Without a Doubt (28 page)

I knew that I was attracted to Gordon Clark. And I could tell he was attracted to me. I suppose anyone looking at us from the sidelines could tell what a mismatch this was. For one thing, I was a twenty-six-year-old attorney. He was a twenty-two-year-old without a college degree. But he seemed to hold out the promise of happiness. I looked at him and I saw, or thought I saw, stability.

I knew what I had to do and I steeled myself to do it. One evening, I waited for Gaby to come home. I wasn’t nervous or frightened. I was sitting on the stairs and he was in the living room below me. He started to discuss a trip we’d been planning to take to Monte Carlo, where he was to play in a backgammon tournament.

“Gaby, I’m not going to Monte Carlo with you,” I told him.

“What are you talking about?” he asked me, mildly exasperated. “It’s all planned.”

“I’m not going,” I told him in a voice so calm it surprised even me. “Gaby, I want to get a divorce.”

He stared at me in silence for a few seconds. Ordinarily there would have been blame-swapping, finger-pointing intended to intimidate me. Instead, I found calm acceptance.

“Can’t you give me another chance?” he asked.

“No, Gaby. It’s too late, I just want a divorce.”

It was over. We both knew it.

There was one small problem. I had no place to go. I had no money. I could have gone after community property, but all I wanted was out. The sentiment was noble—but hardly practical, given my current circumstances.

I was in between jobs and on unemployment. And the nine-month grace period on my student loan repayment had expired several months before. I’d thought Gaby was making those payments, but shortly after I moved out, I learned that he hadn’t paid a dime; I was several months in arrears. That nonpayment had been reported to all the credit agencies, so I had no credit cards and no way to get one. I couldn’t have passed a credit check even if I’d been able to afford an apartment. How could a woman with a law degree be so helpless?

Luckily, friends of mine knew a man who was converting some apartments into condominiums. He agreed to let me stay in one rent-free for a month or two until I could get on my feet. I packed up my clothes. Gaby gave me an old TV and I moved out. I wrote the bank a letter explaining that I was going through a rough period and that I had no intention of defaulting on my student loan. I assured some faceless bank official that as soon as I was employed I would catch up on the delinquent payments and make all future ones on time. I made good on that promise. After a year of timely payments, I wrote another letter to the bank asking them to clear my credit rating. And to my surprise, they did. (If whoever was responsible for that act of kindness is reading this, I’d like to say thank you. That gesture meant more to me than I can properly express. It didn’t just boost my credit rating, it was a vote of confidence.) Someone had cared enough to look past the data sheet and see that I might actually shape up to be a responsible member of society.

When I left Gaby, however, I was destitute. In spite of that, I was happy. I felt I might actually be able to make it out on my own. Not long after moving out I landed a job with the law firm of Brody and Price doing defense work. I loved my colleagues. They were wonderful, ethical people. I was well on my way to making it on my own. And yet within three months, I was married to Gordon Clark. How did that happen?

Why didn’t I take some time to enjoy my newfound freedom and experience life as a single, independent adult for a while? What the hell was the rush?

The relationship with Gordon had taken off like lightning, but marriage was definitely not on the agenda as far as I was concerned. The Church of Scientology, however, didn’t allow romantic liaisons between its officers and members of the public. If Gordon wanted to stay on the staff and keep seeing me, we’d have to get married. The problem was that I was still legally married to Gaby. One of Gordon’s fellow Scientologists told us how to get a quickie divorce in Tijuana. It was supposed to be perfectly legal, but I wasn’t so sure. On the other hand, so what if my marriage to Gordon wasn’t strictly kosher? We were only going through this charade to appease the church hierarchy.

And so I made the trip to Tijuana. My brother came along to keep me company. Two weeks later Gordon and I got married in a friend’s apartment. The Scientology minister who married us was Bruce Roman, who, strangely enough, managed to remain friends with Gaby. Having a friend do the honors made it seem less frightening. It was quick and casual. Gordon immediately went back to work.

