Another City Not My Own Read online

  Gus sat on a chair by the wall. He watched Marcia Clark chat with Betsy Bloomingdale as they were taking their demitasse cups to their seats. Marcia seated herself on a sofa and sipped her coffee as she glanced at one of the art books on the table in front of her. Suddenly, she looked up and saw Gus looking at her. She smiled at him, tapped the seat next to her, and signaled to him with her head to come and sit by her.

  “Is this your kind of life, Gus?” she asked him in a low voice, indicating with a hand gesture the transformation of the library into the screening room. “You act like you’re used to all this.”

  “I suppose you could say it’s one aspect of my life, not all of it,” replied Gus.

  “Pretty ritzy, Gus,” she said in a teasing voice. “You don’t seem intimidated by any of these movie moguls.”

  “I don’t need anything from any of them anymore, that’s why,” said Gus. “I left the business and went into other fields, like covering trials for Vanity Fair, or I’d probably be over there at the bar right now sucking up to David Geffen or Ron Meyer, like I used to when I was still in the picture business.”

  They both laughed.

  “This is all new to me, people like this, houses like this, showing movies after dinner. For years, I’ve been reading about Betsy Bloomingdale in the society pages and fashion magazines, and here I am talking to her about the clothes I’m going to wear at the trial, as if I knew something about fashion, which I don’t.”

  Gus laughed. “You’re holding your own,” he said. “I was watching you across the table during dinner. You had the moguls enthralled.”

  “You say all the right things, Gus,” said Marcia. “Is that why everyone talks to you?”

  “Maybe one of these days you’ll talk to me, Marcia,” said Gus. “I’d really like to write about you.”

  She smiled and changed the subject. “Didn’t I read a book you once wrote about Betsy Bloomingdale?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “And she speaks to you?”

  “She’s a classy lady.”

  “So this is society, huh?”

  Just then the movie started.

  7

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

  The Simpson case is like a great trash novel come to life. It’s a mammoth fireworks display of love, lust, lies, hate, fame, wealth, beauty, obsession, spousal abuse, stalking, brokenhearted children, interracial marriage, the bloodiest of bloody knife-slashing homicides, and all the justice that money can buy.

  With Kato Kaelin, Al Cowlings, Faye Resnick, Denise Brown, and Detective Mark Fuhrman in key supporting roles, there’s not a vanilla character in the whole story. Even the lawyers on both sides are bigger than life. By now, who doesn’t know who Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran are? Or Marcia Clark? At dinner parties and in restaurants, whole evenings are spent discussing the case. Everyone has a tidbit of information. Everyone has a theory about what happened. Even those people who affect weariness with the subject, who say things like “I’m sick, sick, sick to death of O. J.,” lean in and listen intently when a new nugget is brought forth. A great many people I have encountered were friends, or friends of friends, of O. J.’s and Nicole’s before the knifings. Everyone has a topper to everyone else’s piece of information. “I saw Nicole jogging in Brentwood just the day before,” said a man at a screening, to which another man immediately replied, “Craig Baumgarten played golf at Riviera with O. J. on the morning of the murders.”

  Gus became a regular at the best restaurants in town. All the maître d’s soon knew his name and always found him a good table on the right side of the room, even when he called at the last minute from the courthouse or the greenroom of the Larry King show to say he was coming by in half an hour and he needed a table for two, or three, or four. He had known for a long time that people who had things to tell him relaxed and talked more when they were sitting on a velvet banquette perusing a pricey menu.

  “Gus, do you have any interest in meeting O. J.’s caddy at the Riviera Country Club? He was caddying for O. J. when he played with Alan Austin and Craig Baumgarten on the morning of the murders. Apparently, O. J. became enraged at his friend Craig Baumgarten because he talked while O. J. was teeing off. The caddy says he never saw O. J. lose it like that, all the times he’s ever caddied for him. He said O. J.’s rage at Craig was out of all proportion to what Craig had done. He’d be happy to talk to you, Gus. I could set it up for you to meet him. He said he’d be happy to go to the Chateau after court one day.”

