Conrad Black appears at the midtown Toronto restaurant Scaramouche almost on time and not much later than me, on a snowy night. The dinner is at my invitation. He has already left word he will be running late. This is very flattering. Last time we had dinner — and I don't want to give the impression we dine together regularly — he had appeared 40 minutes late, exactly as I had expected, given his reputation for fashionable tardiness.
He looks better than ever. Trimmer than in previous times. Younger seeming and certainly handsome. He is energetic, engaged, relaxed. He grins, he charms, he appears genuinely happy — an extraordinary thing for a man in his position.
His position is that of Celebrity Accused. In two weeks, he will sit in a Chicago courtroom to confront the institutional wrath of the U.S. Department of Justice and to defend himself against charges of fraud, racketeering and money laundering. He faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. But he is a man chomping at the bit, eager to engage in the battle to come very shortly, stimulated at the prospect of having to fight for his life.
To say Lord Black is of interest to people is to say the foie gras at Scaramouche is tasty. There has been a crescendo of fascination building ahead of his trial. Tom Bower's recently published book Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge — the subject of an $11-million libel suit launched by Conrad two weeks ago — fed the appetite.
His perhaps deliberately lively social calendar in Toronto during the past year or two has effectively sent the message that he was neither hiding in shame nor cowering in fear of his accusers. His wife, Barbara Amiel-Black, in her columns in Macleans magazine on such subjects as material extravagance and men who steal for their women, has been calculatingly provocative. And now, in recent weeks, there has been a possibly orchestrated but growing swell of support for Conrad in various quarters of public opinion.
There is no denying the case has touched a nerve with many people completely unassociated with Conrad Black. “I receive e-mails every day from people expressing their support for me,” he tells me, adding in an e-mail later, “The Conrad Black Movement is growing and ramifying exponentially.” And while Mr. Bower's book or general gossip would have one believe the A-list that Conrad and his wife socialized with in their Hollinger heyday has dropped them as pariahs, that is not at all what Conrad says, mentioning an invitation he and his wife have to a coming party for Elton John.
At this moment he seems more Celebrity than Accused.
He strides over to the table. Heads turn in the room. He is accustomed to this. At the events he attends in Toronto, there is an invisible space around him. Not many people in the chattering class of Toronto actually know an Accused who faces the possibility of a prison sentence. People stop conversation to observe him and then to whisper to each other. Lord Black never gives the impression of noticing this.
The world of Conrad watchers has fallen into two sects: those who support him and those passionately against him. They are the ones who snub him in public and the ones who, in their e-mails to me, for example, call him a criminal, although of course he is convicted of nothing.
At a cachet-heavy dinner series held in Toronto every winter, Lord Black is a regular attendee and ardent supporter. Called the Grano speakers series, it brings in noted writers and intellectuals from outside Canada, throws 100-plus of the business, academic and media “elite” into a trattoria and pours copious amounts of wine into them. It is a crowded, electric scene and, when Conrad enters the room, I have seen the voltage go up.
