Another City Not My Own

by Dominick Dunne

  “Tell her I am absolutely not interested. Tell her I am speaking for my two sons also, as well as their mother. Tell her the family will not cooperate,” said Gus.

  “She wants to buy the rights to the article you wrote about Becky’s trial,” said Judy.

  “Not for sale. And she may not quote from it,” said Gus.

  “I’m just the middleman here, Gus,” said Judy.

  “I understand that, Judy. I’m sorry if I’m sounding testy. It enrages me for them to be doing a documentary on Becky’s death fifteen years after it happened. Why? You know as well as I do why they want to do it now. It’s the O. J. connection. Men who beat women. O. J. Simpson and Lefty Flynn. Men who stalk women. O. J. Simpson and Lefty Flynn. Men who kill women. O. J. Simpson and Lefty Flynn. The parallels are strong.”

  “Then why don’t you cooperate?” asked Judy.

  “Because they’re doing it for the wrong reason,” said Gus. “They sneaked into this project. They didn’t come and ask my family if they could do it. They’re doing it because of the name value. I’m on TV every day at the O. J. Simpson trial. You can’t pick up a newspaper without reading about Grafton. Malachy and Edwina have new books out. Known names all. And Zander, the one member of the family who wants nothing to do with the spotlight, has just been right in the brightest glare of it. I can see why they want to do it, but my family’s not going to play ball.”

  “Judge Katz is going to be in it,” said Judy.

  “If I ever had a doubt, that cinched it, Judy,” said Gus.

  “He told them he wouldn’t be in it if you were going to be in it,” said Judy. “Naturally, they would have preferred you.”

  “Well, now they have Katz for marquee value.”

  * * *

  Within days people who had been involved in Lefty Flynn’s trial began to call Gus to tell him they had been contacted by the E! channel to appear in the documentary about Becky’s murder and the trial that followed. Grafton and Zander had received similar calls from people they knew. They all wanted to know whether or not they should appear.

  “Tell anyone who asks that the family is not going to cooperate, but we have no objection if any witnesses or friends want to appear,” said Gus.

  “They’re going to make it anyway, whether you cooperate or not,” said Charlie Wessler, Grafton’s friend. “Flynn’s lawyer, Marv Pink, is going to appear in it. It might be good to have someone who could speak for the family. I’d be happy to do that.”

  “By all means, Charlie,” said Gus.

  Gus said to Grafton on the telephone, “I can’t deal with this documentary they’re going to make on Becky. Don’t you think there’s enough going on in our lives without this? It’s so close to the end of the trial, and I don’t want to have my attention diverted. I told Owen Laster to tell the people at the E! channel that I don’t want to hear any more about it. I couldn’t believe they’d go forward with it if we didn’t cooperate, but they are.”

  For his appearances on Good Morning America, Gus had to get up at three in the morning. A car and driver picked him up at the Chateau Marmont at three-thirty to drive him to the ABC studio. When he was delivered back to his hotel at five in the morning, after his segment with Charlie Gibson or Joan Lunden, he was never able to get back to sleep before his regular six o’clock wake-up call. He found he slept less and less, but his social life continued unabated each night after court and after appearing on the evening news. More and more he preferred to be only with people who shared his obsession about the Simpson case. He had dinner at Morton’s with Bill Whitaker of CBS, who reported on the trial with Dan Rather every night. He enjoyed introducing his media friends to his movie friends, and his movie friends enjoyed talking to his media friends about the trial. “Barry Diller, this is Bill Whitaker of CBS,” Gus said. He attended a dinner at Eclipse that Dan Abrams gave for his father, Floyd Abrams, the constitutional lawyer. Cynthia McFadden of ABC, Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker, David Margolick of the New York Times, and Jack Ford of NBC were the other guests. They talked about O. J. Simpson until the restaurant closed. So engrossed was Gus in a conversation that he failed to notice that the film star Sharon Stone, whom he had recently met for the first time at one of Roddy McDowall’s parties, was seated at the next table. He addressed a group of Catholic reporters at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Westwood, arranged by Kitty Feld, who was covering the trial for National Public Radio. He had lunch with Nancy Reagan and Marje Everett to discuss the trial. He spoke at a meeting of Justice for Homicide Victims, the group that Peach had started in Los Angeles, for which she had received a medal from President Bush. He visited Elizabeth Taylor to discuss the trial. He spoke about the trial for Cheryl Reventlow’s charity, Haven House, a home for battered women, in the garden of an estate in Brentwood. He read them a letter that Nicole Brown Simpson had sent to O. J. Simpson detailing the beatings and humiliations she had endured during their marriage. He attended a party Joe McGinniss gave for the media at the house he had rented in Beverly Hills. He had dinner at Drai’s with Shirley Perlman, who was covering the trial for Newsday. He had dinner at Morton’s with Art Harris of CNN to talk about Mark Fuhrman. He went to Linda Deutsch’s birthday party at a restaurant in the San Fernando Valley and sat in a corner with Shoreen Maghame of City News and Mary Jane Stevenson of Court TV, talking about Marcia Clark. He had dinner with former Los Angeles district attorney Ira Reiner, who commentated on the trial each night with Tom Brokaw on NBC, and his wife, Judge Diane Wayne. He appeared on Tom Snyder’s show. He appeared on the George and Alana show. He appeared on Larry King Live. He appeared on Geraldo Rivera’s show. He appeared on Charles Grodin’s show. He did his Friday segment with Dan Rather. He did his Sunday segment with Harvey Levin. He talked of only one thing. The subject never changed. As the days of the trial dwindled down, and the closing arguments were at hand, his anxiety reached a fever pitch.

