Free The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal Page A

himself in a bucolic enclave twelve miles to the east of L.A., a tiny, self-contained, all-American town of true-blue believers, all too eager to embrace a stranger, especially one with a stellar name.

CHAPTER 4
    Christopher Chichester: San Marino, California
    D eep in the dossier of documents I had been given by my secret source in Boston, an interesting item caught my eye, a report from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, dated July 4, 1994:
    Detectives say that Chichester dresses well, is very clean cut and very articulate. He attends church services and ingratiates himself with older people in wealthy communities. He has passed himself off as a computer expert, film producer and stockbroker. He has told people that his father was a lawyer, an archaeologist or a British aristocrat and his mother an architect, an archaeologist or an actress. He is very knowledgeable on subjects of which he would speak. Although Chichester speaks with what people have described as an English accent, detectives say he is not British. He is believed to be from another Western European nation.
    Nearby in the dossier on the young immigrant were the following lines:
    May 26, 1981: Moves to California, becomes Christopher Chichester.
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    February 7, 1983: issued California drivers license No. C309973—sometime between this date and 2-08-85 moves into the rear house at 1920 Lorain Road, San Marino.
    I had never been to San Marino, but once I learned more about it, I could see immediately why the German who now called himself Christopher Chichester had chosen to move there. GARDENS OF EARTHLY DELIGHT, read the headline of a New York Times article about the place. A 1996 story in the Los Angeles Times listed the city’s impressive statistics: area in square miles, 3.75; population, 12,959; median age, 41.2; median household income, $100,101.
    The story read:
    San Marino, known for the size of its estates and incomes, is a city of superlatives.
    Consider one of its many distinctions: One of its founders, rail tycoon Henry E. Huntington, ultimately had his name on nearly as much Los Angeles real estate as the county assessor. The city’s first mayor was George Patton, father of the famed “Blood and Guts” general of World War II. As a boy the younger George swam in Lake Vineyard, which would become a 35-acre verdant jewel called Lacy Park. . . .
    A rigorous set of regulations are enforced to maintain a posh lifestyle: a car can be visible in a driveway for no more than 48 hours continuously, only one family is allowed for each home, trash cans cannot be in view of the street, door-to-door hawkers and chain-link fences are expressly prohibited. The only salvation for some jittery souls is a double espresso, the strongest drink for sale in the city.
    One day in the fall of 2008, I took the 110 freeway from downtown Los Angeles until it stopped and suddenly turned into an ordinary road. After I drove through a short and scruffy patch of Pasadena, the sky suddenly opened, the foliage thickened, and the air turned cool and clear. The road widened into a six-lane boulevard. Suddenly I was in a different world, the antithesis of the metropolis twelve miles away. San Marino seemed to be stuck in another era, a flashback to Norman Rockwell’s America, a pristine little town framed by the San Gabriel Mountains, dotted with palms and filled with good, honest, churchgoing citizens. The town felt immediately safer than the urban sprawl I had just left behind.
    The eyesore double-decker strip malls that had taken over Los Angeles had not encroached here. Instead, the main road, Huntington Boulevard, was lined with tidy and quaint little shops: the Huntington Drive Service Station (with real attendants, not the standard serve-yourself computerized pumps), Diana Dee’s Gifts, Carriage Trade Coiffures, the Plantation House, Fashion Cleaners, the Collenette School of Dancing (specializing in ballet), Deluxe Shoe