“What is it?” Kirk asked as Harut led him away.
“Well, they all have proof that, one way or another, they’re related to the Kerkorians of California,” Harut explained. “I guess you’re all cousins.”
“Oh, my God.”
Harut and Kirk continued on to the foreign ministry office where they had a midday meeting to review the government’s press release announcing the Lincy Foundation’s gift of $100 million for the major highway building project. Harut immediately took out a pen and began scratching out lines and fixing spellings.
“What are you doing?” Kirk asked.
“Editing,” said Harut.
“Well, stop. Let them say it however they want.”
Harut marveled in silence. What had become of Kirk, the “shish-kabob Armenian”?
A visit to the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum was arranged for Kirk’s last full day in the country.
All modern-day Armenians grow up hearing harrowing tales of forced marches, roadside massacres, and ethnic cleansing campaigns committed or condoned by Ottoman rulers, Turks, and Kurds. Kirk’s father, Ahron, and grandfather Kasper were both born and raised in the Harput region of what was then Armenia. It is now east-central Turkey. They both left home before the great onslaught of violence that left 1.5 million dead between 1915 and 1923.
Though Ahron never witnessed such atrocities, he would horrify Kirk and his siblings with disturbing stories of Ottoman soldiers hoisting Armenian babies on their bloody bayonets. If some atrocities from that era were exaggerations or even inventions, plenty of them were all too real. And the human toll was staggering.
Hundreds of Armenian villages became overnight ghost towns, their inhabitants forced to walk hundreds of miles without food, drink, or proper clothing, enduring bands of robbers, rapists, and killers. U.S. diplomats in the region called what they were witnessing appalling. One alerted Washington to “the most awful crime . . . that has ever been committed against any race of people.”2
The museum visit brought back memories of his father’s stories during an emotional tour that ended at a collection of glass jars. The guide knew that Kirk’s family came from Harput, an ancient Armenian town east of the Euphrates River. He sorted through containers and pulled out one. It looked very much like the rest, a jar of dirt.
Taking Kirk’s hand, the man turned it palm up and filled it with a small mound of brown soil. Maybe a half cup.
“From Harput, land of your father,” he said.
Kirk said nothing. He didn’t move. He just stared at his hand and the dirt as his eyes filled and flooded over with tears.
Later that day, back in the Marriott Hotel lobby, Kirk and Harut were headed for a bank of elevators when a man rushed to intercept them. He was short and stocky, wearing a T-shirt and toting something heavy in a box.
Please, he said in Armenian, he had been waiting all afternoon for this chance to meet Mr. Kerkorian. His name was Levon Tokmajyan. He was a sculptor. He had something to show and a story to tell. He quickly opened the box.
Inside was the head of Kirk Kerkorian—a chalk-white plaster-cast bust of the financier staring back, blank and lifeless, at a perplexed Kirk. Both heads shared the same telltale pompadour hairstyle.
Harut tried to shield Kirk by stepping between them and giving Kirk the chance to escape on the next elevator. “I’m sorry, we don’t have time to—”
“How much?” Kirk interrupted with an Armenian haggling phrase he remembered. But Levon the sculptor launched immediately into the story behind the head in his box.
It had been commissioned by a former mayor of the holy city of Etchmiadzin. Kirk understood the significance. Etchmiadzin is to the Armenian Apostolic faithful what Vatican City is to Roman Catholics. The Armenian pope who resides there had been deeply moved by Kirk’s generosity after the great earthquake, and the former mayor had simply intended to honor that generosity. He planned to rename one of the city’s boulevards Kerkorian Street and to install Kirk’s bust on a stone pedestal in some grassy square at one end of it or the other.
That apparently was before word got back to city hall that the generous Mr. Kerkorian preferred anonymity and would actually be terribly embarrassed by such a public tribute. By then, however, Levon had already made the preliminary plaster cast, relying on photos and videos he tracked down through the American University in Yerevan.
“It’s very good,” Kirk said with a nod to the bust in the box. At the same time he was reaching into his pocket for a wad of hundred-dollar bills. “I’d like to take it with me when we leave in the morning.”