Thinking back on it all, I can see both the pattern and the reasons for the facade weddings, the race from one marriage to the next. The truth was, I didn’t know how to be alone. I didn’t have a self to be alone with. As long as there was a man in my life, there was someone to cater to and mold myself around. As long as I had a man to define me, I didn’t have to confront the uncomfortable issue of discovering my own identify. It’s funny. People used to tell me how they never really felt they knew me; that I was mysterious to them. If I’d been a little more in touch with myself, I would have looked inward to see what the hell they were talking about. But I never got beyond being puzzled by my own actions.

I look back on those days of obscure identity with great sadness. If only I’d found the strength to stand on my own for a while, to endure the loneliness, to handle the challenges of daily living as a single adult! I might have learned, among other things, to enjoy my own company. I might have discovered a real person who didn’t need another to find definition. That must be what happiness is all about. It’s not a life without problems. It’s the ability to handle those problems. It took me two marriages—and two divorces—to figure this out.

Four or five months after I’d left Gaby I was driving through Beverly Hills when I saw him walking somewhere. His expression was so sad. I’d heard that he’d gotten into a fight with someone who accused him of cheating at backgammon. Gaby had been punched in the face. It was the only time I’d ever heard of a backgammon row ending in real violence. Gaby was apparently sinking deeper.

I didn’t hear anything about him for another seven years or so. One morning I saw a small article in the
L.A. Times
. A man named Gabriel Horowitz had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. I sat stunned, reading and rereading the lines of print, not quite comprehending. Gabriel Horowitz?
My Gaby?
It had to be.

I knew that for my own peace of mind I had to get the whole story, so I asked a detective I was friendly with to check it out for me. A few days later he reported back. Gaby’d been visiting Bruce Roman and the two of them were looking at guns—they were both collectors—when the gun Bruce was holding went off and the wild shot found its way into Gaby’s head. It had been a freak accident. The shot had ricocheted off the ceiling and hit Gaby on the rebound. It left him paralyzed.

Such a bizarre twist of fate. For weeks, I walked around in a daze, barely able to concentrate. The guy had put me through a lot of pain, but when I thought of him confined to a wheelchair for life all I could think was “Poor Gaby.” I never thought I’d say that.

My sadness was so deep, it was inexpressible.

Admittedly, my private life has taken some unusual turns. And whenever I can manage to climb onto a plane of semidetachment, I see why the tabloid press ended up pursuing me with such cruel enthusiasm. I had no defenses. All I could do was steel myself for the worst-case scenario. In late July 1994, just as we were gearing up for the harrowing business of jury selection in the Simpson case, I got word from Suzanne Childs that the tabs were rooting around my marriage certificates and divorce papers. A couple of weeks later, the
Enquirer
published an opus entitled “O.J. Prosecutor’s Tragic Secret Life,” which alleged, among other things, that I had “dumped” Gaby after receiving my law degree. It also detailed the shooting incident at Bruce Roman’s, leaving the casual reader to imagine that I was somehow involved.

The stories presented me in absurd caricature, but anyone could see that they contained nuggets of truth. I was so humiliated. I’d never confided the details of my first marriage to anyone at the D.A.‘s office except my friend Lynn. My “past,” as I saw it, was not an opportunist’s upward scramble, but a painful, private struggle. As far as I was concerned, I was a survivor. I had surmounted my personal difficulties through acts that took considerable initiative and will. In the summer of 1994, I was not Marcia Kleks, the gambler’s girlfriend. I was a lawyer—an intelligent and accomplished one at that. I was a damned good mother. And everything admirable that I’d accomplished seemed threatened by this disturbing and unsolicited celebrity.

I knew that the only chance I had of coming off with any dignity was to stay calm and keep silent. I thought,
If I just concentrate on my job, I can get through this. They’ll get tired of me. I can ride this out
.

But the tabs didn’t get tired of me. In September I picked up new rumblings: the
National Enquirer
was working on a story that I had been a battered wife. They’d apparently turned up a pair of backgammon promoters who were claiming that once, during a tournament-organizing event, Gaby got angry and threw a chair at me. They’d also found some dingbat who’d once been a neighbor of Gaby’s and mine. She was claiming that I walked around in long-sleeved dresses all the time so that no one would see the bruises from Gaby’s beatings.

