“Lady Thatcher said all anybody talks about in the United States is the O. J. Simpson trial, and she’s not really up on it. I wonder if I could pull you aside to fill her in on the broad strokes of the case.”
“Sure, I’d be happy to, Charlie. I mean, how often in life do you get to chat up a former prime minister? You have no idea how many entrées O. J. Simpson is providing me with.”
“Apparently you know Queen Noor, Gus,” said Veronique Peck, when she called him at the Chateau Marmont. “Didn’t you write about her in Vanity Fair?”
“Yes, I interviewed her in Amman just before the beginning of the Gulf War,” replied Gus. “She drove me around in her Jeep. She had her chauffeur drive me to Petra, and I had dinner at the palace with her and the king. Why?”
“She and King Hussein are coming to town for an event at the Reagan Library,” said Veronique.
“As friendly as I got with her, I always had to call her Your Majesty,” said Gus.
“The Stanley Sheinbaums are giving a party for them on Sunday and want you to come. You met the Sheinbaums at our house one night, when the Sinatras were there and Barbra Streisand. Do you remember?”
“I remember very well,” said Gus. “A star-studded evening, as they say on Entertainment Tonight.”
“Stanley thought you might fill the king and queen in on the trial,” said Veronique.
“Fine, I’d like to,” said Gus, jotting down in his green leather notebook another social entrée courtesy of O. J. Simpson. “Use this in novel,” he wrote.
“The Sheinbaums live on Rockingham, directly across the street from O. J.’s house, so there should be a terrible traffic problem that night, between the tourists gawking at O. J.’s house, the police guarding O. J.’s house, and the Secret Service and the motorcycle cops guarding the king and queen. It’s going to be a nightmare, Gus. Why don’t you drive over with us? They always recognize Greg and wave us right through, so we don’t have to wait.”
“I do a Sunday-night wrap-up of the trial with Harvey Levin on KCBS from six-thirty to seven, so I couldn’t come to your house until after that,” said Gus.
Gus counted sixty-eight L.A.P.D. motorcycles lining the driveway of the Stanley Sheinbaums’ house on Rockingham as Gregory Peck’s car, with Greg driving, inched its way forward. Police officers, carrying walkie-talkies and clipboards with guest lists, checked the occupants of each car.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Peck, if you pull out of line here, you can go ahead of these cars. Chuck Pick is at the front door with the parking boys. I’ll tell him on the walkie-talkie you’re coming,” said the officer.
“That’s awfully nice of you, Officer,” said Greg. “It’s quite a mob scene.”
“What’s tying up the traffic is all those tourists trying to get a look at O. J.’s house across the street,” said the officer.
“That’s really quite a nice house of O. J.’s, isn’t it?” said Veronique Peck, looking out the window as they moved forward.
“I just interviewed the next-door neighbors, the Salingers, who’ve lived next door to O. J. for seventeen years,” said Gus. “They liked him as a neighbor, before the murders, I mean. They said he really loved that house, that it meant everything to him, like it was the fulfillment of his dreams. He kept the house through two divorces, and the wives and kids moved to condos with no backyards. He’s that kind of guy.”
“Is anyone living there now?” asked Veronique.
“Oh, yes. His sisters, Carmelita and Shirley, and Shirley’s husband, Benny, and his mother, Eunice, when she’s in town, and Jason, the son by the first marriage.”
“What’s he like?” asked Veronique.
“He never speaks in court. He’s the sous-chef at Jackson’s on Beverly Boulevard,” said Gus.
“O. J.’s ruined this neighborhood, ruined it,” said Veronique. “Everyone’s up in arms over it. Mike Ovitz wants to turn it into a gated community, so no one can drive through.”
“The value of everyone’s property has dropped,” said Greg. “Thousands of cars go through here a week now.”
“The poor Sheinbaums. It’s a nightmare for the people living here,” said Veronique.
“Dina Merrill’s buying a house a block or so down on Rockingham,” said Gus.
“She’ll be sorry,” said Veronique.
