Another City Not My Own

by Dominick Dunne

  The prosecution made a serious miscalculation during jury selection in thinking that black women would be sympathetic to the prosecution because of the issue of domestic violence. Nicole Simpson’s cries on the 911 tapes were not as shocking to black people as they were to whites. Jury consultant Donald Vinson had warned that this would be so and was dismissed. An African-American woman married to a Caucasian wrote me: “I believe O. J. Simpson is not guilty; my husband believes he is. In our eight years of marriage, this is the only disagreement we’ve had on the issue of race. I feel that you, like my husband, are unable to understand a black man’s rage the way that blacks understand it. In us, a black man’s shouts do not produce the same shock that they do in the white community. Sometimes those shouts accompany physical abuse, but very often they do not. Rarely do they accompany murder. So to black people, evidence of O. J.’s rage doesn’t translate to a belief in his guilt.”

  Gus and the great film star Elizabeth Taylor were not new in each other’s lives when they began meeting on Sunday afternoons at Elizabeth’s house in Bel Air to discuss the Simpson trial, with which she was consumed, in minute detail. Twenty years before, he had produced one of her films, and they had remained friends, although the film, which was ill-fated from the first day of shooting in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, brought about the end of Gus’s career in films. In his journal, Gus had written extensively on the making of that film, when nearly everyone of consequence concerned with the project was drunk, drugged, or disorderly, except for Henry Fonda, who was the single model of good behavior. It was there in Cortina that Elizabeth told Gus one night, when they were driving in the Dolomites during a blizzard, that she couldn’t remember when she wasn’t famous. It was there that her celebrated marriage to the great Welsh star Richard Burton began to unravel and came to an end in a very public manner. It was there that Elizabeth said to Gus, in the bar of the Hotel Miramonti at two o’clock in the morning, when they were both drunk, “You know, Gus, this is going to be the last picture you’re ever going to produce.” Gus knew when she said it that she was being prescient, not mean. He understood that she could see that his life was unraveling, as well as her marriage. He knew that what she said was going to come true.

  “Come at three,” her secretary, Randy, would say when he called to confirm the date with Gus. She was never ready when he got there, but he was not put out by that. Invariably, Jose Eber was still upstairs with her doing her hair. “Elizabeth is chronically late,” Richard Burton had once said to Gus about her, when they were making the film in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Gus enjoyed looking at her superb picture collection and her exotic fish. He had portrayed her with great affection as the film star Faye Converse in two of his novels and had written a profile of her for his magazine when she came out of the Betty Ford Center, having dealt with the same problem that Gus had dealt with.

  Elizabeth had an instinct for entrances, even when she was on a walker, which she now was. He jumped to his feet each time, complimented her on her beauty, and kissed her on each cheek. She made her way slowly to the center of a large white sofa and sat beneath the van Gogh painting that her art-dealer father, who had had a gallery in the Beverly Hills Hotel when she was a child star, had left her in his will years before. Behind a needlepoint pillow, there were always a lipstick and a mirror, which she occasionally put to use during conversation. Her health at the time of the trial was precarious, her most recent marriage had ended badly in an ugly blaze of tabloid publicity, and she rarely ventured forth beyond the gates of her estate. The trial occupied her days. She could remember every legal detail.

  “Barry Scheck is brilliant,” she said, “but I felt so sorry for poor Dennis Fung, the way Scheck went after him day after day. I mean. Dennis Fung didn’t kill anybody.”

  “I couldn’t understand how Judge Ito could have allowed Scheck’s cross-examination to go on that long,” replied Gus. “It was cruel. It wasn’t necessary to humiliate Fung like that. It’s one thing to knock a witness down, but it’s another thing entirely to kick him when he is down, especially when every lawyer on the defense team knows O. J. did it.”

  “I almost couldn’t look at him,” said Elizabeth.

  “This part you didn’t see on TV: During the break, Johnnie Cochran was jubilant over what Scheck had done to Fung, and he went skipping down the hall to the men’s room, singing, ‘We’re having Fung, we’re having Fung.’ It was disgusting, but then, even worse, back in the courtroom, Robert Shapiro handed out fortune cookies to some of the reporters, myself included, saying, in a Charlie Chan accent, ‘These from Hang Fung Restaurant.’ These are the same two guys who are screaming racist every five minutes.”

