The Mansions of Limbo

by Dominick Dunne

  He drew more international press by announcing that he had donated to the Louvre the Empress Eugenie crown, valued at $2.5 million, and Fragonard’s The Adoration of the Shepherds, valued at between $2.5 million and $5 million. At a well-publicized ceremony attended by sixty guests in evening clothes, the French government expressed its gratitude by making him a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.

  Next Polo announced that he was putting his famous collection of eighteenth-century French paintings up for sale. In what is thought to have been an I’ll-pat-your-back-if-you-pat-mine gesture, Pierre Rosenberg, the distinguished curator of paintings at the Louvre, wrote the preface to the catalog for the sale, even though it is frowned on in museum circles for museum people to become involved in such commercial enterprises. To counteract the speculation that he was selling his collection to meet the demands of his investors, or to save his failing dress business, or to finance his perfume business, Roberto Polo wrote the foreword to the beautiful catalog, in which he said, “Collectors can be divided into two groups: those who satisfy their appetite by the endless accumulation of things and those who are most excited by the ‘hunt,’ the search and research of things. The latter kind of collector satisfies his appetite and curiosity for the collectible once he has it and squeezes out of it, as from a ripe fruit, all the juice that it has to give, then moves on to a different collectible … I am one of those collectors.” Polo said he expected the sale to bring in between $18 million and $20 million.

  • • •

  When Alfredo Ortiz-Murias returned home from the Venice and Chantilly balls, he observed to Ramona Colón that he had seen a change in Roberto’s personality. Ramona Colón told him that she thought Roberto had been transferring clients’ money to “third parties.” Ortiz-Murias claims that that was his first knowledge of malfeasance on the part of Polo. Colón stated in her affidavit that Polo would direct her to transfer a client’s time deposit to the PAMG-NY account and then to the ITKA account. “I noticed that some client time deposit cards were marked ‘PAMG’ in Roberto’s handwriting. Although these time deposit cards were regularly updated and statements sent to the clients continued to report these time deposits, I believe that the entries and statements were fraudulent and that the time deposits no longer existed.… Sometime in mid-1984, I calculated the total shown on all cards marked ‘PAMG’ and the total was about $37 million.” Colón also stated in her affidavit, “I saw Roberto take home shopping bags full of client transfer records and other client information. Since I worked with the files on a daily basis, I know he never brought the records or information back. On one occasion, when Alfredo Ortiz-Murias requested some information on one of his clients and the record could not be found, Roberto explained that he had probably burned it in his fireplace by mistake. Also, during that time, Roberto instructed me to erase all the time deposit computer records. He told me that if they could not be erased, he would throw the computers into the river. Following Roberto’s instructions, I contacted a man at Commercial Software, Inc., and he instructed me on how to erase the computer records, which I did.”

  Alfredo Ortiz-Murias began to notify his own clients and others that there was trouble, and the clients began to place calls on their assets, meaning, in layman’s terms, they wanted their money back, immediately. In one of his letters from prison, Polo has said, “Rostuca advised PAMG in December 1987 that it wished to terminate its relationship; the other clients did the same in April and May of 1988; this means that PAMG was in the obligation to repay its clients between December of 1988 and June of 1989, at the earliest. Now as before this scandal, PAMG is prepared to pre-pay, but Alfredo is not interested, because as he said, ‘I hate Roberto. I only want his blood.’ ”

  When too many of Polo’s investors demanded their money at the same time, it was like a run on the bank. He could not meet their demands. But that, his defenders say, did not make him a crook.

  A Swiss arrest warrant was issued on April 30. The Swiss were expecting Polo to appear at the opening of the exhibition of twenty-six paintings that were to be auctioned on May 30, but he didn’t show up. In the meantime the Swiss judge got in touch with the French police, and an international arrest warrant was issued. At that time Polo made a call from Paris to Milan from a street telephone. “Don’t call me at home,” he said. “The telephones are tapped.”

