The Last Man: A Novel

by D. W. Buffa

  “I said the drug stuff was nothing.”

  “Nothing? - Why, what’s he done, besides nearly beating to death this kid, Garcia, this afternoon?”

  Like someone worn down by the all the things he had to do, Stanton pushed himself up from the chair and opened the French door closest to him. He stood there a moment, leaning against the frame, his arms crossed loosely in front of him. In the distance, a blood red sun hovered just above the far edge of the blue Pacific, waiting, as it seemed, to take one last look around, to remember what it had seen, before it turned and, dragging the day down behind it, plunged headlong into the sea. Stanton took some comfort in that, the thought that what had happened, after it happened, was gone and buried, and that other, better, things would happen the next day or the day after that. That’s what he told himself, and then he called himself a liar.

  “He raped a girl, and didn’t just do it once; rather twice that I know of,” he announced, abruptly turning back. “Probably more than that; twice that I know of, because both times we had to pay.”

  Bannister did not feel anything, certainly nothing close to shock. He heard this sort of thing every day in court, and after what he had seen of Driscoll Rose the only surprise was that it had not been rape and murder. Nor was he surprised by the way it had been handled. That scarcely meant he approved.

  “When you tell an alcoholic that what he’s doing, drinking every day, isn’t so bad, that’s called enabling; when you cover up a crime, that’s called aiding and abetting, and people who do it go to prison. And you’re too intelligent not to know it.”

  Stanton sat on the corner of the desk and began to swing his foot back and forth. He did not look at Bannister, but gazed again out the open French doors, trying to remember just how it had happened and what had led to the decision that had been made. He wanted to tell Walter the truth, but it was not any longer quite so clear what the truth about it really was.

  “He raped her, that first girl; I mean there wasn’t any question: he forced her to have sex; or rather he had sex with her when she wasn’t in any condition to consent. Christ, Walter! – They were both high on something: cocaine, probably. They were at a party; they went upstairs. She was a minor actress, a bit part player, willing, probably eager, to spend time with the famous Driscoll Rose. But she was young – nineteen, twenty; I don’t remember – and she did not think things would go as far as they did. She had enough presence of mind to tell him she wanted him to stop, and when he didn’t, she started screaming. She -”

  “You said it was a party. What about the people downstairs?”

  Stanton turned just far enough to give him a tired, jaundiced look. “It was Driscoll Rose, remember. No one was going to interfere. This sounds awful, and it doesn’t change the fact that he had sex with her or that she tried to stop him, but it wasn’t like he broke into someone’s home, or jumped out of the bushes, and at the point of a knife or a gun raped a woman he didn’t know. Yes, I know, it isn’t the kind of thing you’re supposed to say, but it helps explain the way it all got settled. We left it up to her, the girl.”

  “She didn’t go to the police?” asked Bannister, just to be sure.

  “No, and I don’t think she would have whatever had happened; I mean, even if we hadn’t done what we did.”

  “You paid her off.”

  “Yes, all right; you can put it that way if you want, but she wasn’t paid off with money. Not directly anyway. I told you we left it up to her. We asked her what she wanted us to do. We told her she had every right to go to the police. We went so far, believe it or not, to tell her that it was probably what she ought to do. I’m not going to lie to you Walter; I’ve known you too long for that. We didn’t have to tell her - she knew as well as anyone – what a charge like that would do. Whatever happened to Driscoll, it would end any chance she had of ever having a career. She said – she is a very intelligent young woman – she didn’t want to cause trouble for anyone, that she knew it never would have happened if Driscoll hadn’t been high on drugs. For all I know, she might even have believed it; but whether she did or not, it was convenient. It made everything manageable. It put us in her debt. Someone mentioned that we had had our eye on her for quite a while, that we hoped she’d become a part of what we were doing, that if she did we were sure she would be a valuable addition, well-worth the kind of extended contract we hoped we might be able to get her to agree to.”

