What are the Odds?
Some time after nine o’clock yesterday morning, I spied Albert Schultz, who played Conrad Black in the great man’s biopic, marching along Bloor Street between Howland and Albany.
A year or so ago I interviewed Schultz about which of Shakespeare’s great tragic figures he thought Black most closely resembled. He said Lear; I thought more Richard III. We agreed to disagree. This morning, like two shtetl babushkas, we kibitzed, analyzed and finally made a wager. For what it’s worth, Schultz bet a toonie that Black would walk on all charges. I can’t resist even money (plus I get to hold the purse), so I took him up. In case you’re interested, Schultz’s conviction rests on his sense that, at a minimum, the testimony concerning conflicting advice from Torys and Cravath are the seeds of reasonable doubt. A good argument to be sure, but I suspect by Friday, with Richard Burt leading off the prosecution’s heavy guns (followed in the coming weeks by Radler, then Thompson), Schultz could regret not asking me for longer odds.
