Newsreal: Been there, Dunne that

Karen Grigsby Bates on how Dominick Dunne's gossipy, glittery O.J. "novel" only tells half the story.

By Karen Grigsby Bates

Oct 30, 1997 | Dominick Dunne has a genetic explanation for why he so enjoys getting even with his enemies: "It's the Mick in me," his alter ego, Gus Bailey, flatly explains in Dunne's latest book, "Another City, Not My Own." That's as good an explanation as any for this disjointed recollection of the first Simpson trial, which Dunne has coyly subtitled "A Novel in the Form of a Memoir." In fact, this book is most definitely a memoir masquerading as a novel. So much so that there is little point in keeping up the Gus Bailey pretense, which Dunne has used in three previous books that chronicle homicides of the rich and famous. During the bizarreness that imbued much of Los Angeles while the Trial of the Century droned on, I'd been in rooms with Dominick Dunne, but I hadn't actually met him until the day of the verdict in what many of us now refer to as O.J. 1. An Op-Ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, I'd been working since about 6 a.m. as a commentator in CBS's treetop deck at Camp O.J., in the parking lot across the street from the Criminal Courts building. There, up on a skimpy platform that swayed with each early-morning breeze, I sat between a power-suited Latina politician, a blowhard talk-show host from Orange County and a black community activist/author. As "community voices," we back-and-forthed with Dan Rather via satellite while waiting for the verdict to be read. Like the rest of the world, I poised, stock-still, in the silence that preceded the forewoman's reading. I watched the booth's monitors as Simpson blinked in teary disbelief at his good fortune, saw his ex-wife's family stare ahead in stony resignation, watched Fred Goldman try to console his anguished daughter and stifle her howls of outrage. And I tried to decide whether Dominick Dunne was going to collapse in a stroke on the spot. It's an indelible picture: the petite, gray-haired man with his jaw literally dropped to his striped silk tie, mouth still agape as he looked around him at the weeping Goldmans on one side, the rejoicing Simpsons on another, the stone-faced Browns behind him. A half-hour later, he staggered into the CBS booth for a brief chat with Rather. He was followed by an anxious young woman (an assistant? someone from CBS?) whose face said it all: Please God, don't let him keel over on my watch! (The combination 90-degree heat of our Indian summer and the fairly arduous three-story climb up a rickety ladder to the booth made this more than hysterical conjecture: Dunne was, after all, 69 at the time.) As he did in his earlier ad hoc interview with CNN, Dunne repeated his conviction that the jury was "stupid" and "hadn't done its job." He was white-faced and trembling with outrage. Two years later, he still hasn't recovered.

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