  “And so you saved a rapist, and the girl became a star.”

  “A star? – No, but a pretty good actress with all the work she can handle.”

  “But she wasn’t the only one; isn’t that what you said?”

  Stanton’s eyes clouded over. He got off the corner of the desk and with nervous irritation began to pace back and forth. Suddenly, he stopped still and scratched at his forehead as if trying to rid himself of something sharp and venomous that had dug its way into his scalp.

  “Jesus! I don’t know sometimes. The second time, the other time I know about, the other time we paid – I should have called the police myself. I don’t know why I didn’t. It was the girl he was engaged to marry, another actress – you’ve met her; you’ll recognize her name - Gloria Baker. He didn’t just rape her, the sick bastard; he beat her worse than he beat that kid today: broke her nose, broke her ribs. I think the only reason he didn’t kill her was he thought she was already dead. She’d broken off the engagement, then he found out she had been seeing someone else.”

  For all that he knew about the practiced lies, the craven duplicity, the way Hollywood protected its own when scandal was a threat to business, Bannister was still astonished at the stupidity of what had been done. It was one thing to turn a blind eye to what was going on, but to take an active part, to help someone get away with what was clearly assault and might even be attempted murder suggested a level of arrogance he had not imagined.

  “Tell me something, Roger. Last week I sentenced a man to death: Daniel Lee Atkinson. You know what he did: murdered four people, two of them children. If he had come to you after he did it, what would you have done – if he had been a famous movie star, I mean – helped him cover up his crime, let someone else be convicted for murder in his place?”

  “That’s unfair!” protested Stanton, the anger starting in his eyes. “The two things aren’t the same; they -”

  “Not the same? Maybe not,” said Bannister with a thin, lethal smile. “One is a murderer, the other a serial rapist who would have been a murderer if he hadn’t thought the girl already dead!”

  Forced to admit the logic, Stanton denied the conclusion. He might not be able to argue the point, but he could feel the difference.

  “Atkinson was an animal; he killed those people – a whole family – for no reason. Driscoll didn’t….He was in a situation…things got out of hand. He didn’t start off wanting to hurt anyone.”

  “Face it, Roger; the only real difference is that everyone hated Atkinson for what he had done – and they should have – and everyone makes up excuses for your Driscoll Rose.” He bent forward and rapped his knuckles hard on Stanton’s shiny, expensive desk. “There are no more excuses, Roger. It ends now. I’m not going to help you cover this up. I saw it with my own eyes; I’m the only who pulled him off that kid – remember?”

  Stanton turned away. “No one is asking you do anything,” he said quietly. There was a strange intensity in his voice, a sense of expectation that Bannister immediately understood.

  “That would be convenient, wouldn’t it? I look the other way: ignore the fact that I was a witness to the most vicious assault I’ve ever seen. Ignore it, don’t report it to the police, don’t make a full statement about what I saw – what I had to do. Don’t mention any of this to the district attorney so he can bring an indictment. Listen to me, Roger: all these other people – they might all be the cowards you think they are, too afraid of getting on the wrong side of the supremely talented Driscoll Rose, but, damn it! I’m not just an officer of the court: In
case you hadn’t noticed, I am the court!” Bannister was on his feet, staring hard at Stanton, but Stanton would not look back. “As soon as I leave here, I’m going straight to the police. I assumed someone would have called them the same time the ambulance was called. I should have known better.”

  “That would be a mistake,” replied Stanton, his voice cold, immediate, the nervous uncertainty all but banished from his mind. “Everyone will say that it was self-defense; that the waiter said something he shouldn’t have said, pushed Driscoll when he got close, made him fall; that Driscoll only hit back in retaliation. Maybe Driscoll hit more than he needed to, but in the heat of the moment, forced to defend himself like that….Well, everyone will understand.”

  The words hung there, a plain statement of made up fact, the invented fiction that would become the reality by which to explain away what the publicity people would call a minor altercation caused by someone else.

