D.A.’s Not Just a Face in the Crowd : Celebrity: Part of a county contingent of bureaucrats visiting Washington, Gil Garcetti turns the heads of Simpson trial watchers in the capital.

He left Los Angeles as a cog in the machine of officials assembled to lobby government for a troubled Los Angeles County and arrived in Washington nothing less than the Guy Who’s Prosecuting O.J.

“How you doin’ !” a district traffic cop yelped on Constitution Avenue, whistle dropping from his lips, when he recognized the now-famous face of Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

It wasn’t exactly the reception that Kato Kaelin got when he graced the federal city with his presence and the black-tie crowd at a radio and television dinner nearly trampled one another for a look at his hair.

But Garcetti was certainly given a celebrity’s welcome Thursday in Washington, where people pointed at him in the halls of Congress, waved to him in front of the White House and did double takes at Dulles Airport.

Washington has its share of well-knowns, but anybody who appears on any channel other than C-SPAN carries an instant appeal, which can come in rather handy in a city where bureaucrats tend to melt into a blob of blue suits.

Realizing this, the county contingency, which had trouble corralling taxis Thursday morning, sent Garcetti into the street figuring that somebody would recognize him and stop traffic. Somebody did.

When all five county supervisors, Sheriff Sherman Block and several other notables huddled with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in a judiciary hearing room, a congressional aide burst from the meeting and announced in the hallway: “Hey, Gil Garcetti’s in there!”

“It’s been happening since about July,” Garcetti said in a low voice, not exactly comfortable with all the attention but appreciative nevertheless. “These are good-hearted people. And we get some very good information from them . . . but not one person has said we are going to get a conviction in this case.”

Ditto the cabdriver hired for the day to ferry Garcetti from Congress to the White House and back.

“I don’t know,” the cabby groaned. “I wonder how (Simpson) didn’t get more scratches on his body. And that blood. I think there’s something wrong with it. . . . I think it’s going to be a hung jury myself. So, do you believe the jury is going to be a hung jury--off the record?” he asked, lest the county’s top prosecutor be tempted to bare his soul right there in a yellow checkered.

“Off the record?” Garcetti indulged, the way he has about a zillion times since the marathon began. “I believe they are going to convict him, and that’s contrary to 99% of the people I talk to!”

He’s amazingly chipper about the dour predictions that keep coming his way, perhaps because they are peppered with compliments about what a swell job the prosecution is doing. Even Garcetti thinks the rave reviews for Marcia Clark and company lend him a dose of credibility as he comes to the nation’s capital with a delegation to discuss welfare reform, immigration, the crime bill and other looming issues that they say threaten financial ruin for the county.

“People believe the prosecution has handled itself extremely well and more than matched the defense, which are $650-an-hour attorneys, compared to $45-an-hour attorneys,” Garcetti said, stepping from the White House gates where three tourists stood in a circle. “Hey, who you with?” one hollered. “I know that face!”

It happens all the time now, in the dry cleaners, the supermarket, no matter the city. On a plane from Atlanta, six psychologists returning from a convention recognized the district attorney and offered some handy advice about the human mind, which Garcetti would not disclose, other than to say that he passed it along to his team.

A little girl in Jackson Hole, Wyo., asked him to write a note to her class on what it’s like to be the D.A. of Los Angeles. He scribbled out something about always keeping faith in the laws and the fairness of the criminal justice system.

Evidently, he is taking his own advice: “I hope I’m not crazy. Do I have really dark rose-colored glasses on? But I think we are going to prevail.”