B009HOTHPE EBOK (47 page)

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Performers have glamour and that has enormous appeal to business-people, and to the world at large. We walk in this separate kind of world, and people who are successful in business—these CEOs of big companies—they have everything, but there’s one thing they don’t have, and that every self-respecting performer has to have: charisma. They crave it like mad, because that’s the magic magnet. That’s the reason that guys with the power and the ego all want to sit next to actresses and they all want to get laid. They love the glow of celebrity, they love being around it, so we always have to be careful about who wants us and for what and deal with it accordingly. I’ve found that businesspeople tend to gravitate to me for favors, maybe make a phone call to someone they want to meet. Or else it has to do with some business deal, someone they want an “in” with. One of the things I’ve learned about billionaires that that their “yes” is usually a “maybe.”

The people who come to Vegas are a very transient group: there are the high rollers and there are the tourists who come there like they would to Disneyland. Vegas is Disneyland for adults anyway, and you never know night to night who the hell is going to show up. I was working down at the Golden Nugget for Steve Wynn in the mid-eighties, and I get a call from the maître d’ Johnny Joseph, one of the best in town, who was always on top of his game.

“There’s this Saudi guy who’s been to a few shows, Prince something-or-other, and he wants to meet you.”

“Well, why, do you think?” I ask.

“Don’t know, but Steve would like you to say hello to him.”

We finish the show, and this guy comes back, he’s dressed in Western clothing, but he carries himself with that whole Saudi royalty demeanor. A Saudi princeling. He has his banker with him and he proceeds to explain the meeting. Likes my music, says, “I know that you know Adnan Khashoggi, who used to be the representative for the Saudis, but I do the deals for them now, for the arms and the planes.” He’s impressing me with who he is. Meanwhile I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“But I want you to do me a favor,” he says.

“Okay, what is it?”

“I know you know Brooke Shields. ’Cause she used to be at Khashoggi’s parties, and I know that you know the mother, and also the father.”

“Yeah?”

“So I want to meet her.”

I’m thinking,
Great, another Arab who wants to get laid.
God gave us a penis and a brain, but not enough blood for both.

So I say, “Do you mind me asking to what purpose? I just can’t call her mother out of the blue, because as you know this is a young girl with a mother who’s all over her and I don’t want to be put in any precarious or awkward position.”

“Well, let me tell you…”—so
thick
Middle Eastern accent—“I hear she wants to do a Brenda Starr detective movie and I hear she can’t get the financing. And I would like to give her the money.”

And I’m going, “O-kay. But why?”

“Well, the truth is, I just want to just meet her. If you just get her the message, tell her she’s got the money, then we can all meet wherever you say. I will send my airplane to wherever she is and we can all meet somewhere on the West Coast.”

“Hmm … Let me think about it overnight and I’ll let you know.”

“Well, I’ll come back to the show tomorrow night,” he says.

The next day I call Brooke’s mother. She puts Brooke on the phone. I tell her, “Look, don’t kill the messenger, but here’s what it is. There’s a guy, a Saudi prince, and he wants to give you backing if you’re still looking to do this Brenda Starr movie.”

“
Yes!
I’ve been trying to get financing for ages and no one will put up the money. I can’t get it financed to save my life.”

“Well, look, don’t hold me responsible for any of the left or right kicks, any of the dynamics that may go down—you’re on your own with that, you’re a big girl. But in the meantime I’m going to arrange a meeting with this guy at my house in Carmel.”

So I call the prince. “Great,” he says, “I’ll see you tonight, yes?” He comes down to the club with all his people, and says, “Follow me.” We go out after the show and I see about fifty people outside of the Golden Nugget, all of whom are murmuring about something they’re eyeing on the pavement. The crowd separates and I see this
huge
custom-made car called a Zimmer, it’s a neo-classic car, sort of like a Stutz Bearcat, an outrageous over-the-top retro vehicle, just short of a pimp car. It’s got wood paneling and leather seats—all decked out. An incredible car—huge and long as a ship. He hands me the keys to the car and says, “It’s yours.”

I say, “Well, I don’t … uh … you don’t have to.…” The truth is I don’t really want the car, it’s a bit of a monstrosity.

“No, please!” he insists.

