Robert Shapiro keeps the reporter and photographer waiting while he takes a midafternoon shower. When he finally emerges from the bathroom, he’s enveloped in a thick, white, fluffy robe. He orders room service–a tuna sandwich and tea–lines up Bulls and Blackhawks tickets for himself and his son, takes a dozen phone calls–“Charlie from Minneapolis! How ya doing?”–changes into a shirt, tie and jeans, and then sits down to discuss his book and have his picture taken.
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“You’re not going to shoot the jeans, are you?” he asks the photographer. “Just shoot from the waist up, the way they do on television.”
Shapiro is disappointed the article won’t be out in time to promote his book signing, but what the hey. His mood is upbeat. He’s amusing himself, in a nit-picky, lawyerly kind of way, turning the interview into a mini-law class.
“What you mean to say is. . .”
” `Get around it’ is not the proper term.” “That’s the wrong way to view a criminal case.” “That’s speculation.” “I know you didn’t mean the question to come out that way.” “Why don’t you ask that in a different manner?”
Then there’s Christopher Darden.
When the reporter and photographer arrive, he’s in the hotel coffee shop, neatly dressed, eating eggs doused with ketchup. He barely looks up. He speaks so softly, he’s barely audible. He’s tired. He’s sad. He’s depressed. He’s O.J.-ed out, Marcia-ed out, book-toured out. He says he left his blood on the pages of his book, and he does look drained. When he walks through the hotel lobby, he keeps his eyes on the ground and drags his feet. You’d think he was going to jail.
He was the emotional one at the trial. The one who got angry, who was frequently overwrought. Johnnie Cochran learned to play him like a Stradivarius. “Lawyers aren’t supposed to wear their hearts on their sleeves, but I can’t help it,” he says.
It doesn’t seem anything can make him happy anymore. What about the fact that Simpson is having trouble getting his life back to normal? Does that give him any satisfaction?
“No, there’s nothing satisfying about any of this.”
Lighten up, he’s told. You’re staying in a fancy hotel, eating free, traveling in limousines. These are the good times.
“They are?” he says.
Shapiro and Darden. It’s the difference between winning and losing.