Producer (24 page)

To this day, I see this
Vogue
shoot as one of the biggest and most surprising events that ever happened to me. And as usual, Larry was a part of it. It
all began when one day, he asked me to make a particularly awkward phone call to get him out of an event he had agreed to
attend. “Please make the call for me, Wendy. This is so damned uncomfortable,” he practically begged. “Please do me this favor.”

“Okay,” I agreed, “I’ll make the call, but it’ll cost you.”

“What will it cost me?” he asked.

“My first authentic Chanel handbag,” I said.

When I was traveling the world as White House producer, I visited a shopping area in South Korea where I got a number of knockoff
bags such as Gucci and Prada. They were gorgeous and looked authentic, but now I wanted the real thing.

“Done,” Larry said, “it’s a deal.”

I made the call, got Larry out of his dreaded commitment, and he took me to Chanel on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. I chose
a gorgeous classic black bouclé handbag that cost him a lot. He feigned upset at the price tag and teased me like crazy. But
now that he knew how much I love them, for each special occasion, Larry buys me a gorgeous handbag and he always includes
a note that says, “Dear Wendy, F—you. Larry.”

I’ve framed every F—you card he ever sent me, and I hang them in my closet with a piece of tape covering the four-letter word
so my kids can’t see it. Maybe when they’re old enough, I’ll decorate my bathroom with a load of F—you cards from Larry King,
one of my dearest friends in all the world.

OPPOSITES ATTRACT

As magnificent as Larry is on the air, he could never be his own producer. And I could never be on-the-air talent on a steady
basis. It’s all about teamwork, and as opposite as we are, Larry and I make a perfect team. I have often found that combining
two opposite talents makes a successful and exciting end product. After all, if we were all the same, imagine how boring life
could get.

When you take a good look at Larry and me, I’m sure no one would necessarily have chosen us as a match. Quite the opposite.
We could not possibly be more different, but we share two things that cement our foundation for a successful business partnership:
our sense of humor and our work ethic. We love to laugh and we love to do it right. And so, it’s not as if we decided that
we were so alike, we needed to work together. It was more like, we’re so
different
, we need to work together. And we have been going strong ever since! I just can’t imagine my life without Larry Zeiger.

Look at your own life and find people who are very different from you, but you still complement each other. Some of the best
marriages are set up that way, so when you meet someone you might work with, your differences might be at the foundation of
your success.

C
ertain stories become an integral part of our pop culture, partly for their shock value, and partly for the intrinsic lessons
that we learn from them. Included in the short list of pop culture stunners we have covered on our show are the Scott Peterson
trial, the JonBenét Ramsey tragedy, the homicide of Michael Jackson, and of course, the infamous and never-ending saga of
OJ Simpson and the double murder case.

It was called the trial of the century for good reason. The effects of this nine-month-long public trial and OJ’s subsequent
acquittal affected the American lifestyle at its core as people sat in their living rooms and got to follow, step by step,
the inner machinations of the US judicial system. There was the double murder, the Bronco car chase, the arrest, the stunning
acquittal, the civil trial, and then, there was the aftermath years later, in which the ex-football trophy-winning hero landed
in jail anyway, proving that karma is real and it
will
get you.

It was June 17, 1994, and I was in the control room in Washington, just like any other night. It was a little after 9 p.m.,
EST,
and Larry was interviewing Cyndy Garvey, wife of baseball star and notorious womanizer Steve Garvey. She was on the show,
however, not to talk about her husband, but rather to discuss OJ Simpson. It seemed that he was missing.

On June 13, four days earlier, Nicole Brown Simpson, OJ’s ex-wife and mother of his children, and her friend Ronald Goldman
had been found dead, lying in a bloodbath outside Nicole’s condominium in West Los Angeles. OJ had been questioned and released,
but he was still a person of interest. Now, Cyndy was talking about the fact that OJ was missing, when I caught sight of a
white car on a highway on a monitor feed that was coming from Los Angeles.

I picked up a line to Atlanta and asked, “What’s going on with that car?” pointing to the monitor directly in front of me.
There was an image of a 1993 white Ford Bronco, slowly making its way down the Interstate 5 freeway. It was heading south
(incidentally, the direction of Mexico), and a number of police cars were following the Bronco, driving slowly and keeping
a controlled distance away.

“We think it’s OJ Simpson,” said a voice from the Atlanta control room.

Was OJ trying to make a getaway? It certainly looked like it as the Bronco exited the freeway suddenly, the police cars still
on its tail, a good distance back. Then it drove along the on-ramp to the northbound Santa Ana freeway, changing direction
and heading back toward Santa Ana.

We kept our eyes glued to the monitor and Larry began to follow it while he continued to interview Cyndy Garvey.

KING:
Aren’t you shocked by this?

GARVEY:
Not a bit. Not a bit… A psychopath… is a person who leads their lives often doing acts without any sense
of remorse or feeling that maybe you and I would have. If I hurt someone, if I do something wrong, I’m saying I’m sorry until
I’m blue in the face. Psychopaths tend to walk amongst us, and, because of their charm, maybe their added talent, and their
acumen to garner public acclaim, they are given what’s called celebrity license to misbehave. If I hear one more time how
people are sorry for OJ Simpson, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Why don’t they show a picture of Nicole Brown and Ron
Goldman? They have no options. They’re taken out. They’re slaughtered.

KING:
Didn’t you like OJ Simpson?

GARVEY:
I have to tell you, I kind of figured out OJ and many people like OJ and Steve Garvey early on, because they treat everyone
about the same in the public, then, when that camera, which I call the public eye, is off, you see the true person, if you’re
still around. Many times, I was still around.

