“Why are you still giving me shit about that?” she snapped.
“Because I’m worried about you,” I said.
“Isn’t that sweet?” she said, but she had an edge in her voice.
Man, I didn’t need that shit. I turned around and left the room without another word. To be honest with you, Nicole’s behavior was beginning to scare me.
The party wound down without incident, and Nicole went home, also without incident, but the next day I had Paula over, and we were watching a movie on TV, working on our relationship, taking it slow, when the phone rang. It was Nicole. She was screaming so loud that I had to take the phone into the kitchen.
“Why are you trying to steal my friends?!” she shouted.
“Steal your friends? What the hell are you talking about?”
“You invited them to the fund-raiser!”
Jesus! I couldn’t believe it. She was talking about the sports banquet I was hosting to raise money for Cedar’s-Sinai, for children with birth defects. The previous fall, while Nicole and I were still together, or trying to be together, I had suggested that she ask some of her friends to join us at our table. I had my doubts about these so-called friends, but Nicole had told me, repeatedly, that I was wrong about them, and I wanted to give her an opportunity to show me I was wrong. She could bring them to the fund-raiser and maybe I’d find out that they were truly the good, decent people she was telling me they were.
After Nicole and I split up, though, definitively this time, I’d asked Paula to come with me to the fund-raiser. I didn’t think she would be all that comfortable around Nicole’s friends, though, so I had to disinvite them. Ron Fishman and his son, Michael, were still welcome, as was Christian Reichardt, but I didn’t want to force Paula to deal with the girls—Cora or Faye or any of those people—because I didn’t think it would be fair to her, or even to Nicole, frankly.
When I called Faye to tell her that the plans had changed, and that I didn’t think the evening was going to work out, she tried to set me straight. “I thought Christian and I were your friends,” she said.
“Well, you are my friends,” I said. (What the hell was I going to say?)
And she said, “Then why can’t we come?”
I tried to explain it to her, suggesting that it might be hard on Paula, and she told me that that didn’t make any sense at all. “O.J., we don’t play that game,” she said. “We don’t take sides. We want to be your friends, and we’d love to meet Paula.”
At that point, what could I do? “Fine,” I said. “You can come.”
So there I was in the kitchen, with Nicole screaming at me about the fund-raiser, demanding an explanation. “I didn’t invite Faye!” I hollered back. “Faye invited herself!”
“Liar!” she yelled. “You’re a goddamn liar!”
My God! This woman was crazy. One day I was an angel, the best thing that ever happened to her, and the next day I was Satan himself.
I hung up and called Faye’s house. Christian Reichardt answered the phone. I told him what was happening, and he put Faye on the phone, and I explained how Nicole had just gone ballistic over the fund-raiser. “Come on, O.J.,” she said. “You know what this is about.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what this is about!”
“This has nothing to do with the fund-raiser. Nicole still loves you, and she’s upset because you’re already back with Paula.”
“Who cares about that?” I snapped. “It’s over between us. I can be with whoever I want, and so can she. I don’t tell her who to go out with and I don’t care, and I wish to hell she’d move on already.”
“Well, that’s the problem,” Faye said. “She can’t move on. She loves you. It’s easy for you to move on because you don’t love her, but she’s still crazy about you and can’t let go.”
I didn’t want to get into a long, philosophical conversation. “Faye,” I said, “I don’t have time for this shit. I just need a favor from you. I need you to call Nicole and tell her that you invited yourself to this thing. You just do that one favor for me, okay? And while you’re at it, please tell her I don’t give a shit who she dates or anything else.”
I know that wasn’t the nicest thing to say, but I didn’t really care at that point. I was sick of dealing with Nicole’s crap. And I had Paula in the other room, waiting.
