The Gambler

by William C. Rempel

  It would be a few days before he was ready to confront Lisa with the findings. He said that, regardless of the test results, he wanted to remain close to Kira and he would provide whatever Kira needed. But he was done serving as Lisa’s personal ATM.

  Lisa immediately challenged the test findings. They were mistaken. Kirk was the only possible father, she insisted. Besides, she said, amateur DNA sampling was notoriously faulty. Hair wasn’t as reliable as saliva. She sent him news articles on the subject and said she would order her own tests. She would prove Kirk’s conclusions were absolutely wrong.

  Lisa first tried to enlist Steve Bing, telling him he was the father of her baby, but that all she needed from him was help faking a DNA test. Bing refused.8 And so it was that several weeks later Lisa lured Kirk’s daughter Tracy to Knott’s Berry Farm to spit in a jar.

  Unfortunately for Lisa, the ruse would have to be repeated a second time since spit samples were not suitable for testing. So, after months with random and limited contact, Lisa arranged for a second meeting in two days with Tracy and her friend. She took the women to lunch at a Black Angus restaurant, and then strolled around a park. An opportunity arose when friend Katherine went off to buy everyone a treat from an ice cream vendor. Lisa was alone with Tracy.

  She quickly explained: the sample in the jar wasn’t testable. Could she take a swab? Tracy shrugged and opened wide so that Lisa could swipe a cotton swab inside her cheek. That evening, however, Tracy and Katherine reported what happened in a phone call to Kirk.9

  When Lisa prepared her DNA sample kit for the lab in Seattle, she labeled the specimens “Kirk Lilly” and “Kira Lilly.” The “Kira Lilly” sample, however, was actually Tracy’s cotton swab.10

  A month or so later, the lab results came back positive. “Kirk Lilly” and “Kira Lilly” (a.k.a.: Tracy Kerkorian) were almost certainly father and daughter.

  Lisa presented the results to Kirk as though they proved what she had been saying all along. But Kirk shook his head. He wasn’t buying it for a moment. Lisa reacted with an emotional outburst that forced Kirk to back off. If it turned out that Kira was not Kirk’s daughter, said Lisa, then she would put the girl up for adoption “or kill her!”11

  In spring 2001 Kirk proposed taking Kira to Maui with him for five days. He would bring along a nanny, but he refused to bring along Lisa. In a telephone exchange that Kirk would report to the Beverly Hills police, he said Lisa told him: “I should just kill Kira . . . or, maybe I should kill you!” Kirk told police he feared for Kira’s safety. Lisa later said she was angry and “did not mean it.”

  She did, however, pack up Kira and Taylor and two nannies and fly to Maui to see for herself, she told Kirk, whether he was alone or with another woman. He often compared Lisa rather benignly to “peanut butter on your finger—you just can’t shake it off.” But now, in Kirk’s favorite paradise on earth, she was more like a nightmare, but he couldn’t wake up. She checked into the Grand Wailea hotel, a nine-minute walk from his Four Seasons hotel. He retreated to his private jet and flew home.

  No more Mr. Nice Kirk.

  It had been more than a year since he agreed to buy Lisa’s Greenway Drive house. She already had his $3 million down payment, but she refused to close the deal—or return the down payment. After fifteen months, the transaction remained stalled in escrow.

  In August 2001 Kirk’s lawyers slapped a lien on the Greenway Drive property for more than $3 million. Lisa’s lawyers countered that the money was a gift and that Kirk was reneging. They demanded an increase in child support. Terry Christensen confronted one of Lisa’s lawyers with the DNA results that showed Kirk was not Kira’s biological father.12

  Suddenly there were hints that Lisa might take her money fight public, this despite six signed nondisclosure agreements under seal in the paternity case. It would mean dragging Kirk the one place he most abhorred: into the public spotlight.

  There would be depositions, discovery, sworn statements. Kirk would have to testify. Lisa and her lawyers figured Kirk would pay almost anything to avoid such an unpleasant gauntlet and all that publicity.

