If I Did It (11 page)

the kids giving him a hard time—they were repeating all the things
they'd learned from Nicole: that he was a freeloader and a bum—
and I went over and told them to cut it out. I wasn't mean about it,
though. I realized they didn't know any better. Nicole had poisoned
them with her anger.
To tell you the truth, though, I was a little sick of Kato myself.
I'd already told him to find a place of his own, on more than one
occasion, and he kept assuring me that he was trying. It's not like he
was underfoot or anything, though, so I didn't give it much
thought, but that was one of the things that made it hard for me to
understand the depth of Nicole's rage: She saw him even less than I
did, but the mention of his name could really set her off.
About an hour after Kato left, Nicole showed up in the mid-
dle of the picnic. The first words out of her mouth were, “Where's
Kato? I sure hope I don't see him.”
“He left,” I said. I wondered what she was doing there, but
since she had often cohosted that little picnic with me, I wasn't
going to ask her to leave.
“You feeling better?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she reached up and gave me a little kiss,
then she went around saying hello to the parents, most of whom
she knew from school. She was acting very friendly, and behaving
like the hostess, and even thanking people for coming. I thought
that was pretty strange. Everyone knew we were no longer together.
Everyone knew she didn't live there anymore.
I tried not to think about it. I went inside and joined some of
the dads, who were watching the NBA playoffs. A few minutes
later, Nicole came down and dropped onto the couch next to me
and asked me to rub her feet. I rubbed her feet for a few minutes,
mostly because I didn't want to get into anything. She was pale and
still looked pretty sick. “You okay?” I asked.
“Uh huh,” she said. “Just tired.”
I stopped rubbing her feet and told her to go upstairs and lie
down, and I said I'd stop in later to check on her. She went, and I
thought I'd gotten rid of her, but within a few minutes Gigi, my
housekeeper, came by to tell me that Nicole was asking for me. I
went upstairs, frustrated, and found her lying on my bed.
“What's up?” I asked.
“Why is Kato still here?”
“ Why is Kato still here? What the hell does that have to do with
anything? He's not here now.”
“I hate him.”
“For Christ's sake, Nicole, you're the one who asked me to put
him up.”
“I know,” she said. “But that was five months ago. He was
supposed to work for his rent, and he's not working. He's not doing
shit for me. I keep asking you to get rid of him, and you're not get-
ting rid of him.”
“Why are we having this conversation now?” I said. “I've got
people downstairs.”
“We're having this conversation now because I don't want him
around anymore. I don't want to see him when I'm here.”
I felt like saying, Nobody asked you to come by, but I didn't. The
whole thing was crazy. Nicole wasn't making any sense on any level.

“I don't like Gigi either,” she said suddenly.
“ Gigi? What has she ever done to you? What is going on with
you, Nicole? Are you on something besides antibiotics?”
“Why are you still giving me shit about that?” she snapped.
“Because I'm worried about you,” I said.
“Isn't that sweet?” she said, but she had an edge in her voice.
Man, I didn't need that shit. I turned around and left the
room without another word. To be honest with you, Nicole's
behavior was beginning to scare me.
The party wound down without incident, and Nicole went
home, also without incident, but the next day I had Paula over, and
we were watching a movie on TV, working on our relationship, tak-
ing it slow, when the phone rang. It was Nicole. She was screaming
so loud that I had to take the phone into the kitchen.
“Why are you trying to steal my friends?!” she shouted.
“Steal your friends? What the hell are you talking about?”
“You invited them to the fundraiser!”
Jesus! I couldn't believe it. She was talking about the sports
banquet I was hosting to raise money for CedarsSinai, for children
with birth defects. The previous fall, while Nicole and I were still
together, or trying to be together, I had suggested that she ask some
of her friends to join us at our table. I had my doubts about these
socalled friends, but Nicole had told me, repeatedly, that I was
wrong about them, and I wanted to give her an opportunity to
show me I was wrong. She could bring them to the fundraiser and
maybe I'd find out that they were truly the good, decent people she
was telling me they were.
After Nicole and I split up, though, definitively this time, I'd
asked Paula to come with me to the fundraiser. I didn't think she
would be all that comfortable around Nicole's friends, though, so I
had to disinvite them. Ron Fishman and his son, Michael, were
still welcome, as was Christian Reichardt, but I didn't want to
force Paula to deal with the girls—Cora or Faye or any of those
people—because I didn't think it would be fair to her, or even to
Nicole, frankly.
When I called Faye to tell her that the plans had changed,
and that I didn't think the evening was going to work out, she
tried to set me straight. “I thought Christian and I were your
friends,” she said.
“Well, you are my friends,” I said. (What the hell was I going
to say?)
And she said, “Then why can't we come?”
I tried to explain it to her, suggesting that it might be hard on
Paula, and she told me that that didn't think make any sense at all.
“O.J., we don't play that game,” she said. “We don't take sides. We
want to be your friends, and we'd love to meet Paula.”
At that point, what could I do? “Fine,” I said. “You can come.”
So there I was in the kitchen, with Nicole screaming at me
about the fundraiser, demanding an explanation. “I didn't invite
Faye!” I hollered back. “Faye invited herself!”
“Liar!” she yelled. “You're a goddamn liar!”
My God! This woman was crazy. One day I was an angel, the
best thing that ever happened to her, and the next day I was Satan
himself.