  On May 8, Roberto Polo and Fabrizio Bagaglini were in Haiti. Polo intended to start a new collection of pictures to replace his collection of French masterpieces. An American friend, Kurt Thometz, and his wife were in Paris at the time. They visited the Polo apartment and said there were already between thirty-five and forty Haitian paintings in one room. Roberto was also buying Dominican art, including some new works by his father-in-law.

  On May 11, Polo was seen at a jewel auction in Geneva, selling.

  On May 12, he was seen in the South of France with Rosa, Fabrizio, the child, the nanny, and Julio Cordero, Rosa’s cousin, who was the manager of the Geneva office, and his wife.

  On May 15, the group was in Monte Carlo, and Polo’s life seemed out of control. With an international warrant out for his arrest, he arrived that afternoon at the Hôtel de Paris apartment of Baby Monteiro de Carvalho, the richest man in Brazil, to watch the Grand Prix, which raced by in the square below. He was accompanied by Rosa, Marina, and Fabrizio, and other guests commented that he seemed harassed.

  On May 16, police entered the office of the Miguel Cruz perfume company in Paris and told the staff that Roberto Polo was under arrest. The feeling, according to Ortiz-Murias, is that perhaps the employees alerted Polo. He and his family returned from the South of France that night. Rosa and the child went to the apartment, but Roberto did not. Instead he went to a hotel.

  On May 17, Roberto disappeared.

  On May 18, at nine o’clock in the morning, the police and detectives walked into the Polo apartment. Rosa was there. The police seized $26 million in furniture and paintings, leaving her with only two mattresses on the floor. Rosa asked the police if she could keep her engagement ring, and they let her.

  The Ferrari Testarossa was seized in Monte Carlo.

  In the days that followed, several people in New York had direct-dial overseas calls from Polo. Eleanor Lambert told me, “He didn’t give his name. He simply said, ‘You know who this is, don’t you?’ I said yes, and he went on to say that all the stories about him were lies spread by Alfredo Ortiz-Murias, and that in time his name would be cleared.” People who knew him best said that he would not allow the police to catch him, that he would take sleeping pills.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was dead,” said an antiques dealer in New York.

  “A suicide?” I asked.

  “No, murdered.”

  “Murdered?”

  “You must understand that there are a lot of people who don’t want him to be found, because he could incriminate them.”

  In addition to the investors who did not want to be identified, several of the antiques dealers Polo did business with in Europe were said to have been paid partially in their own country and partially in Switzerland, a practice not only frowned upon but considered criminal in some countries.

  The whereabouts of Roberto Polo and Fabrizio Bagaglini between May 16 and the end of June, when they turned up in Viareggio, remains a mystery, although the most persistent speculation at the time, later proved incorrect, was that they were in Peru, Chile, or Brazil. Alfredo Ortiz-Murias believes that Polo was hiding out in an apartment in Paris, because Rosa Polo, who was then under surveillance, left her apartment each afternoon and went to the Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme to use the public telephone, presumably to call her husband. In one of the press releases Polo wrote from the prison in Lucca, he says about this period, “Prior to going to Viareggio, I had been in my apartment in Monte Carlo, at the Hôtel de Paris (also in Monte Carlo), at the Hôtel Hermitage (also in Monte Carlo), at Hôtel Le Richemond in Geneva (registered in my name), and before that in Por
t-au-Prince in Haiti with friends and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with family.” There is no doubt that he was in all those places, but earlier than May 16. There is further speculation that the French police did not want to make the arrest in France because a nephew of President Mitterand, Maxime Mitterand, was an employee in the Geneva office of PAMG, Ltd.

  On May 30, the auction of Polo’s French masterpieces went on in Paris as scheduled. Five days earlier, Ader Picard Tajan, the auctioneer, had called a press conference to explain that the sale would be a “forced one” and that he would be the “receiver” for the courts. Surprisingly, the highly publicized sale did not draw crowds. The $14 million realized from it was $3.4 million less than had been expected. There was talk in art circles that if the works donated to the Louvre by Polo had been purchased with money that was not his own the Louvre would have to return them.