  “I’ll tell you who I can’t staaaand is Mr. F. Lee Bailey. Do you like him?”

  Gus smiled. “I had lunch with Nancy Reagan yesterday at Marje Everett’s house, and she can’t stand him, either.”

  “Nancy and I were at MGM together in the old days,” said Elizabeth. “She came to my wedding when I married Larry Fortensky at Michael Jackson’s ranch. I never see her now that the President’s so sick.”

  “She stays pretty much at home,” said Gus.

  “Tell me more about F. Lee,” said Elizabeth.

  “He has lifts in his cowboy boots to make him appear taller, and when he sips from a little silver flask he always keeps in front of him, his pinky finger sticks out.”

  “What’s in that flask?” asked Elizabeth.

  “It’s not coffee, because he has a container of coffee in front of him. It’s not water, because he has an Evian bottle in front of him. I don’t know what it is.”

  “And this whole police conspiracy thing is ridiculous,” said Elizabeth. “One minute they’re accusing the L.A.P.D. of being inept, incompetent, and careless, and the next they’re saying that they’re all part of a brilliant conspiracy to frame O. J.”

  “Thank you, Johnnie Cochran, for that,” said Gus. “Cochran’s the one who said the police lab is a cesspool of contamination, during his opening statement. When you have a client you know committed the murders, what you do is blame the police for everything. It’s surefire. I’m sure that every one of the black jurors has had his or her beefs with the L.A.P.D., and they want to get even, and Johnnie knows that. He’s gotten rich over the years suing the L.A.P.D. for infractions against black people, so he knows how to play this game better than any lawyer in L.A.”

  “Listen, Gus, I know Johnnie Cochran, for God sakes. He’s been here to this house, sitting right in that chair you’re sitting in. He was charming, funny. I adored him. I’m the one who put him together with Michael Jackson, when Michael was having his, uh, his problems, and he did a brilliant job for Michael. Oh, have I shown you my latest acquisition?” She shook back the sleeve of her caftan and held a bracelet up to Gus’s face. “Michael sent me this sapphire bracelet. Isn’t it divine?”

  “It’s beautiful, Elizabeth, but you deserve a sapphire bracelet, at least, after what you did for him when he was in trouble with that kid who was suing him,” said Gus. “Didn’t you fly all the way out to Bangkok, or someplace, to be with him?”

  “Twenty-two hours on the plane, thank you very much. My back—I couldn’t move,” said Elizabeth. “Don’t tell anybody I’m on a walker, for God sake. I had a hip replacement, and one leg came out shorter than the other. That’s all the tabloids need to hear.”

  “Speaking of Johnnie, or Mr. Johnnie, as Rosa Lopez calls him, I received an invitation in the mail to a testimonial dinner at the Beverly Hilton that is being co-hosted by Johnnie Cochran and Miss Elizabeth Taylor. Can you explain that one to me?”

  “It’s a dinner honoring my lawyer, Neil Papiano.”

  “I don’t think you should go, Elizabeth,” said Gus.

  “I have to go. Johnnie and I are the hosts. Neil Papiano introduced me to Johnnie, and this whole thing was set up long before the O. J. Simpson trial.”

  “Johnnie will use it for a photo op—you can count on that. You of all people
know when you’re being used. He’ll have pictures of the two of you on television and in every newspaper in the country, and it’s going to look like you think O. J. didn’t do it, if you’re seen laughing it up with O. J.’s lawyer at the Beverly Hilton during the middle of his murder trial. First a child molester and then a killer.”

  “Michael is not a child molester,” said Elizabeth, as if she had said the same sentence over and over again in previous conversations.

  “Well, O. J. is a killer,” replied Gus.

