Another City Not My Own Read online

  Gus believed everything. He couldn’t get enough information. Outside Schwab’s, Gus pointed to a châteaulike building, towering high over Sunset Boulevard. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “That’s the Chateau Marmont,” said the guide. “That’s where Greta Garbo lives.”

  Gus stared, captivated. He had fallen in love with a city. What he knew with total certainty at age nine was that at some time in his future, Los Angeles was going to play an important part. He knew that it would become his city. He knew that he would be walking in the front doors of the houses that he had stared at from the tour bus. It wouldn’t matter when he found out later that Mervyn LeRoy had not discovered Lana Turner at the soda fountain of Schwab’s drugstore on the Sunset Strip, or that Greta Garbo had never lived at the Chateau Marmont. It was where he wanted to be.

  When Gus checked into the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard for the long stay ahead, he was delighted to see that paperback copies of one of his earlier novels, An Inconvenient Woman, were on display and for sale in a vitrine near the front desk in the lobby. An Inconvenient Woman was about the murder of the mistress of Jules Mendelson, the billionaire friend of the President of the United States. It had caused a furor in Los Angeles social circles at the time of its publication, as well as a public snubbing of Gus in some quarters.

  “How could he?” asked people about Gus at the time. “He knows us all. He’s been to her house for dinner, for God sake.” Jerome R. Zipkin, a dilettante of consequence in social life, on whom Gus had based the character of the social fool Ezzie Fenwick in People Like Us, reported to one and all that his great great friend on whom the vile Gus Bailey had based the character of Pauline Mendelson in An Inconvenient Woman was devastated, simply devastated, and would never, ever, ever speak to Mr. Bailey again, thank you very much, and no one else should, either.

  “I’m back,” said Gus, staring into the vitrine.

  The book was on display in the vitrine because the narrator, an investigative reporter named Philip Quennell, whom Gus had based on himself, at a younger age, had lived at the Chateau Marmont in the novel, and a crucial scene had taken place in Suite #48. As a consequence of the recognition, the Marmont’s owner, Andre Balazs, invited Gus to stay at the Chateau Marmont for the length of the trial, in Suite #48, which was a living room, bedroom, kitchen, dining area, and a balcony that looked out on a pink Georgian mansion, far too large for the lot on which it sat. The empty house fascinated Gus. It had been built on speculation during the 1980s and had never sold. Every day the lawn sprinklers went on, and every night the house was all lit up, both inside and out, as if a wonderful party were going on. “I have to fit that house into my novel,” said Gus late one night, sitting on the balcony.

  Gus loved the old hotel. He called it his home away from home. There were friends everywhere. He ran into the great photographer Helmut Newton there, with whom he had done many stories, including the Claus von Bülow trial, and his wife, June. He ran into Warren Beatty in the garage, who told him that his house on Mulholland had been wrecked in the earthquake and that Annette was having another baby. He ran into writer friends there, out from New York on assignment, and he never tired of looking at the rock stars and movie stars who frequented the Chateau. “Courtney Love has the room across the hall from me,” he told his son Grafton on the telephone, “and Keanu Reeves has the room next to me.”

  * * *

  Within days of his arrival, Gus’s telephone started to ring.

  “You get more calls than anyone in the hotel,” said Mario Maldonado as he handed Gus a fistful of messages at the front desk.

  Mary Jane Stevenson of Court TV and Shoreen Maghame of City News. Reunion of the Menendez reporters at Orso on Third Street Friday night. Mrs. Marvin Davis, dinner for Placido Domingo. Linda Deutsch of Associated Press, lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunday with Elaine Young, the Beverly Hills realtor, and Theo Wilson, the great crime reporter. Janet DeCordova, dinner at Chasen’s Sunday night. The Billy Wilders would be coming. Mart Crowley, dinner at Orso. Martin Manulis, dinner at Morton’s. Tita Cahn, dinner at her home.

