The Search for Justice (9 page)

At about three, Gil Garcetti called, asking to speak to me. When I put the phone to my ear, there was no doubt that the district
attorney was livid.

“I ’m here with Suzanne Childs [his press secretary] and we ’re at a loss to understand this, Bob,” he said, his voice barely
controlled. “Can you explain to me how a murder suspect just disappears from a house full of people?”

I knew Garcetti reasonably well; in fact, not only had I supported his reelection campaign and done some major fund-raising
for him, I had been named to the board of advisors of the District Attorney ’s Association. He ’d come to my fiftieth birthday
party. He had trusted me. Now, it was clear, he believed that his trust had been badly misplaced. I could only imagine, between
the press and the police chief ’s office, the kind of heat he was getting at this moment—heat that he was ready to redirect
towards me.

“Gil, look,” I said, trying to control my own fears about O.J. and calm Garcetti ’s anger at the same time, “I gave my word
that he would surrender on his own, and that ’s still my intention. Don ’t forget I promised to bring Erik Menendez in, and
I did, all the way from Israel. If O.J. ’s alive, and we ’re hoping that he is, I ’ll do everything I can to get him there.”

In the meantime my wife, who hadn ’t heard from me all day, had grown more and more worried, and she finally beeped my driver,
Keno, who called me to the phone.

“What on earth is going on there?” Linell asked. “We ’re
watching TV, and they ’re reporting that he ’s disappeared or something.”

“You know as much as I do,” I told her. “We were preparing to surrender him, and then… and there ’s this letter. It ’s awful,
Linell. We ’re pretty sure that he ’s gone off to kill himself.”

“Everyone ’s calling here looking for you,” she said, “and I was so worried. Nobody knew where you were, and when I didn ’t
hear anything, we began to think that maybe you ’d gone with him. And now there ’s all this speculating on television.”

She told me that David Gascon, the L.A.P.D. commander, had appeared on TV, obviously furious, and made a statement to the
effect that anyone who was involved in O.J. ’s disappearance was now involved in a felony and would be dealt with as a felon.
Gascon ’s anger didn ’t dissipate over time. A year and a half later, when Michael Nasatir and I were at a Kings hockey game,
we ran into him, and it was apparent, although he was cordial, that he was still smoldering over the fact that O.J. hadn ’t
been surrendered as we had promised—thus making the L.A.P.D. look foolish.

In the meantime, Linell had more information for me. “Lee Bailey called,” she said, “and asked that you call him back immediately.”

When I got Bailey on the phone, he said, “Bob, you have to respond to this somehow. They ’re on the air, out-and-out accusing
you, claiming that you ’re involved somehow, that you ’re deliberately not surrendering him.”

“Lee, wait,” I said, “that ’s totally ridiculous. I mean, we ’ve got this suicidal letter here, and—”

“No, no, no,” he interrupted. “You ’ve got to speak up, and do it now. Before it gets worse.”

I told Kardashian what was going on outside the walls of his house. And then I called up my office and spoke with Bonnie,
asking her to please do whatever it took to set up a large conference area somewhere in the building and to notify the press
that we would be there at 5:00
P.M
. to make a statement.

On the way over in the car, Kardashian and I discussed O.J. ’s letter, which I thought he should read aloud at the press conference.
“People have to hear his own words, so they can understand what ’s going on,” I said. “So they ’ll know what we know.”

“Bob, I can ’t do that,” Kardashian said. “In front of a room full of reporters? I don ’t think I ’ll be able to get through
it.”

As I tried to figure out a way to help him, I suddenly remembered a conversation I ’d once had with Jack Nicholson. I ’d met
him while I was working on the Brando case and asked him about talking in front of a camera, about how to be effective and
not self-conscious. He told me, “The best help I ever got was from John Wayne. Years ago I was riding with him in an elevator
at the studio and asked what kind of advice he might give to a young actor. He just said, ‘Remember two things: Speak low,
and speak slow. ’” This was what I told Bob Kardashian.

