“Once I’m in that limo, and it’s gone, I need you to park the fucking Bronco in the driveway, then get into your car and take the fuck off. Do you understand?”
Charlie nodded.
“This here’s the clicker. It’ll open the gate. You can drop the key in the mailbox, but run out before the gate closes. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
I took the key out of the ignition and removed all the keys except the one for the Bronco.
Then I set the bundle in his lap. “I need you to take this, and get rid of it,” I said. Charlie looked down at the bundle, afraid to touch it. “I don’t give a fuck how you get rid of it, but make sure it disappears. You hear? It needs to disappear forever.”
Charlie nodded.
“Did you fucking hear me?!” I hollered.
“I heard you,” Charlie said.
I made him repeat everything I had told him, word for word, then I got out of the car and stole into the neighbor’s property, toward my house. My heart was beating like crazy. I could feel it pounding in my ears.
I moved past the tennis court to the little secret path that connected our two properties. Only a few friends knew about that path, and all of them were tennis players. They made use of it whenever I wasn’t around to open the front gate for them.
Within seconds, I was on my property, moving past my own tennis court. I hung left, moving past the guesthouses, all of which are tucked away, out of sight, and past the pool, toward the rear of the main house. I couldn’t see the limo from way back there, but I knew it was at the Rockingham gate. I was sure the driver had already buzzed the house by then, and I was pretty sure he’d already called his office to tell them I wasn’t there. Still, he was a few minutes early, and he’d hang tight. He’d buzz again in a few minutes. For all I knew, he was buzzing at that very moment.
As I was moving past Kato’s room, I stumbled against one of the air-conditioning units, making a racket, and almost fell down. I stole past, still clutching my keys, breathing hard, and let myself through the back door. I moved toward the alarm panel and punched in the code to keep it from going off.
I didn’t turn on any lights until I got upstairs, into my own room, then I hurried into the bathroom and hopped into the shower.
Not a minute later, I heard the phone ringing. I saw that the bottom light was flashing—the light that corresponded to the Rockingham gate—so I knew it was the limo driver. I figured he’d seen the lights go on in the bedroom and the bathroom and was trying me again. Maybe he thought I’d been asleep. That would be a good thing to tell him: That I’d been asleep.
I let the phone ring, knowing he’d call back, and finished showering. I got out and dried myself, thinking about what I had to do. My bags were pretty well packed, so I was almost ready to go.
I slipped into my black robe and went downstairs and grabbed the Louis Vuitton bag and my golf clubs and took them out front and set them in the courtyard. The driver saw me and got out of the limo, squinting in my direction.
I hurried back upstairs, to finish dressing, with my heart still beating like crazy. I could feel it in my ears, and against my temples, but as I looked around I couldn’t understand what I was so worked up about. I took a deep breath and told myself, The last hour was just a nightmare. None of that ever goddamn happened.
The phone rang again—the lower light—and I reached for it. “Yeah, man,” I said. “I know you’re here. I overslept and just got out of the shower. My bags are out front.”
I hit the code and opened the front gate, so he could drive through and get the bags, and hung up and finished dressing. Then I hurried downstairs and went outside. The driver was still putting the bags into the trunk of his white limo.
“Hey,” I said.
“Good evening, Mr. Simpson.”
“We about set here?”
“Yes, sir.”
At that moment, Kato showed up, looking spooked. “Did you hear that?” he asked.
“What?” I said.
“That banging noise,” he said. “A big thump out back, near the fence.”
“I didn’t hear shit,” I said.
“I was in the shower.”
“It was a really loud fucking noise, O.J. It scared the hell out of me.”
Kato seemed to think that someone had been lurking around that part of the house, and he asked me to have a look, so I humored him. We went off in separate directions, and after about a minute we reconvened near the front door.
“I didn’t see anything,” I said.
“You got a flashlight?” he asked.
“Jesus, Kato—I’m trying to get out of here. You go look for it and lock up when you’re done.”
Kato went into the house, still spooked, and I got into the limo and took off. I think the driver was nervous about being late or something, because he got confused at Sunset and took the wrong entry ramp onto the 405 Freeway.
Once we were en route, I called Kato to tell him to make sure to set the alarm. I didn’t get through to him, but I remembered having told him to lock up, and I hoped he was smart enough to set the alarm.
“Man,” I told the driver. “It feels like I spend my whole life racing to and from airports and getting on and off airplanes.”
“I know what you mean,” the driver said.
When we got to the airport, I checked in at the curb, like I always do, and watched the skycap tag the bags. A couple of fans came by for autographs, and I was happy to oblige.
On my way to the gate, I signed a few more autographs, and when I boarded the plane I shook hands with a couple more fans. One of them was curious about my ring—he thought it was my Super Bowl ring, but it was actually my Hall of Fame ring—and he took a closer look and admired it. I only mention this because there was supposed to be a cut on my ring finger, but it must have been a phantom cut—there was nothing but a ring there.
I was asleep before the plane took off, and I slept most of the way to Chicago. A limo driver helped me get my bags, then took me to the O’Hare Plaza Hotel. It was quiet at that early hour, even at the airport, and the ride only lasted about five minutes.