  After Polo’s arrest in Viareggio, Fabrizio Bagaglini returned to Rome, where he remained for two weeks. From there he went to Paris and then on to London with a rich Argentinean girlfriend.

  As of this writing, Roberto Polo has been denied bail by the Italians. Here in America, in addition to the ongoing investigations reportedly being conducted by the IRS and the SEC, the FBI is now allegedly involved in collecting evidence to see if there has been mail fraud, if, as Ramona Colón claimed in her affidavit, Polo sent false statements to his investors each month. On East Sixty-fourth Street in Manhattan, the gray stucco Italianate front of the Polo’s town house is cracked and peeling. Inside, the lights stay on day and night. All the furniture is gone except for a set of six upholstered chairs, a chaise longue, and a sofa, all covered in chintz, that were left behind in the sitting room of the master bedroom, and an Aubusson rug, folded in one corner. On the front door is a notice that says, “Warning: “U.S. Government seizure. This property has been seized for non-payment of internal revenue taxes, due from Roberto Polo, by virtue of levy issued by the District Director of the Internal Revenue Service.”

  From prison Roberto Polo wrote me saying he was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude while awaiting the determination of his fate. He also issues communiqués and ultimatums, as if he were in the best bargaining position. In response to the criticism that his life-style surpassed that of the people whose money he handled, he wrote, “It is quite stupid to state that my lifestyle is better than that of my clients: I have a better education and sense of the quality of life, as well as make more money than any of them singly! Does the President or Chairman of the Board of Citibank, for example, live better than most of the bank’s clients? Of course he does! PAMG, Ltd. has clients who are worth U.S. $20,000,000, but who don’t know any better than to buy their clothes at Alexander’s when they visit New York or who dine at coffee shops!”

  From Mexico City, Pablo Aramburuzabala said, “Yesterday Polo said that if we didn’t accept his offer to accept the money that had already been frozen he was going to tell everyone who we were. I said that my money is not dirty money. He can go ahead and tell.”

  In New York, Alfredo Ortiz-Murias says he has received irate calls from Roberto Polo’s mother in Miami. She says she will not rest until she sees Alfredo in jail. Chantal Carr has become engaged to Marco Polo. Rosa Polo continues to live with Marina in the stripped-down apartment in Paris. The Miguel Cruz fashion house is defunct, and the perfume company is at a standstill. Everyone is waiting.

  Jacques Kam, Polo’s French lawyer, told me when he was in New York on the case, “There are many things in the stories that are quite wrong, 100 percent wrong.” He added, “It is not the round that counts. It is the match. This whole case could boomerang.”

  Like the people who danced the nights away in the various discotheques of Imelda Marcos and then, after her fall from grace, pretended not to have known her, or claimed to have only met her, many of the recipients of Roberto Polo’s largess act now as if the Polos had been no more than passing acquaintances, although they attended their parties and accepted free evening dresses from the illfated Miguel Cruz collections. Such is life in the fast lane. There are those, however, who remember Roberto Polo differently, for example the Chilean painter Benjamin Lira and his artist wife, Francisca Sutil. “The Roberto Polo we know doesn’t match with this man we have been reading and hearing about,” Lira said. They remember their friend Roberto as a devout family man and a loving and generous friend, with whom they went to concerts and films and galleries, and with whom they spent long evenings in their loft or in the Polos’ town house, discussing art.

  “Roberto’s understanding of art goes far beyond taste,” said Francisca Sutil. Eleanor Lambert agreed: “He was not just showing off. He was someone with real destiny. He could have been one of the great authorities on art, another Bernard Berenson.”

  October 1988

  DANSE MACABRE

  The Rockefeller and the Ballet Boys

  There is no one, not even his severest detractor, and let me tell you at the outset of this tale that he has a great many severe detractors, who will not concede that Raymundo de Larrain, who sometimes uses the questionable title of the Marquis de Larrain, is, or at least was, before he took the road to riches by marrying a Rockefeller heiress nearly forty years his senior, a man of considerable talent, who, if he had persevered in his artistic pursuits, might have made a name for himself on his own merit. Instead his name, long a fixture in the international social columns, is today at the center of the latest in a rash of contested-will controversies in which wildly rich American families go to court to slug it out publicly for millions of dollars left to upstart spouses the same age as or, in this case, younger than the disinherited adult children.