  He wrote in his journal, “Why does this matter so much tome?”

  Marcia Clark looked drawn, tired, tense, thin. “She eats nothing, she smokes too much,” Suzanne Childs said about her to Gus. Watching her, Gus remembered the night he met her, in the drawing room of Ray Stark’s house, when the whole world was smiling on her. She had walked in that night like an actress who had just been given the starring role in the biggest picture of the year. Now she had dark circles under her eyes, as she stood for a moment looking at the jurors before saying good morning. The jury had not liked her. By now she knew it. The race issue had taken over the trial. To pretend that was not the case was foolhardy. Over and over again people had said to her about the African-American jurors, “They can’t go back to their neighborhoods if they convict him.” She knew by then that most of the twelve in front of her had to answer to other people for the way they voted. She had gone into the trial confident of winning a conviction. She knew now that her maximum hope was a hung jury. The nine black jurors were lost to her. The Hispanic was unknown to her. Of the two white jurors, she could be sure of only one. Only in the eyes of Anise Aschenbach had she seen revulsion at the horror of the murders.

  Gus, in the front row, watched. In his thoughts, he urged her on, as if his thoughts could be implanted in Marcia’s head. Play to Anise. Play to Anise, he said over and over in his mind. She is your only hope of hanging this jury.

  But it went wrong from the beginning. Marcia began with a negative. She began with an apology to the jury for Mark Fuhrman. It fed right into the racism of the trial. It took precedent over the two murdered people.

  Looking at the jurors apologetically, distancing herself from the witness she had presented to them, she said, “Did Mark Fuhrman lie when he testified here in this courtroom saying that he did not use racial epithets in the last ten years? Yes. Is he a racist? Yes. Is he the worst the L.A.P.D. has to offer? Yes. Do we wish that this person was never hired by the L.A.P.D.? Yes. Should the L.A.P.D. have ever hired him? No. In fact, do we wish there were no such person on the planet? Yes. But the fact that
Mark Fuhrman is a racist and lied about it on the witness stand does not mean that we haven’t proven the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and it would be a tragedy if, with such overwhelming evidence, ladies and gentlemen, as we have presented to you, you found the defendant not guilty in spite of all that, because of the racist attitude of one police officer.”

  Why isn’t this better? thought Gus. Why is she falling into the defense trap of turning this murder trial into the trial of Mark Fuhrman? There are two murdered people, Marcia. Get to them. Start talking about slit throats, Marcia. Why are you speaking in such apologetic tones when you tell the jurors that Simpson is guilty? Why don’t you point at Simpson and say, “There is a killer in this courtroom.”

  “Are you okay, Gus?” whispered Shoreen Maghame.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “You seem like you’re going to jump out of your skin.”

  “Sorry.”

  “How do you think Marcia did, Gus?” asked Art Harris of CNN, as he left the courtroom.

  “Oh, I thought she was great,” Gus heard himself saying, but it was loyalty, not belief, that dictated his words.

