LAS VEGAS — Shortly after allegedly robbing a pair of memorabilia dealers in a hotel room here, O.J. Simpson asked one of his cohorts if he had pulled out "the piece" in the hallway, according to an audio recording played in court Friday.
"I kept that thing in my pocket till we got inside that room," Michael McClinton assured him, according to the recording.
Simpson sounded relieved; he said investigators would probably scour security videos. "There ain't nothing on that video . . . ain't nothing he can see," he says. "They gonna see us going in the place. They gonna see leaving us with just the boxes."
In an armed robbery trial where jurors have heard hours of surreptitious exchanges, the 26-minute conversation at a sushi restaurant might be the prosecution's strongest audio evidence.
Simpson, 61, has maintained that he never saw weapons in the Palace Station hotel room and never asked anyone to bring one. But McClinton, who said he waved a .45-caliber Ruger at the dealers at Simpson's behest, secretly taped him seeming to say otherwise after the incident.
At the Little Buddha restaurant, Simpson, McClinton and Walter Alexander -- who testified earlier this week that he carried a .22-caliber Beretta -- laugh about the encounter.
Simpson: "It's a tabloid story."
McClinton: "We the goon squad."
Alexander: "O.J. and his goon squad came in."
Simpson repeatedly says he doesn't want to be arrested -- the cops, he says "would love to say O.J. had a gun" -- and reassures his associates that things should turn out OK.
"This ain't no major crime," he says.
The former USC football standout is charged with a dozen crimes including kidnapping, which carries a potential life sentence. He claims that he and five associates, four of whom are cooperating with prosecutors, were simply retrieving his stolen personal mementos, including pictures of his late parents.
McClinton -- deep-voiced, bald-headed and wearing a blue-and-black-checked suit and a white pocket square -- provided dramatic, if staccato, testimony. His formal demeanor was at odds with the hot-headed gunman recorded during the confrontation shouting: "Stand the [expletive] up before it gets ugly in here!"
Simpson, McClinton said, had directed him and Alexander to arm themselves on Sept. 13, 2007. Just before entering Room 1203, "Mr. Simpson asked me to show my weapon and look menacing," McClinton testified.
