Another City Not My Own

by Dominick Dunne

  “What’s this like for you to be going through?” he asked Carmelita one day during a bomb scare, when the courthouse was evacuated. They had taken refuge from the blazing sun in the television trailer of Channel 9, after the ninth floor of the courthouse, where the trial was being held, had been cleared. There were twenty television monitors in the trailer, and O. J. Simpson’s face was on every one. He was the biggest story in the country.

  Carmelita stared up at her brother on the monitors and for more than a minute didn’t reply to Gus’s question. Gus wondered if he had been pushy and had offended her, but then she started to talk, very quietly, without turning to look at him. “It’s like living in someone else’s nightmare, Gus, a nightmare that’s never going to end. There’s no way anyone can know what it’s like.”

  “I know,” said Gus.

  “Not from our side you don’t,” said Carmelita, still staring at the monitors.

  “I used to watch the mother of the man who killed my daughter in the courtroom during that trial. My feeling was that she was a good woman, who’d worked hard all her life, and she was sitting in a courtroom, being loyal to her son, who had strangled a girl. No one ever spoke to her. Her son never even waved at her. I hated her son. They’d dressed him up like a sacristan in a Catholic seminary, and he always read the Bible with a beatific expression on his face. That was his act to fool the jury, and the assholes fell for it. But I felt sorry for his mother. Siobhan, her name was. She had red hands and carried a cheap suitcase, but there was a quiet dignity about her. She didn’t do anything wrong. That’s how I know what it’s like from your side.”

  Carmelita turned around to face Gus. Before she could speak, David Goldstein, the commentator for Channel 9 on the Simpson case, came on the monitor to say that the pipe bomb had been detonated by the bomb squad and that it was safe to return to the courtroom.

  Not long after that, Carmelita said to Gus one day, “Truman’s coming to court tomorrow.”

  “Who’s Truman?” asked Gus.

  “Our brother,” she replied.

  “O. J. has a brother? I didn’t know that,” said Gus in a tone of voice that registered surprise.

  “We all have a brother, Gus,” replied Shirley.

  “Of course. I’m sorry, Shirley. He is brother to all of you.”

  Until then, almost no one seemed to know that Truman even existed. He came to court the next day in the company of two friends, and Shirley Baker introduced him to Gus in the corridor outside the courtroom. “This is our brother Truman,” she said quietly.

  “Hello,” said Gus, turning to Truman and putting out his hand.

  “Gus Bailey is the one who wrote those books that Benny is reading back at the house,” said Shirley.

  Truman smiled and shook hands with Gus, nodding his head to acknowledge that he knew who Gus was from family conversations. There was indeed a strong family resemblance, Gus noticed, but the looks that worked so perfectly on the face of O. J. Simpson did not work as well on the face of his brother. Gus noted also that there was a vacant look in his eyes.

  “And these are Truman’s friends, Billy Maple and Conrad, uh, forgive me, I forgot your last name, Conrad,” said Shirley.

  “Oxnard.”

  “Oh, right, Conrad Oxnard, Gus Bailey,” said Shirley.

  Gus shook hands again. “All of you down from San Francisco?” he asked, making small talk. Gus was good at small talk when the situation warranted, and he kept up a running commentary for the trio on the personalities of the trial, as they arrived for the morning session, at the same time that he was observing Truman Simpson.

  “Too bad you guys weren’t here yesterday,” he said. “A man wearing a dress, earrings, and pearls caused a disruption in the courtroom and was dragged out by a couple of deputies, and then Barbara Walters came to court and, naturally, Judge Ito took her back into chambers for a chat while we cooled our heels out here. Every time a celebrity comes to court, which is practically every day these days, the trial stops while the judge has a backstage chat. Let me see now. There was James Woods, the movie star, who’s an O. J. addict, as is Mark Hamill of Star Wars, and Larry King, Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer—on and on. It’s the new status symbol in L.A., getting a seat at the Simpson trial. Oh, look, guys, there’s Marcia Clark coming in, in the beige suit with the very short skirt.” They chatted until Deputy Jex opened the door and allowed the Simpson family members and guests to go into the courtroom and take their seats for the morning session.

