“I’m a wreck, Gus, a wreck. The idea of jail absolutely terrifies me,” said Heidi. She ordered iced tea. “I honest-to-God don’t know if I can handle it.”
“I hear you’re writing a book,” said Gus.
“I need money. I have to pay my lawyer who lost the case for me,” she said.
“Are you going to name names in your book?” asked Gus.
“No,” she replied.
“Why not?” asked Gus. “That’s the only way you’re going to make any money on your book. From the names I’ve heard on your client list, people would be running to the bookstores to get copies.”
“I don’t know. That’s what everyone tells me,” said Heidi.
“Was O. J. ever one of your customers?” asked Gus.
“I don’t talk about my customers, but no, he wasn’t,” said Heidi. “I could tell you a couple of stories, though, of things I heard about him.”
“Let me ask you something. Are any of these rich and famous guys who utilized your services helping you out on your legal fees?” asked Gus.
“Get real, Gus,” said Heidi, shaking her head. “I haven’t heard from one of them since I got in all this trouble, not a single one.”
“You know, it would be so easy for a couple of those guys who make ten or twelve or fifteen million dollars a picture to stuff a bag full of cash that couldn’t get traced to them and have their business manager deliver it to you.”
“Don’t I wish it,” said Heidi.
“If I’d been one of your clients, I’d have sent you over a bag of cash, pronto,” said Gus, and they laughed.
“Oh, there’s Gus Bailey. Hello, Gus.” The woman’s voice was one that Gus recognized, although he was still immersed in the injustice of Heidi’s story. He jumped to his feet to greet Nancy Reagan and Betsy Bloomingdale, who were joining friends in the next booth. “Hi, Betsy,” he said. “Hello, Nancy.” They exchanged the requisite society kisses. Then Gus ventured, “May I present, uh—”
The three ladies stared at each other, fascinated, although no one spoke. In the several seconds that the encounter lasted, Heidi Fleiss met eye-to-eye the former First Lady of the United States Nancy Reagan and the celebrated international socialite Betsy Bloomingdale, just as Betsy Bloomingdale and Nancy Reagan met eye-to-eye the celebrated Hollywood madam, Heidi Fleiss.
It’s perfect, thought Gus, watching the moment. As always, he could imagine it as a scene in his novel, the constant overlapping of the different elements of Los Angeles. He longed to reach in his pocket and extract his notebook and pen and start making notes, but he restrained himself for propriety’s sake.
“Big hug,” said Betsy, and the ladies scrambled to their table. Gus sat down again with Heidi.
“I can’t fucking believe what just happened,” said Heidi.
* * *
That night, Gus called Peach’s house in Nogales, Arizona. He had received a message that Zander was going to be there visiting his mother. The trial had so monopolized Gus’s thinking that he had not returned the call.
“Hi, Marisella, it’s Gus.”
“Hi, Mr. Bailey,” said Marisella.
“Is Zander there?”
“He’s here, but he’s out.”
“Will you ask him to call me at the Chateau Marmont this evening at six-forty-five? Or tomorrow morning at six-forty-five. Either one. He knows the number. We keep missing each other, and I’m impossible to get hold of most of the time because I’m at the courthouse. How’s Peach?”
“She’s pretty good. She’s doing just fine, and she’s always happy when Zander’s here,” said Marisella. “She likes watching you on the TV shows. We all do. Alicia, Gloria, all the nurses, they run into Mrs. Bailey’s room and say, ‘Mr. B.’s on Oprah,’ or whoever’s show it is. We love it when you’re on Oprah. Is she nice?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s great, but she’s in Chicago and I’m in L.A. when I’m on, so we’re not face to face. Tell Peach I’m on Good Morning America at seven-twelve tomorrow morning,” said Gus.
“I’ll tell Gloria, too. She’ll be on duty then. Mrs. B. sometimes forgets.”
“Give her my love.”