Inside the house, Gus thanked the Sheinbaums for inviting him. Betty Sheinbaum was a daughter of Harry Warner of the Warner Brothers Studio Warners. In his film-producing days, Gus had known her daughter, Sarah, when they both had films showing at the Cannes Film Festival. He said hello to Warren Beatty and Stefanie Powers. David Margolick introduced him to Jesse Jackson.
“Are you going to be visiting O. J. in jail while you’re in town, Reverend Jackson?” asked David.
Jackson gave Margolick a cold look and a noncommittal answer.
“Reverend Jackson didn’t seem to like your question,” said Gus.
“He looked pissed off that I’d asked it,” said David.
“I noticed,” replied Gus. “Do you remember the way the Kennedys always had a Catholic priest in the Palm Beach courtroom during the William Kennedy Smith rape trial? ‘Father Murphy wouldn’t be here if Willie did it’ was the subliminal message to the jury. The Menendez brothers had a priest who sat with the family, too—I suppose to show what nice Catholic boys they were. I’m surprised the Dream Team doesn’t have any of the black leaders, like Jesse or Al Sharpton, in the courtroom.”
“This trial is right up your alley, Gus,” said Queen Noor. They were in a corner of the Sheinbaums’ living room, talking about the case. “This has all the things you write about and get indignant about. The rich and the powerful in a criminal situation. You said trials are different if the defendant can afford million-dollar lawyers. You told me that was what interested you.”
“What a good memory, Your Majesty. I remember the conversation, and I later wrote it in my journal, in case there’s ever a memoir in my future. We were in your Jeep, going out to the refugee camps. That was an amazing experience for me.”
“I don’t always see Vanity Fair, but I have read a few of your pieces about the trial,” said the queen.
“There are more complicated issues this time than in the kind of trials I usually cover. This time, there’s race and fame thrown into the mix, along with the power and the money. What I’m beginning to realize is that the people who believe in him don’t care if he did it or not. They want him to be acquitted. As a story, it’s irresistible, but as an experience to be involved in, it has become like an obsession with me. Nothing else interests me.”
“We watch the trial on CNN at the palace, but we’re not caught up in it the way everyone is here. I’ve never seen anything like it. All anyone talks about is O. J. Simpson,” said the queen.
“It’s become something bigger than a murder trial,” said Gus. “I think people are beginning to feel that. It’s telling us a great deal about ourselves as a country. There has never been a murder trial in this country that has so involved the nation for such a long time.”
“Darling, you remember Gus Bailey, don’t you?” said the queen as her husband came up to join her.
King Hussein smiled and greeted Gus with a handshake.
“Your Majesty,” said Gus, giving the little bob of the head that is a requirement when meeting royalty. “Whenever I see you on television or read about you in the papers, I always remember that wonderful night at the palace when you had several of the journalists who were waiting to get into Baghdad for an off-the-record dinner. Judy Miller of the New York Times, Chris Dickey of Newsweek, and the other ten or so. That was a great night.”
“I remember,” said the king, nodding his head.
“I remember the queen chiding Chris Dickey for chain-smoking all through dinner,” said Gus.
“Gus and I were just talking about—” began the queen.
“Yes, yes, I know, the O. J. Simpson trial,” said the king.
“Go on, Gus.”
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“The trial seems to be exacerbating the racial tensions of the country. There’s an ugly feeling with the crowds outside the courthouse carrying placards—blacks and whites screaming insults at one another. We are looking at each other suspiciously.”
Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair magazine, sent a fax to Gus at the Chateau Marmont to call him at his apartment in the Dakota that evening.
“I just read your ‘Letter’ for the next issue,” said Graydon. “I love the part where the real-estate agent’s daughter arranged for you to go to Nicole’s condo on Bundy, and you and she and some guy acted out the murders.”
“No matter how many pictures you’ve seen of that patio, it’s still a shock when you see how little it is,” said Gus. “So much violence took place in such a tiny space. It was creepy being there. I almost felt I could hear the sound of the scuffling of Ron’s sneakers and O. J.’s Bruno Magli shoes on the walkway.”
“Who was the other guy?”
“Robert Altman, the film director. He’s a cousin of the real-estate woman selling the house for the Browns. He was O. J. I was Ron. Moya was Nicole.”