  “I know you’re right, Gus, but I don’t know how I can get out of it. Neil’s my friend, he’s handling my divorce from Larry, and Johnnie Cochran’s one of his best friends. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You could check into St. John’s—you know. That back of yours has been giving you trouble since the flight to Bangkok—and nobody could ever say you finked out. Make a videotape from your hospital bed that they can play at the dinner, wishing Neil well and saying what a great guy he is. They’ll drink toasts to your good health at the dinner, and your picture won’t be in the papers with Mr. Johnnie.”

  * * *

  “Who’s that guy with the ponytail who’s always around?” asked Gus. It was the following Sunday afternoon, during his visit with Elizabeth Taylor.

  “That’s Jose Eber, my hairdresser,” replied Elizabeth.

  “No, not Jose. I know Jose. The fattish guy with the gray ponytail,” said Gus.

  “Oh, you mean Bernard.”

  “Yes. Who’s Bernard?”

  “Bernard Lafferty.”

  “Bernard Lafferty? You mean Doris Duke’s butler Bernard Lafferty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t he supposed to have killed her?” asked Gus. “I mean, like helping the final exit along a bit, à la Dr. Kevorkian.”

  “No, absolutely not, Gus,” said Elizabeth, bristling a bit. “That’s a terrible story and completely untrue. Bernard adored Doris. She couldn’t have done without him. You’ll like him when you get to know him.”

  “I read in Bob Colacello’s piece in Vanity Fair that he’s a drunk,” said Gus. “That’s why the judge removed him as executor of her will.”

  “He’s stopped the drinking. He’s in the program, and he takes it very seriously,” said Elizabeth.

  “How did you get to know Bernard?”

  “Doris Duke left me a million dollars for AIDS, and Bernard was the executor of the will. That’s how I got to know him. And he’s charming,” said Elizabeth, in such a way as to let Gus know she didn’t want to hear anything unpleasant about him.

  Gus was aware of her enormous loyalties to her friends, especially those who were in trouble. “I didn’t know you knew Doris Duke,” he said, instead of what he had been going to say.

  “Actually, I didn’t know her very well,” said Elizabeth. “I’d met her a couple of times, but she always did wonderful things for charity.”

  “Good for Doris. That was very generous of her,” said Gus.

  Gus called the writer Bob Colacello in New York. He and Gus had been at Vanity Fair together for years. Colacello was the authority at the magazine on matters pertaining to Doris Duke, the eccentric billionairess, whose death was under investigation.

  “You won’t believe whom I met, Bob,” said Gus. “Bernard Lafferty.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I’m not. He was at Elizabeth Taylor’s yesterday when I was there. He always seems to be there, according to the secretary. Elizabeth said Doris Duke left her a million bucks for AIDS and Bernard was the executor.”

  “Actually, Bernard gave the million to her AMFAR charity during the time he was executor and had the authority to do such things,” replied Colacello. “He was a huge fan of Elizabeth’s.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Gus. “Well, I suppose that’s one way for a fan to meet his idol. Lay a million dollars on her favorite charity. Far more effective than a fan letter, I’d say. She’d have to invite you to dinner in return for that. It’s rather noble in a way.”

  “Noble? How?”

  “He gives away a million dollars from a multibillion-dollar estate, a mere pittance for Miss Duke, as Bernard calls her, but a contribution of consequence for Elizabeth’s charity. It’s called ‘perfect balance.’ He gets to become friends with Elizabeth Taylor, and the money goes to a great cause.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” said Bob. “What’s he like?”

  “Strange guy. Wears a drop earring. Carries a gold clutch purse. Seriously fat. Probably very companionable for Elizabeth, who doesn’t see many people these days. He hardly said a word. Speaks with a brogue and makes grammatical errors, but he’s very gentle. I can see why these rich ladies have him around.”

  The following Sunday, Gus was waiting patiently in Elizabeth Taylor’s living room while Jose Eber was putting the finishing touches on her hair and makeup upstairs. Gus was using the time to make notes in his green leather notebook with the gold-edged pages, which he always carried with him, on what he was going to talk about later that evening on his weekly wrap-up of the Simpson trial on KCBS.

  “I discover we have a mutual friend,” said Bernard Lafferty, who had been sitting so quietly on another sofa at the far end of the room that Gus had not noticed him.