I got to my room exhausted, and stripped and immediately fell asleep, but a short time later I was awakened by the ringing phone. I picked it up. It was some cop in Los Angeles—either Philip Vannatter or Thomas Lange, I don’t really remember—calling to tell me that he had some bad news. “Nicole has been killed,” he said.
“Killed?” I said, not sure I’d heard him correctly. “What do you mean killed?”
And the cop said, “O.J., we can’t tell you. But we can tell you that the kids are all right. Where are you?”
I looked around the hotel room and came out of my fog. “I’m in Chicago,” I said.
“I need you to come back to L.A. as soon as you can,” he said.
Much later, during the trial, the prosecution made a big deal about my response to that phone call, claiming that I never bothered to ask what had happened to Nicole, and suggesting that I didn’t ask because I already knew. But that’s not the way I remember it. When I was told that Nicole was dead, my first response was the one I just noted: “Killed? What do you mean killed?” And even when I was told that I wasn’t going to get any more details, I remember asking, “What happened? What the fuck happened?”
The cop repeated himself: “We can’t say anything. We’re still investigating.”
And I said, “And my kids are all right?”
And the cop said, “Yes. As I said, the kids are fine. We need you to come home now, O.J.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “That’s all you’re going to say: Come home now!”
“O.J.,” the cop replied. “We’ll tell you what we know when you get here. We don’t know much ourselves. We’ll be waiting for you at your house.”
I went nuts, and I remember screaming at him—begging him not to leave me in the dark—but it didn’t help. When it became clear that the cops had nothing else to say—either
because they didn’t want to share anything with me, or because they didn’t know much—I slammed the phone down, stormed into the bathroom, and threw a glass across the room. It shattered against the tiled wall, sounding like a gunshot.
I went back into the room and called Cathy Randa, my assistant, and told her what was going on. “I just heard from the cops,” I said. “They told me Nicole is dead.”
“Dead?” she said. “What do you mean dead?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “They say she was killed.”
“Oh my God!”
I told her to call the cops and get hold of the kids, and asked her to please get me the next flight to Los Angeles.
Then I looked down at my hand and noticed that my finger was bleeding.
I made a few more calls. I called Hertz to tell them I had to go home, I tried calling the cops again, and I called the Browns, down in Dana Point.
Nicole’s sister, Denise, got on the phone, hysterical. “You brutal son of a bitch!” she hollered. “You killed her! I know you killed her, you motherfucker!”
Juditha took the phone from her, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I told her I was getting on the next flight back to Los Angeles, and that I’d speak to her as soon as I landed.
I got dressed and had the porter come up for my bags, then went down to the lobby and asked for a Band-Aid. I guess I’d cut my finger in the bathroom, when I threw that glass.
On my way to the airport, fighting panic, I made a few more calls. I tried to reach Cathy, to see if she knew anything else about my kids, and I again tried to call the cops. For some reason, I even tried to call Kato, back at the house, to see if he knew anything.
When I got to the airport, I was told there was a flight leaving at 7:15, but that it was already booked. I spoke to one of the clerks and she spoke to the manager and they made room for me.
During the course of that entire flight, I sat upright and stock still the entire time. I felt like I was made of glass or something, and that if I moved too much I would shatter into a million pieces. I also remember trying to control my breathing, and thinking that my heart was beating all wrong. I guess I was on the edge of panic.
There was a guy in the seat across the aisle from me, and he noticed and asked me what was wrong. I told him that the cops had just called to tell me that my ex-wife had been killed, and that I didn’t even know where my kids were. He turned out to be a lawyer, and after expressing his condolences he gave me some advice: “You should contact your attorney the moment you land,” he said. “You’re going to need someone to help you navigate your way through this.”
Someone? Christ, the man had no idea. I ended up needing a fucking team to get me through it, and even then I almost didn’t survive.
When the plane landed, I found Cathy Randa waiting for me at the terminal, along with Skip Taft, one of my attorneys. Both Cathy and Skip looked shocked, but probably nowhere near as shocked as I looked.
“Where are my kids?” I said.
“They’re safe,” Cathy said. “They’re on their way to the Browns’ place.”
“That all your luggage?” Skip asked.
“No, there’s the golf clubs—but leave them. I’ll get them later.”
We hurried through the terminal and talked about what had happened, but they didn’t know much more than I did. And I was having trouble hearing them, anyway, because my heart was pounding and the blood was roaring in my ears. I was fucking terrified, to be honest. Nicole was dead—gone forever—and the police were waiting for me at my house.
When we were in the car, leaving the airport, Skip said we should go to his office before we went to see the cops.
“No,” I said. “The cops told me they needed to see me, and they said they’d be waiting at my house, and I’m going to my house. I can’t go to your office. I’m going to my house. That’s what the cops asked me to do.”
“The cops can wait,” he said. “We need to get a handle on this thing.”
“No,” I said. “I gave them my word. I’m going.”
At that point, Skip turned his attention to the radio, and he began flipping through the stations. I picked up bits of information here and there: Nicole Simpson Brown was dead. There was a second victim, a young man. The murders had taken place in the courtyard of her Bundy condo. Police were waiting to talk to O.J. Simpson, who had been out of town but was apparently on his way home.