“Why didn’t you use Altman’s name in the article?” asked Graydon.
“I didn’t want him to think I was using him,” said Gus.
“It makes it a better story if it’s Robert Altman, the great film director, participating in a reenactment of the murders on the actual site where they happened than just some anonymous guy,” said Graydon.
“Is there still time to make some changes?” asked Gus.
“Write it tonight and fax it to Wayne in the morning,” said Graydon. “Now, listen, Gus, do you think there’s any chance you can take a few days off from the trial and fly over to London?”
“Oh God, I don’t think so,” said Gus.
“The magazine’s having a fund-raising dinner at the Serpentine Gallery. Princess Diana’s going to attend. It would be good if you could be there.”
“I really don’t know how I could take the time off,” said Gus.
“The princess told me she liked the articles you wrote on Jackie Onassis and Queen Noor,” said Graydon.
“Oh, great,” said Gus. “I’d rather interview Princess Diana than anyone in the world,” he added.
“It’s a long shot. I just thought it would be a good thing for you to meet her under these circumstances,” said Graydon. I had Dana check with Garcetti’s office, and it’s going to be a three-day weekend at the trial. Ask the judge for a day on each side. You could take the Concorde both ways. We’ll put you up at Claridges.”
“Can I let you know?”
That night, Gus wrote in his journal, “Fifteen years ago, when I was still down-and-out, or maybe just beginning to get up, if anyone told me I was going to have choices like this to ponder over in my future—Princess Diana or O. J. Simpson—I’d have thought it was camp.”
“If O. J. walks, what do you think his life’s going to be like?” asked Larry Schiller. They were sitting in a restaurant in Venice Beach. Schiller’s fiancée, Kathy Amerman, was with them.
“Different, very different from the kind of life he led before the murders,” said Gus. “No endorsements—I think that’s over for him, even if he walks. And no television series. I don’t even think his friend Don Ohlmeyer has enough clout to put him on television. And this I know for a fact: His country-club days are over. I hear there’s going to be a mass exodus of members from the Riviera Country Club if he should ever show up on the golf course there again. What do you think? You’re my only link with O. J.”
“I’ll tell you what the plans are, but you can’t use this, Gus, either on television or in Vanity Fair. They’ll know it came from me,” said Schiller. “Save it for your novel.”
“Okay.”
“First, after the acquittal, about ten days after, there’s going to be a Pay-Per-View television appearance that could net him somewhere up to twenty million dollars. That would pay off all the lawyers and leave O. J. more than enough to resume his old life. The show’s going to feature his children from both marriages, his family and friends, and his lawyers. The interviewer, who’s not settled on as yet, is going to be Barbara Walters or someone of comparable stature.”
“I feel like puking,” said Gus. “Kill two people and get rich on it. Who’s making all these arrangements? Skip Taft? Robert Kardashian? They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
“Calm down, Gus. Calm down,” said Larry.
“Oh God, would I love to write about this. There would be a white riot in Los Angeles if people knew such plans were afoot while this trial is going on.”
“You can’t write about it,” said Larry.
“I know. I know.”
“Don’t you guys ever get sick of talking about O. J. Simpson?” asked Kathy Amerman.
“Just let me finish this point,” said Schiller. “After the Pay-Per-View, O. J.’s going to drop out of the spotlight for two years, raise his children on a ranch in Wyoming, or someplace like that, away from things, and then return slowly to Los Angeles to restart his life.”
“He’s got it all figured out, hasn’t he?” said Gus. “I keep thinking about poor Nicole and Ron.”
“Could we talk about something else, please, besides O. J.?” asked Kathy.
“How about Princess Diana? Do you want to talk about her?” asked Gus. “I happen to have a little news in that department.”
“Yes, now you’re talking,” said Kathy. “Don’t you think she got a raw deal when she married the Prince of Wales and nobody told her he was in love with that country lady, whatshername?”
“I agree,” said Gus. “There’s a chance, just a chance, I might get to interview her. Graydon Carter wants me to take a couple of days off from the trial and fly over there to meet her.”
