The Search for Justice (36 page)

On the flight back to Los Angeles, Linell and I speculated on what I would find waiting for me at home. “You ’ve put your
life, our lives, on hold for this trial, and now look what ’s happening,” my wife said. “People are working against you behind
your back, and you ’re just too nice to see it.”

I tried to take a more balanced approach. “Whatever ’s going
on,” I said, “it ’s important not to make it bigger than it really is. With the trial about to begin, we ’re all under enough
pressure, this is no time to start looking in the bushes for enemies. I don ’t want to start worrying about who I can trust
and who I can ’t.”

But Linell was adamant. “Something ’s wrong, Bob, and it goes deeper than Lee Bailey fighting to get a seat at the counsel
table or equal time on television. Hold your ground with O.J. He knows that you ’ve put this all together. Do things your
way, because that will be the right way. And if they decide they want Bailey and Cochran to run the show, well, fine, you
can just get out of it, and we can have our lives back.”

“I can ’t ‘get out of it ’ unless the client shows me the door, Linell,” I said. “And you know that as well as I do, I made
a commitment to him, and I have to honor that.”

On January 2, I had to wade through a press phalanx to get into the jail. “So what ’s the deal on your demotion?” shouted
one reporter. “Are you getting booted off the team?” yelled another. “Is Bailey taking over?”

“It ’s been two weeks of no O.J.,” I answered. “So somebody ’s cranking up the wheels. If I had to spend any of my time worrying
about the innuendoes, the speculation, the rumors, I wouldn ’t have any time for preparation.”

When I got inside, Johnnie was already there. There was a tension between us that had not been there before. “What ’s going
on?” I asked. “Am I out?”

When I ’d hired Cochran, it was with the full understanding that he would have a more active role once the trial started,
because he was good with downtown juries, he was good with blacks, and he had a good track record for trials. I wasn ’t exactly
surprised that he had stepped forward, but where I had anticipated a power shift, there now appeared to be a power struggle—or
a coup. Things had changed.

“O.J. ’s not too happy that you ’re charging a thousand dollars a day for your conference room,” Johnnie said abruptly.

“What?” I said. “Where the hell did that information come from?”

“We ’ve got the records,” said Johnnie. “Go talk to Skip Taft, it ’s all in there.”

It was true, we had been paying rent to the firm for the conference room. To the
firm
, in which I was not yet a partner and from which I didn ’t profit one cent. “Nine hundred and seventy dollars
a month,”
I told Johnnie.

Since the case had begun, we ’d occupied the biggest conference room in the firm for seven days a week, almost around the
clock. It was where the investigators had worked the phones, written their reports, stored their files. The paralegals and
the temporary office help camped out there, sorting the stacks of mail, collating the fourteen copies of every memo and motion.
It was where the take-out food was delivered and eaten on the lunch hours and evenings when no one left the office until late.

“Well, there ’s more to it than that,” Johnnie said. “There ’s evidence that you leaked the story to the
Star.”

After the transcripts had shown up in the
Star
, Pat McKenna knew that he ’d be suspected of being the culprit, since he ’d signed the tapes out of the office to take them
to O.J. in the jail. So he went to the magazine immediately, and they assured him that they ’d give him a letter stating that
he wasn ’t the one who ’d given
Star
the material. That person, according to the
Star
, was me—and in fact had been paid five thousand dollars for it. McKenna reported this to Kardashian, who said, “I don ’t
believe that. Go back and get a copy of the five-thousand-dollar check.”

McKenna brought back a copy of the check, made out not to me but to a third party, because, he was told, “Shapiro is so sneaky,
he doesn ’t want his name appearing on anything.”

The transcripts were somewhat favorable to O.J., so of course it only made sense that I ’d made sure they showed up in print.
The source of the leaks on our decision not to hold Kelly-Frye hearings—also me. In fact, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius had it on good
authority: She ’d heard it from two of Larry King ’s staffers
at a Washington dinner! The conduit to CNN, the print press, the networks—all me.

I was totally dumbfounded. “You know this is absolute and total bullshit, Johnnie!” I said. “How can you even think I ’d do
anything like this? I haven ’t busted my butt and pushed these people so hard the last six months just to see everything we
’ve worked for go south now!” As my voice grew louder, I knew I could be heard all the way down the hall. But I didn ’t care.
I had found myself in the role of defendant, surrounded by circumstantial evidence that bore no relationship to the truth.

Throughout our heated discussion, Johnnie never raised his voice. He seemed to take a quiet pleasure watching me grow angrier
by the minute. It was all I could do not to say, “Let ’s just step outside and settle this.”

The next morning we all met at Johnnie ’s office, with O.J. on the speakerphone. All the rumors and stories were on the table
now, and everyone seemed to accept my absolute statement that I hadn ’t leaked to the
Star
or to anyone else. There were apologies all around, albeit some of them subdued, and an acknowledgment that we had to find
a way to close ranks.

“We ’re being driven apart by the rumors and the leaks, and it ’s hurting the case,” I said. “I think we should all take lie-detector
tests.”

“That kind of thing wouldn ’t work in this instance,” said Bailey.

“What about a confidentiality agreement?” Skip Taft asked. “It doesn ’t guarantee anything, of course, but it would formalize
where we go from here.”

“No, no, we don ’t need formal agreements,” Bailey said. “We ’re all professionals here.”

