Return of the Naive

From the ripening sunshine of Brazilian spring, Edward Mortimer Gilbert, 38, flew home last week to weather the wintry discontent of U.S. justice. He seemed to be charged with everything except starting the Korean war: 15 federal fraud charges of, among other things, making a false SEC report and misappropriating $1,953,000 of the funds of the E. L. Bruce Co., Inc., the lumber milling giant that he had bossed before fleeing last June; twelve New York State charges of grand larceny; a U.S. tax lien amounting to $3,500,000. The erstwhile timber wolf of Wall Street faced up to 194 years in jail. Why then had he returned from extradition-free Brazil?

One reason came from Hearst Gossip Columnist Cholly Knickerbocker (Igor Cassini), who used to mention Gilbert frequently, and whose public relations firm had handled E. L. Bruce. Cassini lost at least $30,000 himself in Gilbert's crash and then committed the calumny of calling his oldtime pal "a crook." After a Park Avenue stroll with a pipe-puffing Gilbert last week, Cholly chronicled all. "Eddie said he 'couldn't let down' his parents, his wife and children, his friends and all those who believed in him. 'I also wanted to see if you and I were still friends,' he said, looking me squarely in the eye."

"I Love a Deal." Gilbert had tried his hand at making money down in Rio, but it was all kind of small time after Wall Street. Encountering a fruit peddler on Copacabana Beach, he haggled the price of a few oranges down from 20 cruzeiros apiece to 12. "I just love a deal," said Gilbert. He dabbled in beer stocks, pocketed $5,000 as management consultant to a lathe works, ran his stake high enough to move from dismal digs into a Copacabana suite that he leased from a feminine exile named Simone Delamarr, who had been one of King Farouk's flings.

In his Elba. Gilbert conspicuously shunned such runaway U.S. swindlers as Lowell Birrell and Earl Belle, and their revolving blondes. "I may be one of the boys," he snapped, "but I'm not one of those boys." Instead, Gilbert went to the movies, hoping to see himself in the newsreels (he didn't), cultivated a voodoo priest ordained in spirit vibrations, and passed one weekend with Novelist John Dos Passes discussing the works of Daphne du Maurier because Gilbert had recently read her but never Dos Passes. Each day Gilbert studied the Wall Street Journal, which a thoughtful pal in New York sent down by jet.

"I Don't Mind Jail." Then came phone calls from his Manhattan lawyer Arnold Bauman. On the basis of these conversations Gilbert figured he might beat his raps--or some of them. Buoyed by that thought and the prospect of a lighter sentence if he returned voluntarily, Gilbert winged back. He was still vowing to "pay off all those people who had faith in me and then lost everything they had," which would take some doing if the feds got all the money they were seeking. Mostly, though, Playboy Gilbert seemed to be longing for the company of an audience. "I don't mind going to jail." sighed Eddie Gilbert, "but I don't think I could stand it if they put me in solitary."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.