  “Oh, Bernard, excuse me. I didn’t notice you were there,” replied Gus. “I was just making some notes for my broadcast later.”

  “With Harvey Levin, I know. We always watch,” said Bernard. He spoke in a lilting voice and sat with his hands folded in front of him. Although he was now a rich man living at Falcon Lair, the Los Angeles residence of Doris Duke, which had been built by the silent-screen star Rudolph Valentino, he maintained the manners and attitude of a servant.

  “We have a mutual friend? Let me guess,” said Gus, putting his notebook in the pocket of his blazer. “Oatsie Charles? Isn’t she an executor of Doris’s will also? I know Oatsie.”

  “Yes, she is, but I don’t mean Mrs. Charles,” said Bernard.

  “C. Z. Guest? I’ve heard her speak of you, very affectionately, as a matter of fact,” said Gus.

  “She was a great friend of Miss Duke’s, but I don’t mean Mrs. Guest,” said Bernard.

  “Who, then?” asked Gus.

  “I meant Faye Resnick.”

  “Faye Resnick? How in the world do you know Faye Resnick, Bernard?” asked Gus. “I’m always interested in how the social circles overlap.”

  “In the program. At the Friday-night meeting on Rodeo Drive. Faye and I are both in the program,” said Bernard. “Elizabeth said you were in the program, too. I hope you don’t mind my knowing that. Anonymity and all that.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” said Gus. “Richard Johnson broke my anonymity on Page Six of the New York Post not long ago. There are no secrets these days, Bernard.”

  “I know Faye wouldn’t mind that I told you,” said Bernard. “One day I saw her at the coffee machine. I recognized her right away. Her picture’s been in the papers so much since the murders. It was shortly after her book came out, and she was taking a lot of hits in the media from people who said she was capitalizing on her friend Nicole’s murder.”

  “I was one of those who misjudged Faye at first, but I’ve become a great admirer of her,” said Gus.

  “That day, she looked so forlorn, so unhappy and friendless. I spoke to her. I told her I’d been maligned in the media, too. I said people were saying that I killed Miss Duke, when I adored Miss Duke. It’s hard when you are being misjudged unfairly, as we both were. We had something in common.”

  “I didn’t know Faye was in the program.”

  “She’s going to take a cake on her first anniversary next week at the Rodeo meeting,” said Bernard.

  14

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

  Despair was the operative word for the prosecution team as they watched criminalist Dennis Fung squirm under the relentless cross-examination of Barry Scheck, whose courtroom expertise surpassed that of ev
ery member of the defense team, thus far. During the days that the attack was on, the prospect of defeat was written in the slump of the shoulders of Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden, and Hank Goldberg. Fung, who wilted more each day, was unprepared for the superbly crafted onslaught aimed at destroying his credibility and competence. Scheck, who possesses the requisite mean streak and unpleasantly curled lip of the successful defense attorney, was not satisfied with mere victory in felling Fung for his failure to collect evidence properly at the crime scene. He wanted humiliation, and he got it. In a cross-examination sometimes painful to watch—especially with Johnnie Cochran, looking like the cock of the walk, beaming his approval from the defense table—Scheck verbally kicked and shamed his victim with the insistent implication that if Fung was so inept in gathering evidence, O. J. Simpson was therefore innocent. From his chair at the defense table, Simpson watched, haughtily amused by his lawyer’s brilliance.

  George Vernon was a mysterious character in the media group. He had press credentials, but no one had ever heard of the paper that he wrote for. During lunch in the cafeteria, he often sat at a table by the Simpson family’s table, which gave the appearance that he was with them. As time went by, there were those in the press group who began to wonder if he had not been planted by the defense to get information on how the members of the press were talking about Simpson privately.

  “I don’t like the way he’s always hanging around, listening to what the reporters are saying among themselves,” said Robin Clark, who was covering the case for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

  “I bet he has a pipeline right into Carl Douglas’s office,” said Gus.

  “I was in Chicago over the weekend, Gus,” said George one day in the corridor. He had a habit of coming up from behind, which unnerved Gus.

  “Oh?” replied Gus. He had never had good feelings about George and tended to stay away from him.