  Gus had noticed that no one else was introduced to Truman. Having had a personal drug involvement in his long-ago past, it occurred to him that the mystery brother in the Simpson family might be similarly inclined. “It’s a look in the eyes,” Gus said later. It had also occurred to him that the two friends of Truman were probably keepers hired by the family to hold him in check in the event of untoward behavior. After the lunch break, Truman and his friends did not return to court for the afternoon session.

  That evening, after taping a segment for Rivera Live, Gus was in his suite at the Chateau Marmont dressing to go out to a dinner party at Betsy Bloomingdale’s. “Gus, can I get you for dinner on Tuesday, dressy, not black tie? The Annenbergs will be here, and they’re dying to hear about the trial, and you’ll know everyone,” Betsy had said when she invited him. “Can you come?” asked Betsy. “Hell yes,” replied Gus. It was to be his first visit back to that house. He called down to the garage for his car to be ready. As he was leaving the room, the telephone rang.

  “Hello?” He answered in a tone of voice that suggested he was rushed and late for where he was supposed to be at that time.

  “Mr. Bailey?”

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Conrad.”

  “Who?”

  “Conrad Oxnard. I met you in court today. I was there with Truman Simpson.”

  “Oh, of course, Conrad, forgive me. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got quite a story to tell, Mr. Bailey—you know, for the right price, I mean. I could tell by the look on your face today that you got the picture.”

  “The picture?”

  “The family secret. You knew the minute you looked at Truman what the story was,” said Conrad.

  “Put it this way, Conrad, it takes one to know one. I had my own troubles in that department years ago,” said Gus.

  “That’s why we didn’t come back after lunch,” said Conrad. “Did you notice the family didn’t introduce him to anyone? Did you notice none of O. J.’s lawyers even looked in his direction? Did you notice O. J. didn’t even nod to his own brother? They want anything about drugs to stay as far away as possible from this trial, especially drugs in the Simpson family.”

  “Why did they let him come to court, then?”

  “He insisted, and they couldn’t stop him. He said everyone in the country’s talking about this trial, and he wanted to see it, because it’s his own brother. Are you interested in getting together? I could tell you some stuff Truman told me about the family that would knock you on your ass.”

  Gus was not alone in believing that O. J. Simpson had been high on drugs when he killed Nicole and Ron. A drug dealer named Ron X, who had come to see Gus at his hotel, had taken and passed a lie-detector test after claiming that he had sold crystal meth, the highest form of speed, to O. J. and Kato Kaelin in the parking lot of a Burger King franchise in the Brentwood area on the night of the murders. But there was no proof, and both the defense and the prosecution seemed to want to avoid the topic of drugs in the murder trial.

  “Listen, Conrad, I don’t pay for news, and my magazine doesn’t pay for news, either. What you’re selling about O. J.’s brother has nothing to do with the trial or the murders. I’m sorry. I’m not interested. Listen, I have to go. I was due somewhere for dinner half an hour ago.”

  On the Sunday and Monday evenings before the Tuesday that Gus was due for dinner at Betsy Bloomingdale’s, the ABC network had substituted its regular program at the last minute
with a rerun of the four-year-old miniseries of An Inconvenient Woman. Gus had no inkling of the change in programming until O. J. Simpson’s niece, Terri Baker, the daughter of Shirley and Benny Baker, told him she couldn’t wait to see it on Sunday and Monday nights, as she had just finished reading the novel. “Dear God,” said Gus, joyless at the news of his good fortune. He considered calling Betsy and backing out of her dinner, so as not to cause her any further embarrassment, but he kept postponing making the call, and didn’t. All day at the trial, people had told him they had seen it.

  Always late for parties, he was the last to arrive at Betsy’s house. As the butler handed him the small white envelope with the number of the table at which he was to sit at dinner, Gus was reminded of the similarity to the scene in his book when the character of Philip Quennell, which was based on himself, had arrived late on his first visit to the magnificent art-filled house, where the Mendelsons’ party was already under way.

  The butler, whose name was Dudley, had also been a character in Gus’s book, and Gus could tell from his greeting that he had seen the miniseries the night before in which he had been portrayed.

