Golden by Jeff Coen Read Free Book Online

still amazed to see him on the sidewalk. Wearing a wide grin and a white soccer-like shirt fashionable at the time with thick, dark stripes down the sleeves, Blagojevich cautiously approached Nixon and introduced himself and asked Nixon if he could take a picture with him. The thirty-seventh president had his hands filled with papers and a black binder, but he didn’t mind at all. As the camera clicked, Blagojevich smiled while Nixon looked down, signing an autograph for the young men, his papers jammed between his chest and left arm.
    It was nothing more than a brief interruption in an otherwise average day for Nixon. But for Blagojevich it was a highlight of a lifetime. Years later he would tell the story, acting out the parts of all three characters: himself, Ascaridis, and Nixon.

    In the fall of 1980, with Ronald Reagan months from being elected president, Rod Blagojevich packed up his bags and moved west. He found himself blown away by the beauty of Pepperdine’s campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and he was just as stunned by the women.
    Blagojevich was once again easily distracted from his studies, choosing to read Charles Dickens novels and hang out on the beach over going to the law library. Later, he even got paid eighty dollars to be an extra in a TV movie,
Malibu,
in which he sat and watched a Chad Everett tennis match. It was a bit of a brain shift for Blagojevich.
    â€œI had a job at a place called Malibu Nautilus,” Blagojevich told the jury in 2011 before launching into one of his trademark rambles. “That was interesting because I’d clean up there and I’d help out, and, you know, they’re working out there—I remember someone making a lot of noise, he was bench pressing, it was the late Michael Landon who played [on]
Little House on the Prairie,
and he was there. And Dyan Cannon, who was Cary Grant’s fifth wife, she worked out once there. Olivia Newton-John, she would work out there. You’d see these movie stars. Farah Fawcett-Majors, you know, you’d see her. You know, it was completely different from Cicero and Armitage.”
    The first year of law school, which is traditionally the most difficult, ended up nearly catastrophic. Blagojevich found almost any excuse notto study. He got lost when professors tested students’ logic and fashioned a legal debate in class, which was different from his undergrad lectures, where he had taken copious notes and memorized them for tests. By the end of his first year, he was on academic probation.
    Blagojevich spent the summer painting porches back home but headed to England in August. Pepperdine offered law students the chance of spending a semester in London, and Rod seized on the opportunity. He later remembered thinking the “ambience of London” might make it easier for him to get in a legal mindset and concentrate on his studies.
    Blagojevich was touring the city on a double-decker bus headed toward the Tower of London when he met Alonzo Monk.
    Blagojevich recognized Monk as another student at Pepperdine, and the two started talking. Lon, as everyone called him, grew up in California. Monk’s father was a rich, well-respected gynecologist who in 1962 delivered future tennis phenom Tracy Austin, an odd piece of trivia that somehow impressed Blagojevich. Later, the first time Rod visited the Monk family home, he was amazed to see peacocks patrolling the front lawn.
    Despite their disparate backgrounds, Rod and Lon loved sports. Monk had played tennis in college while Rod talked about his mediocre boxing career. The following month, they watched the biggest match of the year—the “Showdown” welterweight championship fight between Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy “Hit Man” Hearns—on a large screen in a movie theater at Piccadilly Circus. After being down at the start, Sugar Ray won a thrilling victory.
    The two men bonded over the experience and forged a strong friendship