The Last Man: A Novel

by D. W. Buffa

  Chapter Thirteen

  Michael Harlowe wrapped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. He gazed around his office, taking inventory of his surroundings: the long rows of law books on the wooden shelves stacked floor to ceiling on the wall opposite; the diplomas from college and law school and the ornate certificates with their stilted language announcing his admission to practice in both state and federal courts; a dozen random photographs, most of them taken years earlier when he first started trying cases; a tarnished antique replica of the scales of justice, a gift from his wife when he opened his first office shortly after they were married and a long time before their divorce.

  Everywhere he looked he found something to remind him of how much of his life he had been doing this, practicing law, trying cases in court, and how long it had taken to get to where he was now, a lawyer everyone who was in trouble wanted to have. It was always a lie when someone who had achieved a certain degree of success said in so many words that they had always known it would happen; that no matter how difficult it had been in the beginning, they had never lost faith. They said it because now that it had finally happened and they were looking down instead of up, it was the only thing that seemed to make sense. Harlowe was too honest to invent a new biography for the past. He had always known that what happened had more to do with chance than anything else. You could try cases until the sun forgot to rise and nothing would change, no one notice except a few seasoned veterans of the criminal courts, which meant that only a couple of judges and one or two prosecutors would remember your name. The only way a defense attorney became a great success was to have that one case, that one trial that suddenly became the only case, the only trial, anyone wanted to talk about.

  He had been in practice for fifteen years before it happened to him, a murder case in which to the astonishment of both the court and the prosecution he called as the first witness for the defense the victim, the man whose wife had supposedly killed him. He had actually simply wandered off, a victim, not of murder, but of amnesia brought on by rare virus that had attacked his brain. The memory loss was complete and, unfortunately, irreversible. He had been found only by chance, and it was chance again that led Harlowe’s private investigator to hear about it before anyone else. The effect of his sudden appearance in the courtroom had been so stunning, so profound, that no one thought to ask how long Harlowe had known he was alive or where he had been living the last several weeks of the trial; which meant that no one could ask why, if Harlowe knew he was alive, he waited until he could destroy the prosecution’s case in front of an astonished courtroom audience before revealing that fact to anyone else. That case had made his name. And now this!

  Staring at the scattered remnants of his past, the memorabilia of his life in court, Michael Harlowe felt on his cheek more than the glow of his own achievement, the rare satisfaction of what he had not yet accomplished, the trial that had not started yet, or even been scheduled, the case that would make him a name known by everyone and the object of envy of every well-known lawyer in the country. It was pure vanity, and he knew it; but instead of berating himself, he dismissed it as a harmless self-indulgence, a brief diversion that, given the stakes involved, he could afford to enjoy. He glanced at his watch. The appointment was for four o’clock, and it was now five minutes after. His eyes did another circuit of the room, but only to pass the time while he waited five more minutes.

  “You can send him in now,” he said quietly into the private line to his secretary at ten minutes past the hour.

  He removed some documents from a file folder on his desk and began to study them. When his next appointment walked in, he found Harlowe hunched over his desk, so absorbed in what he was reading, that he did not seem to notice that anyone had entered. Driscoll Rose turned around and started to leave.

  “You wanted to see me, Mr. Rose. What can I do for you?”

  Rose hesitated; deciding, as it seemed, whether it was worth his time to bother.

  “The appointment was for four. You made me wait,” he complained.

  Harlowe could not let pass the irony, and what it said about the self-absorption, of this from an actor notorious for never being on time for anything, even when he remembered to show up.

  “You were here on time?” he asked in a tone of understated astonishment. “That’s a good start, anyway. Yes, you had to wait a few minutes. We got you in the same day you called, but as you can see I’m very busy.”

  Driscoll Rose had a face older than his years, and in some surprising ways, older than his generation. He had wavy hair, smooth and shiny, like an actor in the days when they made movies mainly in black and white; and there were deep lines, not just across his forehead, but vertically, down his face. His eyes were close together, giving him a questioning, wary look, as if, though he could not be sure, he thought you were probably someone he would not like. His mouth was small and querulous, and when he began to open it you almost expected him not to speak real words but to snarl something guttural. He stood stiff as a board while he listened to Harlowe tell him he was lucky Harlowe had seen him at all.