  “You have to look at it this way, Gus. Nicole knew how to push O. J.’s buttons,” said Jennifer Lee during lunch at Le Dome on the Sunset Strip. They had already talked about their mutual friend Paul Morrissey; about Jennifer’s book, which Gus had liked; about Gus’s book, which Jennifer had liked; and about Whoopi Goldberg’s wedding, which Jennifer and her former husband, Richard Pryor, who were together again, had attended.

  “You would have loved it, Gus. Whoopi had FUCK YOU painted on the roof of the house to keep the reporters in the helicopters away,” said Jennifer. “Remember how the helicopters ruined the whole thing when Madonna and Sean Penn got married?”

  “I saw Whoopi in Las Vegas awhile back,” said Gus. “It was the night of the freeway chase, and she was terribly upset about O. J.”

  “That’s all anyone talked about at the wedding. O. J., O. J., O. J.,” said Jennifer.

  “It’s become the prime subject of conversation in Los Angeles,” said Gus.

  “When Nicole didn’t save a seat for O. J. at little Sydney’s dance recital that last afternoon, she knew what she was doing,” said Jennifer. “She knew perfectly well how crazy that was going to make him, having to walk up and down the aisle looking for a place to sit. That’s not a good look for a guy with an ego like O. J. Simpson’s. Nicole knew that was the equivalent of giving him the middle finger in front of her family.”

  “The beginning of his rage,” said Gus, making a mental note. He was beginning to see how he was going to write in his novel about the buildup of Simpson’s rage on the day of the murders. The early-morning rage at Craig Baumgarten on the golf course. The reignited rage at his daughter’s dance recital.

  “Have I lost you, Gus?”

  “No, no. Go on, Jennifer.”

  “And then she didn’t ask him to join his kids and her parents and her sister Denise for dinner at Mezzaluna,” said Jennifer. “He’s standing there with egg on his face. She’s embarrassed him in front of her family.”

  “The rage builds,” said Gus.

  “You see, once Nicole found out he was still seeing Paula Barbieri on the side, after she and O. J. were supposed to be reconciling, she said, Over, out! Fuck you, Charlie. I think what he realized was that she really meant it. It was over. It was over for good this time.”

  “Guys like O. J. do the leaving. They don’t like to get left,” said Gus. He was thinking of Lefty Flynn. Becky had broken it off, moved back to Peach’s house in Beverly Hills, and he had stalked her and killed her. “Explain something to me, Jennifer: Why did Nicole keep going back to O. J. when he had beaten her and would certainly beat her again?”

  “Blame it on the way she was brought up, Gus. She’d gotten used to having her laundry done. After the divorce, she was pushing the grocery cart up and down the aisles of the supermarket, just like any other mom. She wasn’t special anymore. She’d lost her cachet,” replied Jennifer.

  “That’s what I don’t miss about living out here,” said Gus. “This is the only divorce I ever heard of where the husband keeps the mansion and the maids in a divorce, and the wife and kids move downscale to a condo on the wrong side of Sunset,” said Gus.

  Jennifer opened her gold-chained Chanel bag and fished out a package of cigarettes. “This is one of the few restaurants in town where you can still smoke. Are you going to have a fit if I smoke, Gus? I bet you don’t smoke.”

  “I don’t, but I don’t mind if you do,” replied Gus, not wanting her
to stop talking.

  “Really, you’re sure?”

  “I recognize an addict when I see one,” said Gus.

  “Oh, are you right. Richard haaates it if I smoke. He used to smoke like a chimney, but ever since he practically burned himself to death in that accident he was in, he won’t let anybody smoke in his house. He makes me go outside, for God sake.”

  “How is Richard?” asked Gus.

  “Did I tell you what he said to me this morning, about an hour or so ago? He said, ‘Where are you going all dressed up like that?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to have lunch at Le Dome,’ and he said, ‘Who with?’ and I said, ‘My old friend Gus Bailey,’ and he said, pointing a finger to emphasize each word, ‘Don’t you dare talk about O. J. Simpson with Gus Bailey, do you hear?’ And he meant business. That’s the way it is these days in the interracial set, Gus.”

