A Most Proper Con

Beacon Hill reveals itself best in the cold of autumn. The ivy clinging to antique townhouses dies back, uncovering the two-century-old brick beneath. The wind whips leaves up the narrow streets and across sidewalks where long-gone Alcotts, Appletons, and Cabots once strolled. But when Clark Rockefeller arrived to stroll those same sidewalks, taking up residence on Pinckney Street in September 2006, he came with something to hide.

Rockefeller was met by welcoming neighbors, and found it easy to make friends. He always had. On the evening of November 30, he and his wife, Sandra Boss, headed across the Public Garden to the Back Bay mansion of philanthropist Jane Roy. The occasion was a fundraiser to benefit the Mount, the former Lenox home of Edith Wharton that now serves as a museum. Roy would host a cocktail reception before guests moved a few doors down the street for dinner at the Algonquin Club. The event promised to be grand, but in that understated way still typical of Boston. The guests, perhaps befitting their ingrained Puritanical sensibilities, took their drinks secure in the knowledge that they'd be afforded the opportunity to repent for them later with their checkbooks.

Rockefeller's introduction to this scene, like many advantages handed to him in the preceding years, was owed to his wife's achievements. The managing partner in the Boston office of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, she had just been appointed a trustee of the Mount, which was then struggling under several million dollars' worth of debt. Museum officials hoped her business experience would help them avoid foreclosure.

The Mount has for years been supported by some of Boston's most distinguished residents, people like Amos and Barbara Hostetter, and Lillie Johnson, the wife of Fidelity chair Ned Johnson. But this party hosted more than merely deep-pocketed donors. Indeed, for Rockefeller, the fundraiser would have been an enticing combination of literary lights and high-status patrons of the arts. In addition to the former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, guests included authors like Mark Bowden, who wrote Black Hawk Down, and Cambridge's Claire Messud, whose The Emperor's Children had just spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. "It was quite a fashionable event," says Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action. "All the cream of Boston society was there."

The benefit was in full swing by the time Boss and Rockefeller climbed the steps to Roy's front door. Inside, the omnipresent society photographer Bill Brett was navigating the room, shooting photos that would appear in the Globe. Although he didn't recognize Rockefeller and Boss as they entered, Brett was drawn to how they looked—she stunning in an evening dress, he wearing a flashy dinner jacket—so he approached them with his camera. It took just a moment for Rockefeller to notice the photographer, even less time for his expression to change from startled to angry. "You will not take my picture," he hissed, and disappeared into the crowd.

The exchange was an odd one, if not rare for Rockefeller, whose various affectations—a hard-to-place accent, a fabricated educational pedigree, a borrowed last name—added up to an image that practically begged people to notice him. Yet once they did, he would flee from their attention. As if once they began asking questions, he would realize that he shouldn't be courting attention at all.

After spending years bouncing across the country, what Rockefeller had finally found on Beacon Hill that fall must have been a relief. It was a place where people were impressed by his name, though not terribly surprised by it. More than that, it was filled with people ready to believe the sorts of stories they presumed a Rockefeller would tell. And so it was that Clark Rockefeller, who was created in Manhattan, became in Boston the type of man he always thought he deserved to be.