LOS ANGELES -- He is taken from a windowless cell in Men's Central Jail to a windowless holding room on the ninth floor of the Criminal Courts building on the gritty, northern edge of downtown L.A.
There, the deputies, who laugh and joke with him (O. J. Simpson is a model prisoner, after all) unlock his shackles, and he changes out of his blue jail jumpsuit.
He must wear the jumpsuit a week before it is washed, though he is allowed to change his underwear twice each week.
In the holding room, one of his lawyers hands him a suit from the extensive wardrobe Simpson keeps at his home on North Rockingham Avenue.
The suits are both conservative and beautiful, and as he changes clothes, his mood visibly improves.
With a suit on his back, a belt around his waist, a tie at his throat, he enters the world of normal people, the world of people not accused of homicide.
He follows his attorneys through the unmarked, wood-paneled door into Courtroom 9-307. He has done this many times over the past several months, but today, with opening statements scheduled, his trial really begins.
His chief lawyers -- Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, and F. Lee Bailey -- are all short men, and Simpson towers over them. At the defense table, the chairs have been adjusted to equalize things a bit.
Until Friday, the courtroom looked much like any other. But now, two giant projection TV screens set up to show the jury a high-tech display of evidence make it look a bit like a sports bar.
Judge Lance Ito, his judicial bench crowded with knickknacks and mementos, is always the last to enter. He checks the courtroom temperature on a thermostat behind him -- he complains when anyone touches it -- and takes his seat.
Before court begins, the opposing lawyers act in a collegial manner, greeting each other by first name and shaking hands.
But on Friday, the prosecution introduced a new chill into the proceedings. Deputy District Attorney Christopher Darden announced that a new witness for the prosecution had come forward.
She is a woman who once baby-sat for Nicole Simpson's two children and who will reportedly testify that Nicole carried Mace to protect herself from O. J.
When the name of the woman was announced, Simpson shook his head sadly and laughed. But his mood changed swiftly when Darden made his next statement.
"The witness has a fear for her physical safety, should the defense learn of her address and phone number," Darden told Judge Ito.
Simpson looked shocked. His lawyers exchanged outraged glances. Carl Douglas, one of Simpson's secondary lawyers, leapt to his feet.
"I take umbrage that O. J. Simpson poses a threat to her or any witness!" he said.
No, not O. J. Not the Juice. How could anyone accuse this man of posing a threat to anyone?
The murders of Nicole and Ron Goldman?
That wasn't O. J., the defense will tell the jury. First of all, it had to take more than one person to commit those crimes, and second of all, neither one of them was Orenthal James Simpson.
Couldn't have been. He was at home, waiting for a ride to the airport. Just ask his lawyers.
From her seat in the front row of the spectators' area, Denise Brown, Nicole's elder sister, allowed a grim smile to play across her lips as Simpson's lawyers expounded upon his peaceful nature.
She is waiting for the day when she will stop being an observer and will take the witness stand. And, when one sits and watches her watching Simpson with her jaw locked and her eyes unswerving, one gets the impression she can't wait to stick a knife in him as she believes he stuck one in her sister.
*
Killing a person with a knife is a rare form of homicide in Los Angeles County.
In 1993, the last year for which statistics have been assembled, only 9 percent of the 2,065 homicides were accomplished by stabbing, cutting or hacking.
It is a particularly intimate crime.
Unlike shooting, which can be accomplished quickly, impersonally and from a distance, a stabbing literally links the killer and victim.
And according to experts, excessive slashing and puncture wounds far in excess of what it takes to kill are commonplace in such crimes.
Nicole Brown Simpson's neck was slashed to the spinal column, the knife going one-quarter inch into the vertebrae. The knife severed both her carotid arteries and one jugular vein.
Ron Goldman was cut more times than Nicole and exhibited four wounds to his neck, head, chest and side, any one of which would have been sufficient to end his life. One wound was more than 5 inches deep.
Both bodies also exhibited classic "defense" wounds, which are wounds to the fingers, palms and forearms as the victim attempts to ward off the blows.
"If you've got a gun, it's real easy and clean -- you don't have to get yourself dirty," said Kris Mohandie, a Los Angeles Police Department psychologist. "Using a knife entails a lot of something else -- a lot more work, a lot more involvement, a lot more investment, both physically and emotionally."
*
"B," who has contacts within both the defense and prosecution sides of the case, sits with me in Mezzaluna, next to the big table where Nicole had her last meal on June 12.
Sydney, Nicole's and O. J.'s 8-year-old, had just finished a dance recital and Nicole, nine family members and friends were celebrating.
O. J. had been at the recital but was not at Mezzaluna.
He went to McDonald's with Kato Kaelin instead. Kato ordered a fish sandwich. We do not know what O. J. ordered, but whatever it was, the prosecution will tell the jury, he could not stomach it.
All he could think about was Nicole at Mezzaluna, where Ron Goldman was waiting tables.
"Nicole knew how to push O. J.'s buttons," Dominick Dunne quotes a friend of the Simpsons as saying in the February Vanity Fair magazine. "When she didn't save a seat for O. J. at their daughter's dance recital that last afternoon, she knew how crazy that was going to make him, having to walk up and down the aisle looking for a place to sit. She knew that was the equivalent of giving him the middle finger."