  “Go on,” said Gus.

  “Richard is a lot like O. J. It’s always his way. Controlling, always in control.”

  “Why did I think you and Richard got divorced after you wrote that book about him?” asked Gus.

  “Richard and I are divorced, but I’m back with him. He’s sick. He’s got multiple sclerosis. Terrible disease.”

  “I know all about MS. That’s what Peach has,” said Gus. “My sons have been pushing her wheelchair for years.”

  “You’re sure you don’t mind? I’ll blow the smoke in the other direction, toward Wendy Stark’s table. Hi, Wendy,” called out Jennifer.

  “Honey, you can smoke the whole pack, and I’ll keep lighting them for you, but, puleese, go on with your story,” said Gus, striking a match to light her cigarette.

  “You see, Nicole stayed too long at the fair. You’re supposed to get out of an abusive relationship, not stay in it. Even after they were divorced and she moved out of the house, they were still involved. Nicole was a provocateur. I’m probably not pronouncing that right, but you know what I mean. She knew he was going to kill her, and she never stopped doing the one thing that she knew was going to drive him to do it.”

  “I could never understand Nicole giving that guy Keith Zlomsowitch a blow job in the living room of her rented house on Gretna Green, with the candles lit and the curtains open, when she knew O. J. was stalking her,” said Gus.

  “Well, now you do,” replied Jennifer. “That’s the game. Do you know what happens when you don’t get out? It becomes a dance of death. That’s what Nicole and O. J. were in, Gus, a dance of death. You won’t quote me, will you, Gus? I mean, you can tell the story, but don’t attach my name to it. Is that a deal?”

  “I won’t use it in the magazine. I’ll save it for the novel, which I’m going to write when the trial’s all over. But I don’t understand why so many of you who know things never want to have your names used. There’re two people dead here.”

  “Suppose he’s acquitted, Gus. That’s why. Richard and I move in the same circles.”

  “He can’t be acquitted, Jennifer. There’s no way,” said Gus. “From what I hear, the evidence the prosecution has against him is overwhelming,”

  “Oh, get real, Gus,” said Jennifer, giving him a pitying look for his lack of understanding. “None of you gets it, what’s going to happen. This is O. J. Simpson. Don’t ever forget that.”

  She was right. Gus didn’t get it. He thought the DNA evidence was going to cinch it for the prosecution.

  Gus liked to have dinner with the reporters so that they could spend the whole time talking about the case. David Margolick of the New York Times and he went to Cicada. Shirley Perlman of Newsday and he went to Morton’s. Harvey Levin of KCBS and Pat Lalama of Hard Copy went to Eclipse. That night, he went to dinner at Drai’s with Dan Abrams, the young commentator on the Simpson trial for Court TV. Dan, a lawyer himself, was the son of the famed constitutional lawyer Floyd Abrams. Gus was impressed with Dan’s grasp of the most minute legal points and his ability to translate them almost instantly on-camera, making the information totally understandable to the television audience.

  “I’m good with the people part of the trial,” said Gus. “I’m not so good with the legal part, so I crib from your reports when I watch you on Court TV at night, and my editor at Vanity Fair thinks I’m smart as hell that I know so much about the law.”

  Dan laughed. “Shapiro says that you know more about the story than anyone else except him and Johnnie Cochran, because you stand out there in the corridor and everyone comes up and tells you things,” said Dan.

  Gus laughed. “That’s true,” he said. “Including him. He’s told me a couple of amazing things. You know, I’ve sort of gotten to like Shapiro, and I didn’t think I was going to like him at all when the trial started and he was playing Brad Pitt at the premiere. I saw him here at Drai’s the other night. He was having dinner alone with Linell. I stopped by his table on the way to the men’s room, and he introduced me to Linell. At first, she was a little cool to me. Shapiro said, ‘I see you’re with the big guns over there.’ I was with Lew and Edie Wasserman, about whom it’s always said or written that he’s the most powerful man in Hollywood. Shapiro’s really a part of the show-business community, and he was impressed with the Wassermans. Then Linell said the damnedest thing to me. She said, This whole thing has been awful for us, Gus. Everyone we know thinks O. J. is guilty, and friends we’ve had for years don’t see us anymore because they don’t want to be seen with us. Bob likes to go out nights and see people, but we can’t anymore. It’s become a nightmare for us. We hardly ever go to restaurants, because people come up to our table and say terrible things to Bob because he’s representing O. J. “How could you represent that killer?” Things like that. I thought that was what you were going to do when you came up to the table.’ I’d never really thought of it from her point of view before. I bet Shapiro wishes he’d never come near this case. Except for Cochran, I think every one of O. J.’s lawyers is going to be damaged by their association with him.”

