Another City Not My Own

by Dominick Dunne

  Later, in the cafeteria, he told the writer Joe Bosco, “She was terrifying, but she was also ridiculous. Her reaction would have been appropriate if she had discovered me molesting a couple of children, not handing my pad to Kardashian for his phone number.”

  Gus was an expert mimic. By late afternoon, he had Shoreen Maghame of City News and Michelle Caruso of the New York Daily News roaring with laughter at his imitation of Deputy Browning.

  That night, as he was dressing to go to his friend Tita Cahn’s house for dinner, the telephone rang in his room at the Chateau Marmont. It was Jerrianne Hayslett, the director of media relations for Judge Ito.

  “What happened today, Gus?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” asked Gus.

  “With you and Deputy Browning.”

  “Oh, her. She got quite annoyed with me when I handed Kardashian my notebook to write down his telephone number.”

  “That’s against the rules. Members of the media can’t speak to lawyers in the courtroom,” said Jerrianne, who was a stickler for rules.

  “Oh, okay, I didn’t know that. Rules like that should be posted. She was ridiculous, she was so mad, but I think everything’s all solved,” said Gus.

  “No, it’s not. She went to see Judge Ito and wants you to be permanently barred from the courtroom,” said Jerrianne.

  “You must be kidding,” said Gus.

  “I’m not. She was very serious.”

  “This is absurd, Jerrianne. She pounced on me, with her face contorted with anger that looked almost out of control. She was over the top. It didn’t make any sense to be that angry about asking for a phone number. She could have had a heart attack, she was so mad.”

  “I can only tell you, Gus, that your seat in the courtroom is in jeopardy. I’ve just left Judge Ito.”

  “Something stinks here, Jerrianne. I don’t want to sound paranoid or anything, but something’s going on, I wonder if somebody put her up to that to keep me out of the courtroom.”

  “Save that for your novel, Gus,” said Jerrianne, who was in a no-nonsense mood. “How are you going to handle this?”

  “I’m going to fax a letter to Judge Ito. I’m going to tell him I am so law-abiding in a courtroom that the deputies at the Menendez trial gave me a gift of a lucite clock with the emblem of the sheriff’s department on it at the end of the trial. I can’t believe that Judge Ito would throw me out of the courtroom permanently without hearing my side of the story.”

  * * *

  Tita Cahn’s dinner that night was for Sean Connery and his wife, Micheline, who had just arrived in town from Spain to begin shooting Connery’s new film. Tita was the widow of Sammy Cahn, the famed lyricist for whom Gus had been the stage manager years earlier on the television musical version of Our Town, which had starred Frank Sinatra.

  Arriving late as usual, Gus cased the room from the marble hallway three steps up. There were orchid plants on every flat surface, in full lavender bloom, and sixteen or so famous faces were chatting on sofas, or leaning on the bar, or standing in small groups. As always at her parties, the guests were the high-powered of the film world. In a glance, he saw Sherry Lansing, the head of Paramount Pictures, and her film director husband, Billy Friedkin, who had directed the film The Boys in the Band, which Gus had produced when he was still in the movie business. Sidney and Joanna Poitier. Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. Angie Dickinson.

  Tita, his hostess, came to the steps to greet him. They were old friends.

  “Have I got a surprise for you,” she said.

  “You’re lookin’ gorgeous,” said Gus, kissing Tita on each cheek. “Not a bad group for a Tuesday night in Beverly Hills. Sorry to be late.”

  “I never care if you’re late, Gus, as long as you’ve got all the latest O. J. news,” said Tita. “Did you see Faye Resnick on Larry King tonight? She’s very gutsy, that one, the things she has to say about O. J. and Johnnie Cochran. Of course, I agree with every word. You know me and Johnnie Cochran. Just starting with the spelling of his name, for God sake.”

  “Johnnie has a very nice wife named Dale,” said Gus. “I have to say that for him. A classy lady. I think he must wear those lavender suits and terrible ties for the benefit of the jury. Dale wouldn’t ever buy clothes like that for him. I saw her shopping at Sulka in Beverly Hills last Saturday, buying him undershorts.”

  “Now, listen, Gus, you can’t leave right after dinner tonight, like you always do, even if you have to be on Good Morning America tomorrow,” said Tita. “I’ve got Michael Feinstein coming in to play after dinner, and Tony Danza’s going to sing.”