It was agreed that Johnnie would be the lead lawyer at the trial, Carl Douglas would be the case manager in charge of all
discovery, and I was once again the quarterback in charge of the overall defense team and strategy. We would make the decisions
as to who was in court and who would examine witnesses on a day-by-day basis.

After the meeting, I went down to the jail with Alan Dershowitz to talk quietly with my client. I was prepared to resign if
that ’s what was required, and I wanted Alan with me for what might have become a difficult session. However, when we left
the jail and were met by the reporters, I was able to report that no one was leaving the defense team and we were prepared
to go to trial.

The very next day, in Cochran ’s office, Bailey was ready for another fight. “You went down to the jail behind our backs,”
he snapped at me. “You went down there to undermine us, to convince O.J. to see it your way.”

Dershowitz got mad at this. “Lee, you weren ’t even there. I was. Bob wasn ’t undermining anybody. He even offered to resign,
if that ’s what O.J. wanted.”

At that point, it wasn ’t clear to me what O.J. wanted. He was on the inside, we were on the outside, and he needed us. Maybe,
because of this, he wanted to be everything to everybody, so that we ’d all stay with him and keep up the fight.

That day, someone faxed me a
New York Daily News
column, written by Mike McAlary. It gave all the details about the trip to Maui—Linell and me in first class, the kids in
coach, the name of the hotel, the Tony DiMilo alias. I was a “Hollywood character tan-deep in makeup and significance” who
had been demoted by Cochran and Bailey, both “appropriate, decent men.” Johnnie was quoted as saying, “I think Shapiro ’s
gone off the deep end.”

However, McAlary reported, Bailey was now “on the case. Even Cochran defers to his judgment now.” Hmm, I thought, wonder what
Johnnie ’s response was when he saw
that
line.

Directly beneath McAlary ’s column was another piece, this one equally detailed, on my demotion to a “lesser role” on the
defense team. “O.J. told him in no uncertain terms that Cochran and Bailey will be taking control of the trial,” it stated.

For Skip Taft, this was the last straw. The jury members were still out there in a post-holiday haze, not yet sequestered,
and no doubt picking up reports about the squabbling defense team. Inside information was being sold, and our confidence in
each other—and O.J. ’s confidence in us—was eroding. Skip asked Bill Pavelic to begin an official investigation of the leaks.
Where, Skip wanted to know, was our weak link?

In the meantime, we had to go back to court for motions, specifically on domestic abuse and Fuhrman. One night I got a call
from Bailey. “Robert, do I have the privilege of riding with you to court tomorrow?”

“You do not,” I said.

I picked up Johnnie as usual the next morning, and when we got to court, we were both surprised to see Bailey there. “You
’re not needed today, Lee,” Johnnie told him. After court, we went back to Cochran ’s office for a closed-door strategy meeting.
There came an insistent knock. “Johnnie, Bob, I ’ve got to talk to you,” said Bailey.

I looked at Johnnie. “It ’s up to you,” I said. “I ’m not talking to him.”

Johnnie went to the door, stepped outside for a few moments, and then came back into the room. “The source of the leaks and
stories,” he said, “is John McNally.”

Bailey had evidently decided to make retired N.Y.P.D. cop McNally his fall guy. After all, he was already off the case and
safely out of Los Angeles. But I knew that McNally hadn ’t been present for my “demotion” meeting. The information from that
meeting, no matter who had passed it on to the
Daily News
, could only have come from someone in the room with us at the time.

A lot of things made sense now. How and why Barry Hostetler (”Spence ’s guy,” Bailey kept calling him) had been eliminated
from the investigative staff. How reporters always knew where my kids ’ parties or hockey games were going to be. How Mike
McAlary knew about Tony DiMilo. And why so much of the negative stuff was coming from the New York papers and columnists.

“There ’s one thing to be learned from this,” I said. “Don ’t
ever judge anyone on circumstantial evidence. It ’s impossible to defend yourself.”

A few weeks later Bill Boyarsky, who wrote “the spin” column in the
Los Angeles Times
, called
Star
magazine directly.

“What about the release of O.J. ’s police interview transcripts?” Boyarsky asked Kaplan. “Was it Bailey or Shapiro?” The answer,
which the
Times
printed: “We can tell you this—it wasn ’t Shapiro.”

While Bailey ’s betrayal was deeply painful for me and my family, other people paid a price, too. For nearly six months, McKenna,
McNally, and Howard Harris had been trusted members not just of the defense team but also of my office family. They had all
been together constantly, under the same pressure, eating the same take-out food and rolling their eyes at the same bad gallows
humor, going to Bonnie ’s home to play pool and unwind over Mexican food and a few beers. Out of necessity, everyone ’s world
had narrowed, and it was like being in the trenches or, as someone else said, like working in an emergency room. These had
become close, trusting friendships.

For me, loyalty is the key to everything worthwhile in my life. The friendships that mean the most to me are the longterm,
going-back-a-long-way ones. Long-term marriage isn ’t the norm in my neighborhood, and I deeply cherish my own. The loyalty
of O.J. ’s friends kept me believing in and committed to his case. And loyalty was what led me to bring Lee Bailey in on the
Simpson case to begin with. Now that was over.

In his carefully detailed report to Skip Taft a few weeks later, Bill Pavelic wrote that his investigation had revealed a
“systematic and elaborate campaign of disclosures to the press, principally to columnists for Eastern papers, CNN, and supermarket
tabloids. The object… to denigrate Shapiro ’s skills and his ability to keep client confidences, and to enhance Bailey ’s
own modest role in the case so far.”