  That night at Harry Evans and Tina Brown’s dinner for Gore Vidal at L’Orangerie, to celebrate the publication of his memoir, Palimpsest, Gus arrived late, after appearing on Larry King Live. He said to his old friend Tina Brown, whom he hadn’t seen for ten months, “If I act peculiar, tell me, Tina. I feel like I’m flipping out. I’ve become a zealot over this trial. I can’t think of anything else. I even dream about O. J. One night, I reenacted the fucking murders at Nicole’s condo on Bundy, with Robert Altman directing. That’s how nuts I’ve gotten. I look over there at that table, and I see Gil Garcetti, the district attorney of the City of Los Angeles, holding court for all the movie stars and famous people you have here, discussing the case, and I want to go over and scream in a loud voice, ‘What are you doing here at a glamorous party for Christ-fucking-sake, when you’re losing the case? Why aren’t you down at the Criminal Courts Building helping Marcia and Chris with their closing arguments, which did not get off to a rousing start today.’ ”

  “Don’t, please, you’ll ruin the seating if he leaves,” said Tina, laughing as they hugged. “You know Gore.”

  “Only since I was twenty,” said Gus. “I think I already told you.”

  “I was already famous way back then,” said Gore. “Gus is only a Johnny-come-lately.”

  “True, true, an upstart. The story of my life,” said Gus. “I haven’t read your book yet, Gore. I bought it at Book Soup, and I’ll read it right after the verdict, which should be very soon.”

  “You’re in my book,” said Gore. “Twice. Once with Anaïs, of course, and another time with Jackie Kennedy.”

  “That ain’t bad company. I’ll settle for that,” said Gus. “In the meantime, I can’t pronounce the title and don’t know what it means.”

  “Harry is going to explain that in his speech,” said Gore.

  “I’m thinking of writing a memoir myself, when I finish my Simpson novel,” said Gus. “I have this disturbing feeling of not being able to visualize myself very far in the future anymore, whatever that means, so I want to get it all down before it’s too late.”

  “If you’re going to write a memoir, you have to be ready to tell all,” said Gore. “It can’t be selective memory, you know.”

  “Oh, believe me, I’m ready,” said Gus.

  “We’re sitting down,” said Tina. “Gore, you’re next to Roseanne. I can’t remember whom you’re next to, Gus. We’ve changed the placement so many times, because of last-minute dropouts and additions. Madonna backed out this afternoon at four.”

  “Movie stars always back out at the last minute,” said Gus.

  When Gus found his place, he was seated next to Lady Anne Lambton. “I apologize for the rudeness of H.R.H. at Rupert Loewenstein’s lunch,” she said. “I couldn’t believe her when she said O. J. Simpson was such a bore.”

  “Such a bore,” said Gus, imitating the princess’s snub.

  “All I want to talk about is O. J. Simpson. I am riveted, and you have to meet my friend Rupert Everett, who’s as hooked as I am, and he’s dying to meet you. Come to lunch Sunday. What did you think of Marcia’s closing argument? Did you think she was wonderful?”

  “I learned something from Leslie Abramson during her closing argument in the Menendez trial. She knew that the men on the jury hated her, so she made no attempt to win them over. She played her whole closing to the women of the jury, who admired her, and it worked for her. She got a hung jury for a couple of cold-blooded killers. Marcia should have played her entire closing argument to juror number three, Anise Aschenbach, who’s the only one on that jury who could save her from defeat. There was no way she was going to win over the others. It’s a given that she’s lost them. She never had them. She needed only one juror to hang the jury, and that one juror was number three.”

  When Gus returned to the Chateau Marmont after the party, there was a message for him to call Norman Carby in Hawaii. The telephone operator had written on the message sheet “He said call tonight, no matter how late you get in.” Carby, a painter, used to live in West Hollywood. Two weeks before Lefty Flynn killed Becky, he had beaten her up, and she had taken refuge in the bungalow of Norman Carby, who took Polaroid shots of the bruises on her face and the purple marks on her neck. The photographs were used as exhibits in the trial.

  “Hi, Norman, it’s Gus,” Gus said when he called from his room.

  “I saw you on TV tonight,” said Norman. “You look worn-out.”

  “I am. I have to go to bed in a minute, so I can’t talk long. What’s up?”

  “Did you know that the E! channel is making a documentary about Becky?”

  “Yes.”

