Hernreich is the man who knows a former U.S. president. He's the man who once owned TV stations, then Winchester rifles, then houses in Vail. He made a fortune in the stock market, and no one ever knew it. He nearly bought the Houston Rockets 15 years ago, at the same time as a family that had once owned that NBA franchise - name of Maloof - was trying to get it back.

Now Hernreich stands not merely as the only non-Maloof family member to be included in their general-partnership control of the Kings but as the man handpicked by league Commissioner David Stern to represent the franchise in its attempts to get a new arena built in Sacramento, or at least near it.

"He's killing himself trying to get a deal made," Joe Maloof said last week.

This just in: Hernreich will survive it. One way or another.

He is 60 years old, twice divorced and rich enough to have paid cash for his share of the Kings in 2000, and if you want to irritate the man - virtually impossible to do, by the way - try to identify him as the go-to person on this deal.

"There are so many people who've been working on this thing. I'm just a part of that," said Hernreich, who was reluctant to be interviewed and then fretted for days afterward about the effect on negotiations that an article about him, specifically, might have.

"Let's not make any mistake: Joe and Gavin run the team," Hernreich said. "We have an incredible manager in John Thomas. Between him and (basketball operations guru) Geoff Petrie, they've done a wonderful job of managing the entire investment. John Thomas is a brilliant, brilliant man."

And yet, with the whole arena discussion toxic to the point of choking just about everything it touches, it is to Hernreich that the Maloofs and Stern have turned. The steaming - and perhaps eerily glowing - pile now belongs to him.

Hernreich's gift is getting into a room and being able to stay there, and it is a gift honed by years of experience. With his honey-dipped voice, vaguely athletic appearance and boyish features, the Arkansas native represents the Maloofs' last best chance to strike some sort of partnership - public-private, Hernreich says, "with the heavy emphasis on 'private' " - that would result in a facility that could house the Kings and Monarchs and host a multitude of other events.

It is a challenge beyond just about anything Hernreich has attempted, for the simple reason that it is unlike anything most business people ever do. This isn't like other deals, except in the sense that it falls apart 10 times for every one time it appears to be falling together.

A downtown site? Dead on arrival. Taxpayer money? Not unless at gunpoint, and most likely not even then. A plan to use developer money out of rezoned North Natomas land blew up when some of the principal landowners decided against joining forces.

The latest effort, in which Hernreich has been intimately involved but about which he'll not speak, involves multimillionaire Angelo Tsakopoulos again trying to gain approval to develop land on an accelerated schedule, then skim some of the profits to fund the arena and other artistic and charitable endeavors.

It is a given within the Sacramento business community that Tsakopoulos has the wherewithal to make a new arena happen, but this is a multi-party negotiation often involving city and county officials, other developers and the like. From the Kings' perspective, it falls to Bob Hernreich to pull those parties together and see if something good comes of the result.

"No. 1, he's about the most likable guy in the world," Joe Maloof said. "He's honest - very high integrity. He has a great reputation. I mean, he has always helped us with major decisions."

And, of course, no one really ever knew that, mostly because no one asked, and Hernreich never offered. His approach to the Kings is straightforward: It's the Maloofs' venture, of which he has a percentage. If they want his opinion or consultation, he's there.

Increasingly, they go to him. And whether or not Hernreich wants to acknowledge it, any progress on a new arena in the Sacramento area will be made in significant measure because he is on board.

Hernreich likes to joke about his penchant for mistiming his business decisions. He was in cable television in its infancy, then got out of the business before it really took off. He was in the cellular business for a while, partnering with Craig McCaw, who went on to become one of America's richest individuals by building a cell empire - and got out of that too soon, too.

"I've had experience beat into me," he says with a laugh.

But, of course, the joke's not on him. In truth, Hernreich is the man who bought TV and radio stations in Arkansas towns while in his early 20s (his father had owned a radio station), grabbing channel frequencies that weren't being used. When the Fort Smith native sold off a few years later, he became an instant multimillionaire.

Hernreich is the man who bought the Winchester rifle company, owned it for a while and sold it for another big profit. He's the man who got into real estate in Vail, Colo., in the early 1990s, just in time to make another fortune. He's the man who enjoyed a stupendous runup in his stock holdings in the late '90s, then sold virtually everything he owned in January 2000 so he could buy into the Kings with the Maloofs. (Hernreich won't say what percentage he holds, nor how many millions he paid.)

"Two months later, the stock market crashed. I would have lost 60 or 70 percent of my value," Hernreich said. "Some people believe in serendipity? I depend on it."

And along the way came the other stuff, the odd and the famous. Hernreich was at one of his TV stations one day when a young Arkansas political aspirant came in to discuss buying advertising time. Three decades later, Bill Clinton remains a close family friend.

How close? Check the register for the Lincoln Bedroom from the Clinton presidential years; you'll find Hernreich's name. But more to the point, it was Hernreich's first wife, Nancy, a longtime campaign volunteer who finally became Clinton's scheduler as Arkansas governor, who spent Clinton's two full terms in office as the director of Oval Office operations.

"Aside from Hillary, no one could go into the Oval Office without going through Nancy," said Hernreich, who has remained close with both of his former spouses. "She's the one who threw Monica Lewinsky out of the West Wing. She hired Betty Currie (Clinton's former secretary). She's loyal, intelligent, gracious - I can't say enough good things about her.

"That's why I divorced her. She was too good for me."

Bob Hernreich moved in the other direction, heading West to Colorado, where he still spends his time when he is not traveling or at his midtown residence in Sacramento. Along the way, he morphed into dozens of different business personas - private investment, development, board member for public companies like K2 and private interests like Washington University in St. Louis, his alma mater - and used several variations of his given name. At times Hernreich is "Robin," at times Bob, at times Robert, and in casual conversation Bobby.

He met the Maloofs 15 years ago, introduced to them by his friend John Whisenant. At the time, Hernreich and the Maloofs wanted to buy the Houston Rockets, and Whisenant put them together. The deal failed; the friendship took root.

In the years since: lots of activity, most of it predictably under the radar. The Maloofs and Hernreich, joined by their business acumen and their shared love of sports, pursued various franchises. Several sources say Joe and Gavin were ready to buy the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning until Hernreich expressed grave doubts about the deal.

Hernreich had a chance to buy the NBA's Denver Nuggets but didn't feel sure about it. At almost the same instant, he got a call from the Maloofs. The Kings were for sale by Jim Thomas. Did Hernreich want to throw in with them?

"It didn't take me but a second to say yes," Hernreich said. "These are good people. You know that if you deal with them, you will be treated fairly. And I said to myself, If I'm going to do this, I need to do it with people I love and trust."

A few years later, John Whisenant was introduced as the head coach of the WNBA's Monarchs. Coincidence? Not exactly, no.

Now Hernreich faces his greatest challenge since coming to Sacramento, trying to forge an arena deal where none exists and, in some quarters, may well be actively opposed. Joe and Gavin Maloof long ago concluded that their presence in the discussion can be deleterious: They're just a little too publicly rich, a little too famous. It's one too many shots of them stepping out of the Palms in Las Vegas with cameras and flashes going.

"It is not an easy market to convince the populace that an arena deal actually works, and to make sense out of what everybody's receiving in the thing," said Mark Bloom, a Nashville business magnate who helped get an arena built there for the NHL's Predators and the Arena Football League's Kats, of which he is part owner.