KING:
Cyndy… do you think OJ—and this would just be a layman’s guess—may have taken his life?

GARVEY:
I have two thoughts on this, Larry. I think men that beat on women and have a history of abuse are too cowardly to commit
suicide. That could be one. You might think I’m coldhearted. I am not. I don’t think he will commit suicide… I don’t know
what he did there that night, in front of Nicole’s house. But, whatever came down there, it’s pretty heavily weighted that
he was involved.

While the slow-speed chase continued, producer, CNN vice president, and friend Rick Davis brought a copy of an LA map onto
our DC set so Larry could track where the SUV was heading. We were getting affiliate reports that Simpson’s friend A. C. Cowlings
was driving. It was his Bronco, in fact, and OJ was holding a gun to his own head.

This is the 911 call from Al Cowlings:

911 DISPATCHER:
911, what are you reporting?

COWLINGS:
This is A.C. I have OJ in the car, OK.

DISPATCHER:
OK, where are you?

COWLINGS:
I’m coming up the 5 freeway.

DISPATCHER:
OK.

COWLINGS:
Right now, we’re OK, but you’ve got to tell the police to just back off. He’s still alive but he’s got a gun to his head.

DISPATCHER:
OK, hold on a minute…

COWLINGS:
He just wants to see his mother. Let me get to the house [unintelligible] right now is OK, Officer. Everything is OK. He wants
me to get him to see his mom. He wants to get to his house.

911 DISPATCHER:
OK.

COWLINGS:
All I—that’s all we ask. He’s got a gun to his head.

The Bronco finally pulled up in front of OJ’s house and he exited the car where the police were waiting to handcuff and arrest
him. As we watched the onset of the unfolding of a true American tragedy, how could we ever know how huge it would become?

The first indication came when the network asked us to stay on the air after our usual sixty minutes. We’d been following
the Bronco chase and it was another two hours before I drove home, so mentally exhausted I almost fell asleep on the road.
But I was also disturbed. OJ had been caught trying to flee with money and his passport. He had held a gun to his own head,
and then he was arrested and booked. The idea that OJ Simpson, a celebrated American football hero, sportscaster, and actor,
could be under suspicion for two brutal murders
was impossible to believe. Doubly disturbing was the fact that this family man with so much talent and so many opportunities
could very well be guilty.

During the months leading up to the trial, in which the prosecutors announced they would seek a life sentence with no possibility
of parole rather than the death penalty, the world was watching. On January 23, 1995, with OJ languishing in jail, the trial
began with opening statements by the prosecution and the defense. Since the judge had granted television privileges throughout
the entire trial, an unprecedented decision, the networks were on high alert at all times.

As Larry’s producer, this was the first time I was faced with covering the same topic night after night. But while it was
grueling in its own right, I found it easier than I had expected. Each time a friend said, “You must be so busy with the OJ
trial,” I smiled to myself. They had no idea what “busy” really was. Try being a White House producer. Imagine falling asleep
at night and being awakened three hours later with a call that you have to go to the White House right then. That kind of
thing was business as usual back then. I could be on vacation, at a wedding, at the gym, or in bed with ice packs on my face
after dental surgery, and the call inevitably came. I was in all of these positions at different times when I was roused in
the middle of the night and ended up outside in the dark, hailing a cab to the White House. Or worse, at a moment’s notice,
I would find myself half asleep, getting on a plane to God only knew where. It was no wonder I had come to hate flying so
much.

A moment on March 6, 1991, stands out in my mind. I had worked all day and I was at the gym exercising when my pager went
off. I called in to find that President Bush was going to address the nation and I needed to go directly to the
White House. My hair was wet, I had on my pink sweats, and I rushed over to the White House. I still have a picture on my
wall of a group of us standing in the Oval Office with George H. W. Bush, with me still in my gym clothes.

Years earlier, in 1983, when the Beirut bombing occurred, 241 service members were killed, including 220 Marines. I’d just
had four wisdom teeth extracted and I was in bed doped up with cold packs on my face, when the news of the bombing hit the
airwaves. I dragged myself out of bed and made my way to the White House, looking like someone had hit me in the face repeatedly
since my cheeks were swollen, I was in a lot of pain, and my voice wasn’t working very well.

Dean Reynolds, the first person I saw, was mortified when he looked at me, his producer. “Why the hell are you here?” he asked
me. “You look terrible.”

Dean and I had seen each other at our worst. Back in 1983, I had been Dean’s White House producer when he was CNN White House
correspondent and he had been demonstrating some irritable behavior. When I got a call that day that my father had had a stroke,
Dean met me outside the White House to talk. “I’ve been a little tough on you lately,” he said. “I just wanted you to know
that my dad is sick, too, and I haven’t told anybody. I’ve been under a lot of pressure and I’m really sorry.”

My father was in the hospital recovering from the stroke when I had a bad feeling some days later. I picked up the phone in
the White House where I was working and called my father’s hospital room. My mom answered and said in a shaky voice, “Dad
just died.” He was sixty-eight, which we considered old at the time.

I hung up the phone and before I could figure out what to do next, Dean called the CNN bureau and said, “Wendy’s
dad just died. I want to leave the White House and take her home.”

A producer said, “But your story will be late.”

Dean said quite calmly, “I just told you that Wendy’s father died. I’m taking her home right now.”

He drove me home, and later that day I got a flight back home to Jackson, Michigan, to attend the funeral and be with my mom
and my sisters. Ironically, Dean’s father, Frank, died a few days later. When I got back to Washington a little bit earlier
than planned so I could attend the Reynolds wake, Dean was very glad to see me. “I can’t believe you made it back, Wendy,”
he said. “Thank you so much for being here.”