BY THE TIME F. LEE BAILEY'S AVIDLY anticipated showdown with Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman was over last Friday, the lawyer was in a chatty mood--and fairly pleased with his own performance. "Johnnie Cochran and O.J. Simpson understand that jury the way no white lawyer will. Days 2 and 3 of Fuhrman's cross, we got very good vibes," he explained to Time. "I'm not Perry Mason; nobody is. Other lawyers whom I respect told me that given what I had to work with, it was good. Norman Mailer called me and said it was flawless. So I feel good."
Yet the defining face-off of the trial was not exactly what most observers expected. Bailey's lengthy questioning of Fuhrman produced no fireworks; the high drama occurred instead in Bailey's rancorous clashes with Marcia Clark over new evidence. The 61-year-old Bailey, once America's most famous trial lawyer, was, by turns, sputtering, enraged and embarrassed. Instead of regaining his former glory after nearly two decades out of the limelight, he may in the end have scarred his reputation.
Bailey was thrown off- balance when Fuhrman steadfastly withstood a grueling interrogation. Even when Bailey rumbled into the "nigger" line of questioning, Fuhrman calmly responded that he had not used the epithet in the past 10 years. Nor did Bailey come up with a plausible explanation of how Fuhrman might actually have planted the bloody glove. "Bailey created such expectations, and he did not deliver," says Laurie Levenson, a professor of criminal law at Los Angeles' Loyola Law School. "Maybe he didn't have the right ammunition."
Instead, Bailey handed dynamite to Clark when he claimed last Tuesday that a black former Marine named Maximo Cordoba was ready to testify that Fuhrman had called him a nigger. Clark let loose, claiming that Bailey's proof of this event would "evaporate into thin air." In response, Bailey puffed up his chest and said, "I have spoken to him on the phone, Marine to Marine, and I haven't the slightest doubt that he'll march up to that witness stand and tell the world what Mark Fuhrman said to him." That night the TV newsmagazine Dateline NBC aired a segment in which Cordoba claimed never to have spoken to Bailey. As a result, Clark was still more outraged on Wednesday. "This," she complained, "is the kind of nonsense that gives lawyers a bad name."
To add to the confusion, on Wednesday Dateline obtained a fresh interview with Cordoba, in which he suddenly remembered he had talked briefly with Bailey. Then Dateline aired the second half of the first interview, with Cordoba now claiming that he indeed recalled--in a dream--that Fuhrman had called him a nigger. By that time, however, Cordoba's credibility was on a par with that of defense witnesses Rosa Lopez and Mary Anne Gerchas.
But in the end, Fuhrman may be the one to sustain the most lasting damage. Though he emerged from the cross-examination remarkably unscathed, months of poisonous publicity have made him a symbol of all that is wrong with the Los Angeles police department and branded him a vicious racist. Yet interviews with many of Fuhrman's colleagues and friends suggest that he is a considerably more complex character than the one so far presented to the public.