The Last Man: A Novel

by D. W. Buffa

  Everything came to Bannister on the instant, without conscious effort, the words he heard himself speak his own first knowledge of the thought. He was like a trained athlete who plays a game too fast to think, and, better at it than anyone, never gets tired of what he is doing. There was that about Walter Bannister, the observable fact no one could understand: he could go all day, listen with endless concentration and make decisions without a moment’s hesitation or a second thought, and seem to be as eager to go on at the end of the day as he had been at the beginning. Some attributed this to a healthy and vigorous physical condition, a man who had never missed court because of illness; had never, so far as anyone knew, been sick a day in his life. Others thought it was the other way round: the work, and the way he did it – the complete absorption in the law and its application – the source of the remarkable energy he seemed to possess. He was so lost in what he did, this world of his where he alone was responsible for whether things were right, that time flew by so quickly that it was almost as if time had ceased to exist.

  The last case on the docket, a motion to suppress evidence, presented what the lawyers call an issue of first impression, a question the appellate courts had not yet resolved. It was handled with Bannister’s usual orderly dispatch. An hour had been set aside for oral arguments, and after the defense and the prosecution had each had their thirty minutes, Bannister announced he would have a decision by the end of the week. It was now four forty-five. He had fifteen minutes before the meeting he had scheduled early that morning. In chambers, he got out of his judicial robe and sat for a few minutes at his desk, trying to decide how he should approach a question which should not have given him any trouble at all. It had lay there at the back of his mind all day, a problem he had been avoiding since his conversation with his brother-in-law late yesterday afternoon. Nothing should have been easier to decide. He had been a witness to a crime, a savage, and nearly murderous, assault. It had to be reported, and it should have been reported – he should have reported it – right away, a 911 call that would have summoned both an ambulance and the police.

  He regretted that now, that he had not acted on his first instinct, that he had allowed himself to be drawn into a long and unnecessary conversation with Roger Stanton about what, or whether, anything should be done. This was not to deny that what he had learned about the apparently all too frequent violent misbehavior of Driscoll Rose had been interesting; the point was that it was irrelevant. A crime did not become excusable because others found it inconvenient, or even expensive, to have the criminal locked up. He had known that yesterday as well as he knew it now. Why, then, had he hesitated; why, after giving Stanton no reason to think he would do anything to help him keep private what had happened, had he still not done anything about it? Why had he left Santa Barbara without calling the police?

  It was not because Roger Stanton was his wife’s brother and Stanton did not want him to; it was because he had become so intrigued by what Stanton had told him about what Gloria Baker had done – kept secret the fact she had very nearly been murdered by Driscoll Rose – that he had been drawn into the very conspiracy of silence he had said he would not be a part of; drawn in so far that when Stanton said that all he was asking was that he think about it - all the ramifications of a criminal charge in a matter that could so easily be handled to the great advantage of everyone, including especially the victim, Lorenzo Garcia, whose name Stanton had remembered not to forget - he heard himself make a promise he had never thought he would make.

  And so he had not done anything, until this morning, when he made the call and scheduled the meeting at the end of the day. Under the circumstances, he told himself as he started down the long hallway, twenty four hours was not too long a delay to come forward with what he knew.

  The secretary in the outer office greeted him with a bright smile and told him to go right in. The District Attorney was expecting him.

  “Just a minute,” said Hector Alfonso with a muffled laugh. He cast a serious, determined look at the golf ball lying at his feet. Holding the putter in his hands, he turned his head slowly toward a glass placed sideways on the thick pile carpet twenty feet away. With a stiff, even motion of his arms, he hit the ball with a firm stroke and sent it rolling toward the makeshift cup. It had the proper distance, but it hit the lip of the glass and spun a few inches off to the side.

  “Not too bad,” said Alfonso to himself. With an eager expression, he turned to see if his judgment was shared, but Bannister had taken a chair in front of his desk and from the look on his face had other, more pressing, business on his mind. Alfonso buttoned the jacket on another new and expensive dark suit and moved quickly to his chair.

  “I think this is the first time you have come to see me,” he remarked, as he leaned forward on his elbows. “It must be important. What can I…?” Suddenly, he remembered that they were not in chambers, and that whatever Bannister had come to see him about, they were not on the court’s calendar. “I’m sorry; can I offer you a drink? It’s after five, and sometimes, when I want to unwind….”

  To his surprise, Bannister accepted, and at a cabinet on the other side of the large office, Alfonso poured a scotch and soda for the judge and a whisky and water for himself.

  “Now, how can I help?” He had taken a long first drink and now held the glass in his lap as he sat back, relaxed, in the leather chair.

  “I was a witness to a crime, and I want to report it. Yesterday, the actor, Driscoll Rose, assaulted a young Hispanic waiter, Lorenzo Garcia, at my brother-in-law’s place in Santa Barbara.”

  At the name, Driscoll Rose, Hector Alfonso had begun to study the amber liquid in his glass. By the end of the sentence, he had begun to scratch his ear.

  “I’ve heard about that,” he said without lifting his eyes from the glass.