  In the years between Gus’s flight from Los Angeles in 1979 and his return in 1994, the circumstances of his life had changed considerably. He had left as a failed film producer with a drinking problem, in bankruptcy, who was no longer invited anywhere, and he returned as a best-selling author, with four novels and four miniseries based on his novels to his credit. In the circles in which he had once moved, success is the most valued of all commodities, and Gus was seized upon. People who had once written him off as a failure now said, “You know, Gus, I always knew this was going to happen to you.” His old friend the playwright Mart Crowley, who wrote The Boys in the Band, the movie of which Gus had produced during his show-business career, said to him, “I don’t know how you could go to their house for dinner, after the way they treated you when you were down-and-out,” when he heard Gus accept a dinner-party invitation from a very swell couple who had done just what he said. Gus didn’t see it that way. He was open to all the experiences. He replied, “This is what I write about. This is how they live.”

  Gus went out to dinner every night. Since he never made a secret of exactly how he stood on the guilt of O. J. Simpson, he invariably met someone, often in the most unlikely houses, who either gave him information or offered to introduce him to someone who would be willing to give him information relevant to the case.

  “I can introduce you to the technical adviser who taught O. J. how to use a knife to slit a throat on the Frogman pilot,” said a customer who recognized Gus having dinner at the Book Soup Bistro.

  The actress Polly Bergen said to Gus one night at Drai’s, the restaurant of the moment with the movie and media crowd, after hearing him refer to Simpson as the killer, “You should remember that O. J. is innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Oh bullshit, Polly,” replied Gus. “While we’re supposed to be saying O. J. is innocent until proven guilty, his lawyers are sitting around a table in Bob Shapiro’s office creating a scenario that a Colombian drug cartel is responsible for the murders committed by their client.”

  “Don’t mind Polly, Gus,” said Jolene Schlatter, the wife of the television producer. “She’s a great friend of Bob and Linell Shapiro’s. They fed her that line.”

  Before the trial started, Gus met several of the principal players who would dominate the news in the months to come. At the billionaire Marvin Davis’s Carousel of Hope Ball, he saw Robert Shapiro. Marvin Davis and his wife, Barbara, had become the top hosts in Hollywood society, entertaining in a lavish style that recalled an earlier era. Shapiro was at the time riding high, the master of his universe, signing autographs, waving to the crowds, being interviewed on television, being invited to the best parties. The stigma of being associated with O. J. Simpson, which would come in time, was still a long way off.

  That night, Shapiro was one of the most photographed superstars of the Davises’ party, in the heady company of Hillary Clinton, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Dustin Hoffman, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, and Fergie, the Duchess of York.

  Gus, fascinated by him, could not stop looking at Shapiro as he walked through the crowd with a beatific smile on his face, a man content with his role in life. He was in the world he wanted to be in, a part of it, a member of the elite and privileged. He was one of them. The defense attorney as celebrity had begun to eclipse the movie star as celebrity. Leslie Abramson had become a national figure for her emotional defense of the young parent-killing Menendez brothers, Lyle and Erik. Now Robert Shapiro was becoming a national figure as the defender of O. J. Simpson, and the town was paying deference to his position of importance.

  He turned and saw Gus staring at him. Each held the look. They had never met, but each knew who the other was. Gus walked across the room to where Shapiro was standing and put out his hand.

  “Mr. Shapiro, I’m
Gus Bailey.”

  “I know who you are,” replied Shapiro, smiling. Once he had written a guide to show defense attorneys how to deal with the media. Charm played a large part.

  “I hear the biggest draw in the silent auction is lunch with Robert Shapiro at the Grill in Beverly Hills,” said Gus.

  “But not until after the trial is over,” said Shapiro.

  “You’re getting more attention tonight than the Duchess of York,” said Gus.

  Shapiro smiled.

  “I hear you’re out here to crucify me, like you crucified Leslie Abramson at the Menendez trial,” said Shapiro, smiling and full of self-confidence, as they shook hands.

  “What do you mean, I crucified her? I made her famous, that’s what I did,” said Gus. “She was just local stuff until I started writing about her.”

  They both laughed. Shapiro reminded Gus of an agent he used to have when he was still in the picture business.

  “Now, who could have told you such a thing?” asked Gus.

  “I’ve already heard about your dinner at ‘Twenty-one’ with my friend Lee Bailey,” said Shapiro. “He tells me you think I shouldn’t sign autographs.”

  “Lee’s a good reporter,” said Gus.

  “We should have lunch one day,” said Shapiro.

  “I’d really like that,” replied Gus. “I hear you go to the Grill every Friday.”

