Could the message be any clearer? It sounded to me like she was saying, “I’ll go to the highest bidder.” We would have loved to use this material to impeach her when she appeared at trial. (And we knew she would; Ito had ruled that the Redondo Beach incidents were not too remote in time to be ruled inadmissible.) Unfortunately, we were in a bind. The more evidence we used to discredit Bell, the more latitude the defense would be given to introduce other evidence of the N-word in order to shore up Bell’s credibility. In the end, we had to cut our losses and go easy on Kathleen Bell.
In the frenzy of Monday-morning quarterbacking that followed the trial, pundits would soberly characterize Bell as a credible witness with no ax to grind. Give me a break. This woman was looking for a payday and, very possibly, for payback. What more satisfying revenge could you take on a man who has rejected you than to humiliate him before an entire nation? The supreme irony was that Mark Fuhrman didn’t even remember her. But we’d all have to deal with her in court, when Kathleen Bell would have a chance to savor her few minutes of fame.
The relationship between Chris and Mark continued to deteriorate. Chris would not spend more than five minutes in Mark’s company if he could help it. And Chris made it clear that he intended to treat Mark as a hostile witness. He didn’t intend to object to anything the defense said on cross. Just great, I thought. If it looks like we despise Fuhrman, the jury will not only feel free to hate him, but will conclude that we don’t believe him, and that we think he planted evidence.
The Sunday of Presidents’ Day weekend, I’d come into the office to fine-tune my direct of Kato Kaelin. I was plowing through a mountain of binders, on my fifth cigarette of the day, when Cheri knocked on the door.
“What’s up?” I asked her, grateful for a break. I leaned back and put my feet on the desk. I was wearing my usual weekend uniform: leggings, sneakers, and a sweatshirt. Cheri looked worried.
“I don’t know if you know what’s going on,” she said. “But Chris had Mark down in the grand jury room. There were about ten other deputies and law clerks firing questions at him.”
I shot forward in my chair and slammed my feet onto the floor. Why the grand jury room? Why the cast of thousands? If you want to act out a cross realistically, only one person should be doing the questioning.
Alan Yochelson, one of our deputies who was a good bud of Chris’s, stuck his head in the door.
“What the fuck is going on down there?” I demanded.
“They were firing questions at him and he denied using racial slurs,” Alan reported. “I don’t know if Chris expected this setup would get him to admit it, or what. But whatever he expected, Mark hasn’t admitted to anything.”
“Where are they now?” I asked.
“I don’t know, it broke up a few minutes ago,” said Cheri. “I’m not sure where Chris is, maybe in with Terry.”
I was furious. This was just so typical of Chris. He loved to be the center of attention. He’d never do anything quietly if he could turn it into a sound-and-light show. That’s the problem with the team approach to prosecution. You can’t stay on top of what other members of the team are doing all the time; you have to give them a certain amount of autonomy. But if they’re willful, they’re likely to do ill-considered things. I kept my temper in check until the end of the day, when Chris himself finally thought to pay me a visit.
“Quite a spectacle,” I drawled sarcastically. “Who’s writing the screenplay?”
He came back defensively. “Hey, there wasn’t any air conditioning in my office, so I got Terry to open up the grand jury room for us. There were people hanging around. They wanted to give us ideas.” His voice trailed off. His back was half turned to me as he fiddled with the collection of ceramic mugs on my little refrigerator.
Finally, he turned. His previous bravado was gone. “Look, Marcia,” he said, “I can’t deal with that motherfucker. I don’t think I can do him.”
“You’re dumping him on me now?” I wailed. “You know I’m buried.”
It was true. I had a ton of work to do with Kato, plus at least two more days’ worth of interviewing with Allan Park. I was still searching for a use-of-force expert to explain how one man could quickly dispatch two victims with a knife. And I hadn’t even started on the hair and trace evidence.
Chris shrugged. “Let Hank do it.”
“Hank’s got his hands full with Dennis Fung.”
The only other alternative was a special prosecutor, but I dismissed that idea out of hand. It would send the wrong message to the jury.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it.”
I leaned forward and rested my head on my hands. There was no way around it. I would have to take Mark.
This would double my load over the next two weeks. Chris had not done much actual prep work with Fuhrman, which meant I would have to organize his testimony from scratch. I’d have to weave in all the reasons why he couldn’t and wouldn’t have planted evidence-but if I spent too much time talking about how he’d done nothing wrong, we’d look defensive. Spend too little and we’d leave holes for the defense to fill in with sinister fantasies. It would be yet another tightrope walk.
Damn. I only wished Chris had dumped him earlier.
“Chris?” I lifted my head but he was gone.
Was I pissed? I sure was. For about a hour. And then my anger softened. Chris was under pressure, too. Some of it I could only guess at. I reminded myself that home for him was a black working-class community where the prevailing sentiment was that Simpson had been framed. Chris had to worry about whether his best friends considered him an Uncle Tom. He’d been spat on. He’d been flipped off. Every day of the week he had to walk out his door prepared to take it on the chin.
I remembered one ugly incident when he and I had made a trip out to the offices of Nicole’s divorce attorneys in West L.A. As he entered the elevator, a young white woman beside us glanced up at Chris. Then she pulled her purse closer to her body. I’ll never forget the look on his face. One minute you’re an attorney, a civil servant, a full partner. The next minute you’re a suspected mugger. Chris had managed to keep his dignity in a dangerous, miserable, unfair world, and his courage often moved me. Beyond that, he had the greatness of soul to think beyond himself and his race and take up the cudgel for battered women. He’d gone to bat for DV-which, deep down, I knew lay at the center of this case. He’d picked up that burden when I’d felt too weak to carry it. He took on my demon issue.
The least I could do was take on his.
Early the following week, I’d polished off a bag of the pretzels I always nibble on and was scouting the office for more goodies. People were always sending us care packages. I’d nicknamed the War Room the Snack Vortex. I’d spotted a gift basket and was about to plunder a tin of pâté when Scott Gordon put his hand on my arm.
“Someone leaked the mock cross to Newsweek,” he whispered. His eyes were darting over my shoulder. He was clearly afraid of being overheard.
“Mark denied everything,” I whispered back. “What’s newsworthy about that?”
“Well, that’s not how the article reads.”
The way it read, apparently, was that Detective Fuhrman had “admitted that he’d made racial slurs in the past.”
Oh, man. Could they hit us any lower? How could someone on our own team have gabbed to the press-and leaked lies to boot?
I caught up with Chris in Suzanne’s office. He was pacing furiously. Obviously, he’d heard the news.
“I want every single person on this team to take a polygraph!” he was saying. “Everyone! Right fucking now. I’m going to get to the bottom of this!”