The news threw me into a state of near panic. Of course, I knew what the truth was. Gaby never threw anything at me in public. His pride would never have allowed him to let people see that we fought. We did all that in private. But even during those arguments behind closed doors he never beat me. Never. He pushed, I shoved, we wrestled. That’s as far as it ever went.

Don’t misunderstand me. The pushing and the shoving were bad enough. But I always gave as good as I got. It wasn’t right to let Gaby take the rap when I’d done so much provoking. I was not a battered woman! I was not a victim!

I have always hated the culture of victimization. It seems that everyone nowadays has some personal trauma to explain away his own character failings. It’s something I can’t tolerate. I believe people have to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. This seems a reasonable position for a prosecutor to take on matters of human conduct.

My approach to domestic violence cases over the years was one of extreme caution. I’ve never gotten up on a pulpit to spout a feminist line. I never rushed in and charged spousal battery without a full set of facts in hand. The Simpson case was no exception. From the beginning I’d hung back on the DV. I felt there was too much we didn’t know. As of July 1994, the personal history of the Simpsons was still too murky. From a strictly legal standpoint, we would never have needed to address their history of marital violence. True, the fact that a man has beaten his wife over the years may go to motive if he is accused of murdering her. But the state isn’t required to establish
why
one person killed another, only that he intended to do it. It is perfectly possible to get a conviction strictly on the physical evidence. And in the Simpson case, the physical evidence was so amazingly strong, I felt that we could probably put him away relying on that alone.

The domestic violence aspect of the case, by contrast, left me deeply conflicted. The photos of Nicole, her voice on the 911 tape—these produced in me sensations of dread. When the police and city attorney’s reports arrived in my in box, I scanned them hurriedly, professionally, then pushed them to one side. Later, when Scott Gordon would collar me in the hall, as he did at least seven times a day, with, “Marcia, we’ve got to get to work on DV,” I’d say “Yeah, yeah, Scott. Why don’t you write me up a memo on that?”

Every time a reminder of Nicole’s physical suffering came up, I felt headachy. Sometimes a little sweaty. I’d knock the feelings away and keep pushing on. There were so many brushfires burning around me that it was easy to postpone dealing with the issue indefinitely. I’m sure I knew that, when the time came, I’d have to confront my personal history as well. Which gave me added incentive for not facing the demon down.

By late September 1994, this new threat from the tabloids to invade my personal life left me feeling desperate. If things proceeded on a crash course and the
Enquirer
was allowed to publish such a wildly distorted account of my troubled marriage to Gaby, the fallout could be disastrous. O. J. Simpson’s defense would charge that I had some political agenda for going after their client. This was not a time to work through my personal
mishegoss
. I had to take some kind of action. But what, I didn’t know.

My good friend and fellow D.A. Lynn Reed came to my rescue.

“You have to go and see my friend Mark,” she instructed me firmly. “He’s an entertainment lawyer. He helped out a friend of mine who’s been chased around by the press, and he really knows what he’s doing. If the tabs start hearing from your lawyer, they might decide it’s not worth it. Trust me on this one, kiddo.”

She gave me his number.

This whole thing seemed so weird to me. How does it happen that a D.A. in the course of prosecuting a class-one felony comes to need an entertainment lawyer? Come to think of it, have you ever heard of a prosecutor whose private life has made it into a tabloid banner? I haven’t.

Anyway, I gave Mark Fleischer a call and we agreed to meet at a downtown restaurant called Checkers.

I arrived at six o’clock. The place was almost empty. Businessmen and bureaucrats had already decamped for home after downing their “freeway flyers.” I lurked apprehensively in the foyer until the maître d’ directed me to a table in the farthest corner of the room. Mark rose to greet me. He was a slender, dapper man reminiscent of Fred Astaire. He had twinkling blue eyes and a firm yet gentle handshake. I liked him on sight.

“I’m the one who bakes cookies and collects husbands,” I told him.

Mark laughed. “I’m aware of your financial situation,” he said. “One of my dearest friends works in your office. Scott Gordon.”