  “You know everything, and you just got to town,” said Shapiro.

  “The story of my life,” said Gus. They shook hands and went back to the ballroom.

  Later, after Plácido Domingo sang and Kenny G played, Jay Leno, the master of ceremonies, openly mocked the glove that was then being touted as having been moved by Detective Mark Fuhrman from Nicole’s condo on Bundy to O. J. Simpson’s estate on Rockingham, as part of a police conspiracy to blame Simpson for the murders. A spotlight found Shapiro at his table, and the entire ballroom watched his nonreaction to Jay Leno’s jokes. Later, when people talked about the night of the Davises’ ball, several hostesses in the town claimed that that moment, watching Shapiro fail to laugh at Leno’s joke about Johnnie Cochran and the glove, made them realize for the first time that they wouldn’t be able to ask him and Linell to dinner much longer. Feelings were beginning to heat up.

  “Shapiro was at Jackie Collins’s house for dinner the other night,” said Wendy Stark. “Thank God she didn’t seat me next to him.”

  6

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

  In the circles in which I travel, Marcia Clark is perhaps the most admired member of the legal teams, but her role in this case is a difficult one, made even more difficult by the fact that Gordon Clark, her estranged husband, is seeking primary custody of their two sons, claiming that his wife is never home during this single-most-important moment of her career. I have found in covering trials that juries tend to dislike female prosecutors, especially if the defendant is male, good-looking, rich, famous, or young, all of which categories Orenthal James Simpson falls into except the last. They have little sympathy for a woman who is trying so hard to send a man to prison, perhaps for life. Sexist? Yes, of course. The jury disliked Moira Lasch, the prosecutor in the Palm Beach rape trial of Willie Smith. The jury disliked Pamela Bozanich in the Van Nuys murder trial of the Menendez brothers. The dislike is unrelated to intelligence or ability; it is simply the nature of the beast. Conversely, the female defense attorney does not have this problem, even though she may be trying to win an acquittal for a guilty defendant. Very often, she comes off as a lioness trying to protect her cub.

  The day after the Marvin Davises’ ball. Wendy Stark, who was both the daughter and granddaughter of eminent show-business figures, which qualified her for the status of Hollywood royalty, called Gus at the Chateau Marmont. He was settling into his suite for the long stay of the upcoming Simpson trial. Gus was a meticulous organizer. For him, everything had to have a proper place, a trait that drove his former wife, Peach, to distraction at times. That day, he had purchased pens, pencils, pencil sharpener, paper clips, pushpins, pink Hi-Liters, spiral pads, Scotch tape, file folders, videotapes to record the news on television, and audiotapes for interviews and monitoring telephone calls. “I can’t work if there’s disorder around me,” he wrote over and over again in his journal. He had brought his laptop computer with him from Prud’homme, and Mario Maldonado, who worked at the front desk in the hotel, was supervising the installation of both a fax machine and a LaserJet printer for him. The television set was on to Channel 5, in case of any late-breaking news on the Simpson case.

  “My father wants to know if you can come for dinner on Tuesday,” said Wendy Stark. “He’s having a small group, and he’s running the new Brad Pitt movie, Legends of the Fall, after dinner, only no one’s supposed to know he’s running it, because the producer hasn’t shown it to the studio yet, so don’t say anything about it to anyone.”

  Wendy had a way of running all her sentences into one when she spoke. Although there was a considerable difference in their ages, Wendy and Gus were old friends. Sometimes he teasingly referred to her as “my friend the Hollywood heiress” when he introduced her to people. She had stuck by him during the years of his downfall, one of not many who had, and Gus felt a great affection for her. He had a long history with the Stark family and had even used them as characters of wealth and power in his early novel about Hollywood, The Winners.

  “Ray’s starting to entertain again, on a small scale,” said Wendy. From the age of fifteen, Wendy had begun calling her father Ray rather than Dad. Her mother, Fran, an important figure in the town’s social life, had died a year earlier.

  “Damn it, I can’t go, Wendy,” said Gus.

  “Why?” asked Wendy.

  “I’m having dinner Tuesday with this spy I have in the L.A. county jail who gives me all the jailhouse gossip on the Menendez brothers and O. J. Simpson. He knows great stuff,” said Gus.