Gus had two sons, Grafton and Zander. Grafton, divorced, lived in New York and was a director in the film business. Zander, unmarried, lived in San Francisco, worked with troubled children, taught school, and was writing his first novel. Their mother, Peach, had multiple sclerosis and lived in a large house she had built outside of Nogales on land that had once been part of her father’s cattle ranch. Gus and Peach had long been divorced, but they had never become unmarried. The death of Becky fifteen years earlier had bound them together in a closer way than when they had been married to each other. Gus was fond of saying, when he gave a Thanksgiving or Christmas toast at Peach’s house in Arizona, “We may be a fucked-up family, but we’re a family.”
“Sorry I’m so hard to reach, Zander,” said Gus, when they finally connected. “You have to get me between six and seven-fifteen in the morning, or six and seven-fifteen in the evening. Otherwise I’m never here.”
“That’s okay. I know how busy you are at the trial. I really liked the last ‘Letter,’ ” said Zander. “Were you in the courtroom for the glove debacle?”
“I certainly was. It was high drama all the way,” replied Gus. “It made me realize why O. J. was such a great athlete in his time, the way he tried on that glove and played the scene to the jury. Everyone in the courtroom knew the glove fit, but he seized the moment and made the touchdown. The guy has an instinct for survival.”
“What’s it like for you being in L.A. for such a long time?” asked Zander. “After Becky, I can remember hearing you say you never wanted to go back there.”
“Strange, Zander. I keep running into people from my past,” said Gus. “I’d forgotten how hard I’d slammed the door shut when I moved away from here.”
“What’s it like running into Judge Katz at the trial?” asked Zander.
“I avoid him. I never speak. I told you what happened on Larry King, didn’t I? He’s like a bad memory to me,” said Gus. “Listen, how’s Mom?”
“She hardly talks anymore,” said Zander.
“I know, but I think she still listens. I think she likes to hear what’s going on. When I call over there, Marisella, or whatever nurse is on duty, holds the phone up to her ear. I never ask how she’s feeling anymore. I just start telling her about the trial, or who was at dinner at Connie Wald’s the night before and who I sat next to.”
“I don’t think she remembers,” said Zander.
“It doesn’t matter. If it entertains her at the moment, that’s enough,” said Gus.
“Dad, the reason I called, the group that Mom started, Justice for Homicide Victims, wants to know if you’d speak at a victims’ rights fund-raiser they’re having in Los Angeles. They’re trying to get Gil Garcetti, too,” said Zander.
“Of course.”
“They were afraid to call you at the Chateau because you’re so busy, so they asked me to do it,” said Zander.
“Tell them to fax me where and when, and I’ll be there,” said Gus. “Have you talked to Grafton lately?”
“He’s as busy as you are. He cast Kate Capshaw, Uma Thurman, and Kiefer Sutherland for his movie,” said Zander.
“Not bad for a first outing as director,” said Gus. “I haven’t read the screenplay, have you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He wrote it, too, you know, he and Adam Brooks.”
“Is it about me?”
“Not really. More about Mom.”
“How’s your book coming?”
“Okay.”
“I understand that answer. Okay. It ain’t moving, it means.”
“You got it.”
“They’re shooting the miniseries of A Season in Purgatory over on the old MGM lot in Culver City, and I haven’t had time to go to the set once,” said Gus.
“Who’s in it?”
“I
can’t remember.”
“That’s not like you, Dad.”
“I know. I’m usually a pain in the ass when they’re shooting one of my books, but O. J.’s taken over my life,” said Gus. “I don’t even read about Bosnia. If it’s not about O. J., I’m not interested. Listen, I have to go. I’m glad you’re in Arizona with Mom.”
18
In his “Letter from Los Angeles,” Gus wrote:
Detective Mark Fuhrman’s entrance into the courtroom was electric. For eight months, he has been portrayed by the defense as the archvillain of the Simpson case. Stories of his alleged racism have been brilliantly fed to the media by Simpson’s lawyers, and they had first appeared in an article by Jeffrey Toobin in the July 18, 1994, issue of The New Yorker, thereby gaining such notoriety and credibility that there was probably not a juror in the box who had not heard them. A similar defense tactic had been used in the William Kennedy Smith case in Palm Beach in 1991, when a vilifying article attacking Patricia Bowman, who had brought rape charges against Smith, appeared in the New York Times shortly before the trial began. The William Kennedy Smith and O. J. Simpson defense teams even employed one of the same private investigators, Pat McKenna, and the same forensic scientist, Dr. Henry Lee. The racist profile and the framing of O. J. Simpson have become part and parcel of the persona of Detective Mark Fuhrman.