The rest of the evening went pretty well, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
The next day, as I was heading into town in my car, I saw Nicole and Cora jogging through the neighborhood. I didn’t stop, but I called Nicole’s house—knowing she wouldn’t be there to answer the phone—and left a message on her machine: “I hope Faye explained all the fund-raiser bullshit to you yesterday,” I said. “If she didn’t, you need to talk to her. I purposely did not invite her and Cora because I didn’t feel comfortable having them around Paula. That’s the truth. Other than that, please do not call me for anything. If it’s not about the kids, I don’t want to hear from you.”
That was the truth. It was also definitely true that I didn’t want to hear from her. And that right there is the reason we weren’t talking at the time of her death. Not because I’d threatened her, but because I’d had my goddamn fill of her. She was poisoning me with her anger, and I needed to get away from it.
The next day, not even two weeks before Nicole’s death, Cora Fishman called and asked if she could stop by the house. She lived a couple of blocks away, and she came over, and she was crying before she’d even started talking.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“You’ve got to do something about Nicole,” she said. “You’ve got to get her away from these people.”
“Hey—don’t you think I’ve tried?!”
“Then do it by force if you have to,” she said. “Run an intervention. But do something. I’m begging you.”
“I’m sick of trying.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “We had a big fight yesterday, after we went jogging. Nicole is one of my best friends. We’ve never had a fight like that. She just refuses to accept that she’s in serious trouble, and in my heart I know something bad is going to happen “
I’ll be honest with you: I liked Cora, but I wasn’t moved by her tears. “Don’t tell me.” I said. “Tell her mother. Tell another friend. I’m finished with her.”
“O.J. please!”
“Hey,” I snapped. “It ain’t my problem!”
That was the end of the conversation.
Much later, of course, during the trial, and during those many months behind bars, I often thought back to that moment, and I felt pretty guilty about it. But at the time I was completely done with Nicole, and I was responding as I saw fit. It seemed like no matter how much I tried to do for her, no matter how patient and reasonable I was, my good intentions always came back to bite me in the ass. So I was pretty angry at that point, yeah. I didn’t want to see her, I didn’t want to hear from her, and I didn’t want to deal with any of her shit. I had done the best I could, and it wasn’t good enough, and at that point I wanted to put some miles between us.
Cora left the house, unhappy and frustrated, and I didn’t talk to her again until after the murders.
Much later, I heard that the problems over on Bundy only seemed to get worse by the day. Faye Resnick had an acrimonious falling out with her fiancé, and supposedly moved into Nicole’s house on or around June 3. Then there was some talk about her going into rehab. But apparently she didn’t want to go alone, and she kept insisting that Nicole was as messed up as she was. “I’m not going unless Nicole goes!” she kept hollering, even when they were taking her away. “She’s in worse shape than me!” Like I said, I don’t know if this is entirely accurate, but that was the story, and I certainly believed one part of it—the part about Nicole being as messed up as Faye. I believed it because I’d seen it.
In a strange way, I was actually kind of hoping that Nicole would hit the wall. I figured she wouldn’t even
begin to think about acknowledging her problems, or getting professional help for them, until she was completely out of options.
A few days later, while I was in New York, I got a call from Gigi, the housekeeper. I had never heard her so upset. “Nicole was just here,” she said, and she began to cry. “She was screaming at me and cursing.”
“What was she doing there?”
“She came to tell me that her mail would be coming to the house, and that I should put it aside for her.”
That’s when I found out that she was still trying to con the IRS. She wanted them to think that she had taken the money from the sale of her San Francisco condo and used it to buy the Bundy condo, another investment property. Only it wasn’t an investment property; it was her home. I called my lawyer, steaming. “I can’t have her coming by the house anymore,” I said. “She already cost me one housekeeper, and now she’s got the new one crying and on the verge of quitting.”
“So tell her,” my lawyer said.
“I don’t want to talk to her,” I said.
“Then write her a letter,” he suggested.
We wrote it together. I told her I was not going to risk having the IRS come after me because she wanted to play fast and loose with the tax laws. “I don’t want your mail coming to my house,” I noted, “so please make other arrangements. Do what you’ve got to do, but don’t make me part of it.”