“You’re going, aren’t you?” said Schiller.
“I don’t know,” said Gus. “Do you think I should?”
“Of course. Are you crazy? That’s major stuff.”
“I’m afraid I’ll miss something,” said Gus. “Suppose O. J. stands up in court and says to the world what he said to the Reverend Rosey Grier in jail—‘All right, goddamit, I did it. I killed them both’—and I miss the moment because I’m chattin’ up Princess Diana over in London. I’d be mortified.”
“It ain’t going to happen,” said Schiller.
“Are you out of your mind, Gus? Of course you should go to London,” said Harvey Levin. “It’s a slow part of the trial. You’re not going to miss anything.”
“What’ll I tell Ito? I don’t want to lose my seat in the courtroom,” said Gus.
“Tell him the truth. Tell him you might get to do an interview with Princess Diana. He’s the biggest starfucker in the world. He’ll keep your seat for you,” said Harvey Levin. “You wait. He’ll probably say, ‘Please give my best to the princess.’ ”
“Please give my best to the princess,” said Judge Ito when he told Gus that his seat in the courtroom would be safe.
“I will, Your Honor,” replied Gus.
19
In his “Letter from Los Angeles,” Gus wrote:
“I want all the citizens of Los Angeles to remain calm,” said an enraged Johnnie Cochran, in a sentence that said one thing but that could be interpreted as meaning another, during a press conference in which he blasted Judge Ito for ruling that only two of the forty-two uses of the word nigger on the Fuhrman tapes could be presented to the jury, “The cover-up continues,” said Cochran, in a menacing manner, I felt, suggesting that Judge Ito himself could be part of a conspiracy against Simpson. Many people were shocked by Cochran’s statement, myself included. It evoked, as it was intended to, memories of the riots and the burnings after the Rodney King verdict. Later, in a sidebar in the judge’s chambers, Ito told Cochran that he was going to overlook his public outburst. Hello? He fines poor Marcia Clark at the drop of a hat for the slightest untoward thing, and he overlooks a public statement on television by the lead d
efense attorney that suggests he is a part of the conspiracy to frame O. J. Simpson. What is going on here? I have heard it suggested that the defense is holding it over Ito’s head that they know his wife, Capt. Margaret York, the highest-ranking female in the L.A.P.D., lied under oath when she said she didn’t know Detective Mark Fuhrman, so that her husband could keep the gig. I’ve heard that’s what Fuhrman is saying behind closed doors. It has become increasingly clear to those of us who attend the trial every day that Mr. Cochran is running the courtroom, not Judge Ito.
The baggage handler at LAX recognized Gus as he got out of the limousine Vanity Fair had provided for him and handed him his bag.
“I have two carry-ons, and I’m checking this one,” said Gus. “Be gentle with this. It has my computer.”
“You’re the O. J. guy, right?” asked the baggage handler.
“One of them,” replied Gus.
“I see you on Larry King,” he said. “I want to show you something, as long as you’re here. See this trash dispenser? In the trial, this is the dispenser they said in court that O. J. put the bag in that night, with the murder weapon, or whatever, when he was flying to Chicago after the murders. Let me tell you something—they didn’t even have this kind of trash bin until later. Here’s the kind over here that he put the bag in. See? If the police had asked me at the time, I would have told them that, but, oh no, they didn’t do a good search. Anyway, these trash bins get filled up real quick and the cleanup crew empties them every half hour or so.”
“So bye-bye murder weapon within thirty minutes after he dropped it in there,” said Gus. “Gone forever.”
“You got it.”
The night before Gus met Princess Diana, he went to a dance given by Evelyn Rothschild, of the banking family, honoring the twenty-first birthday of his daughter. Gus had first known Evelyn years before, when he was a frequent visitor at Gus and Peach’s house in Beverly Hills before his, marriage. The dance was held at the Royal College of Art, which had been transformed into a replica of El Morocco, the famous New York nightclub of the thirties and forties, by the popular social figure and decorator Nicky Haslam. Gus was well seated at a zebra-striped banquette between the Duchess of Marlborough and the widow of Henry Ford.
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