The Call of the Weird (22 page)

It ended, after three weeks, in a mistrial. The jury was deadlocked— on some counts ten to two, on some nine to three. The prosecutors said they intended to retry the case.

Back in Vegas, and having finished reading the trial transcripts, I called Michael. He wasn’t listed in the phone book, so I tried him at Towbin Dodge. I was put straight through. I reminded him who I was; asked if he could spare any time to catch up. He sounded surprised to hear from me.

“How did you get my number?”

“From the trial transcripts.”

“Hmmm, this week’s real busy. And this weekend’s not good. I got a birthday on Saturday and a wedding on Sunday.”

I could feel I was being brushed off. “What about next week?”

“Well, you could try me early next week.”

“Great, shall we say Monday lunchtime?”

“Better if you just call me on Monday so I can see how I’m fixed.”

At the end, he said, “Not a challenge, bro!” But the signs weren’t good.

Killing time, I spent a morning with Art, drinking expensive coffees at the same popular gourmet coffee chain. He was wearing a green Hawaiian shirt, and shorts with pale chunky legs sticking out of them. He had a folder of material from Marshall, including a photo, seemingly Photoshopped, of Marshall standing on a woman whom he’d hypnotized into believing she was a plank, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand.

“That woman there, I knew her. She was kind of a groupie for Marshall,” Art said. “I was a little like a groupie for a while, I guess you could say. Because I wanted to work for him. He was doing a show in Salt Lake, so I drove all the way to Salt Lake just to see the
show”—more than 400 miles—“because I had never seen one of his hypnosis shows before . . . I was surprised. I thought hypnosis was like putting someone into a trance.” Art closed his eyes and put his arms out like a zombie. “And they kinda follow you around, but basically all it is is just suggestion. Some people are open to it and they do it, and you tell them to quack like a duck, and they do it just’cause you suggested it, I guess.”

I asked about his injury. He said he’d run his car into a telephone pole at low speed, fifteen miles an hour or so, aged sixteen or seventeen. He didn’t realize it but he had an abscess on his brain. Three days later he lost his sight, and the ability to walk, talk, read, and write. “I was president of the class, captain of the football team. I’d been nominated for class favorite. I was real thin, no acne, full head of hair. When I got out of the hospital, I had to start over with Dick and Jane books. Great big pencils and the paper with wide lines. They had to give me steroids to heal the brain damage, and the steroids gave me acne and hair loss and changed my whole metabolism.

“Did you see the magazine article about Marshall?” Art asked. “He was convicted of counterfeiting money.”

“It said something about sexual harassment too,” I said. “He told a woman who worked for him he could give her a one-hour orgasm.” “That’s a little sad,” Art said. “Having to resort to cheesy lines like that.”

He thought he might have Michael Yee’s address on a card at home, so we climbed in his beaten-up 1989 Plymouth Sundance with 125,000 miles on it and no AC and drove to his rented room. His apartment overlooked a shady courtyard with a swimming pool. Pale beige stucco with brown trim, mildewed and warped. Rundown but pleasant. Art’s room was cluttered with folders and tapes and books, all about succeeding at business.
Successful Sell
ing. You Can Choose to Be Rich. Millionaire Mindset. Superstar Selling
by Bob and Zonnya Harrington—six audio cassettes. “I got that one at the Salvation Army for two dollars. I’m gathering stuff like that for Biz-Masters.” His dream was still to run seminars helping people with business and finance.

There was no sign of Michael’s address. On the way out, Art pointed up to a towering brown mirror-building, the latest shiny mega-resort, with three cranes on top, still incomplete. “That’s Steve Wynn’s new hotel,” Art said. “It’s the most expensive hotel in the world, so they say. That’s why I like this town. There’s a lot of things happening. A lot of industry. It’s visionary.”

I wrote Michael Yee a letter. Under the influence of a leaflet Marshall had written to promote the Millionaire Mentorship Program, I struck a similar overheated tone, using words like “challenge” and “adventure” and lots of exclamation points. A few days later, having heard nothing back, I drove out to the car dealership where he worked, on a horrible little stretch of road called Auto Showroom Drive. The receptionist paged him: “Michael, your friend Louis is here to see you.”