The whole thing felt completely unreal, as if it was happening to someone else, not me. I looked down at my hands. They were shaking uncontrollably. “What the fuck is going on?” I asked Skip. “Are people saying they think I did it? I can’t believe people would think that of me—that I could do something like that.”
Skip told me to relax, that nobody could possibly think I had anything to do with the murders. Cathy also told me not to worry. “Everything’s going to be fine,” she said.
“Did the kids see anything?” I asked.
“No,” Cathy said. “The police took them out back, through the garage.”
I felt the bile rising in my throat. It was all I could do to keep myself from being sick. “Call the Browns. Don’t let them tell the kids what happened. I want to be the one to tell them. They’re my kids.”
“I’ll call them,” Cathy said.
When we got to the house, the place was crawling with cops and reporters. It was unreal. We drove up to the gate and I could hear the reporters surging behind Skip’s car, shouting my name and snapping pictures.
“This is not a good idea,” Skip repeated. “We should have gone to my office.”
I ignored him. I got out of the car and moved toward the gate, and the reporters kept hollering at me from across the street.
There was a cop standing guard at the gate, and he seemed a little startled to see me.
“You going to let us through?” I said.
“Not the car,” he said. “Not anyone but you.”
I turned around and saw my friend Bob Kardashian crossing to greet me. I guess he’d been waiting for me there.
“Jesus, O.J.,” he said. He looked like he was near tears.
“They’re not letting us in.”
Skip popped the trunk and Bob and Cathy reached for my carry-on bags and followed me back to the gate. Skip, meanwhile, backed out and went off to park the car.
The cop looked at Cathy and shook his head. “Just you,” he said.
“But they’re with me,” I said.
The officer didn’t care. He opened the gate just wide enough to let me pass, and left Bob and Cathy behind with the two small bags. The reporters were going crazy, snapping pictures and trying to figure out what was going on.
I looked through the gate, back at Bob—he looked ashen—and when I turned back the cop was reaching for his handcuffs.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said. “I live here. This is my house.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Simpson. I’m going to have to handcuff you.”
“You ain’t gonna handcuff me,” I said.
“Mr. Simpson—”
“You gonna handcuff me for what? I’m not crazy. I want to talk to someone. Who the fuck’s in charge here?”
Bob called out from beyond the gate: “What do you want me to do with the bags?”
Hell if I knew. I wasn’t thinking about the bags, and I didn’t realize what a strange part they’d play in the proceedings in the months ahead. One of them was my famous Louis Vuitton bag, and it gave reporters a lot of nothing to write about: What the fuck happened to the Louis Vuitton bag? What was in the fucking bag? Where was Bob Kardashian going with O.J.’s bag?
The irony is that I was trying to bring the bags into the house with me. You’d think that if there had been anything incriminating in those bags I wouldn’t have tried to lug them inside, but of course nobody wrote that part of the story. Instead, they made a huge fuss about the missing bags, and even suggested that Kardashian had walked off with all sorts of evidence, maybe e
ven the bloody knife. Still, not once in the course of the entire trial did the prosecution make any attempt to retrieve the bags, which remained untouched for months on end.
I began to move toward the house, with the cop right on my ass, mumbling about the goddamn cuffs, and when I turned around I saw the horde of reporters across the street, with all sorts of cameras aimed right at us, rolling and pumping. I took a deep breath and figured I shouldn’t make a scene. This was my home. I didn’t want to see myself on the news later that day, giving a cop a hard time about handcuffing me. I had to keep cool. The only thing that really mattered was finding out exactly what was going on.
I put my hands behind my back and let the guy handcuff me. He led me toward the front door just as Vannatter and Lange came out the house. They introduced themselves, and told me they were in charge of the investigation.
“Well, I’m here,” I said. “I got here as fast as I could.”
“Thank you for coming,” Vannatter said.
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Just take these goddamn cuffs off me. You shouldn’t be doing this to me in my own home.”
At that moment, Howard Weitzman showed up. He’s another attorney, and Skip had called him earlier, seeking his advice, I guess. Maybe he was already there, waiting for me, but that was the first I saw him. He looked directly at Vannatter and Lange. “Mr. Simpson is in no condition to talk right now,” he said. “He’s still in shock.”
And I said, “No. I can talk.”
Vannatter asked if I minded going downtown with him and his partner, and I said I didn’t mind at all.
And Howard said, echoing Skip, “That’s not a good idea.”
I don’t know whether I was in shock or not, but I was in no mood to listen to lawyers. “I’m going with them,” I said. “I’m going to do whatever they ask me to do.”
Howard was adamant. He didn’t want me to talk to those guys, and he was getting pretty hot and bothered about it. “O.J.,” he said. “You’re making a mistake.”
“I’m not going to sit here and try to cover my ass,” I replied, getting a little hot and bothered myself. “I’ve read enough thrillers and watched enough TV movies and seen enough shit on the news to know that the first guy they go to in these types of situations is the spouse or the ex-spouse or the boyfriend. I’m not going to be one of those people who get described as an ‘uncooperative witness.’”
If I Did It Page 19