Being Oscar (13 page)

The Meadows was entirely Carolyn’s idea. She was never one to complain, but when she saw a problem, she’d try to figure out a way to correct it. It was clear to her in the late 1970s that the public school system in Las Vegas was a sure path to nowhere. She didn’t think it could be fixed from within, so in 1984 she started her own private school. I was bouncing all over the country at the time representing clients in high profile cases. Our children were in school, although only Cara was young enough to attend the Meadows.

Carolyn started that school with some pre-fab classrooms for kindergarten through sixth grade and ended with a modern, 40-acre campus that is now the home to one of the best prep schools in the state, grades pre-K through 12. She did this as a labor of love and because she valued education for children, and she never took a salary.

At the time of the fundraiser, I was in the middle of a really difficult trial. My client was the previously mentioned oral surgeon who was accused of sexually assaulting patients while they were under anesthesia. The case was being tried in Carson City before Judge Archie Blake, and I could tell he wanted to give my client a zillion years. I couldn’t catch one break: none of my motions were granted, and none of my arguments seemed to carry any weight.

But I knew Blake was a really big baseball fan, so I told Carolyn to have Tommy sign two baseballs. One he inscribed, “To Judge Archie Blake, the greatest legal mind of the century.” And then I asked him to sign another one for the prosecutor, Noel Waters. Tommy signed it: “To Noel Waters, the fairest prosecutor in the land.”

When I went back up to Carson City the next week for the trial to resume, I had both the baseballs with me and I told the judge I wanted to see him.

“I’ve got a gift for you, your honor,” I said.

He was a little standoffish and said, “Wait until Mr. Waters gets here.”

I knew he would do that. You couldn’t have an ex-parte conversation with one side or the other during a trial. It wouldn’t look right. That’s why I had Tommy sign a ball for the prosecutor as well.

When Waters got to court that morning, the judge called us both up to the bench.

“Get on with this, Mister Goodman,” he said.

But as soon as I handed him the baseball, his mood changed. After that, my motions were heard and some of them were even granted. I also received a very favorable jury instruction before the jury went out to begin deliberating. Did those things make a difference? I don’t know. There was a lot of conflicting and circumstantial evidence in the case. What I do know is that my client was found not guilty. I also know the judge was a big baseball fan. In a criminal trial, you have to use whatever tools are available. In this case, one of them was Tommy Lasorda’s autograph.

That’s not the kind of thing they teach you in law school, but it’s the kind of thing you have to use in order to give your client the best representation possible.

Over the years, my criminal law practice also brought me in contact with some of the major players in the boxing world. The experiences were both fascinating and rewarding.

I’d been a boxing fan since I was a kid in Philadelphia. I remember going to Old Man Willard’s house. He lived a few doors down from us, and was one of the first people on the block to have a television set. It was black and white, of course, with a magnifying bowl placed over the screen to make the picture
larger. One of my earliest memories is watching a boxing match on that TV. I remember this because it was also the first time I ever had a Coca-Cola. Old Man Willard mixed me the drink. He took some seltzer water and added syrup of coca-cola, which was great. I sat there watching Jersey Joe Walcott battle Rocky Marciano. It was a classic fight, and I enjoyed the soda as much as I did watching the bout.

My dad got me interested in boxing. He used to take me to Lew Tendler’s, a famous restaurant on Broad Street. They featured steaks and chops, but the real draw for me were the pictures on the walls. Boxers were everywhere. And the thing I remember—and this is probably why my dad took me there—was that the boxers were Jewish.

Lew Tendler had been a pretty good boxer himself. They called him “Lefty Lew” since he was a southpaw, and he and some of the other guys in his restaurant loved to tell stories about their experiences and about the great fighters they had seen. I was in awe. I loved hearing about guys like Barney Ross, the lightweight champion. He was never knocked out in eighty-one fights, and he defeated some of the best boxers in his division, including Tough Tony Canzoneri.

Ross was not only a great boxer, but a great American. That was part of the story they told me. He had been a Marine and fought on Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Ross was awarded a Silver Star, one of the highest commendations. He and three of his fellow Marines came under attack from a larger group of Japanese soldiers. Ross and his three buddies were all wounded. He was the only one who could still fire a weapon, and he fought off the Japanese during a battle that lasted all night. He ended up killing two dozen enemy soldiers. Two of his Marine buddies died during the night, but he carried the third one to safety. Ross weighed about 140 pounds, and the guy he carried was 230 pounds.

After hearing that kind of story about the great Jewish boxers, I guess it was only natural that I developed an interest in the sport. And then, after I became a lawyer, I got a chance to represent some of boxing’s more interesting characters. One of the first was the promoter Don King. He hired me to fight an injunction that would have barred a match between Roberto Duran and Esteban DeJesus. King was promoting the match, and at the eleventh hour I was able to get the injunction lifted. From that point on, I was his guy.

