“You go ahead, June. I have to see this. Tell them I’ll be down shortly,” replied Gus, not taking his eyes off the screen. “I want to see Al Cowlings drive the white Bronco through the gates at the house on Rockingham and let O. J. out.”
“It’ll be on the news later,” said June.
“I want to watch it live,” he said. “I want to see it happen while it’s happening. I’m having the same feeling I had when I watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald live on-camera after Jack Kennedy was assassinated.”
When Gus was tying his black tie in the mirrored bathroom, he looked himself squarely in the eye and knew with total certainty that fate would take him back to Los Angeles, a city he had once said he hoped never to return to again. It was there that Peach had asked him for a divorce. It was there he had had his descent into failure and oblivion. It was there that Becky had been strangled by Lefty Flynn. It was there that Lefty Flynn had received a slap on the wrist as punishment for the murder and was now out and about in a new life, as if he had atoned.
Whenever Gus was interviewed, either in print or on television, about a new book or a new article he had written, he was invariably asked about Becky’s murder. He understood that interviewers always saved their most personal questions for last, and he could pinpoint when the time was nigh for the questions to be asked.
“What happened to that guy?” the interviewer would usually ask, meaning Lefty Flynn, the killer.
And Gus usually answered, “I don’t have any idea where he is, and I don’t want to know. For a while, after he was released, I hired a private investigator named Anthony Pellicano to follow him, but I stopped that. I didn’t want to live a life of revenge. I believe in ultimate justice. I believe that life will take care of what the courts don’t succeed in doing.”
He took the elevator down to the ballroom floor for the cocktail party that preceded the dinner and awards ceremony. He was the last of the recipients to enter the room. His mind was still on the bewildering scene he had just watched on television upstairs. Academy staff members, nervous because of his lateness, rushed to greet him and pin on his name tag. The cocktail party was well under way; there were indications that it was time to begin the move to the ballroom for the dinner and speeches. As Gus looked around at the others, he realized he knew most of the Hollywood and media people who were also being honored.
Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes greeted Gus by saying, “Did you watch? This story’s right up your alley, Gus.” Gus didn’t have to say, “What story?” The freeway chase was already the main topic of conversation. Many of the Hollywood people knew O. J. Simpson. Whoopi Goldberg said to Gus when he kissed her on the cheek in greeting, “Gus, this is awful about O. J. I can’t stop thinking about it.” She shook her head in sadness. Harrison Ford, who before he became a star had once done construction work on the house that Gus’s brother Malachy and his wife, Edwina, rebuilt in Malibu, said he knew Simpson. “I mean, I met him a couple of times, at closed-circuit games and boxing matches, stuff like that. I didn’t really know him.” Robert De Niro and Francis Ford Coppola were telling stories about O. J. Simpson. Michael Eisner, the C.E.O. of Disney, said, “O. J. just did a television pilot called Frogman for NBC. I wonder what’s going to happen to that now.” Eisner had once been unhappy with Gus for writing that he shook hands with people he was being introduced to without bothering to look at them, but that night they shook hands and all was forgiven, as they exchanged information about the freeway chase. Steve Wynn, who owned the Mirage Hotel and was himself a past recipient of the golden plate, said, “Yeah, I know O. J. I can tell you about O. J.”
“Hi, Augustus, I’m Sam Lefrak.” Sam Lefrak, the New York real-estate tycoon, flew to the American Academy of Achievement awards every year, wherever it was held. “We were in Jackson Hole last year, and we’re going to be in Colonial Williamsburg next year. I hope you’ll come back. Barry Diller over there got his golden plate five years ago, and he comes back every year. We’re glad you could come, Augustus. My wife’s a big fan of yours. She reads all your books. We really enjoyed your articles on the Menendez case. My wife didn’t believe that sexual-abuse stuff for a minute, and you didn’t either, did you? What we want to know is, Edith and I, will you be writing about the O. J. Simpson case? Wasn’t that freeway chase the damnedest thing you ever saw? We also wanted to offer you a ride back to New York on our jet. We have a good chef on board. Oh, Kary, come over here a minute. Gus, I want you to meet Dr. Kary Mullis, another of the honorees. Kary’s a leading authority on DNA. You know about DNA, don’t you? Better than fingerprints. And he received the Nobel Prize for science.”