Anticipating the appearance of Mark Fuhrman on the stand was like waiting for the late arrival of a television star at a party. People kept looking toward the door of the courtroom. The lawyers kept walking back and forth. Outside the courtroom, the bailiffs barked orders for people to step back behind taped lines on the floor, just as they do when the sequestered jury arrives and leaves. When Fuhrman finally appeared, surrounded by four Los Angeles police officers serving in the role of bodyguards, he looked like nothing so much as the handsome lead in a cop series.
Fuhrman is to the Simpson case what Dr. L Jerome Oziel was to the Menendez case: a major participant with a flawed record of his own, a person on whom hate can be heaped in tones of righteous indignation. As Dr. Oziel’s deplorable ethics distracted jurors from the brutality of the murders of the Menendez brothers, so the alleged racism of Detective Fuhrman was meant to distract jurors from the crimes of O. J. Simpson. Even though the accusations of his having framed Simpson are fanciful, without proof of any sort, the allegations from Fuhrman’s life made him fair game to be portrayed by the defense as a man whose deeds are as hateful as the murders Simpson is accused of committing.
Gus, remembering back to their initial meeting at dinner at “21” in New York, watched carefully as F. Lee Bailey cross-examined Detective Mark Fuhrman. He remembered Bailey saying that night, “Any lawyer in his right mind who would not be looking forward to cross-examining Mark Fuhrman is an idiot.” His moment had come in the trial, and the courtroom sat in stunned silence.
“Do you use the word nigger in describing people?” he asked.
“No, sir,” replied Fuhrman.
“Have you used the word nigger in the last ten years?”
“Not that I recall, no,” replied Fuhrman.
“You mean if you called someone a nigger you have forgotten it?”
“Look at the look on juror number five’s face,” whispered Gus to Kim Goldman, who was sitting beside him.
“And number six,” she whispered back.
“I’m not sure I can answer the question the way you phrased it, sir,” said Fuhrman.
“Are you therefore saying that you have not used that word in the past ten years, Detective Fuhrman?” Lee Bailey was enjoying himself enormously.
“Yes, that is what I’m saying,” replied Fuhrman.
That night Gus went to a small dinner given by the film star Kirk Douglas and his wife, Anne, at L’Orangerie on La Cienega Boulevard, the most elegant restaurant in town. Gus had known the Douglases from the period of his life when he and Peach were still married and lived nearby in Beverly Hills. There were photographs in Gus’s scrapbooks at his house in Prud’homme, Connecticut, of the Douglases’ youngest son, Eric, at the third- and fourth-birthday parties of Gus’s daughter, Becky.
Among the other guests that evening were Frank Sinatra, his wife, Barbara, and Dani Janssen, the widow of the actor David Janssen, who had become a famous hostess in the movie colony. Although in failing health and inclined to be cranky, Sinatra retained his legend status. People turned to stare as he entered the restaurant under the watchful eye of his wife, and he acknowledged the looks he received from the patrons at every table, having long ago accepted his position on the top rung of the ladder of the Hollywood firmament. Kirk Douglas greeted him on his arrival at the table with the appropriate deference of a grand duke greeting an absolute monarch.
Barbara Sinatra was a stunning, witty blonde whom Gus had met years before on a yacht in Acapulco when she was married to Zeppo Marx, one of the Marx Brothers. Throughout the evening, she fussed over Frank, making sure he was comfortable, checking on his drink, repeating bits of conversation he had not heard, and ordering his dinner for him from the maître d’. “Mr. Sinatra will start with the boiled egg and caviar,” she said.