  While negotiations between lawyers continued, Lisa kept Kira far away, residing in New York City’s Essex House overlooking Central Park. But the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center abruptly changed that. Kirk sent his private jet to bring Lisa and the children back to Beverly Hills and their Greenway Drive residence. Kirk was happy to have Kira closer, and as Christmas approached he would get to play Santa Claus again.

  Kira, now nearly four, had two items high on her Christmas wish list—a Mickey Mouse toy telephone and a pet rabbit. A real live rabbit.

  But tensions also were rising. Lisa’s lawyers signaled that without a settlement of some kind, they would be going to court for more child support soon. Kirk’s lawyers threatened to take “appropriate action” if Lisa’s side filed suit in open court rather than under seal.

  Christmas morning 2001 Lisa Bonder arrived outside Kirk’s residence a few minutes before 9:30. She pulled up to the gate. A security guard would not admit her. Mr. Kerkorian was not available, she was told.

  As Rigoberto Tapia, the groundskeeper and live-in landscaper, watched, Lisa got out of her car and hurled a Mickey Mouse toy telephone over the gate. It landed in the parking area and broke into pieces.

  She buzzed the guard again. The next thing tossed over the gate, she said, would be the bunny.

  Before driving off, Lisa pulled up next to Tapia and shouted through an open window, “Tell Mr. Kerkorian, this time he lost his daughter!”

  At Kirk’s urgent request, Mort Viner—who had also been a friend to Lisa—called “to calm her down.” She said she was angry with Kirk for continuing to see Una Davis.

  In the vernacular of professional tennis, Lisa saw Una as “a bad loss”—an upset defeat at the hands of an unranked and unheralded opponent. She made it clear to Mort on the phone that day: Beverly Hills wasn’t big enough for Kirk’s two lovers.

  39

  A God Among Deal Makers

  Early 2002

  Beverly Hills, California

  Trash trucks make their morning rounds very early in the exclusive residential neighborhoods of Beverly Hills. That’s why Kirk Kerkorian’s security chief was out the night before, getting an early peek into the garbage bin of one particular resident. He was looking for a secret that could unmask a fraud and stop a miscarriage of justice.1

  For Steve Scholl, fifty-four, it was a little bit like being back on the force. He was a retired twenty-four-year veteran of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. Much of that time he had worked undercover assignments. Steve could handle himself in the toughest, seediest of dive bars. But staking out a garbage can in Beverly Hills? This was something new. Sheriff Lamb, his old boss, had suggested getting a trash truck. Steve preferred the more practical and less conspicuous solo approach.

  By late evening black bins lined the street, including the curb in front of Scholl’s targeted address. In the stillness of a quiet April night, he lifted the cover and looked inside. The man in the house was a bachelor and lived alone. The playboy didn’t generate a lot of trash. The retired cop saw what he was looking for almost immediately—a small trash can liner tied off at the top. It was the size and type of liner typically used in a bathroom wastebasket. Scholl plucked it out and gently shut the bin.

  In seconds, he was back in his car, the unopened trash bag beside him, heading for his home over the hill in Sherman Oaks. Later that night he created his own evidence analysis area on a pristine sheet of plastic laid out on the floor of his garage. There, he slowly dumped the contents from the trash bag.

  Like a crime scene detective in latex gloves Scholl sorted through the material, careful to avoid contamination.2 It was the usual bathroom debris—used tissues, used cotton swabs, and used dental floss. Eureka! It was an absolute gold mine. Mission accomplished. Kirk would be pleased.

  Scholl could report back with confidence that he had what
they were hoping for—testable DNA samples from the unsuspecting Steve Bing.

  If the bachelor playboy really was the biological father of Kira Rose Kerkorian, science would soon render that verdict. That same science could undermine Lisa Bonder’s aggressive legal actions. Her unsupported claims about Kirk’s paternity and that faked DNA test would make her credibility a recurring issue in the courts.

  The year had gotten off to a painful start for the Kerkorian side. Lisa Bonder’s threatened lawsuit landed like a staggering right hook. It wasn’t her stunning financial demands that shook Kirk, though she was trying to get $320,000 a month for her daughter’s child support. That was only money. As he told the judge, “I can afford whatever the court deems appropriate.”

  The blow he could not absorb so easily was personal betrayal. “I took her at her word,” Kirk said. And he had come to regret it.