  “They want to fly me over to Los Angeles to be in it,” said Norman.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. They seem to be going after everybody who was involved. Our family is not cooperating, but it’s okay with us if you appear in it. You were an important witness.”

  “The producer told me you weren’t cooperating,” said Norman.

  “If I weren’t at this O. J. trial, they wouldn’t be doing this documentary,” said Gus. “That’s what pisses me off.”

  “I have to say, she seemed nice, but I said I wouldn’t appear,” said Norman. “They’re trying to find Lefty Flynn, but they can’t locate him anywhere. They want to get a shot of him on camera. Nobody knows where he is, and Marv Pink, who is going to appear, won’t tell them where Lefty lives.”

  “I just happen to know exactly where he is,” said Gus. “The reason they can’t find him is that he’s changed his name, He lives in Seattle. He’s the head chef at a restaurant called the Boromeo Bistro. Now, listen, Norman, and listen carefully. This is very important. Do you have a fax machine?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anyone who lives near you who has?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to fax you where he can be reached. A woman in Seattle recently got hold of me to say her daughter worked for him. I don’t want this traced to me. I don’t want the E! channel to know that I provided you with this. But you can send this on to the producer of the show. You can make up some cockamamy story about how you happened to get it. I’d like to see them catch Lefty on camera. To warn off any other girl he happens to be with.”

  Gus raged as Cochran spoke to the jury about the twins of deception, although he was not completely sure he understood the implications of what Cochran was saying. During the break he talked about it with Schiller, whispering in a corner.

  “The twins-of-deception remark was intended to evoke the devil to the jury,” said Schiller.

  “Explain that to me,” said Gus.

  “In the jargon of the Nation of Islam, devil meant white. Vannatter and Fuhrman are twin devils of deception.”

  “White devils,” said Gus.

  “You got it.”

  “And the jury gets
it, too, I suppose.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Johnnie looks ridiculous in that knit cap, but god-damnit, it works. It’s theater. He’s got those jurors on the edge of their seats,” said Gus. “I hate the kind of lawyer he is, but I have to admit he’s putting on a show. He makes Marcia and Chris look pathetic. They should have pointed right at O. J.’s face and said to the jury, This man is a killer! They’re still treating him like a fucking football star. They apologized to the jury for having to say that their hero is a killer. That’s not the way to do it.”

  “Your verdict goes far beyond the doors of this courtroom,” said Cochran. “That’s not to put any pressure on you.”

  “Oh, no?” whispered Gus. “Shhh,” whispered Shoreen.

  “Just to tell you what is really happening out there,” Cochran continued.

  Gus wrote in his notebook, “Vote the party line, or don’t bother to go home.”

  “Stop this cover-up. Stop this cover-up,” said Cochran, his voice taking on preacher cadences. Several times he called Mark Fuhrman a genocidal racist. “If you don’t stop it, then who! Do you think the police department is going to stop it? Do you think the D.A.’s office is going to stop it? Do you think we can stop it by ourselves? It has to be stopped by you.… Who, then, polices the police? You police the police. You police them by your verdict. You are the ones to send the message.”

  “Dear God,” whispered Gus. “He’s becoming Louis Farrakhan before our eyes. He’s telling them to send a message. He’s telling them it doesn’t matter whether or not O. J. did it.”

  “Shhh, Gus,” whispered Shoreen. “Jex is looking at you.”

  “There was another man not too long ago in the world who had the same views,” said Cochran. “This man, this scourge, became one of the worst people in the history of the world, Adolf Hitler, because people didn’t care or didn’t try to stop him. He had the power over his racism and his anti-religion.”

  * * *

  “O. J. got his money’s worth out of Johnnie today. He was disgusting,” said Gus during the break. “And fascinating, I have to admit that. His closing argument made me realize how different we are, blacks and whites. He wouldn’t have dared give that closing to a white jury, likening Mark Fuhrman to Hitler. He didn’t consider how offensive that appalling parallel must have been to the Jewish members of his own Dream Team. He knew as he was saying it that they had pinned a bad rap on Mark Fuhrman when they accused him of moving or planting evidence. He told them to send a message to the Los Angeles Police Department. He gave them their marching orders as black people. He said some people just don’t want to face the truth, and he looked over at Fred Goldman as he said it, the father of the man he knows his client murdered. I felt hatred for Johnnie at that moment, when I realized just how low they are willing to go to save this rich killer.”