I hung up and called Faye's house. Christian Reichardt
answered the phone. I told him what was happening, and he put
Faye on the phone, and I explained how Nicole had just gone bal-
listic over the fundraiser. “Come on, O.J.,” she said. “You know
what this is about.”
“No,” I said. “I don't know what this is about!”
“This has nothing to do with the fundraiser. Nicole still loves
you, and she's upset because you're already back with Paula.”
“Who cares about that?” I snapped. “It's over between us. I can
be with whoever I want, and so can she. I don't tell her who to go
out with and I don't care, and I wish to hell she'd move on already.”
“Well that's the problem,” Faye said. “She can't move on. She
loves you. It's easy for you to move on because you don't love her,
but she's still crazy about you and can't let go.”
I didn't want to get into a long, philosophical conversation.
“Faye,” I said, “I don't have time for this shit. I just need a favor
from you. I need you to call Nicole and tell her that you invited
yourself to this thing. You just do that one favor for me, okay? And
while you're at it, please tell her I don't give a shit who she dates or
anything else.”
I know that wasn't the nicest thing to say, but I didn't really
care at that point. I was sick of dealing with Nicole's crap. And I
had Paula in the other room, waiting.
The rest of the evening went pretty well, and that's all I'm
going to say about that.
The next day, as I was heading into town in my car, I saw
Nicole and Cora jogging through the neighborhood. I didn't sop,
but I called Nicole's house—knowing she wouldn't be there to
answer the phone—and left a message on her machine: “I hope
Faye explained all the fundraiser bullshit to you yesterday,” I said.
“If she didn't, you need to talk to her. I purposely did not invite her
and Faye because I didn't feel comfortable having them around
Paula. That's the truth. Other than that, please do not call me for
anything. If it's not about the kids, I don't want to hear from you.”
That was the truth. It was also definitely true that I didn't
want to hear from her. And that right there is the reason we weren't
talking at the time of her death. Not because I'd threatened her, but
because I'd had my goddamn fill of her. She was poisoning me with
her anger, and I needed to get away from it.
The next day, not even two weeks before Nicole's death, Cora
Fishman called and asked if she could stop by the house. She lived
a couple of blocks away, and she came over, and she was crying
before she even started talking.
“'What's wrong?” I said.
“You've got to do something about Nicole,” she said. “You've
got to get her away from these people.”
“Hey—don't you think I've tried?!”
“Then do it by force if you have to,” she said. “Run an inter-
vention. But do something. I'm begging you.”
“I'm sick of trying.”
“You don't understand,” she said. “We had a big fight yesterday,
after we went jogging. Nicole is one of my best friends. We've never
had a fight like that. She just refuses to accept that she's in serious
trouble, and in my heart I know something had is going o happen.”

I'll be honest with you: I liked Cora, but I wasn't moved by
her tears. “Don't tell me.” I said. “Tell her mother. Tell another
friend. I'm finished with her.”
“O.J., please!”
“Hey,” I snapped. “It ain't my problem!”
That was the end of the conversation.
Much later, of course, during the trial, and during those
many months behind bars, I often thought back to that moment,
and I felt pretty guilty about it. But at the time I was completely
done with Nicole, and I was responding as I saw fit. It seemed like
no matter how much I tried to do for her, no matter how patient
and reasonable I was, my good intentions always came back to
bite me in the ass. So I was pretty angry at that point, yeah. I didn't
want to see her, I didn't want to hear from her, and I didn't want
to deal with any of her shit. I had done the best I could, and it
wasn't good enough, and at that point I wanted to put some miles
between us.
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 cer-
tainly 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 o 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 fundraiser for a pedi-
atric 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 conver-
sation 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 sixteenyearold. I thought she looked
ridiculous, but I didn't say anything. Still, it really made me won-
der. 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