He gets in with me and we drive down the strip, and people are looking and honking. I don’t want to make him feel bad because I know from meeting other Arabs, they don’t take kindly to someone saying no.

We talk about our business
blah blah blah,
and I take the Zimmer home. I can’t even get it in the driveway; my wife’s ready to kill me. “Aw, don’t worry, we’ll keep it a while and then sell the thing,” I tell her. “I can’t seriously keep a car like this, I just don’t want to offend this guy.”

The following week he sends his 737 plane to Princeton, where Brooke is in school. The mother and secretary also come out to be with her. The prince drives up to my house with thirty people. I had a guitarist playing nice mellow tunes under the stairs of my huge living room. I put tables and chairs out. They’re cooking their special food and they’re all over my house—my kids think I’m totally nuts. I drive down to the airport and I get Brooke off the plane and I tell her and her mother, “Now look, this is what it is, don’t be nervous, I’ll guide you through this, make sure everybody’s happy, nothing gets out of hand
buh buh buh
.”

We’re all at dinner, the prince is there, he’s drinking and leaning toward Brooke and I’m propping him up, trying to avoid an awkward situation. I can obviously see what his intentions are but we’re not going to let it get into anything like that. After dinner we go dancing and clubbing, and I’m just crossing my fingers. It’s all to culminate the next day when they’re going to throw a big lunch at a local hotel owned by my closest friend when I lived in Carmel, Ted Balestreri, he and his wife Velma. I have adored them both for years and cherish their friendship. Anyway, there we are in the midst of mounds of rice and lamb and more Middle Eastern delicacies. We sit down and we’re getting through the lunch and Brooke says she wants to get back to school and the mother wants the check and you know what the prince wants—he wants
her
. He’s way down on the end of the bench by now. So we finish and I say, “Okay, let’s go out and talk the talk.” There’s me and the prince and the banker and the mother and Brooke. And we start talking.

In the end, Brooke gets the sixteen million dollars to make the movie. They give the mother the money, everybody disperses, she gets off the plane in Princeton, and there’s a brand-new Mercedes waiting for her. Meanwhile, I’ve still got the Zimmer that I don’t want sitting in my driveway like the
Queen Mary
in dry dock. So the kid gets her Mercedes, I get the Zimmer, Mom gets the money, and they start to make the movie. At this point I bow out of the picture for other reasons entirely. He wants to do other business with me but I discover there are some other characters involved that I don’t want to be in business with. I’ve learned my lesson from my dealings with Khashoggi.

A few months later I’m performing at the Sporting Club in beautiful Monte Carlo. Brooke’s off doing her movie. In the interim I hear they ran short of money, so the prince gives her a few more million. Meanwhile, on the nightly news I’m seeing a certain Clark Clifford and his attorney, Robert Altman, who was married to TV’s Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter. Clark Clifford was a banker and Wonder Woman had moved to Washington to marry Altman, Clark Clifford’s partner. There’s some big bank scandal that is becoming the big news topic on the nightly news.

Bottom line, I get a call from the investigative department of the
L.A. Times.
I’ll never forget it, I’m sitting on my terrace at the Hôtel de Paris overlooking the harbor in Monte Carlo and the reporter says, “Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Yeah, sure, what about?”

“Uh, I just want to ask you. About a Saudi prince. And the money that he gave to Brooke Shields, is all that true?”

And I said, “Well, wait a minute, what’s ‘all that’?”

He says, “Well, what’s the link?”

“Look, first of all I don’t know what you’re going after and I’m going to tell you just what I need to tell you because it’s none of your business. I arranged for the financing for the Brenda Starr film and that’s about it. What’s
your
interest?”

“You know what’s going on with Clark Clifford and Robert Altman and the bank scandal?” he says. “Well, they were all tied in together with that bank.”

“That’s goddamn news to me,” I say. “I didn’t know anything about who they were tied into, and, yes, I arranged for the money. And, yes, she got the movie, but other than that I have no idea who they were involved with, so I can’t help you.”

I hung up and couldn’t believe it. Who woulda thunk it? The press was all over this bank scandal. The prince was never accused of any wrongdoing, and Altman was eventually acquitted of all charges. What a scene!