  “Hello, Dudley,” said Gus.

  “Mr. Bailey,” replied Dudley. “The guests are having cocktails in the pool house.”

  “Do you think I should have canceled, Dudley?” asked Gus.

  The butler smiled. “From what I gather, more people saw the rerun the last two nights than they did when your miniseries first came out.”

  “The entire city seems to have seen it,” said Gus. “Why am I not exulting at the ratings?”

  “At least it took their minds off O. J. Simpson,” said Dudley.

  “There’s that to be said.”

  “We watch you on Larry King and Dan Rather. Just one thing?”

  “What?”

  “Do you think O. J. will walk?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think he’ll walk, but they won’t be able to convict him, either. Not with that jury. One of them was carrying a black-power paperback book in court today. Hung jury is what I think it’s going to be,” said Gus. “Well, here I go into the fray.”

  He walked out through the atrium, where the tables were set for dinner, and across the lawn, past the pool, to where the guests were gathered in the pool pavilion. Everyone was in the appropriate attire of summer, the ladies in chiffon dresses, wearing pearl necklaces and diamond pins, and the men in blue blazers and white linen trousers. Gus was aware as he walked toward the pavilion that he was being looked at and talked about. There was a time when he had been persona non grata with this very group, after the publication of the book that had been on television the night before. Then he saw Betsy detach herself from her guests and walk out onto the lawn to greet him with a kiss on each cheek, in full view of all as he came down the lawn.

  “I’m sorry to be so late, Betsy,” said Gus, reciprocating the society kiss.

  “I was sure you had to be on Larry King, or Geraldo, or that other one—whatshisname?” replied Betsy. “Dudley tells me. He watches you religiously.”

  “None of the above, actually. I had the most extraordinary telephone call from a keeper of O. J.’s mystery brother, wanting to sell me a story about him. Everyone’s trying to make a buck off poor Nicole and Ron.”

  “Denise Hale called earlier tonight from San Francisco,” said Betsy. “I told her you were coming to dinner. She said, ‘Gus Bailey leads the most interesting life of any of us.’ ”

  “I just hang out with more killers than you guys do,” said Gus.

  “Everyone wants to sit next to you.”

  “O. J. Simpson has improved my social position,” said Gus. “The other night, I had a better seat at the Marvin Davis dinner than Kevin Costner did.”

  “Wouldn’t O. J. love to hear that?” replied Betsy.

  “Listen, Betsy, thanks for coming out here and greeting me like this in front of everybody. Now all your guests know it’s okay to speak to me. Believe me, I didn’t know they were going to run the miniseries again.”

  They turned to walk toward the guests in the pavilion. “Did you get paid again for the rerun?” asked Betsy.

  “Ouch,” replied Gus.

  When Charles Wick, who had been part of the kitchen cabinet during a previous presidential administration, rose from his seat and tapped his dessert fork against his champagne glass for silence, Gus knew that he was going to be asked to speak. It was the sort of thing that had started to happen to him almost nightly, at whatever house he was dining. To his amazement, he had grown to enjoy giving his capsule version of the events of the day in the courtroom. Charlie, who understood protocol, gave thanks first to Betsy for the beautiful party they were attending; then he said, “Gus Bailey here has been entertaining us at our table with some stories from the courtroom, and I was wondering, Gus, if you’d care to stand up and share some of them with Betsy’s guests, or answer some of their questions?”

  “Oh, of course, Charlie, sure, just for a minute or so,” said Gus, rising. “One of the things that is so surprising about being in the courtroom every day is to watch the relationship and interplay between Nicole’s family and O. J.’s family. They have, of course, been interrelated for seventeen years, but when you consider that the son of one family is on trial for murdering the daughter of the other, it seems quite unusual that they should greet one another each day as warmly as they do. Just today, Nicole’s mother, Juditha, was showing pictures of little Justin’s seventh-birthday party to Eunice Simpson, O. J.’s mother. At one point, Juditha said about Justin, ‘He has the most beautiful eyes.’ The friendliness won’t last, of course. By the end of the trial, they won’t be speaking.”

