PAST MEETS PRESENT

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

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.

The allegations against Fuhrman, first reported in the New Yorker and Newsweek last summer, consist mainly of comments he made to psychiatrists when he was suing the city to receive permanent disability pay owing to job-related stress. Discussing rage and depression he claimed to be experiencing while dealing with violent gang members and other "slimes and assholes," Fuhrman made an aside about "Mexicans and niggers" he encountered during military service. Though Fuhrman now denies making the racial slurs during the psychiatric sessions, he was clearly a man in distress. He acknowledged to the doctors that his work in an antigang detail in East Los Angeles and foot patrols in the downtown area between 1977 and 1981, years in which his second marriage was collapsing, made him feel increasingly violent and out of control. He was in fact sued during this time for beating a suspect, although the case never went to trial. The other main allegation against Fuhrman, that he allegedly spoke to former real estate office worker Kathleen Bell about burning "all the niggers," is said to have occurred in 1985; Bell is now reluctant to testify.

Many people who know Fuhrman, including African-American friends, a black former partner and black crime victims he has helped, insist he is not, and never was, a racist. Fuhrman's second wife, schoolteacher Janet Hackett, told Time last week, "There's no way I would have married someone with that agenda. I'm very sensitive to that issue. I teach kids of all ethnic groups. I don't even like [racist] jokes." Instead, claims Hackett, who is backed up by several other people close to Fuhrman, the violence he saw on the streets nearly made him snap. "Nobody understands the trouble cops see," Hackett says. "But Mark got help and got his act together." Danette Meyers, an African-American prosecutor in Los Angeles County who has been friends with Fuhrman since 1989, agrees. "Mark saw a lot of negative stuff, and maybe it got to him," she says. "But the person I know isn't a racist."

Fuhrman's transfer in 1985, to the station in largely middle-class West Los Angeles, appears to have eased the pressure. But Fuhrman also seems to have worked at his rehabilitation. Beginning in 1981, Fuhrman saw psychiatrist Dr. David Gottlieb twice a week; he enrolled in art classes and started exercising regularly. "The doctor is good," Fuhrman told another psychiatrist in an evaluation for the L.A.P.D. in 1983. "I used to look for people to hurt; now I'm calming down, but the city won't let me." Does the fact that Fuhrman's friends claim he now socializes with people of all races--which he apparently does--and that he's a fine cop mean that Fuhrman is, or always has been, a swell guy? Not necessarily. A more accurate description may be that he was emotionally ill--and is still a blunt, aggressive guy. "If he sees you doing something stupid," explains Detective Gary Fullerton, his former boss, "he calls you stupid."

As soon as he can, Fuhrman and his third wife intend to get out of town and move to their new house in Idaho--a house that is not near any of the state's white-supremacist compounds. Hackett says Fuhrman told her during a recent conversation, "I just can't believe that all this is happening." But as everyone who has been drawn into this surreal web is coming to learn, all's fair in the court of O.J.

--Reported by Elaine Lafferty and James Willwerth/Los Angeles and Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty and James Willwerth/Los Angeles and Andrea Sachs/New York