  Tita’s surprise for Gus was his seat at the table, next to Margaret Weitzman, the outspoken wife of the defense attorney Howard Weitzman, neither of whom he had met before. Howard Weitzman, who achieved a national reputation when he won an acquittal for John DeLorean in a drug case, had been O. J. Simpson’s first lawyer after the murders. Three days later, he left the case and turned the reins over to Robert Shapiro. There had been much speculation in legal circles and a great deal of gossip in social circles that Simpson had confessed to Weitzman. Gus was thrilled with his seat at the table.

  “I used to go out with Robert Kardashian before I met Howard,” said Margaret.

  “Everywhere I turn, I run into people who are connected to Robert Kardashian,” said Gus.

  “I’m not connected to him anymore, believe thou me,” said Margaret.

  “I hadn’t realized Kardashian moved in such exalted circles as this,” said Gus, perusing the table.

  “No, not quite like this, but this is the kind of group he’d like to be in,” said Margaret with a laugh. “We’re both from Armenian families out here, and his family knows my family, and that whole number, and we went out for a while, but it was nothing serious. He was a nice-enough guy then, but I’d never speak to him again now. I mean, this man knows the truth about what happened, and he’s sticking with O. J.”

  “Oh, good, I like vehemence,” said Gus, knowing they were about to become friends.

  “And I’m vehement all right, at least on this subject,” said Margaret. “How Robert Kardashian could line himself up with O. J. Simpson is something I will never understand. He called me once after it happened, and I said to him, ‘Don’t you ever call this number again,’ and I hung up on him. None of his old friends will see him now, did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “I’m so glad Howard got out of that case. You know, Gus, I don’t know you very well, but I’m going to tell you something, even though Howard hates it when I say it. If my husband hadn’t quit that case, I would have divorced him, I kid you not.”

  She paused for a moment, as if thinking how much to say. Gus knew never to interrupt when a storyteller was on a roll.

  “You see, Howard and I knew O. J. and Nicole. I mean, we’d have dinner together, the four of us. Howard represented O. J. before, from back when he was arrested after Nicole’s 911 call in ’89. I always knew he beat her, so I hated him even before he killed her. Howard and I were home that Monday morning, and the telephone rang. It was O. J. calling from Chicago, where he’d gone to play at a golf tournament, and he said to Howard, ‘Nicole’s been murdered in L.A.’ The news wasn’t out yet. No one knew. It was the first time we’d heard it. Howard said all the appropriate things. I mean, the news was shocking. Then O. J. asked Howard to be at his house when he got back from Chicago. He said, ‘There’s going to be a lot of media. I’m going to need some help dealing with the media. I’m flying home on the first plane.’ Since he was calling from Chicago, it didn’t occur to us then that he had anything to do with it. This was before we knew that he’d just left for Chicago the night before. I went with Howard over to O. J.’s house. I didn’t like him, and he knew I didn’t like him, but I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, because Nicole was my friend. We drove over to the house on Rockingham—it’s not far from our house—and he was right, the media was already lined up outside the gates, CNN, NBC,
CBS, ABC, the whole nine yards. By that time, of course, the news was out, everybody knew, and we drove in through the gates. When I opened the door of the car, I looked down at the driveway before getting out and, I swear to God, Gus, I saw blood on the driveway. I knew right then, before I walked into that house, what had happened. I knew he did it. I went in, spoke to O. J., told him I was sorry, and then I left before Howard and he went off into another room to talk.”

  “You have me transfixed,” said Gus. “What happened with Howard and O. J. behind closed doors? Did he confess to Howard?”

  “I can’t discuss my husband’s business—you know that, Gus,” said Margaret.

  “It was worth a try. You’d be surprised at how often that trick works,” replied Gus, and they both laughed. “Everyone I know thinks that Howard knows he did it and that’s why he quit the case.”

  “My lips are sealed,” said Margaret.

  “I have a theory on why Howard allowed O. J. to be interviewed by Lange and Vannatter without being present himself,” said Gus.

  “Howard took a lot of flak for that from every quack lawyer pundit on television,” said Margaret.