  “Look, there’s no reason why it should come to this. There’s no -”

  “Come to what? – Suborning perjury, bribing witnesses to come into court and lie. Who do you think you’re talking to, Roger? – Some witless actor desperate to get a part. Let’s put it to the test. I’ll be a witness for the prosecution,” he said, glaring at him, daring to take up the challenge, “and not just in an assault trial for Driscoll Rose, but a witness for the prosecution in your trial as well!”

  Lowering his eyes, Stanton with a brief, abrupt movement, shook his head in what was unmistakably an act of contrition. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have….But it’s just so damn difficult.” Lifting his head, he stood straight up, determined, as it seemed, to put the best face on things he could. “He’s getting the best of care; he’s in a private hospital – the Garcia kid. And he’ll be well-compensated, you can be sure of that. He’ll never have to worry about anything again.”

  “Well taken care of, well-compensated,” drawled Bannister with a jaundiced smile. “Yes, well I should think so. Especially if he gets the right lawyer and files a civil suit. Juries like to give large awards when the victim is one of the working poor and the defendant is one of the useless rich! Now, tell me, before this goes any farther: what about the girl, Gloria Baker, who had sense enough to back out of the marriage and almost got killed because of it. What possible reason – honest reason –could you have had for helping him get out of that?”

  In a gesture of recovered self-respect, Stanton lifted his chin and looked straight at him in a way that said there was far more to this story than what Bannister imagined.

  “She called me. I was the first person she called, the only person she called. I could barely hear her, barely make out the words. She was crying, a stifled sob, trying to tell me that something awful had happened, asking me to come right away, and begging me – and I mean pleading with me – not to tell anyone else. She had not told me anything yet - not about what had happened - only that it was awful, and that she didn’t want anyone to know. She lived out in Malibu and it took me a while to get there. And when I did, the door was wide open and I could tell – I mean, things were knocked over, broken chairs, shattered glass. I found her ….I don’t know how she had managed to call me, how she had managed to say anything: her jaw was hanging at a crazy angle, her eyes, black and blue, swollen shut. I didn’t have to ask what had happened: I knew as soon as I saw her. I called a doctor, one of the ones we use. He was there in thirty minutes.”

  “Why didn’t she want you to tell anyone else?” asked Bannister. Stanton, remembering what had happened, stared into the silence. “Why didn’t -?”

  “She begged me not to,” explained Stanton, his eyes suddenly coming back into focus. “It was the only thing she wanted. I think she would rather have died that night than have anyone know what he had done to her. She was that much in love with him.”

  “In love with him?” asked Bannister, more than a little intrigued. He sat down again, sideways in the blue cushioned chair, his arm thrown over the back of it. “I thought she’d just broken up with him, gone out with someone else.”

  A soft, rueful smile floated over Roger Stanton’s fine, sensitive mouth, the silent recognition that the things we prize the most are sometimes the most difficult to explain. He wondered if Walter Bannister, with his rare precision of mind, was not, for that very reason, lacking the one quality necessary to understand the fervent irrationalities of love.

  “She was in love with him, she’s still in love with him; I suppose she’ll always be in love with him. But she knew what he was, what he was capable of; and she knew – she told me this – that if she married him, it wouldn’t last, and that when it ended he might kill her. That’s part of the reason – if there ever are reasons for the way someone feels – why she was in love with him: the sense of danger that he brings. You see it on the screen, and you think it’s an actor’s edge, the way he plays his role; but with Driscoll that part was real. He’s erratic, unpredictable - one minute you’re the best friend he’s ever had; the next minute the worst enemy he’s ever known. He changes moods faster than you can find words to describe them, and through every one of them he’s the center of attention, dominating everything around him. She was in love with him and, to the degree to which anyone that completely self-absorbed is able, he was in love with her.”