  “How do you remember conversations like that? What Linell said to you?” asked Dan.

  “I just told you that I was on my way to the men’s room when I stopped to speak to them, and I took out this little green leather notebook I always carry and wrote it down,” said Gus.

  During their conversation, people came up to the table and greeted Gus. Everyone had something to say to him about O. J. Simpson.

  “Hi, Ed,” said Gus to Ed Limato, a famous actors’ agent, as he passed the table with a beautiful film star. Gus popped to his feet and kissed the lady on both cheeks. During their thirty-second conversation, the star said she enjoyed reading his commentary on the trial in Vanity Fair, and Gus told her he was thrilled she was going to play Evita. They both mentioned Gus’s son Grafton.

  “Oh, excuse me, this is Dan Abrams, who’s covering the trial for Court TV,” said Gus.

  “Yes, I’ve seen you,” she said, and then moved on.

  “Gus, that was Madonna, for Christ sake. You just introduced me to Madonna,” said Dan, who was ecstatic. “How do you know her?”

  “My son Grafton was in a picture with her once,” said Gus.

  “Who was the guy she was with?”

  “He’s her agent, Ed Limato. Ed handles every big star you ever heard of. And he gives the best Academy Awards party each year.”

  “How come you know all these movie people?” asked Dan.

  “I used to be in the picture business. For many years, as a matter of fact.”

  “I didn’t know that. Director?”

  “Producer. That was a long time ago.”

  “Did you produce any pictures I might have heard of?”

  “Probably.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Let’s not talk about my film career now. It’s all blessedly behind me.”

  “What’s it like for you coming back here again?”

  “Strange, quite strange. I have mixed feelings. Some terrible things happened to me here, to me and to people I loved. My career in films ended out here b
ecause I fucked things up for myself. Failure is the one unforgivable sin here, and I failed.”

  “Really?” asked Dan.

  “There’s a line in one of my books about it. It goes something like this: ‘Hollywood is very unforgiving of failure. It will forgive you, even overlook, your forgeries, your embezzlements, and, occasionally, your murders, but it will never forgive you your failure.’ ”

  “But all these people seem thrilled to see you,” replied Dan.

  “Oh, yes. It’s as if it never happened. Writing a couple of best-sellers changes a lot of people’s minds about you, even the kind of people who have categorized you as a failure in the past.”

  “Are you bitter?”

  “Not in the least. That’s the way of the world, at least the world I’ve always lived in,” said Gus.

  “Do you produce the miniseries they make from your books?”

  “No. I’m sometimes offered that, but it’s not what I want to do anymore,” said Gus.

  “You like this career better than the movie career?”

  “Hell yes. I was faking it then. I’m not faking it anymore.”

  8

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

  O. J. Simpson, whatever his private torments may be, puts on a front that is as audacious as his absolutely 100-percent-not-guilty reply to the guilty-or-not-guilty query of Judge Ito. He enters the courtroom each time looking like a star in a courtroom drama. Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran often precede him out the door of the holding room, where Simpson’s manacles have been removed from his wrists and feet by Deputy Jex and he changes from his jailhouse blues into his own beautifully cut suits, which his friend Robert Kardashian takes to get cleaned and altered at a tailor shop in Brentwood. They often enter laughing, as if they had just heard a wonderful joke. Shapiro sometimes turns back to Simpson to whisper some final thing. They are all aware that the camera is on them, and behave accordingly. In showbiz, where I once toiled, it’s called making an entrance.