Gus and Mullis shook hands. Dr. Kary Mullis didn’t look like scientists usually look. He was handsome, deeply tanned, lived on the beach, and talked about surfing, which was his passion. There was about him a sense of the stardom that accompanies fame. Fame was a subject that fascinated Gus. That night, Gus did not know that he and Dr. Mullis would meet up again at the Simpson trial in Los Angeles, where Mullis would be an expert DNA witness for the defense.
“Fame is at the root of this whole story,” said Gus. “I’m talking about celebrity type of fame. It fascinates people.”
3
Since the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, the name of the famed lawyer F. Lee Bailey was very much in the news again, after having been dormant for some time. The lead attorney for O. J. Simpson, Robert Shapiro, who was gaining in national name recognition every day, had brought Bailey on as part of his defense team. No one could say that Shapiro’s choices for his team were not of the highest caliber. Even before the freeway chase, Shapiro had brought Dr. Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner of New York City, and Dr. Henry Lee, the foremost forensic scientist in the United States, onto his team.
Gus’s friend Karen Lerner, a television and film executive, said to him one night at dinner, “You’ll never guess who I’m having dinner with tomorrow. F. Lee Bailey!”
“I didn’t know you knew F. Lee Bailey,” said Gus.
“I haven’t seen him in a long time, and he called me up and said he was going to be in town.”
“He’s flying high these days,” said Gus. “O. J.’s put him back in the news again.”
“He’s got some Mafia client who’s up on a big drug charge. I don’t know the details,” said Karen.
“Where’s he taking you to dinner?” asked Gus.
“Lespinasse, in the St. Regis. It’s free. Lee’s client is putting him up at the St. Regis. Everything’s free for him, as long as it’s in the St. Regis.”
They both laughed. They were old friends who had known each other for years.
“Now listen, honey,” said Gus, warming up.
“You don’t even have to ask, Gus,” said Karen, anticipating what he was going to say. “I’ll ask him to meet you. I’m sure he’ll want to meet you, too.”
“Thanks, Karen.”
“Send me over the articles you wrote in Vanity Fair about the Menendez case, so I can show them to Lee before you meet.”
A few days before he left for Los Angeles, Gus Bailey took F. Lee Bailey to “21” for dinner. Bailey, who was best known as the defender of Dr. Sam Sheppard and the Boston Strangler, was in town from Palm Beach, where he lived, for meetings with a client of his. Walter Weis, the maître d’ at “21” for forty years, made a tremendous fuss over the lawyer and the writer as he led them to the corner table to the left, considered the best in the house, which, he informed them, had just been vacated by the ambassador to France, Pamela Harriman, and the business tycoon Linda Wachner. People at banquettes and other tables turned to look at F. Lee Bailey. His new association with O. J. Simpson had increased his celebrity. Bailey, in turn, seemed pleased with the attention he was receiving. It was the first time that Gus saw the cat-that-ate-the-canary expression on his face. The two men quickly established that, although they shared the same last name, there was no family connection between them.
“
We do share something in common, though,” said Bailey.
“What’s that?” asked Gus.
“Neither one of us seems to like Leslie Abramson very much.”
Gus laughed. He was pleased that Bailey had taken the time to read his articles on the Menendez case.
“Do you know Leslie?” asked Gus.
“About as much as I want to. She contacted O. J.’s mother, Eunice Simpson, and tried to take the case away from us. She told Eunice we had the wrong defense and she guaranteed that she could get him an acquittal. Eunice called Shapiro and told him, and that was the end of it.”
They ordered dinner. They chatted amiably. They talked about the William Kennedy Smith trial in Palm Beach. Bailey had done television commentary on the trial for Court TV, as Gus had for Good Morning America, but they had not met there.
“Moira Lasch was no match for Roy Black,” said Bailey. Lasch had been the prosecutor and Black the defense attorney at the trial.