He was eating lunch, he said, but wouldn’t mind chatting while he ate. We went back to his office, which he shares with two other salesmen, both of them, like him, wearing name tags and company shirts. I sat in front of his desk and he sat behind it, and he ate his two beef tacos out of a folding polystyrene container.

“If you think about it, if one person can take a system and it works, then is the system working? Sure! The question is: Are people working the system? If one person climbs Mount Everest, everybody can, if they do the exact same thing.”

“You don’t think there are people who aren’t capable of doing it?”

“If you put your mind to it, you can do anything you want.”

Since I’d seen him, he’d helped to launch a network marketing company. “Our slogan was ‘Macy’s quality at Wal-Mart prices.’” But Michael was working for free while the company was getting started, and the cofounder backed out of an agreement to pay him for his work. Eventually, Michael ran out of money. He put his things in storage and drove back to Vegas late the previous year. “I had nine hundred dollars and everything I could get in my car.”

Michael had seen Marshall the previous day. “We talk maybe once a month. He’s not somebody I go out and socialize with on a daily or weekly basis.”

“Do you think Marshall takes advantage of people?”

Michael paused. “What’s your definition of taking advantage?”

“Just by your standard.”

Michael paused again. “Nope. Probably does the same thing I do. He’s very persuasive. Absolutely. But that’s why people take the Program. To learn how to be that. This stuff does work. It is real. See, what you perceive to be true is your reality.”

Michael finished his tacos.

“I’d like to maybe see you at home,” I said.

“I don’t have a challenge with that.”

I called Michael a couple of times to see about visiting him at home. He’d be busy and ask me to call back, then I’d find his phone was switched off.

Weeks passed. I tried Sylver Enterprises again. “It’s a fantastic day at corporate offices, this is Donnell, how may I serve you?” I tried emailing the website.

I had lunch with Art, now down to his last $100. He’d been making up prospectuses for his latest business concepts, one for a seminar company called Wealthwerks with an “e.” “I wanted to register
it as a domain name. Wealthworks was already taken. But the guy said in Europe they sometimes spell “werk“ with an ‘e.’” He had a treatment for a TV show about finance called “Biz Buzz.”

I tried nudging him toward thinking about getting a job. I was becoming concerned that Art viewed me as a successful person, a good person to be around and talk ideas with, and that this faith he had in me brought with it a kind of responsibility—a responsibility I wasn’t sure how to discharge. We went to a sandwich shop. I ordered a veggie sub. “I’ll get that, too,” Art said. “That sounds good.” I was his new millionaire mentor.

By now I’d resigned myself to hearing nothing back from Marshall or his people. I asked Art if he would chaperone me, as a former attendee, to one of Marshall’s events. He declined. So the morning of the seminar, one Saturday in September, I met for coffee with Gene Puffer. We were in downtown Vegas, on the ground floor of the Golden Nugget hotel casino.

Gene had brought another disgruntled Sylver graduate. Daniel Braisted was fortyfive or so, clean shaven, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and glasses. “Marshall’s a brilliant man. He’s achieved a lot, and he didn’t do what he said he was going to do . . . He sends me an email inviting me whenever he’s speaking here in Vegas, and then when I show up he throws me out.” Now Daniel was working for a company founded by a controversial health guru, Dr. Robert O. Young. “He believes there’s only one disease in the world. Overacidity of the body.”

“What, even causing things like autism?” I asked.

“Yeah! I’ve seen the blood!”

“Is it network marketing?”

“It has to be that, because that’s the only way to explain it. And he’s international. He’d be great for your book. For me, I don’t see the interest in Marshall. He overstepped himself, he promised
something he couldn’t deliver. I thought the mentors would be successful people. Instead they were just caring people who were willing to make a few calls every day for three hundred dollars a week. I still respect him.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s good.”

“Good at what?”

“He knows how to present. He’s a good presenter. At Turning Point, there are people who make major breakthroughs. They eat fire! I ate fire! . . . The challenge I have is when people overextend themselves. But Marshall has people who did the same seminar I did and they love him.”

