If I Did It

by O. J. Simpson

  Cora left the house, unhappy and frustrated, and I didn’t talk to her again until after the murders.

  Much later, I heard that the problems over on Bundy only seemed to get worse by the day. Faye Resnick had an acrimonious falling out with her fiancé, and supposedly moved into Nicole’s house on or around June 3. Then there was some talk about her going into rehab. But apparently she didn’t want to go alone, and she kept insisting that Nicole was as messed up as she was. “I’m not going unless Nicole goes!” she kept hollering, even when they were taking her away. “She’s in worse shape than me!” Like I said, I don’t know if this is entirely accurate, but that was the story, and I certainly believed one part of it – the part about Nicole being as messed up as Faye. I believed it because I’d seen it.

  In a strange way, I was actually kind of hoping that Nicole would hit the wall. I figured she wouldn’t even begin to think about acknowledging her problems, or getting professional help for them, until she was completely out of options.

  A few days later, while I was in New York, I got a call from Gigi, the housekeeper. I had never heard her so upset. “Nicole was just here,” she said, and she began to cry. “She was screaming at me and cursing.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “She came to tell me that her mail would be coming to the house, and that I should put it aside for her.”

  That’s when I found out that she was still trying to con the IRS. She wanted them to think that she had taken the money from the sale of her San Francisco condo and used it to buy the Bundy condo, another investment property. Only it wasn’t an investment property; it was her home. I called my lawyer, steaming. “I can’t have her coming by the house anymore,” I said. “She already cost me one housekeeper, and now she’s got the new one crying and on the verge of quitting.”

  “So tell her,” my lawyer said.

  “I don’t want to talk to her,” I said.

  “Then write her a letter,” he suggested.

  We wrote it together. I told her I was not going to risk having the IRS come after me because she wanted to play fist and loose with the tax laws. “I don’t want your mail coming to my house,” I noted, “so please make other arrangements. Do what you’ve got to do, but don’t make me part of it.”

  Much later, during the trial, the prosecution tried to make it sound as if I’d been threatening her, and that this was my way of punishing her for leaving me. I don’t know how they got that from the facts, but it seems like most reporters never let the facts get in the way of a good story. I was simply trying to keep her on the straight and narrow. The gist of it was, “You’re not living here, and you’re not going to live here, so you need to take care of this. If the IRS comes, I’m going to tell them the truth.”

  By this point, as you can well imagine, we were pretty much not talking.

  On June 11, I took Paula Barbieri to a fund-raiser for a pediatric hospital in Israel. Margalit Sharon, the wife of the Israeli prime minister, was hosting it. When it was over, Paula and I went back to my place and made love. I felt I had really fallen for her, and things seemed to get better by the day.

  The following day, June 12, was the day of Sydney’s recital. Sydney was doing a little dance thing at her school, with her little classmates, and I was really looking forward to it. Nicole called me late that afternoon to ask me if I was bringing my son, Jason, and to see whether I could get there early to reserve a few seats. I was tied up with stuff, so I told her I probably wouldn’t get there till six, when the recital started. I also told her that I was coming alone. I don’t know whether she thought I’d be bringing Paula, but I wanted to set her mind at ease, so I volunteered that information. I had decided not to bring Paula out of respect for Nicole and her family, and I’d already talked to Paula about it. Unfortunately, that conversation had not gone well. She had wanted to come, and she didn’t see why I had to keep her away from the Browns. “I don’t know why it’s such a big deal,” she said. “They all know about me.”

  “I just think it’s better this way,” I said. “It’ll be easier on everyone.”

  Paul didn’t agree and she went all cold on me. I knew I was in for a lot of apologizing, and a lot of damage control. But what could I do? I thought I was making the right decision.

  When I got to the recital, I saw Nicole and her parents, Juditha and Lou. Nicole was wearing a short skirt that would have looked inappropriate on a sixteen-year-old. I thought she looked ridiculous, but I didn’t say anything. Still, it really made me wonder. What did she see when she looked at herself in the mirror? Was her mind so muddled that she’d lost her grip on reality?

  I went over and said hello to everyone, and Nicole pointed at the seat she’d held for me. It was two seats away from hers. The seats in the middle were for the kids, who would be running around throughout the evening. Nicole’s sister, Denise, was in the row in front of me. She turned around and smiled a big smile and reached over and gave me a kiss.

  Shortly after the evening got under way, I nodded off in my chair. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to one of these things, but they go on forever, and there were probably twenty numbers before Sydney got her turn on stage. When I woke up, startled, they still hadn’t made much progress, and I looked around and noticed that a lot of parents were holding nice bouquets. Damn! I had forgotten the flowers. I leaned over and checked the schedule, and there were at least half-a-dozen acts before Sydney hit the stage, so I worked my way down the aisle and hurried into the parking lot. I got into my car and drove into Brentwood and picked up some flowers, and I got back in plenty of time.

  We watched Sydney do her number, and clapped louder than everyone else, and then there was a brief intermission. Sydney came over, beaming, and I gave her the flowers. She looked absolutely beautiful. When she went over to talk to her grandparents, I looked up and saw Ron Fishman, Cora’s husband. We shook hands and he led me off to one side. “O.J., man, you wouldn’t believe what’s going on,” he said.