  Lisa shredded her nondisclosure contracts with her first court filing, a thirty-three-page sworn declaration detailing the couple’s decadelong love affair and falling-out. It was only the first shot in a fusillade of legal filings that would riddle Kirk’s privacy protections.

  In the following months, every peeping Tom, Dick, and Aram could snoop into Kerkorian’s world through press accounts and public records for details about such things as: Kirk’s low sperm count (about two million per cc) and history of infertility, the frequency of his haircuts (“every 10 days” at about $150 each) and massages (“frequently” at about $200 each), his personal fashion choices (a closet full of $5,000 Brioni sports jackets), and on which side of the bed he always slept (the left).

  Headline writers poked fun at Kirk’s dilemma. In his own backyard the cover of Los Angeles Magazine trumpeted: “Sex, Lies & Dental Floss—The Tycoon, the Tennis Babe and Their $320,000-a-Month Love Child.”3 Around the world London’s Sunday Express reported on “Kirk’s Costly Canoodle.”

  Kirk had made Lisa Bonder a multimillionaire with millions in cash as well as gifts of MGM stock, real estate equity, and exotic jewelry. According to an estimate by the court, she had a personal net worth at the time she filed suit in excess of $12 million.

  At the time, Kirk was paying monthly child support of $50,000. He paid as much as $75,000 a month when she moved Kira to New York. And he had been paying at least $20,000 a month since the day Kira was born. He had also promised to pay for Kira’s education and to set up a trust fund to launch her into adulthood. Still, Lisa wanted more. She justified violating her many secrecy oaths “in order to provide Kira with that to which she is entitled” as the daughter of a billionaire, the same child Lisa knew had been falsely portrayed as Kirk’s biological child.

  Kirk’s most effective palliative against the embarrassment and stress of such a personal battle was to throw himself into what he loved and understood best—business.

  Even as early news accounts about Lisa’s litigation were beginning to appear, business headlines around the country reported that Kerkorian was selling the MGM studio “again!” He was asking $7 billion.

  When it came to setting prices, Kirk was never shy about reaching for the outer limits. In that regard, he may have had an observant companion in Lisa Bonder. She practiced aggressive pricing, too. She would eventually suggest that California courts should impose on Kirk a $1.5 million monthly child support payment. State judges were unmoved and seemed decidedly unamused.

  What made Kirk’s 2002 version of MGM even more attractive than the first version he sold to Ted Turner and the second version he sold to Giancarlo Parretti was more of the same thing—its film library, still the second largest in Hollywood (after Warner Brothers) despite Turner’s purchase of more than three thousand titles in 1986. Kirk had since acquired additional film archives from Orion and other smaller producers. MGM also owned the Rocky and James Bond franchises and Woody Allen’s films.

  Also among the valuable classics in 2002 was MGM’s own Rain Man, the film project that slipped through a budget squeeze, management changes, and mixed internal support to give Kirk one of his biggest hits as a studio mogul. One of Kirk’s biggest disappointments as a mogul was the $115 million box office dud Windtalkers. Its 2001 release had been delayed into 2002 for accounting purposes—so its red ink didn’t ruin a previous year’s earnings.

  Windtalkers accounted for one of the rare instances when Una Davis witnessed Kirk losing his temper over a business matter. She walked into the kitchen one morning in time to hear Kirk on the phone berating then-MGM president Alex Yemenidjian about the cost and bad judgment of backing the war movie. She couldn’t help snickering slightly at Kirk’s colorful display of profanity. But his scowl set her straight: “This was no laughing matter for Kirk.”4

  The $7 billion price tag for MGM and its library was too steep for a quick sale. But the search for a buyer continued beyond 2002.

  Steve Bing didn’t appreciate having his trash seized or his DNA tested without his consent. He sued Kirk for invasion of privacy, claiming damages of $1 billion. He ended up dropping the claim. He told the court that he had asked Lisa to introduce him to his daughter, but Lisa instead threatened to call police and get a restraining order.