“The prosecution was pathetic,” agreed Gus. “Do you know yet what kind of defense you’re going to come up with at the Simpson trial?”
“In the first place, O. J. Simpson is innocent,” said Bailey with firmness. “He didn’t do it. The police arrested the wrong guy. Talk about a rush to judgment! It is simply not possible in the time frame that he could have done it.”
Gus remained noncommittal. “Who, then?” he asked.
“Very simple. It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but the truth is that O. J.’s wife was deep into drugs, and she was talking too much about her sources. She was killed by a Colombian drug gang. It was a hit.”
“I feel like you’re talking to me as if I were a juror, and you have a very persuasive manner, but really, you can’t think anybody’s going to fall for that Colombian-drug-gang stuff,” said Gus.
“It’s the truth. It’s the absolute truth,” replied Bailey sharply, his tone indicating a certain dislike that his version of the murders was being doubted. “Her slashed voice box is the clue. When people talk too much in the drug trade, that’s how they end up. Those guys cut her voice box.”
Gus knew when not to persevere, and he went on to other things. “You’ve known Shapiro for some time, haven’t you? I think I read that.”
“Yeah, a long time. I’m godfather to one of his kids.”
“He represented you on a drunk-driving charge in San Francisco, didn’t he?”
“An acquittal.”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be the longest drunk-driving trial in the American court system?” asked Gus.
“Eleven days. Some cop tried to set me up because I’m famous, but he got his. Do you know Shapiro?”
“No. I never met him, but I was in the courtroom during the Cotton Club murder case when he represented Bob Evans, who used to be the head of Paramount, and who produced the movie The Cotton Club,” replied Gus. “When I was still in the picture business, I produced an Elizabeth Taylor film for Evans. It was a flop, my swan song in show business.”
Evans’s onetime partner on The Cotton Club was a controversial fellow named Roy Radin, who had been murdered gangland-style by the two hired guns who were on trial.
“Evans took the Fifth at the trial, with Shapiro standing next to him. That was the first time I ever saw Shapiro. I have a deep prejudice against people who take the Fifth.”
“They’re great friends, Shapiro and Evans,” said F. Lee Bailey. “I just went to a party out there in Beverly Hills that Evans gave in his pool house for Shapiro. Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, you name ’em, they were all there.”
“I know Shapiro did the plea bargain for Christian Brando, Marlon’s son, after he killed his half sister Cheyenne’s boyfriend, and I know also that he was the first lawyer the Menendez brothers had, before Leslie Abramson, but I’ve never met him.”
Bailey smiled and shook his head. “Shapiro asked me to come aboard with him on the Menendez case, but I said no way, I wouldn’t touch that one with a ten-foot pole. I always knew those two little shits were as guilty as hell. So did Bob, that’s why he quit the case.”
“You think the Menendez brothers are guilty, but you don’t think O. J. Simpson’s guilty?” asked Gus.
Bailey shrugged. “I know he’s not.”
“You ought to tell Shapiro, if he’s your friend, that he should stop signing autographs and waving to the crowds, like he’s Brad Pitt going to a premiere. He’s acting as if he had won the case, and the trial hasn’t even started yet.”
Bailey smiled. “Let me tell you about Bob, Gus,” he said. “He’s a crackerjack lawyer, but he’s never really made it into the big time until now. He’s always been near the limelight but never in it, and that’s what he’s always wanted. Now he’s up there. He’s as big as me, Dershowitz, Roy Black, Gerry Spence, Tom Puccio, any of them.”
“I know Roy Black and Tom Puccio,” said Gus, “and neither one of them would wave to the crowds and sign autographs. It’s called class. You’ve either got it or you haven’t got it.”
Bailey smiled. “Bob’ll calm down when he gets used to being in the spotlight. Fame is a heady experience at first.”
When they were parting in the lobby of “21,” Gus said to Bailey, “I’m sure it’s no surprise to you to know that I believe O. J. is guilty of the murders.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured that out myself, Gus,” said Bailey wryly, and they both laughed.
“People can have different opinions and still be friendly to each other,” said Gus.