Kirk was peeling off bills as he spoke. After the first four or five, Levon was watching, almost certainly counting. Kirk kept going. Once he reached at least twenty of the hundred-dollar bills, Kirk folded them in half and handed Levon the wad. Harut guessed it was somewhere between $1,700 and $2,200. There was no haggling. The sculptor promised to have the plaster bust back before checkout in the morning, properly boxed and padded for safe travel.
“I tried to run him off,” said an apologetic Harut after the transaction. “What will you do with that thing?”
Kirk smiled and shrugged. “If I left it here, who knows where it might have ended up? Now . . . it’s safe.”
That evening he was in a hurry to get to his room. The markets were about to open in New York. It was early Tuesday morning in Las Vegas where Kirk’s management team at MGM Grand was planning to make a major public announcement likely to affect trading—the repurchase of 12 million shares. It was intended as a show of confidence in the company, the gaming business, and Las Vegas itself.
Even halfway around the world, Kirk was busy moving his chess pieces. He couldn’t share what was about to happen with Harut. Not yet. Insider stuff, at least for another hour or two. But for now, Kirk was off to tune in CNBC and watch the market drama unfold live. He was about to make close to a $200 million profit while sitting in a hotel room in Armenia.
For the return on Wednesday morning, Harut was invited to fly along on the private jet as far as Nice. Kirk was stopping there to spend a week or so on his yacht. Harut could have dinner on board and stay the night before catching his commercial flight back to California. They departed Yerevan with Kirk’s boxed plaster bust securely stowed with his luggage. It was the last time Harut saw it.
Kirk’s yacht was easy to spot in the harbor at Nice. It was by far the biggest thing afloat. At 192 feet it was then the second- or third-largest yacht on any waterfront anywhere on the globe. Like airplanes and the MGM studios, Kirk’s yacht was bought and sold numerous times. And even when it was under outside ownership, Kirk leased or chartered the boat when he wanted a week or two in the Mediterranean sun.
The October Rose, or whatever the name on its bow at any given time, slept twelve people in six cabins and had separate crew quarters that could accommodate fifteen. It had a fitness gym, BBQ, Jacuzzi, and a disco deck with its own laser light show. But the German-built steel-hulled boat was elegantly simple and unpretentious in design, a nautical reflection of Kirk.
One of its recent buyers and sellers had been Kirk’s friend and Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison. He fell in love with the sleek white beauty one evening when he saw it offshore from the steps of a Monaco casino. It was bathed in light. “I felt like I was in a James Bond movie. I didn’t know life could be this cool.”3 Ellison offered Kirk $10 million and renamed it Sakura. Whatever its name, it was always the October Rose to Kirk, and it was always his first choice for cruising between casinos along the French Riviera.
Harut was eager to see the Kerkorian yacht. After they boarded on Wednesday afternoon, Kirk led Harut to a small stateroom and asked if it was adequate for his overnight accommodations. Harut happily accepted. It had a bed and he needed a nap. Dinner would be served on board in two or three hours, once Lisa Bonder arrived from Los Angeles. She and the baby had just cleared Customs in Paris.
Harut had met Lisa before. He knew about the baby, now about thr
ee months old. He knew there was widespread skepticism that it was Kirk’s baby. But Kirk was not among those openly skeptical, certainly not in front of Harut. He seemed completely at ease with the notion of fatherhood at the age of eighty-one.
Privately, however, Kirk was wrestling with conflicting clues and troubling doubts. Lisa said it had to be him, as she had no other sexual partners at the time. Even before Kira Rose was born in March, Kirk had been to his urologist for an updated sperm test. His sperm count was very low,4 so low that his odds of fathering a child were about the same as winning a million dollars at craps on a single roll of the dice.
Harut awoke from a light nap to angry voices. It was Kirk and Lisa. They were yelling at each other. Harut couldn’t hear the precise words, but the tone was harsh and upsetting. He sat up but made no move for the door. Moments later there was a knock.
Kirk said Lisa was having a fit. She wanted Kira and one of the nannies in this room. Would Harut mind terribly to be moved to a different room?