“Who is he helping?” I said, surprising myself with my own ardor. “He hasn’t helped anyone!”

I was irritated with Daniel. Here he was taking Marshall’s side, and he was the one who’d lost out.

At eight thirty, I walked up to the conference room where the seminar was being held. Daniel didn’t want to come up—scared, I think. Gene said he’d come up at five to nine. He thought he’d be thrown out as soon as he was spotted.

“Good morning! Welcome back!” a camp little attendant said. “You’re in for an exciting day.”

A long line snaked around the registration room. Everyone was wearing name tags. There was an atmosphere of excited anticipation, and so many people it seemed safe for Gene to come up. I paged him.

“Do you recognize anyone?” I asked.

He looked around. “No.”

We went up to the desk, and just like that we were signed up: a “reattend” and his guest. By coincidence, it was Dena who took our names, the same young woman I had spoken to on the phone. I couldn’t quite believe it. We were in.

We signed release forms promising to keep confidential anything that happened during the session and indemnifying Marshall against lawsuits for accidents during the fire-eating or whatever it was. Another volunteer made up name tags for us. Gene and I walked to the back of another line, this one for people waiting to go into the conference room. Now I was in, I had a weird feeling of disappointment. Two days in a Marshall Sylver seminar! Gene needed the men’s room.

“Gene!” It was Dena, walking out from the registration area, looking agitated. “You will not be able to reattend. I need your name tags back.”

“May I ask why?” Gene said.

“You know why.” And as easily as it had arrived, our opportunity turned on its heels and left.

We were walking toward the elevators when we saw the man himself, Marshall, striding toward us. Rock-faced. Barrel-chested. Hair, as ever, slicked back.

“Marshall,” I said. “Could I come to the seminar?”

Without stopping, he looked at me, then at Gene, then back at me. He stiffened, as though he’d seen an apparition.

“No, you cannot. Don’t even come near me. I’ll have security throw you out.”

“Could I grab an interview with you?”

He was disappearing up the corridor. Without slowing down, he said again, in the same tone of voice, “Don’t even come near me. I’ll have security throw you out.”

It made a change from, “You’re loved.”

Deflated, Gene and I traipsed back to the coffee shop. Gene lined up for coffee, I jotted down some notes from the encounter. Gene came over, having decided he’d had enough coffee. Then he changed his mind again, and joined the back of the line.

We drove around to see Art. After moving apartments several times, he was staying with a friend, paying nominal rent. He had the top half of a huge airy New York–style loft on the far western perimeter of Las Vegas, where the city runs out into desert.

Art and his landlady, Liz, were eating sausage-and-egg Mc- Muffins. I told them about the run-in with Marshall. Art didn’t seem too interested. To his credit, I suppose, he regarded Marshall and the Millionaire Mentorship Program as old news. We chatted a little about George Bush, whom they were both supporting in the election. Art said he was training as a tech support guy for DirecTV, a cable company.

“You’ve really landed on your feet, Art,” I said.

Later, I reproached myself for not being smarter in my approach to Marshall. I wondered what would have happened if I’d gone in with someone who wasn’t blacklisted. I would have got into the seminar and then what? Well, probably some underling would have asked me to leave during the lunch break. The truth was, he was never going to sit down and speak to me. He never granted interviews these days, especially not to reporters who had made doubting documentaries about him. But still, I felt a little ashamed that I hadn’t made more of an effort to at least appear impartial.

On rereading my notes, I understood more about how Marshall worked. The main commodity he was selling was belief. Believe you can do it. Believe Marshall can help you. That was the first prerequisite of success. But you couldn’t go through the motions. You had to be sincere. And they were sincere, the seminar attendees. And having once believed, even though many of them didn’t double their money, it was hard for them to recant their belief. They couldn’t retract their sincerity. Having committed so much time and money, it would have felt foolish, and disloyal. It was a
much-magnified version of the hemmed-in feeling I’d had at the Turning Point seminar. This was the cornerstone of Marshall’s success. People were paying to be indoctrinated in “success,” but he was also training them to love him.