“Absolutely,” answered Bailey.
“Karen told me you’ll probably be doing the cross-examination of Detective Mark Fuhrman?”
“Oh, I hope so,” replied Bailey in a tone of voice that suggested he was salivating in anticipation. “Any lawyer in his right mind who would not be looking forward to cross-examining Mark Fuhrman is an idiot.”
His eyes looked off for a second, as if visualizing the scene in the courtroom on national television between him and Detective Mark Fuhrman, who had found the famous bloody leather glove on the grounds of Simpson’s estate, which matched the leather glove at the scene of the crime. Since The New Yorker had published an article revealing troubling information about the detective’s past, a word-of-mouth campaign was underway to establish Detective Fuhrman as a racist cop, who had moved the glove from Bundy to Rockingham in order to frame O. J. Simpson.
In his journal the following morning, Gus wrote: “Interesting evening with F. Lee Bailey. He almost had me believing he thought O. J. didn’t do it. Watching him visualize the cross-examination of Mark Fuhrman, I think I saw what ecstasy was for him. Why do I think that by the end of the trial we won’t be speaking?”
4
“You really ought to get to know Gil Garcetti before the Simpson trial starts,” said Suzanne Childs, the Los Angeles district attorney’s media-relations adviser, when she called Gus at his house in Prud’homme, Connecticut, a few weeks before he was to leave for Los Angeles. He was at the time working on his novel about the Menendez brothers, called The Sins of the Sons, in which he had created a main character named Valerie Sabbath, who was based on the defense attorney Leslie Abramson, about whom he had written critically in his magazine pieces during the trial. “Gil’s going to be in New York next week, and I wonder if we could arrange something.”
“I’d like to know Gil,” said Gus. “I wanted to meet him during the Menendez trial, but he only came to court a couple of times and stayed very briefly.”
“It’s time the two of you met,” said Suzanne.
“It just happens that I’m going to be at the apartment in New York all next week. Give me a date.”
“He’s only got breakfast Wednesday or dinner Friday open on the calendar I’m looking at,” said Suzanne.
“Friday’s out,” replied Gus, who never stayed in the city on weekends. “I will have gone back to the country, but Wednesday breakfast is fine.”
“Now, the problem is where. He’ll be staying at a hotel called the Wales,
way up on Madison Avenue somewhere, in the nineties, I think—I never heard of it before—and right after breakfast he has to be at the New York Times on West Forty-third Street for an interview with the staff before the trial starts. Can you think of anywhere between those two places? Preferably, he doesn’t want to be anywhere where he’s going to be recognized. He’s been on TV so much since the freeway chase and the arrest and everything. Wherever he goes, people are always yelling questions at him about the case.”
“It’s called the problem of instant fame,” said Gus.
“I never saw anything like it,” said Suzanne. “You’re the New Yorker. Think of something.”
“I have the perfect solution. I belong to this stuffy men’s club at Sixty-ninth Street and Park Avenue,” said Gus. “We could meet there. I can assure you, just as I can assure you that today is Monday, that not one member who happens to be having breakfast there next Wednesday is going to know who the hell Gil Garcetti is, much less yell any questions at him or ask for his autograph.”
“Can’t wait, Gus. See you Wednesday.”
The three of them met on the Wednesday morning at Gus’s club in New York. “This is sort of embarrassing, Gil, but you can’t bring your briefcase into the dining room. You’ll have to leave it here in the cloakroom. Club rules. No business is ever done in a gentlemen’s club, that kind of stuff,” said Gus in an apologetic tone. He led them up the marble stairway to the elevator on the main floor, which they entered and ascended to the third. He walked on ahead of Gil and Suzanne.
“Beautiful library,” said Suzanne, stopping to look in at the huge paneled room with its thousands of books in shelves up to the double-height ceiling and its well-worn green leather chairs, on which several members were reading the New York Times.
“They have all of my brother Malachy’s books, but only one of mine,” said Gus as they entered the dining room. “That’s always sort of pissed me off. Good morning, Ramon. Do you think we could have that table way over in the corner, away from everybody?”
Another City Not My Own Page 3