When we got to the conference room—it was actually the former lobby of a bank in our office building—it was a mob scene. I
had spoken at press conferences before, but nothing like this. The camera lights were blinding, it was hot, and it was noisy.
But the room grew stone-cold silent when I walked up to the microphone. “O.J.,” I said, “wherever you are, for the sake of
your family, for the sake of your children, please surrender immediately. Surrender to any law-enforcement official at any
police station, but please do it immediately.”

I then detailed the events of the day, and Bob Kardashian quietly and slowly read O.J. ’s letter. His fingers gripping the
paper, he read it well. He told me later that his heart was about to come out of his throat.

Afterward, I faced the reporters and answered questions for about forty-five minutes. Then we all went upstairs to my office,
frustrated and sad. Where was O.J.? Kardashian speculated that perhaps he was headed for the Coliseum or USC, to kill himself
there as some type of symbolism. Or maybe he was going to Nicole ’s grave. After a few desultory minutes of conversation,
Keno drove Bob Kardashian home, everyone else
drifted off, and I sat at my desk alone, trying to make sense of it all.

In four days I had gone from a cheerful party at the House of Blues to a murder investigation to a client I believed at this
very moment was committing suicide. Perhaps he was dead already. To top it off, the police were all but calling me a felon.
It was some small comfort the next day to read in the
Los Angeles Times
that we had conducted “the most captivating live press conference ever” in front of approximately ninety-five million TV
viewers. I felt many emotions as I stood in front of those cameras, but “captivating” wasn ’t on the list. I was hoping only
that O.J. was alive—hoping that he had been alive to hear me and Kardashian and that he would stay alive and come in on his
own.

An hour later, I was still sitting numbly at my desk. A little before seven, Peter Weil, one of my law partners, dropped by
the office. He had his son with him. “Boy, this has been a rough day for you,” Peter said.

“You have no idea,” I said.

“Are you going home soon?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, I have to wait. The press is still camped outside, I don ’t want to leave until they ’ve thinned out
a little. One press conference a day is plenty.”

“Bob, I have an idea,” Peter said. “I ’ll bring my car to the side entrance, and we ’ll sneak you out that way. They won ’t
be watching that door—security closes it at six—and they ’re not looking for my car, either.”

His plan worked. On the drive home, I tried to lift my spirits by talking with Peter ’s son, Adam, who was not quite nine.
I love my own boys so absolutely. What they think and what they care about is tremendously important to me, and so it was
a comfort to fall into easy conversation with young Adam. Very quickly I discovered that he was an avid baseball fan.

When we got to my house, I asked them if they would please wait a couple of minutes while I ran inside. I promised I ’d be
right back out. When I came through the front door,
Linell was standing there. “Bob, what on earth is going on? Where are you going?”

“Just a minute,” I said, and went into my study.

I have a lot of baseball memorabilia that I ’ve collected over the years, both from the professional players I ’ve represented
and from the ones I ’ve been a fan of. After looking it all over for a couple of seconds, I grabbed a signed baseball, took
it back outside, and gave it to Adam. He looked at it.

“Orel Hershiser!” he exclaimed. There, I thought, as Peter and Adam drove away, I feel a little better.

“Well, it ’s just a matter of time,” I said to Linell as I walked back into the house. “O.J. ’s killed himself, I know it.
It ’s just a question of when they find him.”

She looked at me in shock. “Are you crazy?” she asked. “Where have you been? He ’s on television, Bob. He ’s been driving
up and down the freeway for hours with Al Cowlings. Complete with news helicopters, and some kind of police escort, and people
cheering him on the overpasses, you can ’t believe it. Come in here, you ’ve got to take a look at this!”

I stood in front of the television in disbelief. There he was in the white Bronco, with A.C. driving. He had a gun, someone
had reported, and a cell phone. His former football buddies Vince Evans and Walter Payton were pleading with him to surrender.
The conversations were being picked up and broadcast on radio and television, and all the while people were following him
in their cars, or standing on the sidelines cheering, like he was running down a football field. “I can ’t believe this,”
I said. “There ’s just no way this can be happening.”

Later there was much made of the fact that he also had a great deal of cash, his passport, and a beard-and-mustache disguise
with him in the car. The theory was he was heading for Mexico, or even farther. But through what airport, over what national
border, could this man reasonably have gone? The police were watching him constantly, and so was the press, and he was aware
of that. For four days his image had been plastered
on the front of every newspaper and broadcast on every television news report.