“Of course not.” Harut grabbed his bags and followed Kirk to another cabin farther astern.
Kirk and Lisa were still sniping at each other over dinner—this time she was angry that he had failed to alert her to the MGM Grand stock repurchase announcement.
“I could’ve made a killing!” she raged. “Why are you keeping secrets?”
Kirk tried to dismiss the question. He was busy. There wasn’t time. It was none of her business.
“And it would’ve been a federal crime if he told you,” Harut added softly.
“What?” Lisa said.
“You’re talking about insider information. We’d all like some of that,” Harut said as if agreeing with her. “But then, Kirk could go to jail. It’s a felony.”
Lisa went silent. Peace returned to the floating dinner table.
37
Wynn and Lose
March 1999
Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles
Kirk was starting to get used to the idea that at his advanced age he had fathered a child with Lisa Bonder. How many men in their eighties could demonstrate such virility? He wanted to believe it, against all the odds—his low sperm count, the improbably long gap between her pregnancy and their last romantic fling, the gnawing suspicion that this beautiful baby was somehow part of a coercive scheme for more money and marriage.
Lisa was always asking for money, substantial sums of cash and loans. And, if that was all she wanted, no problem. As Kirk liked to say, “Anything that can be solved with money isn’t a problem.” But for Kirk, marriage was a price too high.
It was also true that little Kira Rose was such a charming bundle of coos and giggles that Kirk had been completely bewitched. She fell asleep in his arms. Her first word was Papa. And he was starting to see himself in her features. “Look, she’s got a widow’s peak just like me,” Kirk tried to tell his skeptical sister, Rose.1
So it was with mixed emotions that Kirk assumed the twin roles of Lisa’s partner and Kira’s papa at the toddler’s first birthday party. It was on the lush grounds of the Hotel Bel-Air, a three-hour, $70,000 afternoon event described in the formal invitation as “A Victorian Garden Party.” Daisies, orchids, and lacey parasols decorated the party venue where adults widely outnumbered children. Iced teas were served in tall crystal glasses. Lisa wore a pale yellow jacket with stiff lace collar and cuffs, a string of pearls, and long French nails. Her wide-brimmed, daisy-covered hat was suitable for an Easter parade. Kirk was color coordinated, wearing a soft gold-and-charcoal windowpane-patterned Italian sports jacket with his trademark open neck white shirt. His good friend Jerry Perenchio and wife, Margie, were there, as was a professional photographer.
Snap! And there was 1/250th of a second frozen on film with Kirk playfully mugging for the camera alongside a bemused Kira. Snap! And there’s a shot of Kirk hoisting a stuffed bunny to show off one of Kira’s presents. Snap! And there’s Kirk and Lisa sharing a happy moment, her right hand resting affectionately on his thigh.2
But there was also a darkly audacious irony hanging over the sunny birthday scene that only Lisa could have known that day. This same Hotel Bel-Air was where she and Anne DuPont had partied with playboy Steve Bing and his friend one year and nine months before.
Questions about Kira’s paternity had not arisen openly since her birth. Kirk had from the beginning promised to take both financial and personal care of the baby as if she were his biological child, even as he expressed initial doubts that he could be the father. Lisa asked for child support of $20,000 a month. Kirk directed Tracinda treasurer Anthony Mandekic to begin sending those monthly support checks to Lisa immediately after Kira was born.
In the two years between their breakup at the end of 1995 and Lisa’s announcement that she was pregnant in the fall of 1997, Kirk had also made gifts and loans to her amounting to nearly $5.5 million—including the million-dollar cash handout to finance her move to New York, the gift that went instead into her safe deposit box. The rest, he said, went to help Lisa buy and renovate homes in Beverly Hills. He said she kept profits from the sales and the loans were forgiven.
Soon after the birthday party, she came to Kirk for more millions. She wanted to buy a ten-thousand-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion on Greenway Drive with sufficient comfort and safety that it could serve as Kira’s childhood home. It appealed to Kirk, too, who liked the idea of his little girl living within a five-minute drive of his residence. He gave Lisa another $3.2 million.
