The House of Madoff

 

Bernard Madoff’s house on the beach in Montauk is a barn-like hulk of wood situated behind a small stand of trees and shad bushes at the toe of a 90 foot high dune, with just less than 200 feet of sandy strand before the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. For a long time the often-shuttered house was falsely reputed to be owned by Ralph Lauren, which was disturbingly odd. Why would a designer with so much verve and style in his clothing line choose to dwell in a place so somber, ostentatious and so totally vulnerable to being smashed to matchsticks in the next big hurricane? When it was confirmed that Mr. Lauren’s house was actually a safer, cozier place farther up the dune and down the other way, people were glad for him.

 

Occasionally in the summertime, Mr. Madoff and his wife Ruth and their sons, Andrew and Mark, were seated in a booth at breakfast-time at Mr. John’s Pancake House in Montauk town. Madoff made little impression. A Jewish proverb says, “If you look like a swindler, you can’t be a swindler.”

 

Merchants in Montauk town know Madoff and they liked him because he paid his bills promptly and sometimes he proffered a chunk of cash far in advance as a sign that he trusted the merchant unconditionally, as he liked people to trust him. Once a year around the Fourth of July he invited dozens of his Manhattan office staff and some business friends to a sleep-over at a very good local motel.  Mr. Madoff presented everyone with a day at the beach and dinner at the Montauk Yacht Club,  plus a night of world class fireworks in front of his beach house to celebrate yet another good year for the Madoff firm and the independence of the United States of America.  No fireworks are expected for 2009.

 

One morning not long after the arrest last December, there was a discussion of the startling news among Mr. John’s regulars. It was widely agreed that if Mr. Madoff came in and sat down for breakfast, the waitresses would treat him with their usual flippant grace, and the merchants and trades folk around town would probably recognize him with a hello and might even shake his hand, in a display of neighborly Christian forgiveness.