No wonder the guy spent money like water. This prince—you knew if he came to see a show and hung out, he was good for three or four million a night. So a big spender like that, you needed to say hello to him. Whatever scandals he was or wasn’t involved in, I didn’t know any more about him than the man in the moon. At the time the reporter called I was still thinking, what the hell am I gonna do with that big tank of a car?

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One night while I am working at the Riviera Hotel in Vegas, I get a call from a charming gentlemen, who I knew worked for Adnan Khashoggi. His name was Victor Danenza. He said, “Paul, Adnan Khashoggi wants you to do us a favor.” He says, “I am in town with royalty from an island in Asia. They don’t know him here at the hotel and they will not give him credit.” The fact that I was working there, they knew I had contacts that could help them. He went on to say, “So, you see, they just won’t give him the money, and I was wondering if you could meet him and his family, give him some CDs, autograph some photos, and take them to the movies, make them happy ’cause we need to arrange some cash for him. They’re nice people.” Okay, I go over. Pleasant family, bunch of kids. We go to the movies, kill time, come back to the casino, and they get it worked out—barely. Gave him $50,000, which is nothing in that world!

We’re talking casually and I ask, “By the way, who is he?” And the guy says, “The Prince of Brunei.” One of the richest men in the world! And they only gave him $50,000. It’s a casino, but they don’t know anything at these places outside the city limits. In Vegas they don’t know from Prince the dog to Prince Ali Baba.

Then there’s another Middle Eastern crisis: the fraught relationship between Adnan Khashoggi and Mohamed Al-Fayed—the guy who bought Harrods and whose son Dodi was dating Princess Diana.

The connection between Fayed and Adnan is an interesting and tangled one, Khashoggi claiming Fayed was a Singer sewing machine salesman when he hired him and Fayed saying Khashoggi worked for
him
and that he’d had to fire Khashoggi because of his gambling habits. Whatever the story was, the two families were intimately connected when Adnan Khashoggi’s sister, Samira, married Fayed and became the mother of Dodi Fayed.

As I stated earlier, Khashoggi’s empire fell in 1988 when he was arrested in Switzerland for concealing funds, but was ultimately acquitted. Fayed comes into power, buys Harrods, etc. and suddenly there’s this young kid called Dodi Fayed running around, his son. I’d known him as a kid; now he’d grown up, and every now and then I’d bump into him. Sweet enough guy, kind of wants to get into show business, winds up over here because he’s into the Hollywood thing—he’s trying to make movies. He’s Daddy’s boy, and you know a father is a father and doing the best that he can to help him. Dodi looks up to me in a father-figure kind of way, but I know he’s heavy with the cocaine and he’s getting into skirmishes about his rent and so on. News travels fast in this town. I’m hearing all this stuff, but I don’t judge him for it. I try and give him advice, tell him he’s with the wrong women, but young and wild kids will do what they will do. Ultimately he gets a winner movie,
Chariots of Fire.

I’m not running with his crowd, because they’re young and with a group like that with no brakes it’s always a bad ending. One day Dodi comes to see me, and says, “I gotta talk to you.” He meets me at the Ivy, a superhip local watering hole. He begins with a big long ramble, which already makes me nervous.

“Paul, as you know we go way back, our two families,
blah, blah, blah
. I’ve known you all these years, and your family stayed at the Ritz, And we were all tight with Adnan.…”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“But I got a big problem.”

“What is it?”

“Well, I was coming through customs from Europe and I didn’t declare some money and they took $150,000 from me and I can’t tell my dad.”

“Okay. What do you want me to do?”

“Could you just loan it to me for a week?”

Now, I don’t like loaning money. There came a point in my life where I realized, I don’t want to make a liar out of anybody. You loan someone money, you’re making a liar out of them from that day on because you never get the money back. I mean, I could make a long list of the people to whom I’ve loaned money, and then never heard from again.

I said, “Dodi, look, I don’t loan money; don’t put me in that position because—”

He pleaded; he was afraid to tell his father. “I beg of you, Paul. Please, just loan it to me. One week.”

Well, I knew his dad, I’d stayed at the Ritz, the Fayeds were always very courteous. I don’t know what got me to agree, but I did. I said, “Go to this address; go to Merrill Lynch,
buh buh buh,
and pick up the money.”