  The most interesting person in this story is the late possessor of the now disputed millions, Margaret Strong de Cuevas de Larrain, who died in Madrid on December 2, 1985, at the age of eighty-eight, and the key name to keep in mind is the magical one of Rockefeller. Margaret de Larrain had two children, Elizabeth and John, from her first marriage, to the Marquis George de Cuevas. The children do not know the whereabouts of her remains, or even whether she was, as a member of the family put it, incinerated in Madrid. What they do know is that during the eight years of their octogenarian mother’s marriage to Raymundo de Larrain, her enormous real-estate holdings, which included adjoining town houses in New York, an apartment in Paris, a country house in France, a villa in Tuscany, and a resort home in Palm Beach, were given away or sold, although she had been known throughout her life to hate parting with any of her belongings, even the most insubstantial things. At the time of her second marriage, in 1977, she had assets of approximately $30 million (some estimates go as high as $60 million), including 350,000 shares of Exxon stock in a custodian account at the Chase Manhattan Bank. The location of the Exxon shares is currently unknown, and documents presented by her widower show that his late wife’s assets amount to only $400,000. Although these sums may seem modest in terms of today’s billion-dollar fortunes, Margaret, at the time of her inheritance, was considered one of the richest women in the world. There are two wills in question: a 1968 will leaving the fortune to the children and a 1980 will leaving it to the widower. In the upcoming court case, the children, who are fifty-eight and fifty-six years old, are charging that the will submitted by de Larrain, who is fifty-two, represents “a massive fraud on an aging, physically ill, trusting lady.”

  Although Margaret Strong de Cuevas de Larrain was a reluctant news figure for five decades, the facts of her birth, her fortune, and the kind of men she married denied her the privacy she craved. However, her children, Elizabeth, known as Bessie, and John, have so successfully guarded their privacy, as well as that of their children, that they are practically anonymous in the social world in which they were raised. John de Cuevas, who has been described as almost a hermit, has never used the title of marquis. He is now divorced from his second wife, Sylvia Iolas de Cuevas, the niece of the art dealer Alexander Iolas, who was a friend of his father. His only child is a daughter from that
marriage, now in her twenties. He maintains homes in St. James, Long Island, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he teaches scientific writing at Harvard. Bessie de Cuevas, a sculptor whose work resembles that of Archipenko, lives in New York City and East Hampton, Long Island. She is also divorced, and has one daughter, twenty-two, by her second husband, Joel Carmichael, the editor of Midstream, a Zionist magazine so reactionary that it recently published an article accusing the pope of being soft on Marxism. Friends of Bessie de Cuevas told me that she was never bothered by the short financial reins her mother kept her on, because she did not fall prey to fortune hunters the way her sister heiresses, like Sunny von Bülow, did.

  Margaret Strong de Cuevas de Larrain, the twice-titled American heiress, grew up very much like a character in a Henry James novel. In fact, Henry James, as well as William James, visited her father’s villa outside Florence when she was young. Margaret was the only child of Bessie Rockefeller, the eldest of John D. Rockefeller’s five children, and Charles Augustus Strong, a philosopher and psychologist, whose father, Augustus Hopkins Strong, a Baptist clergyman and theologian, had been a great friend of old Rockefeller. A mark of the brilliance of Margaret’s father was that, while at Harvard, he competed with fellow student George Santayana for a scholarship at a German university and won. He then shared the scholarship with Santayana, who remained his lifelong friend. Margaret was born in New York, but the family moved shortly thereafter to Paris. When Margaret was nine her mother died, and Strong, who never remarried, built his villa in Fiesole, outside Florence. There, in a dour and austere atmosphere, surrounded by intellectuals and philosophers, he raised his daughter and wrote scholarly books. His world provided very little amusement for a child, and no frivolity.