  “With what?”

  “The women. Everybody’s mad at everybody. Nicole’s not talking to Cora because Cora’s upset about the drug use and about the people she’s hanging out with. Faye got kicked out of the house by Christian – drugs again – and ended up at Nicole’s. Then they did an intervention without even telling Christian, and for some reasons he’s pissed off about that. It’s a mess. It’s all a huge mess.”

  “I heard a rumor Faye was messin’ up,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is that they took her to rehab, kicking and screaming. She wanted Nicole to go with her. She said, “If I go, she needs to go, because she’s drinking and doing coke worse than I am.” But Nicole wouldn’t go.”

  “I knew this shit was going on,” I said. “I tried to do something about it, but Nicole wouldn’t even talk about it.”

  “I know,” he said. “Cora told me that she tried to talk to you about it, and that you said you were sick of all the bullshit.”

  I felt a little twinge of guilt, but it passed. “What’s going on with you and Cora?” I asked. “I’m hearing some stuff.”

  Ron looked pretty crushed for a few moments, but he pulled himself together. “We split up. We’ve been together for seventeen years, and it’s over.”

  He didn’t tell me what had split them up, and I didn’t ask. “Wow,” I said. “You’re right. It’s a huge mess.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And I’m sure we don’t know the half of it.”

  As I worked my way back to my seat, for the second part of the show, a few people came by to say hello, but I was a little distracted. I didn’t like what Ron had said – We don’t know the half of it – because I knew he was right. There was a lot of weird shit happening around Nicole and those girls, and it only seemed to be getting weirder.

  As I sat down, I saw Nicole looking at me, like she was wondering what Ron and I had been talking about, but I didn’t say a word to her. I didn’t want to get into it. At som
e point, we were going to have to face this thing head on, and I was probably going to need her family’s help, but this wasn’t the time or the place for it. I was upset enough. If I talked to her now, I knew I’d just get angry.

  I was also very tired. I’d been in about four cities in the past week, and I had a late flight to Chicago that night, for a gettogether with the people at Hertz. I waited for the second half of the show to begin. That’s what I was there for, after all. For my kids. I wasn’t going to do anything that might ruin things for them.

  The second half seemed shorter, or maybe I just nodded off again. When it was over, Sydney came running over, and we had our picture taken together. Then I ran into Judy, who was all smiles. “Where’s Nicole?” she said. “Aren’t we going to dinner?”

  “You guys are going,” I said. “I ain’t going.”

  Denise came over and gave me another big kiss, and Lou showed up and shook my hand and said hello. “I’m not going to dinner,” I told him. “I’ve got to stay away from your daughter.” I said it with a big smile, though, as if I was horsing around, but deep down I meant it. I did not want to be around Nicole.

  Much later, during the trial, this whole evening became a huge issue. For starters, the prosecution tried to suggest that I hadn’t been invited to dinner, and that I was upset about it. I didn’t need an invitation. It wasn’t like that. If I had wanted to go to dinner, I would have gone. But I’m the one who didn’t want to go. I didn’t have the energy to get into anything with Nicole, and I knew we’d get into it if I was there. The last time we’d talked, prior to our brief conversation earlier in the day, was when she called to scream at me about taking her friends to that fund-raiser. Faye had spoken to her the next day, to set the record straight, but Nicole had never bothered to apologize to me. If I was pissed off about anything, that was it. I was brought up to acknowledge my mistakes and to do something about them. Nicole had once had the same values as me, but I guess they got lost in the shuffle.

  So, no. I did not leave the recital ‘upset and angry’, as some people would have you believe. And I didn’t think the Browns were indebted to me for all the wonderful things I’d done for them over the years, as other people suggested – though God knows I had done an awful lot of wonderful things for them. And I wasn’t in the dark mood attributed to me by several people who were at the recital, including Candace Garvey, wife of baseball’s Steve Garvey, who got on the stand and told the court that I was ‘simmering’ and looked ‘spooky’. Hell, even Denise testified that I was in a horrible mood. “He looked like he wasn’t there,” she said. “He looked like he was in space.” All of this would have been very damaging, of course, except that there was a guy from Portland at the reception, and he saw me there, mingling with my family, and secretly shot a little video of me to entertain his friends back home. When the trial eventually got under way, he was back in Portland, watching the proceedings on TV, and he heard all sorts of bullshit testimony about my horrible state of mind. He was a little taken aback, to say the least, so he dug up the tape and sent a copy to Los Angeles, and the defense team later played it for the court.

  What was I doing on the tape? I was laughing. I was cracking jokes with Lou. I was talking to Denise, who leaned over and kissed me – for the second time that night. And I was horsing around with my kids.

  I was also doing my best to stay away from Nicole, admittedly. I wasn’t going to go anywhere near that woman. I was sick and tired of her shit. If she wanted to take herself down, that was one thing.

  But I wasn’t going to let her take me down with her.