King was everything he appeared to be: outspoken, flamboyant, just a force of nature. It wasn’t an act; it was who he was. He had a lot of connections in the boxing world and started to send me business. He also introduced me to Muhammad Ali, the greatest heavyweight ever, and we’ve remained friends. Every year I could count on earning about $100,000 from the action Don King sent my way. He had faith in me and never hesitated to call.

One night he called around two in the morning. I was asleep, but when I picked up the phone, I knew right away who it was.

“Oscar,” he said. “I need to see you. It’s urgent.”

“What time is it?” I said.

“Don’t matter,” he replied. “We’re at the Riviera. Can you get down here right away?”

I got dressed and drove over to the casino-hotel. When I walked into the lounge, I saw him sitting in a booth with Larry Holmes, the great heavyweight champion. King and Holmes had a contractual relationship that they wanted severed. It was all amicable, but they wanted it done right away. I drew up an agreement on a napkin and had them sign it. I was never really clear on why it was so urgent and why it couldn’t have waited until morning, but that was Don King; one-of-a-kind. After they signed the napkin, I went home to bed.

A few months after that, Larry Holmes was subpoenaed to appear in front of a federal grand jury in the Southern District of
New York. Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney for the district at the time. The feds were investigating Don King for fraud, and they wanted Larry to testify. Larry was a standup guy. There was no way he was going to testify against King or anybody else.

Larry wouldn’t budge. I made it clear that my client had nothing to say. Giuliani was frustrated, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Larry Holmes was a fascinating guy and one of my favorite people. I had a case once in Easton, Pennsylvania, his hometown, and a got a chance to spend some time with him while I was there. It’s one thing to say that someone is a celebrity in his hometown, but Larry Holmes was more than that. He was revered. When we drove around town, it was like I was with the king. Everyone knew him; everyone called out to him. He owned that town, and I don’t just mean that figuratively. He was a major property owner in Easton. The federal courthouse where my case was being tried was one of his properties; the government leased the building from him.

Later, I had another case, this time in New York, that led me to the great Joe Louis.

My client was a guy named Izzy Marion. Izzy was a charming guy. He was a hairdresser and had a business in Las Vegas. But he had been picked up on a federal wiretap talking about an unregistered gun. He was subpoenaed and went back to New York, where he appeared in front of a grand jury. I wasn’t his lawyer at the time.

He was testifying under oath and was asked by a federal prosecutor why an unregistered handgun had been transported from New York to Las Vegas and ended up in his hands. It was a pretty straightforward question, but Izzy didn’t give a straightforward
answer. The simplest thing would have been for him to say that he needed the gun for protection. That might have been the end of it. Instead, Izzy offered about thirteen different explanations, several of which made no sense and which were contradictory. As a result, he got indicted for making inconsistent statements to a grand jury. The assumption was that some of them were false, and he was charged with perjury.

He hired me to represent him at the trial, and a few months later we flew back to New York. We stayed at the Park Lane Hotel. Izzy knew everybody. Two of his close friends were Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, and Louis’s wife Martha. Joe was going to be a character witness for Izzy, and as we were preparing for trial, I could see there was a problem.

We couldn’t get Joe to enunciate; everything he said was garbled and incoherent. Izzy’s daughter and Martha tried to help get the champ focused on what he was going to say. All we needed was for him to stand up, say who he was, and vouch for Izzy’s good character and reputation for honesty. It was brutal; we couldn’t get Joe to make sense. So we decided to use Martha instead, and have Joe walk into the courtroom with her. Joe didn’t have any mental problems. It wasn’t like he was punch-drunk or had been hit in the head too many times. He just swallowed his words when he spoke, and I didn’t think he would be an effective advocate. If you couldn’t understand him, what was the point of having him speak? But his presence turned out to be enough.

We went to court early that Friday morning. The prosecutor was a real jerk. He thought he had a guaranteed winner, and he finished his case by noon. We were to go on right after lunch. When we got back to court, Izzy’s daughter came running up to me in a panic.

“Mister Louis ate fish in the cafeteria for lunch,” she said.

I didn’t see how that could be a problem.

“He ate everything, bones and all!” she said, nearly screaming.

But the champ was fine. He came walking up to us, and we were ready to go. We all went into the courtroom together. Judge Richard Owen was already on the bench, but he nearly fell off of it when he saw us.

“Mister Goodman, would you please come up here,” he said.

Prior to that, everything had been pretty formal. When I got up to the bench, he said, “Is that who I think it is?”

“Yes,” I said, figuring no other explanation was needed.

“Can you get me his autograph?” the judge asked.

At that point, I liked our chances with the perjury case. I knew Izzy would be found guilty. His statements to the grand jury were what they were; there was no way to fight that. The evidence made it a slam-dunk conviction. But the key was sentencing. Would he get hammered by the judge, or would he catch a break? I think the champ being in Izzy’s corner turned the odds in our favor. The prosecutor had bragged about “doing a war dance on Izzy’s grave” at sentencing, but the judge wasn’t buying any of it.