  Bannister was struck by the flat tone, the cautious, deliberate indifference of that otherwise forgettable phrase; that, and the slight nervous twitch at the edge of Alfonso’s mouth.

  “You’ve heard about it? I’m not sure I understand.”

  The reply was vague, and almost beside the point. “I talk to a lot of people,” was all he said. Bannister would not let it go at that.

  “And some of the people you talk to, talked about this?”

  Alfonso smiled into his glass, and then, with a short laugh, looked up.

  “What else would they talk about? It’s the interesting thing about gossip – have you noticed? – Everyone wants to be first. I started getting calls less than an hour after it happened. We used to say that no one wants to be the bearer of bad news; the truth is that no one wants to be the bearer of old news. If you didn’t hear before dinner last night that Driscoll Rose had gotten into another fight, you have to start questioning whether anyone thinks you’re important.”

  Bannister was not interested in the way rumor and gossip had its own established hierarchy. He put his glass down on Alfonso’s glass topped desk.

  “Then, if you’ve already heard, what are you going to do about it?”

  Alfonso shrugged his shoulders. “There’s nothing for me to do. It happened in Santa Barbara: that’s not in my jurisdiction. But even if it was….”

  “You’re saying you wouldn’t prosecute?” The severity of Bannister’s expression challenged a response; demanded, as it were, an explanation. But they were not in court, and Hector Alfonso could not be forced to answer anything. “I saw what happened: Rose would have beaten that young man to death; he would -”

  “But he didn’t – beat that kid to death,” said Alfonso, breaking his silence. “Thanks to you; and, from what I’m told, the injuries aren’t all that serious: cuts and bruises mainly.”

  He looked at Bannister, searching his eyes in the way of someone trying to decide just how far he could go: how much he could afford to reveal and how much he had to hold back. Bannister did not much like that look. It was as if he were being measured, judged on whether he could be trusted. It was not his honesty t
hat was in question, but whether he was in a sense too honest, too devoted to a strict application of the rules, to understand why it was sometimes necessary to make an exception, certain adjustments that were in the interest of everyone.

  “Are you going to tell me that I shouldn’t bother doing anything; that Driscoll Rose is too important, that what happened to Lorenzo Garcia – that’s the young man’s name – doesn’t matter because one of them is movie star and the other one is a nobody? You’re the district attorney, Hector; you’re not the head of some studio worried about what could happen to his next picture.”

  The dark eyes of Hector Alfonso became darker still, full of slow resentment and hidden malice. He respected and admired Walter Bannister as a judge and as a man, but there was something vaguely troubling and almost laughable in his attitude of moral superiority. Bannister might know more about the law than anyone Alfonso had ever met, but when it came to politics the judge had nothing to teach and everything to learn. Or so he believed until he heard the next thing Bannister had to say.

  “I’ve been around a long time, Hector. Whatever you may think, I know how things work in this town. I’ve seen it happen often enough. I was told – you can guess who told me – that if I tried to do anything about this, if I testified at trial, there would be a dozen different witnesses who would swear that the waiter started it, that Rose was only defending himself, and that if the waiter got the worst of it, if he wound up in the hospital, it was only because Rose got in a couple of lucky blows. They’ll say that I stopped it, and that is the reason I did not see it quite as clearly as they did. But even if that’s true, even if a dozen people want to perjure themselves, that doesn’t change what I need to do. Would you – if you had been there, if you had seen what I saw, done what I had to do – would you just let it go, agree that as long as the kid was taken care of – ‘compensated for his trouble’ – would you, Hector? I don’t believe it for a moment.”

  Ignoring the compliment to a courage he was not sure he had, Alfonso tried to play the prosecutor. He began to analyze in advance the withering cross-examination that was sure to follow if Bannister were ever to testify in a trial of Driscoll Rose.

  “You know what someone like Michael Harlowe could do? ‘Where were you when it started – on the other side of the dance floor, and you didn’t even see Rose until the trouble began, did you?’ That’s just the beginning, because then he goes after you with: ‘He’s dancing with some woman and goes crashing into the crowd, and the next thing you know, Rose and this other guy are going at it, swinging at each other.’”

  “I know what I saw,” insisted Bannister, as unshakeable, Alfonso had to admit, as any witness was likely to be. “And I know what I stopped: I stopped him killing that kid! What do you know about him, this Driscoll Rose? You may not have jurisdiction over what happened yesterday – which doesn’t mean you can’t pick up the phone and call the D.A. up there – but you’re the only one who has the authority to charge him with being in violation of his probation. You need to do this, Hector. He’s on probation – I put him there; suspended his sentence on a drug offense. So have him arrested; I’ll have the hearing right away. Shouldn’t take more than all of about five minutes!”

  Lacing his fingers together, Alfonso started beating his thumbs. He gazed first one way then the other, growing more agitated with each passing second.

  “Damn it, Walter! I can’t do that, and you know it.”

  “You don’t mean you can’t; you mean you won’t!”

  It was a distinction without a difference so far as Alfonso was concerned.

