As the afternoon sun wanes, F. Lee Bailey squints his light-blue eyes and peers from his back yard onto the dazzling Intracoastal Waterway. Seeing him there in his trademark cowboy boots, you understand why he is often described as a legal lion. A short, potbellied man with a large, gray, Irish head, he is a bit leonine in appearance. With 67 years behind it, his face is jowly yet still square, and his chin, with its perfect cleft, is still powerful. His large nose looks as if it were cut from smooth stone. He's an American icon, and he looks the part.
Like any jungle king, he has an enviable spot in the world, a $1.5 million waterfront home on the exclusive island of Manalapan near West Palm Beach. But his abode is modest compared to the ornate palaces across the water, some of which are 20 times the size of an average middle-class house.
"They call it Billionaires Row," he says in his familiar, deep-and-scratchy voice. But this isn't the same courtroom curmudgeon described by his friend Patrick McKenna as having "balls made of cement." Bailey now seems more like a kid in a toy store. Smitten with the fantastic wealth surrounding him, his voice quickens as he lists his neighbors. "Don King lives in one of them," Bailey says, eyeing one of the modern castles. "Yanni lives over there. The Sara Lee president has got one. Hartley Peavey, who makes speakers, lives out there, too. And you see that building way out there in the distance? That's the Ritz Carlton hotel."
If Bailey's house and its spectacular view aren't convincing-enough evidence of the good life, he has color brochures inside to prove it. One includes a magazine story about his airplane, the Bailey Bullet, and another is replete with pictures of the glorious 74-foot yacht he used to own, the Spellbound. (These days he settles for a 22-foot boat that he says he "uses to go to dinner.") For land travel he has two Mercedes, including a beautifully refurbished 1968 two-door model.
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