  “I know. My theory is that O. J. didn’t want him to be there. My feeling is that the decision was O. J.’s and not Howard’s. O. J. was used to bullshitting cops. He’d been bullshitting cops all his life and getting away with it. Witness all Nicole’s 911 calls that he bulled his way out of. But it’s hard to bullshit two seasoned detectives who know their job if your lawyer’s sitting there listening to your bullshit,” said Gus. “Bullshitting’s a private kind of thing.”

  “O. J.’s one of the great con men of all time,” said Margaret

  “And his con job worked on Lange and Vannatter,” Gus continued. “They only interviewed him for thirty-two minutes, and they kept their kid gloves on. Nobody got rough. Any other suspect in a double murder, they’d keep grilling for hours, until the killer got confused with his lies. But not O. J. They never even gave him a urine test, which would have determined what drugs were in his system, because no one had the nerve to ask the great football star to piss in a bottle, as if it was beneath his dignity.”

  “I think we’re going to be good friends, Gus,” said Margaret.

  “I get that feeling, too,” replied Gus.

  “Don’t tie up Gus for the whole evening, Margaret,” called Tita, playing hostess from her end of the table. “We all want to hear what happened in court today. Come on, Gus. Only Gus could tell you that Johnnie Cochran’s wife, Gail—”

  “Dale,” called out Gus, correcting her.

  “Yes, Dale—she gets Johnnie’s undershorts at Sulka in Beverly Hills,” said Tita. “Stand up. Say a few words.”

  “What did you say to Judge Ito?” asked Jerrianne.

  “I sent him a fax last night,” replied Gus.

  “I know. What did you say?”

  “I told him I was law-abiding. I told him I respected the court system. I said I would never violate the rules of the court. I said I had never been reprimanded in any courtroom before. I told him the deputies at the Menendez trial gave me a gift at the end of the trial, I’d been so good, a lucite clock with the insignia of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department on it that I keep on an antique table in the media room of my house in Prud’homme, Connecticut, next to the Bronze Star I won for saving a man’s life in the Battle of the Bulge. I rather laid it on a bit, Jerrianne, as you can probably tell.”

  “He loved it. Everything’s okay. Your seat is safe.”

  12

  In his “Letter from Los Angeles,” Gus wrote:

  Ron Shipp provided one of the defining moments of the trial. He made all of us in the media realize that we could look at and listen to the same witness on the stand and interpret him differently; black journalists saw Shipp one way and white journalists another, and all felt confident of their take on him. Shipp, an African-American former L.A.P.D. officer, had been one of Simpson’s best friends, as well as a friend of Nicole. I was so impressed by Shipp’s testimony and sense of honor that he became for me a figure of nearly heroic proportions, a deeply conflicted man caught between duty and friendship, racked by guilt for not doing anything to halt the domestic violence he knew was going on in the lives of his friends Nicole and O. J., a violence that he came to believe resulted in murder. On the stand, he was treated with sneering contempt by defense attorney Carl Douglas, who managed to introduce a drinking problem and suggested an adulterous Jacuzzi dip at Simpson’s house on Rockingham with a blonde not his wife. The word blonde, which he used several times for maximum effect, was spewed out of his mouth like a dirty thing. Shipp, maintaining calm, twice spoke directly to Simpson from the witness stand. The first time he said, “This is sad, O. J.” The second time he said, “Tell the truth, O. J.” When I told an African-American reporter my impressions of Shipp, she looked at me as if I were mad. The person she had seen on the stand was “a sneak, a snake, a most disloyal figure.”

  “Sorry to be late. Katie. There was another bomb scare at the courthouse, and I couldn’t get to my car because the police had the parking lot behind the courthouse sealed off,” said Gus, out of breath, rushing into the CNN studios on Sunset Boulevard.

  “Go right into makeup, Gus,” said Katie Spikes, the producer of Larry King Live. “Sophie’s waiting for you. We’re on the air in about eight or nine minutes.”

  “Is Larry hosting the show from Washington?”

  “No, Larry’s here. He got in last night. We’re doing the show from Los Angeles all this week.”

  As Gus walked into the greenroom after makeup, he looked in and saw Faye Resnick, who was already in makeup.

  “Hi, Faye,” said Gus, who was delighted to see her. “I didn’t know you were on the show, too. God, we’ve got a lot to talk about tonight. Did you watch the trial today?”