  “This was a wonderful evening, Betsy,” said Gus when he was making an early exit. “I’m going to be on Good Morning America, and we go on the air at four A.M., so I have to get back to the hotel and get some sleep. It was a terrific party.”

  “Oh, thank you, Gus,” replied Betsy. “You bring out the Emerald Cunard in me.” They both laughed. “I hear you go out to dinner every night.”

  “I’m finding all this dining out very Proustian,” said Gus. “Swann, who was socially controversial, went out to dinner every night. Whether he was at the Guermantes or the Verdurins or wherever, everyone talked about the Dreyfus case. Out here, I go out to dinner every night, and everyone talks about the O. J. Simpson case. Only here, at least in the houses where I have dinner, nobody is divided in their opinion about the guilt of Mr. O. J. Simpson, the way they were about Dreyfus at those Parisian dinners Swann went to.”

  “I hope you didn’t mind when Charlie asked you to speak.”

  “Oh, no. It’s become a nightly occurrence on the social circuit. I call myself ‘the floor show,’ ” said Gus.

  “That was a nice story you told about the two grandmothers, looking at their little grandson’s pictures. It’s heart-wrenching, really.”

  “By the end of the trial, they’ll never speak to each other again. Whether the jury finds Simpson guilty or innocent, either way, one side’s going to win and the other is going to lose, and the damage between the families will be irreparable. Listen, Betsy, before I go, there’s something I want to say to you. I know I hurt your feelings when I wrote that and I know I hurt your kids’ feelings, and it’s always bothered me. That was never my intent.”

  “Oh, Gus, let’s not talk about it,” said Betsy, looking away.

  “It was the same thing with what was left of the Woodward family, when I wrote The Two Mrs. Grenvilles. If I hadn’t written it, someone else would have, and that someone else would have put in a lot of things that I chose to leave out. In both cases. Anyway, I think you’re a terrific lady, Betsy, and I thank you for inviting me.”

  The next day, Gus said to Benny in the cafeteria of the courthouse, while they were waiting in line with their trays for the steam table, “There’s something I think you ought to know, Benny. I had a call from one of those guys who was in court with Truman yesterday.”
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br />   Benny, surprised, looked at Gus. “Yes?”

  “He wanted to sell me some information about your brother-in-law,” said Gus.

  “What kind of information?” asked Benny, his voice tense.

  “Of the druggy variety, I gathered.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He was looking for money. I said that we don’t pay at my magazine. He seemed surprised at that. I thought you ought to know, because there’re people covering this trial who do pay.”

  Later in the day, Shirley Baker said to Gus, “That was nice of you to tell us that, Gus.”

  “What he had to tell me, I didn’t need to know. It had nothing to do with the case,” replied Gus.

  “My poor brain-dead brother,” said Carmelita about Truman.

  “What do you guys do nights?” asked Gus. “Do you sit home every night?”

  “Sometimes we go to Denice Halicki’s Bible class. Several nights a week, we go down to jail to visit O. J. He takes a big interest in family matters, like our brother Truman,” said Carmelita.

  “I mean, do you ever have any fun, or are you trapped in O. J.’s house all the time?”

  “We go out to dinner at Jason’s restaurant some nights. It’s not actually Jason’s restaurant, but it’s where he cooks,” said Carmelita.

  “Jason’s a chef?” asked Gus. Lefty Flynn, the man who killed Becky, had been a chef at Ma Maison on Melrose, a popular restaurant of the time with the film crowd, which went defunct in the wake of the murder and the trial. “I didn’t know that.”

  “He’s the sous-chef at a restaurant called Jackson’s on Beverly Boulevard,” said Carmelita.

  “Is that the restaurant owned by Michael Jackson’s son? I don’t mean Elizabeth Taylor’s friend Michael Jackson that Johnnie Cochran represented in the child molestation case,” said Gus.

  “We know. We know,” said Carmelita. “The talk-show host Michael Jackson.”

  “Is that a known fact, that O. J. Simpson’s son is the sous-chef at Jackson’s?” asked Gus.

  “Don’t write about it, Gus. He doesn’t want to be a tourist attraction,” said Carmelita. “He’d lose the job if people started going there to look at him or ask him about his father.”