  “Oh,” she replied. Her voice implied that she didn’t think his engagement for the evening was in the same league with the one she was offering.

  Gus, excited by the information provided by his source, went on. “Did you know that O. J. and Erik Menendez were in adjoining cells at the county jail for a bit?”

  “David Geffen’s coming,” replied Wendy, in answer to Gus’s enthusiasm, as a lure to entice him. David Geffen was one of the two or three most important moguls in the film business, as well as the most publicized. The word billionaire usually preceded his name in gossip columns.

  “Oh, it’s a big-time evening, huh?” said Gus. “I wish I could go, but I’ve already canceled this guy once, and I don’t want to lose him as a source. Who else do you know who has a mole in the county jail?”

  “Marcia Clark’s coming,” said Wendy in a casual, throwaway voice. “But that’s a big secret no one’s supposed to know, and I promised Ray I wouldn’t tell.”

  Suddenly, Gus gave Wendy his full attention as the importance of his jailhouse spy’s information began to diminish in the face of the presence of Marcia Clark at Ray Stark’s house for dinner on Tuesday night. “Let me get this straight,” said Gus. “Marcia Clark is going to your father’s house for dinner and a movie on Tuesday? Did I hear that correctly?”

  “That’s what I said,” replied Wendy, sounding like her father when he outpowered a difficult film star or director in a contract dispute.

  “How did that come about, for God’s sake? How do you get Marcia Clark to dinner at this juncture of her life? She’s the lead prosecutor in what they are saying is going to be the most famous murder trial of the century. I would think she’d have her hands full these days, and nights.”

  “Oh, you know Ray,” said Wendy. “He has a friend in the D.A.’s office, Suzanne Childs, and that’s how it got arranged. Ray thinks Marcia ought to know that everyone in the film industry is behind her and rooting for her.”

  “I’m all for that,” said Gus.

  “So Suzanne’s bringing her. You mus
t know Suzanne. Used to be married to Michael Crichton? Divorced him before he became famous. Went to law school. Does media relations for Gil Garcetti?”

  “Sure, I know Suzanne,” said Gus. “I had breakfast with Suzanne and Gil Garcetti in New York.”

  “She’s also supervising Marcia’s makeover before the trial starts. She’s the one who suggested Allen Edwards to do the new hairstyle, get rid of the tight curls, give her kind of a Diane Sawyer look. Allen does Farrah Fawcett and Candy Bergen. I forget who’s going to do her clothes, somebody I never heard of before, medium-priced working-girl clothes, that kind of thing. Suzanne wanted Armani, which would have been perfect on Marcia, but he’s expensive, and they’re afraid it might turn off the women in the jury if her clothes are too expensive.”

  “You’re a fund of information, Wendy. I’m going to make some notes. What’s that hairdresser’s name? I might give him a call.”

  Thoughts began racing through Gus’s head. How could he tell his jailhouse spy that he had to cancel him for the second time and still not lose him as a source, a source introduced to him by Bruce Nelson, a famed real-estate broker, about whom Gus had once written in an article for his magazine on the mansion-building sprees of the new rich in the eighties. “You’ve made me a star,” Nelson wrote to Gus after the article appeared. “If there’s anything I can ever do for you, etc.” Nelson was a man who was true to his word. When Gus had wanted to get inside the Menendez house in Beverly Hills shortly after the brothers had shotgunned their parents to death, Nelson passed him off as a rich client from New York who wanted a pied-à-terre in Beverly Hills, and Gus was able to spend time in the room where the murders had occurred. Recently, Nelson had put Gus in touch with a friend of his in the county jail.

  There were many things Gus wanted to find out about O. J. Simpson in jail. He wanted to know if it was true that Simpson was allowed to have a treadmill outside his cell so that he could work out. He wanted to know if it was true that Simpson was permitted to receive his visitors in a private room with no guard present, only a lawyer from Johnnie Cochran’s office named Nicole Pulvers. He wanted to know if it was true that sounds of partylike hilarity were often heard in Simpson’s visiting room. He wanted to know if it was true that Simpson had shouted out a confession to the murders to the Reverend Roosevelt Grier, which was overheard by a guard in the jail. He wanted to know if it was true that O. J.’s exact words were “All right, goddamit. I did it. I killed them both.”