  “Watching the trial has become my lifework,” said Faye. “Chris Darden was great today. I was cheering for him.”

  Gus turned and saw Judge Burton Katz, who was also seated in the greenroom and was also in makeup for the show. The two men stared at each other for an instant. Gus turned away from Faye and walked out into the hall again. Looking down the hall, he saw Katie about to go into the control room. He called after her.

  “Katie, I’m not going to go on tonight,” he said when he got to where she was.

  “What do you mean, Gus? We’re on the air in four minutes. I was on my way to get Larry,” said Katie.

  “I’m not going on the air with that guy in there,” said Gus, pointing with his thumb to the greenroom.

  “That’s Judge Burton Katz. He’s a retired judge who’s covering the trial for the Malibu Times?” said Katie.

  “You don’t have to tell me who he is, Katie,” said Gus. “He was the judge in the trial of the man who killed my daughter, where the killer served only two and a half years in prison. We are not fond of him in my family.”

  “We didn’t know that when we booked him, Gus,” said Katie.

  “I know that, Katie. I’m not blaming anyone. I’m just saying that I will not go on the air with him. Tell Larry hello, and I’m sorry. I’ll come back any other night he wants me.”

  “Sit in here, Gus, in this dressing room, just for a minute. Please don’t leave. Let me tell Larry,” said Katie.

  In a minute or so, the door to the dressing room opened and Larry King came in. “I guess you’ve just lost me a friend, Gus,” said Larry.

  “What do you mean?” asked Gus.

  “I sent Katz home.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, Larry,” said Gus. “I told Katie I’d come back any other night.”

  “You’re a better guest,” said Larry. “You have a seat in the courtroom. We better get into the studio. We’re on in about a minute.”

  “Hi, Gus, it’s Gillian Washburn. Listen, I read in the papers and heard on TV about Marcia Clark’s child-custody problems. I can’t believe that husband of hers is doing this to her during the most impor
tant case of her life. What a shit he must be. If you ask me, I bet the defense put him up to this. You ought to check that one out, Gus. George agrees with me on that. But this is what I was calling about: My kids are about the same age as Marcia Clark’s two boys. I could have our nanny pick up Marcia’s kids after school and bring them here to play. We have a pool and a court—they’re probably too young for that—and a jungle gym, so Marcia wouldn’t have to worry about them, and they’d be in good hands. We’d feed them and then have our nanny take them back to Marcia’s home. Would you ask her?”

  “Gus, would you like me to arrange for you to meet with Wolfgang and Marta Salinger?” asked Ernest Lehman, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter, whom Gus had known years before, when they were under contract to Fox. They were at an Academy screening at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater on Wilshire Boulevard.

  “I’m pulling a blank, Ernie,” said Gus. “Who are the Salingers?”

  “They’re old friends of mine, lovely people, very quiet, very distinguished,” said Lehman, “but they’ve been in the news recently as the employers of Rosa Lopez.”

  “Oh, of course, the Salingers,” said Gus.

  “They’ve been next-door neighbors to O. J. for seventeen years. They’ve got some great Rosa stories to tell you. Rosa was a friend of O. J.’s maid, the one Nicole supposedly slapped. Wolfgang says Rosa never took the dog out for a walk that night, when she claims she saw the white Bronco on the street. No way. Wolfgang says the dog is old and blind, and he doesn’t ever let it go off the grounds.”

  “Oh, yes, Ernie, I’d really like to meet the Salingers,” said Gus. “Rosa’s one of my favorite characters in this saga. She’s going to play a big part in my novel.”

  “They liked it when you wrote in Vanity Fair, ‘If Rosa Lopez is as lousy a housekeeper as she is a liar, I’d hate to see the inside of the Salingers’ house.’ ”

  For Gus, Rosa Lopez, the former maid for the Wolfgang Salingers, provided an epic memory of the trial. She was O. J. Simpson’s alibi, promised to the jury by Johnnie Cochran in his opening statement. She said that she saw Simpson’s white Bronco parked outside the mansion on Rockingham when she took the Salingers’ dog for a walk at the same time the murders were taking place at Nicole’s condo on Bundy. Therefore, Simpson could not have committed the murders. But it hadn’t worked out. She had blundered badly on the stand.