The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal

hostess, in fact, usually organized the event, but in 1982 Chichester had stepped in and insisted that he coordinate everything. He was very proficient with computers, he said, and he’d do it all electronically. It would save everyone a huge amount of effort.
    But when it came time to actually do the work, Chichester found himself faced with a mountain of paper—production notes, lyrics, cast lists—and he gave up on the project without having contributed anything at all. Then, with no explanation, he showed up at the first week of rehearsals expecting to be in the show. “I said, ‘Put him in a dog suit,’” our hostess recalled. So the illustrious baronet came out on the Fathers’ Night stage in a dog outfit, and the only thing he had to do was pantomime peeing on a fire hydrant.
    â€œHe was a flake !” the hostess said, a crack finally beginning to appear in her sunny façade. She pointed to two of her friends, who had introduced her to Chichester, and said, “I told them he was a flake. But they said, ‘No! He’s wonderful!’ ” She shook her head. “These two Virgos,” she continued, “are just so trusting ! They just love everybody ! Everyone’s perfect, and nothing bad ever happens. The world is just as it should be, in their eyes. We never dropped the atomic bomb and there has never been a war or catastrophe.”
    I looked over at the two Virgos under attack. They continued smiling as their friend railed away at them. The hostess then pointed to one of the women, who I had been told was among her best friends, and said, “I called her one morning and said, ‘We had lightning strike last night!’ And she said, ‘Oh, no, we didn’t.’ We were the most trusting little town, the most innocent people you’ll ever know. We went right along with the gag. That’s how he got away with it.”
    She explained, “I’m from San Francisco, and I turned up my nose at San Marino at first. I thought, ‘Who wants to live in this flat, icky place?’ ” She motioned to her garden outside and the hills beyond. “You see, I settled on the biggest hill I could find. But the people here were so nice. San Marino was charming! That’s why he—Christopher Chichester—could get by. I can’t say that’s true today.”
    Today San Marino is less homogeneous and likely feels a bit less like a community than it did in the early 1980s. Its population is about half Asian American, mostly affluent Taiwanese, who moved to the city in great numbers in the 1980s and 1990s, attracted by its top-notch public school system—consistently rated among the best in California—and its small-town way of life.
    The ladies agreed that a great deal had changed in San Marino in the past twenty-five years. The era of trust, openness, and innocence was over, and it wasn’t due solely to demographic changes. In large measure, it ended with the mysterious arrival, and the equally mysterious departure, of the young man who called himself Christopher Chichester.
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    When the tea was over, I rode home with Peggy Ebright, one of the all-trusting Virgos, a perky blonde. We went to her comfortable house in the flats of San Marino, and she pulled out yellowed newspaper clippings and production schedules.
    She showed me an article from the January 15, 1984, edition of the Pasadena Star-News . It was a society column about a party given by Joyce and Howard Morrow, the owners of Morrow Nut House, a national chain of roasted-nuts shops. They had donated $40,000 to fly in twenty-two Olympic athletes from San Marino’s namesake, the tiny Republic of San Marino, the microstate of thirty thousand people nestled in Italy’s Apennine Mountains. While competing in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the athletes were wined and dined by the citizens of San Marino, California.
    The party given by the Morrows