Much later, during the trial, the prosecution tried to make it sound as if I’d been threatening her, and that this was my way of punishing her for leaving me. I don’t know how they got that from the facts, but it seems like most reporters never let the facts get in the way of a good story. I was simply trying to keep her on the straight and narrow. The gist of it was, “You’re not living here, and you’re not going to live here, so you need to take care of this. If the IRS comes, I’m going to tell them the truth.”
By this point, as you can well imagine, we were pretty much not talking.
On June 11, I took Paula Barbieri to a fund-raiser for a pediatric hospital in Israel. Margalit Sharon, the wife of the Israeli prime minister, was hosting it. When it was over, Paula and I went back to my place and made love. I felt I had really fallen for her, and things seemed to get better by the day.
The following day, June 12, was the day of Sydney’s recital. Sydney was doing a little dance thing at her school, with her little classmates, and I was really looking forward to it. Nicole called me late that afternoon to ask me if I was bringing my son, Jason, and to see whether I could get there early to reserve a few seats. I was tied up with stuff, so I told her I probably wouldn’t get there till six, when the recital started. I also told her that I was coming alone. I don’t know whether she thought I’d be bringing Paula, but I wanted to set her mind at ease, so I volunteered that information. I had decided not to bring Paula out of respect for Nicole and her family, and I’d already talked to Paula about it. Unfortunately, that conversation had not gone well. She had wanted to come, and she didn’t see why I had to keep her away from the Browns. “I don’t know why it’s such a big deal,” she said. “They all know about me.”
“I just think it’s better this way,” I said. “It’ll be easier on everyone.”
Paula didn’t agree and she went all cold on me. I knew I was in for a lot of apologizing, and a lot of damage control. But what could I do? I thought I was making the right decision.
When I got to the recital, I saw Nicole and her parents, Juditha and Lou. Nicole was wearing a short skirt that would have looked inappropriate on a 16-year-old. I thought she looked ridiculous, but I didn’t say anything. Still, it really made me wonder. What did she see when she looked at herself in the mirror? Was her mind so muddled that she’d lost her grip on reality?
I went over and said hello to everyone, and Nicole pointed at the seat she’d held for me. It was two seats away from hers. The seats in the middle were for the kids, who would be running around throughout the evening. Nicole’s sister, Denise, was in the row in front of me. She turned around and smiled a big smile and reached over and gave me a kiss.
Shortly after the evening got underway, I nodded off in my chair. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to one of these things, but they go on forever, and there were probably twenty numbers before Sydney got her turn on stage. When I woke up, startled, they still hadn’t made much progress, and I looked around and noticed that a lot of parents were holding nice bouquets. Damn! I had forgotten the flowers. I leaned over and checked the schedule, and there were at least half-a-dozen acts before Sydney hit the stage, so I worked my way down the aisle and hurried into the parking lot. I got into my car and drove into Brentwood and picked up some flowers, and I got back in plenty of time.
We watched Sydney do her number, and clapped louder than everyone else, and then there was a brief intermission. Sydney came over, beaming, and I gave her the flowers. She looked absolutely beautiful. When she went over to talk to her grandparents, I looked up and saw Ron Fishman, Cora’s husband. We shook hands and he led me off to one side. “O.J., man, you wouldn’t believe what’s going on,” he said.
“With what?”
“The women. Everybody’s mad at everybody. Nicole’s not talking to Cora because Cora’s upset about the drug use and about the people she’s hanging out with. Faye got kicked out of the house by Christian—drugs again—and ended up at Nicole’s. Then they did an intervention without even telling Christian, and for some reason he’s pissed off about that. It’s a mess. It’s all a huge mess.”
“I heard a rumor Faye was messin’ up,” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is that they took her to rehab, kicking and screaming. She wanted Nicole to go with her. She said, ‘If I go, she needs to go, because she’s drinking and doing coke worse than I am.’ But Nicole wouldn’t go.”