Gus had known all four of Sinatra’s wives: Nancy, who was called Big Nancy, Ava Gardner, Mia Farrow, and Barbara, as well as his two daughters, Nancy, who was called Little Nancy, and Tina. But Sinatra had never liked Gus, and, consequently, Gus had never liked Sinatra. The genesis of Sinatra’s dislike had never been clarified. People said, “Oh, that’s Frank. That’s the way he is.” They had once worked together on the television musical of Our Town, but Sinatra had barely noticed Gus at the time in his lowly stage-manager position on the production.
In the past, long ago, when Frank was married to Mia Farrow, who was a friend of both Gus and Peach, there had been a few unpleasant incidents. People still said from time to time when they were talking about Sinatra, “Do you remember that time at Swifty Lazar’s party in the upstairs room at the Bistro when he was so terrible to Peach?”
Later, when Gus changed careers and became a writer, he repaid Sinatra for his rudeness to Peach by basing a running character on him named Dom Belcanto, a legendary singer with Mafia connections, in several of his novels. Gus believed in getting even with certain people; he used to say, “It’s the mick in me.” In his Hollywood novel, The Winners, which had been a flop, he used the embarrassing incident at the Daisy nightclub in Beverly Hills, when Sinatra paid the captain, George Winona, fifty dollars to hit Gus, who was sitting at another table with Peach. George carried out his assignment because he was afraid not to. “I’m sorry, Gus, he made me do it,” George had said with tears in his eyes as he struck Gus. Even then, years before he was a writer, Gus said to himself, “This would be a terrific scene in a novel.”
After Gus’s return to Los Angeles for the Simpson trial, he and Sinatra met for the first time in years at a dinner at the Gregory Pecks’, where Sinatra was seated to the right of Veronique Peck and Gus to her left. The trial was the topic of conversation, as it always was, and Gus became the center of attention rather than Sinatra, who was used to being the center of attention wherever he went. The dynamic between them had changed, at least for the period of the O. J. Simpson trial. Gus was no longer afraid of him. If Sinatra had verbally attacked him the way he had once attacked Peach, Gus would have countered in kind. In the one moment their eyes connected, Gus felt that Sinatra understood that. They did not speak to each other that night, or any of the nights that followed, when they met at the Marvin Davises’, or the George Schlatters’, or the Kirk Douglases’.
No sooner were they seated at the table for eight than Kirk began to talk about the trial, which he watched every day on television. He was in distress over F. Lee Bailey’s cross-examination of Detective Fuhrman that day in court.
“Gus, why, why, why did Detective Fuhrman say he hadn’t said the N word in ten years? Why did Marcia Clark let him say that? It’s going to come back to haunt him, believe me,” said Kirk, in a wailing tone of
voice.
“My source in the D.A.’s office tells me Chris Darden and Marcia hardly speak to Fuhrman, they’re so pissed about the racist stuff,” said Gus.
“That’s stupid,” fumed Kirk.
“Of course it is.”
“I met Marcia one night at Ray Stark’s.”
“I know. I was there,” replied Gus.
“Of course you were. I sat next to her at dinner. She seemed like a smart woman. She should have anticipated the question. F. Lee Bailey’s a helluva smart lawyer. He’s not going to let a chance like that go by. She should have prepped Fuhrman. She should have asked him the question, Have you ever said the word nigger, and worked out the answer with him. There are all kinds of answers like ‘Yes, I may have said it years ago, when I was a cop on the beat in South Central Los Angeles, dealing with the gangs, and I wish I hadn’t said it.’ But no. He said, ‘I never said the word nigger!’ ”
“I know it’s not very nice to say, and I probably shouldn’t even say it, but I suppose everyone has said the N word at some time or other,” said Anne Douglas
“Frank said it this morning,” said Barbara Sinatra.
“You’re coming to our dinner tomorrow night at Chasen’s for Margaret Thatcher, aren’t you?” asked Charlie Wick.
“Of course, Charlie. I’m looking forward to it,” replied Gus.
“And Sir Dennis, as he’s now called,” said Charlie. “And she’s Lady Thatcher now. We knew her in the Washington years.”
“Yes, I know. I told Mary Jane I might be a little late if I go on Larry King’s or Geraldo’s show first,” replied Gus. “I never know for sure until the last minute.”
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