Bernie Kerik feels cursed. “I could find trouble in this glass of iced tea right here,” he says over lunch. “I could find chaos.” Not only is the former police commissioner a political liability for his old boss, Rudy Giuliani, and the target of a federal investigation into his tax payments and other matters, but his security-consultancy firm has also been hurting. Kerik blames his coverage. “Good doesn’t sell,” he says. And in stories about Giuliani’s campaign, he gripes, he’s referred to in passing as Rudy’s “bodyguard.” True, Kerik was once Rudy’s muscle. But there’s more. “I have a 33-year career of meritorious, heroic service,” he says. “I’m the only fucking police commissioner who ever had the Medal of Valor. It’s like, ‘Hey, guys, whatever happened to the other 31 fucking years?’ ” Kerik was in Jordan last week on business—he’s been to the Middle East 36 times since April 2005—but whenever there’s another negative story about him, he says, his security clients get cold feet. “It’s a personal nightmare; it’s a professional nightmare. There were book deals that have been pulled from the table and are on hold. There was a movie deal, pulled from the table and on hold. There were contracts pulled from the table and on hold.” With a potential jail stint looming, those projects could be on hold for a long time. “I just pray for the best,” Kerik says.

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Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Geoffrey Gray
• Table of Contents: July 2, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!