“I knew this shit was going on,” I said. “I tried to do something about it, but Nicole wouldn’t even talk about it.”
“I know,” he said. “Cora told me that she tried to talk to you about it, and that you said you were sick of all the bullshit.”
I felt a little twinge of guilt, but it passed. “What’s going on with you and Cora?” I asked. “I’m hearing some stuff.”
Ron looked pretty crushed for a few moments, but he pulled himself together. “We split up. We’ve been together for seventeen years, and it’s over.”
He didn’t tell me what had split them up, and I didn’t ask. “Wow,” I said. “You’re right. It’s a huge mess.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I’m sure we don’t know the half of it.”
As I worked my way back to my seat, for the second part of the show, a few people came by to say hello, but I was a little distracted. I didn’t like what Ron had said—We don’t know the half of it—because I knew he was right. There was a lot of weird shit happening around Nicole and those girls, and it only seemed to be getting stranger.
As I sat down, I saw Nicole looking at me, like she was wondering what Ron and I had been talking about, but I didn’t say a word to her. I didn’t want to get into it. At some point, we were going to have to face this thing head on, and I was probably going to need her family’s help, but this wasn’t the time or the place for it. I was upset enough. If I talked to her now, I knew I’d just get angry.
I was also very tired. I’d been in about four cities in the past week, and I had a late flight to Chicago that night for a get-together with the people at Hertz. I waited for the second half of the show to begin. That’s what I was there for, after all. For my kids. I wasn’t going to do anything that might ruin things for them.
The second half seemed shorter, or maybe I just nodded off again. When it was over, Sydney came running over, and we had our picture taken together. Then I ran into Judy, who was all smiles. “Where’s Nicole?” she said. “Aren’t we going to dinner?”
“You guys are going,” I said. “I ain’t going.”
Denise came over and gave me a big kiss, and Lou
showed up and shook my hand and said hello. “I’m not going to dinner,” I told him. “I’ve got to stay away from your daughter.” I said it with a big smile, though, as if I was horsing around, but deep down I meant it. I did not want to be around Nicole.
Much later, during the trial, this whole evening became a huge issue. For starters, the prosecution tried to suggest that I hadn’t been invited to dinner, and that I was upset about it. I didn’t need an invitation. It wasn’t like that. If I had wanted to go to dinner, I would have gone. But I’m the one who didn’t want to go. I didn’t have the energy to get into anything with Nicole, and I knew we’d get into it if I was there. The last time we’d talked, prior to our brief conversation earlier in the day, was when she called to scream at me about taking her friends to that fund-raiser. Faye had spoken to her the next day, to set the record straight, but Nicole had never bothered to apologize to me. If I was pissed off about anything, that was it. I was brought up to acknowledge my mistakes and to do something about them. Nicole had once had the same values as me, but I guess they got lost in the shuffle.
So, no. I did not leave the recital “upset and angry,” as some people would have you believe. And I didn’t think the Browns were indebted to me for all the wonderful things I’d done for them over the years, as other people suggested—though God knows I had done an awful lot of wonderful things for them. And I wasn’t in the dark mood attributed to me by several people who were at the recital, including Candace Garvey, wife of baseball’s Steve Garvey, who got on the stand and told the court that I was “simmering” and looked “spooky.” Hell, even Denise testified that I was in a horrible mood. “He looked like he wasn’t there,” she said. “He looked like he was in space.” All of this would have been very damaging, of course, except that there was a guy from Portland at the reception, and he saw me there, mingling with my family, and secretly shot a little video of me to entertain his friends back home. When the trial eventually got underway, he was back in Portland, watching the proceedings on TV, and he heard all sorts of bullshit testimony about my horrible state of mind. He was a little taken aback, to say the least, so he dug up the tape and sent a copy to Los Angeles, and the defense team later played it for the court.
If I Did It Page 16