The new acquisition also needed renovation, so Kirk loaned her another $1.7 million and allowed her to move into the big house (formerly the Sonny and Cher house) on his twenty-three-acre Wanda Park estate. They would live for the next several months as neighbors—Lisa receiving rent-free lodging while she spent Kirk’s millions on her new home, all while collecting $20,000 a month in child support.
Their daily proximity allowed Kirk to spend more time with Kira. It also allowed Lisa to lobby Kirk. “Let’s get married,” she pressed him. She told him it was difficult for her to be the “mother to our out-of-wedlock child,” that she felt society “looked down upon her,” that marriage would “legitimize” Kira and spare her the stigma of being an illegitimate child. Kirk disputed her arguments; after all, Kira Kerkorian already had his name and support. But he became concerned that Lisa seemed increasingly depressed.
Five months after the birthday party, Kirk agreed to a perfunctory marriage—a thirty-day contract marriage with a heavily lawyered prenuptial agreement. The formal understanding was that no legal rights to Kirk’s properties, businesses, or personal estate would change in any way. Kirk also agreed that following their prearranged divorce, he would increase child support to $50,000 per month. Also, he would give Lisa another $1.2 million to cover additional remodeling costs on the Greenway Drive house that had surged over budget.
Kirk Kerkorian, the legendary deal maker—perhaps the greatest in capitalist history—was being pushed and shoved to an altar against his wishes. The billionaire was being nickel-and-dimed for nearly $10 million by a girlfriend he’d been trying to dump for four years. And as part of their faux marriage arrangement he was about to accept legal, biological parentage of a baby that he suspected, deep in his heart of hearts, was the child of another man.
It seemed that Kirk had finally met his match in a former tennis star less than half his age who made him laugh . . . and made him pay.
Kirk’s troubles at home had not dulled the gambler’s instincts for opportunity in the business world. Steve Wynn’s billion-dollar Bellagio Hotel had recently opened and Kirk considered it one of the finest properties he had ever seen. Roaming the grounds he had been especially impressed by the fact that even in remote areas where visitors rarely wandered, he found thoughtful design touches and careful maintenance. Wynn’s Mirage Resorts was a class operation—just the kind of company Kirk would be proud to own.
Kirk and Steve were friends, their relationship dating back to the grand opening of Caesars Palace when the
twenty-four-year-old kid he called “Stevie” hitched a ride on Kirk’s private jet along with a group of East Coast investors and high rollers. While Kirk still controlled the International Hotel, he threw some of the hotel’s beverage business to Stevie who represented a liquor distributor.
By 1999 Steve Wynn had taken the Kerkorian model of building big and going bold and added his own flair of artistry and showmanship to produce the Mirage, Treasure Island, and the Bellagio. When a massive gold nugget was discovered in Australia, Wynn sent his private jet and a load of cash across the Pacific to buy it for permanent display in his Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino. Kirk attended all of Stevie’s grand openings. He was like a kid in Disneyland when he first watched the pirates swarm over the British ship at Treasure Island.
Kirk’s MGM Grand executives all knew just how much their boss admired the Wynn operations. They had heard a version of Kirk’s hungry alligator story: “The alligator waited motionless as a log near the shore. Though he was hungry, he ignored the minnows. He seemed harmless as a log. Then a big fish swam by. He gulped it down whole.”3
Mirage Resorts was the biggest fish in gaming.
While Kirk’s lawyers in Beverly Hills were negotiating and drafting final terms for a thirty-day marriage to Lisa, Kirk’s financial advisers in Las Vegas were keeping him posted about financial troubles in Wynn’s world where stock prices were heading steadily downward. Major cost overruns at Wynn’s new casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, took a heavy toll on second-quarter earnings. Analysts were caught by surprise. In a two-month span before the Fourth of July, shares of Mirage Resorts plunged 40 percent.
Feuding New Jersey casino rival Donald Trump noticed and piled on, dismissing Wynn’s hotel and casino properties as “funeral parlors.” He also got personal, mocking Wynn’s progressive eye disease—retinitis pigmentosa. “The guy can’t see,” Trump said.
The Gambler Page 29