Just inside the doorway of VIP, our local estate agent’s offices – smack in view of whomever cares to see – stand five large containers of personal effects belonging to one of the world’s most infamous people: Bernie Madoff.
One of these containers is a large, black suitcase, zipped tightly shut. The others are sturdy moving-house-style boxes, two of which lie open at the top. A few stray papers poke out of one. Another reveals a straw hat and bag and a pair of white sandals that belong to Bernie Madoff’s wife Ruth. Visible, too, is a pair of men’s navy canvas Lacoste loafers, the little alligator lying face-up in the box.
Those shoes were for the boat, Angela tells me in French.
“The boat” would be the Madoffs’ (ever-so-aptly named) Bull, one of their Cap d’Antibes assets that Angela hasn’t yet managed to sell.
Angela is equally well-known around here. People know her as Angela, just Angela – like you talk about Celine or Madonna or Cher. I make this observation to her. She grins and nods vigorously.
Following on from Lunching on Nuggets (my blog dated 22 January 2009), I can now report that the Madoff home on Cap d’Antibes has SOLD. Despite the wretched economy and trail of bankruptcy proceedings, our local real estate agents – the very same folks who sold us Bellevue and who watch over the house in our absence – these good folks have returned a bit of revenue into the vast, black hole that surrounds the Madoff legacy.
“It’s my legacy,” Angela says of the boxes. She seats herself behind one of VIP’s antique wooden desks. I sit across from her. The thick files stacked between us relate to Madoffs’ property.
I’m still wondering what else is inside the boxes. It feels wrong to touch them, voyeuristic even to get too close, and so I’m considering how I might get a casual, closer look. Angela notices my curiosity. “There’s nothing special inside,” she tells me.
Angela was the kingpin – or the queenpin – in the transaction that closed May 19, the Madoff property being offloaded to some Russians. She sold the place furnished, books and all – except for the so-called legacy stuffed into cardboard boxes and a big, black suitcase.
I detect some sadness in Angela’s voice. She had links with these people. She draws a page from her files and shows it me. It’s a clipping from a glossy magazine, a photo of her clients, Bernie and Ruth, decked out as celebrities in their cocktail best – the same friends she has known and dined with over the past 15 years on the Cap d’Antibes. It was Angela who had sold them the now-offensive property (in Ruth’s name). It was she who Ruth Madoff had phoned last December, unsure whether the queen of property was willing even to talk to her. (The queen was.)
The day I visit Angela in VIP’s offices, she’s decked out in her usual get-up. Not that there’s anything usual about it. Today’s selection is a lavender knit, short-sleeved dress, adorned by six necklaces (at least that’s the number I can count) bearing an array of bobbles. One necklace is large enough to count for three; it’s encrusted with large chunks of turquoise. She wears five bracelets (of the glittering and hardly-small variety), two rings (an amazingly modest number, although each ring has the square acreage of six), and big, rhinestone hoop earrings. Turquoise eyeshadow lines her lids. Turquoise-green swirled reading glasses perch on her scalp, which is squeezed tight by a long, turquoise-and-hot pink floral scarf tied at the nape of her neck. Later I unearth a turquoise encrusted hairclip sunk within her pile of hair.
This is Angela, and there is nothing unusual about her dress today – relatively speaking for Angela anyway.
The fact that she was happy to have that year-end chat with Ruth Madoff would’ve seemed a coup for the newly ostracized woman. From informal Cap d’Antibes research, I’ve learned that no one in Ruth’s family is communicating with her – not her children, not Bernie. No, her husband is dressed up in an orange jumpsuit these days, tucked away in a nine-square-foot cell (including shower and toilet) that’s situated in the terrorist section on the 13th story of a Manhattan building, with an elevator that only reaches the ninth. Access to each and every floor above nine requires clearance through an air-locked chamber.
But someone went to visit Bernie recently, and that’s his bankruptcy lawyer. Angela flashes me a copy of his passport page from her files. He’s in his early 40s and bears a crop of dark curly hair and olive skin. Angela describes him as gentil, or kind, adding that he fell in love with Cap d’Antibes, the see-and-be-seen Pom Pom bar in Juan-les-Pins, and the celebrated Eden Roc restaurant.
This gentil lawyer visited Bernie in his orange jumpsuit. Their conversation centered on the sale papers for his pad on the Cap. Angela takes a copy of the document from her files. There, in the bottom left-hand corner, is Bernie’s jagged signature, a condensed, photocopy-gray scrawl centered within the seller’s box on the form.
The speed of the whole transaction is one that has astonished onlookers. First the court had to approve Angela as sales agent for the property. She signed stacks of legalese from the New York State Attorney General’s office, agreeing not to talk to the press and such.
Then, once she had the job, it took Angela only 47 days to get a deal and a firm contract on the property. The bankruptcy lawyer, frankly, couldn’t believe it. He and Angela had developed a sort of rapport during the short period, with the Cap d’Antibes sales agent emailing the New York lawyer almost every day to report showings and conversations over the estate. But the fact that Angela had maneuvered the extra hurdles of an overseas jurisdiction and the property’s connection with a well-followed bankruptcy case made her feat even more astounding.
I was up until 1:00 a.m. faxing papers, Angela says. The New York lawyer emailed her wondering how ANYONE in France could be awake at such an hour and WORKING. “You must be crazy,” he wrote. As she replays the scene for me, she enjoys this description of her as folle.
Angela told the lawyer that, in fact, she was German. That should explain everything.
The reputed industriousness, yes, perhaps, but not the speed of the sale. And taken from a New York lawyer’s perspective, probably the long distance of the transaction, and possibly even the name of the reality office – VIP – stepped beyond the usual bookwork, too. Everything seemed just a little off-kilter. So the New York bankruptcy lawyer finagled a quick trip to the French Riviera to check out the legitimacy of Angela’s deal.
Angela met the curly-haired lawyer at the airport. She grins at me even more broadly in telling this part of the story. The lawyer took one look at her, she says – and here she gestures subtly toward her attire, referencing whatever multi-layered, swirly, hot pink and turquoise outfit and bangles she’d chosen for the day – and the chap said, “Now I know you’re crazy.”
Angela relives those days and finishes on a high note, her eyes twinkling with the fact that the lawyer declared her as even more folle on the day he left the Cap. But he knew one thing for sure. The Madoff sale, crazy or not, was real.
Angela has sold the Madoff home. She has sold the Madoff car as well. One of the thick files on her desk holds these papers. She opens its front cover and waves a set of car keys and a Peugeot ownership card.
Now she’s moving onto Bull, the boat.
At this rate, I reckon you should keep your eyes peeled in the local markets. While the contents of the four cardboard boxes and suitcase are meant to ship overseas to their rightful owners, the freight costs are not insignificant. And who knows where that money would come from.
There are the Madoffs’ former housekeeper and a boat captain, Angela reminds me. They could inherit the legacy.
But, if only for a good dinner party story, I think I’ll keep my eyes open on market days for a smart pair of navy canvas Lacoste loafers.
Please email Mark Seal, writer for Vanity Fair magazine in the US. Thank you. Markseal@aol.com
Posted by: Mark Seal | July 10, 2009 at 09:07 AM