The explanation was simple: The mustache-and-beard disguise had been ordered by him some weeks before (using his own name
and address, the police easily discovered, which hardly pointed to subterfuge) so that he could take his children on a planned
trip to an amusement park without being recognized; the sizable amount of cash and passport were always with him, as was the
cell phone, when it wasn ’t in one of his cars. These items were all carried in the black leather bag he was known to have
with him constantly, not unlike other business people with their bulging computer cases. He flew back and forth across the
country quite often, and on short notice, on business for Hertz or the NBC network, for whom he was a sports commentator.
The cash was his “pocket money” used for golf, gambling, tipping, et cetera; in fact, Faye Resnick, in her book, noted that
both O.J. and Nicole were known to carry large amounts of cash, into the thousands, all the time, and they often paid for
things, even big-ticket items, with cash rather than with their credit cards. In this instance, it was evidently O.J. ’s intention
that after his suicide the cash go immediately to his small children as a stopgap support measure until the larger legal matters
were handled on their behalf.

Linell and I were transfixed in front of the television. All over the country people had done what I just did: walked into
the house after a long day, to be greeted by a televised three-ring circus, a weird national spectacle, at the center of which
was my client. Larry King had tracked down Michael Baden in Los Angeles, and now Baden was providing mile-by-mile commentary
for CNN. Network coverage of the NBA playoffs had been temporarily interrupted for the breaking O.J. news, and when coverage
was resumed, a window in the upper right side of the TV screen monitored the Bronco ’s strange ride.

“My God,” I said to my wife, “I hope the police don ’t decide to start shooting at that car.” And then we heard he was heading
home, back to Brentwood.

“You ’d better get over to Rockingham,” Linell said.

I ran out and got into my car, grabbed the car phone, and punched in 91, as I took off. “I need to talk to the L.A.P.D.,”
I snapped.

“Is this an emergency?” the operator asked.

“Yes, it ’s an emergency!” I said. “I ’m Robert Shapiro, O.J. Simpson ’s lawyer, and I have to get to him, to his house in
Brentwood. I know the police have blocked off some streets, and what with the traffic and the people, I ’m going to need some
help to get there.”

In a minute or two, the police were on the line. “Where are you, Mr. Shapiro?” they asked.

“Beverly Glen and Sunset,” I said.

“Just keep going that direction.” They took the description of my car, and within two or three more minutes a motorcycle cop
pulled up, motioned me to follow him, and turned on his flashing lights and siren. Falling in behind him, I took off on what
would normally have been about a twenty-minute drive. This time, weaving in and out of traffic on Sunset, mostly on the wrong
side of the street, the trip took all of five minutes.

When I turned onto Rockingham, the street was cordoned off and lined with people. Someone recognized me, presumably from the
televised news conference earlier that afternoon, and a voice shouted out, “It ’s Shapiro, it ’s Shapiro!” People actually
started cheering. All I could think was, Where the hell is O.J.?

The police let me drive a little farther down the street, near the front gate. The captain and the commander came over and
asked me to stay back—they had a SWAT team lined up there. O.J. was in the house with A.C., Kardashian, and Jason, his son.
Eunice Simpson, O.J. ’s mother, had been checked into the hospital in Oakland. No one knew for sure whether it was a heart
attack or an understandable physical reaction to the emotional roller coaster of this day. I could hear the voices squawking
on the police radio. “He ’s coming out, he ’s coming out. He ’s in the police car.”

When the squad car rolled back down the drive, I could see
O.J. inside. He turned and saw me and nodded almost imperceptibly. I nodded back, and then the car drove away. Later O.J.
would say that as A.C. had pulled the Bronco into the driveway, he was still holding the gun to his head, not yet ready to
abandon the idea of suicide. When his son Jason ran up to the driver ’s-side door, Cowlings, who knew that the situation was
still delicate and O.J. ’s behavior unpredictable, instinctively shoved Jason out of the way, both to protect him and to try
to keep things stabilized. When O.J. heard Jason cry “Dad! Dad!” he suddenly realized that for his children ’s sake, suicide
was not an option for him. It ’s entirely possible that Jason saved his life.