  Sliding the sides of his jacket behind him, Stanton put his hands on the small of his back and crossed his right foot over his ankle, balancing the toe of his leather loafer on the tile floor. Out on the terrace, the palm trees swayed gently in the evening breeze and the shadows, having waited all day, began to dance beneath them.

  “I would have called the police that night,” he said in a distant, faraway voice. “And probably I should have, but I’d never known anyone that determined to save someone she loved, and so I promised I wouldn’t, and I kept my word, and no one ever knew. You’re the only person I’ve ever told.” Folding his arms across his chest, he furrowed his brow and kicked at the floor. “The damn thing is, I had the feeling, when she told me that she thought he might end up killing her if they got married, that she was mainly worried about what might happen to him: that he’d end up a murderer and everything that would mean.”

  “Everything that would mean -? His reputation, his image! Whether anyone would still want to see his movies?”

  “Don’t look so surprised. What else is there for people in this business? They’re up there on the screen; they never die, as long as someone comes to watch.”

  Bannister was still skeptical.

  “Why do people have children? – To leave something of themselves behind. Why do people want to become famous; why do politicians always talk so much about what history will say? How many of the people who were here today will late tonight watch an old movie on television and tell themselves that someday, years from now, other people will be staying up late to watch them? That’s what she meant: if he killed her, he’d be a murderer, and that’s all anyone would see.”

  “It’s almost funny, when you think about it,” said Bannister, leaning back with his hands behind his head. “I sentence Daniel Lee Atkinson to death and it doesn’t quite seem fair: murder four people – murder four hundred! – You can only be put to death once. But a movie star! – Murder just one person and the sentence of death keeps getting repeated every time someone sees his face on film. The whole business is insane,” he said, laughing into the gathering night.

  “Maybe, but that’s what she was afraid of, why she made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anyone what happened, what he did to her.”

  Bannister drove home alone. Meredith had gone ahead with friends who, after what had happened, had decided to have dinner somewhere in L.A. It was dark when he reached the front gates of his house, dark inside when he opened the door. It was not so much that he did not mind his wife’s absence as that he did not notice it. His mind was on other things. He made himself a drink and went into his study.

  It was smaller, much smaller, than the one where he had jus
t spent nearly two hours with his brother-in-law arguing – or rather discussing, because though they had once or twice come close to it, neither of them had raised his voice in anger – what should be done about the latest episode in a spoiled actor’s violent career. Smaller, but more impressive as a place where something got done. There were far fewer shelves but far more books, and if none of them had the glowing hard finish of Stanton’s empty collection, they had, every one of them, the look of things used and used again. Even had there been no books at all, Bannister’s study had a feel of quiet intimacy, a private room reserved for a single occupant. The cleaning lady was allowed inside to vacuum, but only once a week.

  Bannister unlocked the drawer where he kept what he called indifferently his journal or his diary, the record of the sometimes strange late night musings of what in his more lucid moments he called his own dementia, the out of season thoughts of what he sometimes feared, and sometimes with a certain defiant pride acknowledged, as his own descent into madness. It was the perhaps inevitable effect of the attempt. He wanted to be completely, and even ruthlessly, honest with himself: to put down on paper what he really felt, however far that might take him from the safe conventionality of what, in the world in which he lived, he was expected to believe.

  “Meredith is having an affair,” he wrote in the slow, longhand style he had learned, years before, in school. “She has probably been having it for a long time. Is this the first time, the first one she’s had? I tend to doubt it. She’s always needed the lavish approval of others, and now of course she needs to feel still young and desirable, despite her age. Will she ask for a divorce; probably not. Will I? Again, probably not. The truth is that I’m actually glad what she’s doing. Perhaps I should tell her that, that she doesn’t need to lie, worry about my finding out; that I don’t care what she does, that I haven’t cared in years, that I’m incapable of it, that the only thing I want from her is to be left alone. It makes me crazy each time I have to listen to the latest small triumphs of her Hollywood friends. We live in the kingdom of the superficial, where nothing is real and true happiness is always just around the corner. And there is always another corner.