  “Even if I wanted to, the same thing would happen. You’d have to recuse yourself; another judge would preside. And then…, well, you said so yourself: all these other witnesses, claiming Rose was only defending himself. And if you think the victim, this Garcia kid, is going to show up and tell the truth, after what they’re going to do for him….” Alfonso lurched forward, his elbows on the desk and looked straight at Bannister. “Everyone knows what they have to do; no one has to be told who is in charge. And I don’t need to tell you who that is. Forget Driscoll Rose: Nobody wants to get on the wrong side of Roger Stanton, not in this town. You may be the best judge I’ve ever seen, but when it comes to what happens in Los Angeles, what people think, he’s the one who makes the law.”

  “And that includes you?” Bannister fired right back.

  Alfonso slammed both hands down on the desk, rattling the two half empty glasses that sat on opposite sides.

  “I’m responsible to a lot of different constituencies. I have to take account of a lot of different needs.”

  With a look of the utmost severity, Bannister rose slowly from his chair.

  “You wouldn’t prosecute this guy for murder, would you?”

  This struck hard at Alfonso’s pride.

  “That’s not so, Walter,” he protested, a wounded expression in his eyes. “I hope you know it isn’t.”

  But all that Walter Bannister knew was that Hector Alfonso, sworn to uphold the law, had all the instincts of the politician, and that Driscoll Rose was safe from prosecution. The word of an honest judge meant less than a lying chorus of ambitious and frightened actors.

  Chapter Eleven

  Walter Bannister did not want to be seen, or at least not noticed. Dressed in a blue sports shirt and a tan windbreaker he could have passed for one of the wealthy men who lived there, part of the anonymous crowd of show business celebrities who found what privacy they could in one of Malibu’s beachfront homes. He had not had any trouble finding his way to the address he wanted. It was nearly nine o’clock, and because everyone’s windows faced out toward the ocean, the only lights that could be seen from the street were the ones, and those barely visible, that lit the numbers that marked one place off from the next. Gloria Baker answered the door on the first ring.

  He had sat next to her at dinner at Roger Stanton’s home on Mulholland Drive, but his mind had been on other things and he had not remembered much about her. He had seen several of her movies, and he knew that his brother-in-law thought she had a chance of becoming one of those rare actresses who brought more than her looks to what she did. Stanton had cast her in different roles to see if, as he suspected, she had that indefinable quality that made an audience look at her whatever part she played. Roger Stanton had an eye for that effect: the way in which someone who would pass unnoticed in a crowd could dominate the screen. He could not explain how he knew it, only that he did. He had known it about Gloria Baker from the moment he first saw her.

  It was a mystery to Walter Bannister what Roger Stanton had seen. He had thought her, that night at dinner, no better looking than most of the other young actresses trying to make it in Hollywood; and now, opening the door, she did not look even as good as that. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she had no makeup on at all; and standing there, barefoot, wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, she looked like someone’s kid sister home from college for the summer. A screenplay she had been reading dangled from her left hand. She stared at Bannister through large, thick glasses and with obvious annoyance wondered who he was and what he wanted. Immediately, her expression changed, and she laughed in embarrassment

  Oh, hell, I forgot,” she admitted with a candor he found disarming. “Please, come in. I’m sorry; I knew you were coming, but I forgot the time. I was reading this….” She showed him the screenplay and then, as she led him into the living room, tossed it onto the coffee table next to a stack of six or seven others. “Projects,” she explained waving her hand in a careless gesture. “Things we’re thinking about doing.”

  She sat with her legs tucked under her in the corner of the sofa. Bannister took the easy chair at the end of the script laden table, facing at the far end of the long, rectangular room a wall of glass and, beyond it, the moonlit ocean. The sliding doors were open and the sound of rolling surf made an endless echo in the night. As he looked around, everything seemed to be glass and chrome, all the
simple elegance of what, when the house was built in the middle years of the last century, was supposed to be the future.

  “You look different,” said Gloria with a pleasant, friendly smile, and then laughed at the way it had come out. “I didn’t mean…. I don’t know what I mean. You seemed so serious, so formal, that night at Roger’s. But you’re a judge…, so I suppose…. I’m not making this any better, am I? What I’m trying to say is -”

  “That you thought I was a stiff-necked bore, someone who only looks at things with disapproval,” he said with a modest smile. He shook his head to stop her protest. “Which is probably a pretty fair assessment: I’m afraid I disapprove of a lot of things; though I certainly don’t disapprove of you. Roger tells me you’re a serious actress, one of the best he’s ever seen.”

  Her eyes lit up, and he was so taken by the honesty of her reaction that he wanted to tell her more.

  “I’ve known Roger since he was in college. He’s a very cautious man, and he never says what he doesn’t mean. I’ve never heard him talk about anyone the way he’s talked about you.”

  She listened, grateful for what he was saying, but without surprise. Raising her hand she pointed up to the painting that hung on the wall behind her.

  “Roger gave me that; hired the artist to paint my portrait. It was a present after the first picture I starred in. He’s always been kind to me. There have been times I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Bannister in a confidential tone.

  “You know?” she asked, a puzzled expression in her eyes.

  Bannister bent forward, trying to assure her that he was someone she could trust.