Rage, the prosecution will tell the jury. Rage and jealousy and the knowledge that he could no longer control Nicole. Those, coupled with his long history of violent and abusive behavior, were enough to transform O. J. Simpson from the friendly, smiling person you see sitting in court day after day to the monster who slashed and cut and killed.
Nonsense. Utter nonsense.
That is what the defense will say. First, O. J. Simpson was invited to dinner at Mezzaluna, but he declined. Second, he had taken worse treatment from Nicole -- he once peeked through her window and watched her have sex with a man while his children slept upstairs -- but neither attacked Nicole nor the man afterward.
So why should he be moved to murder on this occasion? It is nonsense. The prosecution cannot present a real motive for O. J. to commit this act.
Nor can it present the means he used -- no one man could have committed such a violent double homicide and escaped in such good shape.
Nor can the prosecution demonstrate that O. J. had the opportunity. He could not have driven the two miles to Nicole's condominium, killed two people, gotten rid of his bloody clothes and bloody knife, driven two miles back home and caught the limousine ride to the airport.
"B" cuts into her wild mushroom pizza, a specialty of Mezzaluna.
"This is what Nicole ate on her last night alive," she says. "Of course, we don't really know what she had. The coroner's office threw out her stomach contents. They kept Ron Goldman's and threw away Nicole's. Incredible. Stomach contents are so important in fixing the time of death."
Keystone Kops. That is what the defense will tell the jury. This case, this celebrated, historic case, was booted and botched and bungled from the beginning.
We leave Mezzaluna shortly after 8:30 p.m., the same time Nicole left. I glance up the street to the Starbucks, where Nicole first met Ron Goldman. Nicole would stop there after running, meet Ron and sometimes they would work out at a gym together.
"That is what Brentwood women do," "A," who used to live a few blocks from here, says. "They are beautiful. They are blond. They have huge diamonds. They work out. That is what they do."
I get into my rental car and drive the few short blocks to Bundy, where the murders were committed. It is a dark street, a side street, but also a well-known short cut from San Vicente, where Mezzaluna is located, to a major expressway.
The entrance to Nicole's condominium is draped in shadows and partially hidden from the road by large plants and agapanthus bushes. But cars drive by all the time. And how could anybody risk slashing two people to death in an entrance way that is even semi-exposed to view from the street?
That is what rage does, the prosecution will argue. It clouds your judgment. Rage will make a killer risk anything to carry out his deed.
The tourists looking for Nicole's condominium and O. J.'s house have largely disappeared by now, much to the relief of the residents of this up-scale neighborhood. Roseanne Arnold lives in Brentwood. As does James Garner. As does the mayor of Los Angeles. As does Gil Garcetti, the district attorney who is attempting to send O. J. Simpson away.
It has one of the lowest crime rates in the city.
*
Studies have shown that trials are often won or lost in opening statements. But few trials last longer than a few days or a few weeks. The O. J. Simpson trial will almost certainly last for months.
So there is a real question of whether the jury will remember the opening statements when it comes time for them to deliberate. Yet each side considers today crucial.
The defense has decided to go for all or nothing: either an acquittal for murder or a conviction. It does not want the jury to convict on manslaughter as a compromise.
"This is a man on trial for his life," Johnnie Cochran told the jurors when they were being selected.
True, the state is not seeking the death penalty. But Simpson is a man who spent his life running free like the wind and now he sits in a 9-by-7-foot cell. If he is convicted of any crime, Cochran will argue, his life will be over.
And, meanwhile, the real killer, he will say, goes free.
"They've got every police agency in the U.S. working on this case," Cochran told reporters after he left court on Friday. "But they're only looking in one direction."
Who should they be looking for?
"I can't tell you now," Cochran said. "But I will. I will."
*
At her last meal at Mezzaluna, Nicole told her family she had reached a turning point in her life.
Three days before, she had put her condominium up for lease. It was time to get more than two miles away from O. J. Simpson.
In the narrow restaurant, where, behind the huge windows, the patrons are on display like gems in a glass case, Nicole turned to Denise.
"Everything is going to change," Nicole told her sister. "And we're going to be happy."
TV COVERAGE OF THE O. J. SIMPSON TRIAL
Proceedings in the O. J. Simpson trial begin at noon EST with a hearing to discuss various issues, including whether his ex-wife, Marquerite Simpson Thomas, will testify. Opening statements are scheduled for 1 p.m. EST but could be delayed by the hearing.
Cable television's Court TV and E! Entertainment Television will offer gavel-to-gavel coverage. CNN will offer extensive, live coverage.
Fox plans to air a continuous feed from the courtroom's pool cameras for its broadcast affiliates to use at their discretion.
ABC, CBS and NBC will revert to regular daytime schedules after covering the beginning of today's opening statements.
ABC, CBS and NBC will then opt for "O. J. minutes" or brief hourly or periodic trial updates. They also will have control rooms able to jump instantly into live coverage and have pledged to provide live coverage of the trial's major developments, key testimony, closing arguments and verdict.
Columnist Roger Simmon will report from time to time on the O.J. Simpson trail.