  More conflict was brewing. Kirk’s confidant and lawyer Terry Christensen was in trouble and didn’t even know it yet. It would arise from his hiring of a colorful—and controversial—private detective named Anthony Pellicano. At the time, Team Kerkorian was gathering everything it could on Lisa Bonder to prove she was lying about Kirk’s paternity claim. The private investigator was employed by a number of prominent Hollywood figures over the years. But one of Pellicano’s tactics turned out to be illegal wiretaps.

  The Kerkorian side launched its own countersuit against Lisa, accusing her of breach of contract. So much litigation—it was a great time to be a lawyer in Los Angeles.

  A battle of accountants in the case made for some of the most outrageous public claims. According to Lisa’s numbers, her four-year-old now needed $144,500 a month to cover her travel needs, nearly $4,000 a month for clothes, and $6,000 a month for house flowers. Her projected personal food budget of $11,000 a month prompted one outraged letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times by a reader complaining that $11,000 was “enough to feed an entire Afghanistan orphanage for . . . years.”

  Approaching the end of a nearly yearlong legal battle, those numbers and more were bluntly rejected by an incredulous judge. Superior Court Judge Lee Smalley Edmon cited “grossly inflated” costs and certain expenses that were “not remotely related to the reasonable needs of a four year old.” In that category, the judge included a Christmas party for a hundred guests that was budgeted at more than $120,000.

  Judge Edmon was unsparing in taking Lisa to task for “her lack of truthfulness” and for “her pursuit of meritless claims” that the jurist said significantly increased court costs. By one estimate, those legal fees alone approached $10 million.5

  Regarding Lisa’s initial petition to raise child support from $50,000 a month to $323,000 . . . and then later to $491,000 . . . and ultimately to $1.5 million a month, the judge responded: all of those sums were “inherently unreasonable.” She accused Lisa of using child support as a disguise for spousal support.

  The judge agreed to increase Kirk’s child support payments by only $316—to $50,316 per month. Case closed. Well, at least for a few years. But like peanut butter on his finger, Kirk wouldn’t shake trouble that easily.

  Besides staying active in deal making, Kirk remained active on the tennis court. He kept to a religious schedule of daily weight lifting and walking under the guidance of Ron Falahi. Kirk’s physique in his eighties was the envy of men thirty years younger. And he continued to train under tennis coach Darryl Goldman.

  Kirk wanted one thing that his billions couldn’t buy—to be the best eightysomething tennis player in the country. He approached that goal with the same laser focus he brought to all his business deals. Unlike his cool demeanor in business, however, Kirk on the court in his eighties was what frien
ds described as “a tiger,” playing with a ferocious intensity that favored plenty of lingering “Rifle Right” power in his forehand. He also trained rigorously, treated every loss as a learning experience, and took on any tournament anywhere to test his game.

  Once, in the midst of a complex merger deal between MGM and Metromedia International Group, Kirk faced an inconveniently timed tournament on graffiti-marred public courts in a small town an hour’s drive east of Los Angeles.

  “It’s a sketchy neighborhood. Let’s take the van,” Kirk told his coach. “I’ve got a pistol in the glove compartment.”6

  With that, one of the world’s richest men headed off without security guards, without an entourage, and without hesitation to focus on tennis while his half-billion-dollar merger deal waited for his return. Kirk took a beating in that early tournament but stuck with it. Under Goldman’s tutelage Kirk would win a number of tournaments and doubles matches and was eventually ranked as high as third nationally in senior doubles competition in his mideighties age group.

  But his eyesight was giving him problems. Macular degeneration would slowly rob him of his full vision field. Tennis was an early victim.

  Kirk fought the creeping disability. He subjected himself to treatments that included painful eyeball injections.7 And the playfully labeled “grudge matches” on weekends continued with his old pals. Mort Viner was the first to drop out. He did it with a Hollywood flair. He dropped dead of a heart attack on the court while playing doubles with Kirk in the summer of 2003.8

  A year later in Las Vegas Fred Benninger died at eighty-six. He was Kirk’s age. Another year passed and Kirk’s old financial team passed on—Walter Sharp, the Bank of America branch manager in Montebello who made those first loans to Kirk the entrepreneurial pilot; and George Mason, one of Kirk’s closest friends and the former Fresno stockbroker who was there when Kirk made his first fortune.