The Anna enigma: Who is Howard K. Stern?

What a banal man, to sit at the center of a tabloid mystery.

Days after Anna Nicole Smith's body was finally put to rest in the Bahamas, we probe the conundrum of Howard K. Stern like a tongue constantly searching a tooth-gap. For more than a decade, Stern was close to one of this nation's more bizarre celebrities — a woman whose death has proved a continuation of the scandal of her life.

If there is ever a movie of Smith's life, the actor playing Stern will require schlumpiness and an unremarkable screen presence. In TV interviews since Smith's death, Stern talks softly and with little inflection, his voice almost monotone except when he breaks into tears. He was a lawyer to Smith, but he also claims to have been her lover and the father of her infant girl. As we all know, there's a lot of competition for that last claim — the most significant challenge coming from a freelance photographer named Larry Birkhead.

Stern concedes that Smith was dating other people but says he was cool with that.

"I wanted her to be happy," he said in that flat voice during a court hearing last month.

Stern also served as a kind of valet. In the Anna Nicole Smith reality show, Stern is continually fetching things. Smith sits while he brings her food from the buffet, and then she complains he didn't bring everything she wanted. He carries her bags and smiles when, at one point, she shoves him. His shirt is always untucked, his eyes too eager. He often totes her small dog, Sugar Pie.

Ah, love.

Who you gonna trust?

But there are many readings of the man. Some who know Stern paint him as a canny planner who insinuated himself into Smith's life. They say there's no way baby Dannielynn is his — Smith wasn't even attracted to him.

"Dude was like a little nerd," says Jackie Hatten, a reggae singer who says she was Smith's friend for 15 years. Hatten says Smith declared she wouldn't date Stern "if he were the last man on Earth." Hatten says the lawyer always gave her a "weird" feeling, which is strange because as a Sagittarius, Hatten likes everyone.

"Like Anna," Hatten says. "We're both Sags."

Alas, that can't be the final say because Hatten's word — like that of nearly everyone else in this case — is tainted. Her brother is in prison for threatening Smith, and Hatten claims Stern is responsible.

Of the many creatures who've scurried forth since the rock of Smith's life was overturned, some have a financial interest, and others appear to like seeing themselves on TV. Everyone purports to know what really happened. One person says Stern and Smith were deeply in love, and another says he saw Stern try to kiss Smith in a stairwell but she resisted.

"Tomorrow I'm doing the 'Dr. Phil' show and the 'Tyra Banks Show,' " says a fellow named Bobby Trendy, who was Smith's interior decorator and says he knows the real story — and adds that he was the star of Smith's reality show, that Stern was "just jealous" and that "he wanted to be me."

In this case, there are no straight lines. Everything is crooked.

Howard's history

Stern, 38, was raised in Sherman Oaks, Calif., the youngest of three. He passed the bar in 1994 and started his career pursuing a mix of entertainment, corporate and personal-injury law, according to his sister, Bonnie Stern. Several lawyers who've worked with him describe him as sharp and painstakingly methodical. Former law partner Dave Shebby says Stern led a "frugal" life, driving a 20-year-old Jaguar.

Stern and Smith met in 1996, according to his testimony in a Florida courtroom last month over where to bury Smith, who died Feb. 8 at age 39.

She was a former stripper and fast-food waitress and, more recently, a Guess model and Playboy Playmate. She needed help in the fight for the estate of oil baron J. Howard Marshall II, who was 89 when Smith, then 26, married him. Marshall died 14 months into their marriage. The legal battle for his many millions remains unresolved.

Stern took on Smith's estate case on a contingency basis, becoming one of many lawyers working on her behalf, and eventually became her personal counsel. Bonnie Stern says her brother helped negotiate the deal for Smith's reality show, which ran from 2002 to 2004 and showcased a slurring Smith, whose ample assets were frequently emerging from her clothes. Stern follows her around, appearing willing to do anything to stay in her orbit.

Meet the parents

By 2000, Stern testified, he and Smith had become secret lovers. By 2002, she was his only client. He never charged her for working as her personal lawyer, he said, but Smith paid rent on his Santa Monica apartment and for everything they did together, sometimes giving him cash. Shebby says he and Stern had to end their brief partnership because Stern wasn't bringing in any income.

Bonnie Stern says her brother brought Smith to holidays at their parents' house. Did that first visit, on Thanksgiving 1998, create a culture clash?

Oh no, Bonnie says. Smith was dressed formally and seemed "pretty shy." Later, they took pictures.

"I was asking her to show me how she poses sexy," Bonnie says. "So she was posing, and I was snapping pictures."

But was it love?

For years, Smith and Stern publicly denied any romantic relationship. Bonnie Stern says she had a feeling they were in love, but they wouldn't admit it. Last fall, shortly after the birth of Dannielynn and the mysterious (and as yet unexplained) death of Smith's 20-year-old son, Daniel, Smith and Stern exchanged vows during a nonbinding commitment ceremony. Stern declared himself the father of Dannielynn. The baby's birth certificate also lists him as the father. (Meanwhile, Larry Birkhead filed a suit claiming paternity.)

How did their love blossom? In a TV interview, Smith said that one day she finally just "attacked" the "shy" Stern: "I kissed him first."

What could they have had in common — the glamorous high-school dropout and the UCLA-trained lawyer?

The facts are skeletal enough to be interpreted in vastly different ways.

"She had a lot of different people in her life," says Smith's longtime publicist, David Granoff. "This man had the patience of Job. ... I think he loved her."

"I don't think he loved her, ever," Smith friend Hatten says. "I think he was obsessed ... just totally obsessed with her celebrity, her notoriety, her fame."

From Larry's perspective

Birkhead, who testified that he dated Smith from 2004 till 2006 and says he is Dannielynn's father, has said Stern had a "fantasy" about being Smith's lover, but Smith never felt the same way. Birkhead said that while he was in bed with Smith, Stern used to sleep on a couch on the floor below.

Stern continually interfered in their relationship, Birkhead testified, saying Stern kept Smith supplied with a duffel bag of prescription drugs when she was pregnant and in a hospital trying to detox.

Meanwhile, Hatten and Smith friend Peter Nygard, a fashion designer, say that over time, Stern came to play "gatekeeper" with the phone in Smith's home, preventing her from getting certain calls.

Birkhead testified that he and Smith had a falling-out in May 2006 when he didn't obey her request to buy her a pair of sunglasses. She yelled at him, and that was the last time he saw her. Shortly after that, he says, the model moved to the Bahamas. A man named Ford Shelley, who said he was a friend of Smith's, testified that he suggested Smith move to the Bahamas when she "told us she was pregnant with Larry Birkhead's child and that she did not want him to have any rights to the child."

There are open questions about whether Bahamian law would automatically award guardianship to the child's biological father.

What's in it for them

And for Stern, Birkhead and all the other men who've claimed paternity, there is the persistent question of motives. Whoever gets the baby may get access to some of Marshall's millions, assuming the litigation goes her way.

All we have are pieces, the detritus of a life washed ashore. Friends come forth to speculate about this B-list celebrity whose life had Grade A scandal.

And what about Stern himself? Where exactly does he fit in all this madness? Approached through his attorney, Bruce Ross, he would not comment for this story. These days, he's mostly been doing "Entertainment Tonight."