  6

  The Night in Question

  I was in a lousy mood after the recital. I was exhausted, and not looking forward to getting on another plane, but most of all I was upset about my brief conversation with Ron Fishman. I didn’t like what Ron had said about Nicole and the girls: We don’t know the half of it. The half I did know about was bad enough, but Ron seemed to think it was worse than either of us imagined. I also thought back to my conversation with Cora, Ron’s wife, and felt another twinge of guilt. I’d pretty much given up on Nicole, but she was still the mother of my kids. I had to do something; if not for her, for them.

  For a few moments, sitting there in my living room, I wondered if I should threaten to fight her for custody. The idea was not to take the kids away from her – I knew that would destroy her but to shake her up so badly that she’d finally start trying to get her shit together. The girl was an accident waiting to happen.

  As I was thinking about this possibility, Kato showed up. He was carrying a towel and a magazine and asked if he could use the Jacuzzi.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “How was the recital?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did you talk to Nicole?”

  “I went out of my way to not talk to her,” I said.

  “You look bummed, man. What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “This shit’s endless. You should have seen the skirt she was wearing. She thinks she’s still a teenager.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Kato said. “Why is Nicole so fucking mad at me?”

  I didn’t want to get into it – all that business about Kato living rent-free without doing anything to earn it – so I told him not to worry. “You know how she is,” I said. “She puts her anger and craziness on everyone else.”

  I noticed the magazine in his hand. It was the current issue of Playboy. Kato flipped it open and showed me one of the girls inside.

  He said he knew her and could introduce me, but I wasn’t interested. He went off to get into the Jacuzzi and I found myself thinking about a Raiders cheerleader I’d known some years back. She looked a little like the girl in Playboy. I dug up her number and called, and when her machine picked up I left a message. “Hey, it’s me. O.J. I wanted to see how you were doing, and to tell you that I’m a free man – a totally free man. Call me.” I hung up and realized that I really did feel kind of free, but the feeling only lasted a few moments. I found myself thinking about Nicole again, and then about Paula. I was pissed at Nicole, and Paula was pissed at me because of Nicole. Maybe I should have taken Paula to the reception. I had tried to be respectful of Nicole and the Browns, and once again I got bit in the ass for my efforts.

  I went into my home office and started getting some of my things together for the trip. I noticed I only had hundred-dollar bills, and I knew I’d need a few fives for the airport skycaps, so I went out to see if Kato had any change. He was already done with the Jacuzzi, which he’d left running, and I turned it off and went by the guest house.

  “Kato, man, please try to remember to turn the Jacuzzi off when you get out,” I said.

  “Did I forget to turn it off?” he asked.

  Man, I used to wonder if the guy was all there! “Yeah, Kato. You forgot to turn it off.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I held out a C-note and asked if he could break it, but all he had was twenties. I borrowed one, and told him I’d pay him back.

  “I need it,” I said. “I just realized I haven’t eaten anything, and I’m going to run over to McDonald’s.”

  “Can I go with you?” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “But hurry up. I’m pressed for time.” We took the Bentley and ordered at the drive-thru window. I ate my burger on the ride back. Kato saved his for later. I was busy eating, so I didn’t talk much, and I found myself thinking back to the recital, and to how cute Sydney had looked up on stage, doing her little dance number. It put me in a dark mood.

  The last few times I’d called Nicole to try to get the kids, which I often did on the spur of the moment, she had gone out of her way to make it hard for me. She always found some reason not to let me take them. The kids are tired. They’ve just eaten. They’ve had enough excitement for one day.

  I couldn’t understand it. She didn’t even want me to see my own kids. It seemed like she was making everything as difficult as possible for me. It’s t
rue what they say about never really knowing another person. Nicole wasn’t even Nicole anymore. She was a complete stranger to me.

  I finished the burger and felt lousy. It had gone down wrong. When we got back to the house, I went inside and started packing, laying some of my things out on the bed. Then I went to the garage to get my golf clubs. There were a few dead balls in the bag, so I set them on the driveway and chipped them into the neighbor’s yard. I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Nicole, though. Usually, when I pick up a golf club, the world disappears – that’s one of the things I like about the sport – but this time, I couldn’t get her out of my head. I remember thinking, That woman is going to be the death of me.

  It was probably around 9:30 by then. I figured Nicole and the kids and the Browns had finished dinner and gone their separate ways. As I found out later, they’d eaten at Mezzaluna, an Italian place on San Vicente Boulevard, in the heart of Brentwood. Nicole’s mother, Judy, had left her glasses at the restaurant, and she’d called Nicole, who called the restaurant, and learned they’d found the glasses. She was also told that Ron Goldman was just finishing his shift waiting tables, and that he would be happy to drop off the glasses at the Bundy condo when he was done. I knew none of this, of course. None of this had anything to do with my life.

  Not then, anyway.

  I set the golf stuff aside and fished out my cell phone and called Paula from the driveway. Either she wasn’t home or she wasn’t answering. I think it was the latter. I’d called her several times that day, to apologize for not taking her to the recital, and it looked like she was determined to punish me. Hell, for all I knew, she was already thinking about moving on. If that was actually the case, I had Nicole to thank for it. The lesson here was simple: It doesn’t always pay to do the right thing, especially if you’re doing it for people who don’t give a fuck about you.