  “There are other lawyers,” he said with a scornful expression.

  “Go see one,” suggested Harlowe, smiling pleasantly.

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” replied Harlowe, lowering his eyes to the desk. A moment passed, then another. He did not look up and Rose did not say a thing, just stood there. More time passed. Harlowe continued reading, and Rose did not move from the spot. Finally, Harlowe looked up with an expression that suggested surprise he was still there.

  “Need help finding your way out?”

  “They say you’re…” He was about to say, ‘the best there is,’ but he could not do it. “They say you’re as good as anyone, and it looks like I might need a lawyer. I didn’t do anything, but everyone seems to think I did.”

  Harlowe motioned toward a green wingback chair the other side of his glass topped desk. Rose seemed to take it under advisement, as if he still was not sure he wanted to stay. Harlowe gave him a sharp look.

  “Make up your mind, Mr. Rose. I have plenty of other things to do.”

  It was an interesting question whether the actor’s bad manners were deliberate or simply ill-breeding. Rose appeared incapable of being polite or even civil. He continued to stand where he stood, a petulant expression on his face that seemed a permanent part of his character. He was so used to getting his way, and getting it without resistance, that faced with an obstacle he froze with indecision. Harlowe did not like him, but then he did not have to.

  “I just finished defending a guy who murdered four people, killed a whole family in cold blood. And you know what? – I got more respect from him than I’m ever likely to get from you. So do us both a favor, Mr. Rose: Find yourself another lawyer. I’m too damn busy to waste time on someone who can’t even decide if he wants to sit down!”

  Rose’s chin snapped up, the instant angry reaction to a challenge. His eyes turned hard, filled with cold malice. Harlowe stared back with eager, almost cheerful, defiance. Rose was a skinny five foot eight, a runt who would not last a minute if he was fool enough to take a swing at Harlowe. Suddenly, Harlowe smiled.

  “Sit down, Mr. Rose. There is a reason you came to see me. We can decide later whether you want me as your lawyer, and if I want you as a client.”

  Rose came back to his senses. He took the chair that had been offered and began with a line that he had not needed to rehearse; a line Michael Harlowe had heard hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.

  “I didn’t do it; I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill Gloria Baker.”

  Harlowe had learned a long time ago that unless you knew someone quite well, or unless they tripped over their own mistake – told you one thing, forgetting they had previously told you something else – it was next to impossible to decide whether they were telling the truth, especially when they were facing the imminent prospect of death or im
prisonment. With an actor, who was nothing if not a trained liar, you could never be sure of anything. Harlowe tried to turn the question back on Rose, attack his claim of innocence, not on the grounds of dishonesty, but stupidity.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Why didn’t I…?”

  “Kill her.” Harlowe crossed his arms, bent his head to the side, and fixed him with a steady glance. “Yes, if you didn’t kill her, why didn’t you? I hear you tried to kill her before, beat her up so bad she wound up in the hospital. I understand that’s the reason she was living there, in the house you used to own.”

  “How did you hear about that?” demanded Rose, visibly agitated. “All right: I have a temper; I get angry. I do things I shouldn’t do, and then I feel bad about it. One night, something happened: we got into a fight; I didn’t mean to hurt her, I didn’t even mean to hit her. But it happened, and I tried to make it right. It was my house, but she loved it there, and I didn’t care about living there anymore after we broke up. So, yeah, I gave it to her. Why not? But that’s a lie! – That I tried to kill her. And it’s a lie now when anyone says I did, says I killed her that night. She was dead when I got there. I found her there like that: stabbed to death, lying on the floor.”

  Though stunned by what he heard - the admission that Driscoll Rose has actually been there that night – Harlowe reached for the pen that lay next to the note pad on his desk and looked at Rose as if he were still waiting to hear something of importance. A tight smile of pure skepticism danced across his mouth.

  “You went there that night, and you found her, lying on the floor, and she was already dead. And you did – what, exactly?”

  Rose seemed not to understand.

  “What did you do? She’s lying there, dead – must have been plain someone had killed her. What did you do?”

  “I left,” said Rose with a puzzled shrug. “What do you think I would have -?”

  “Called the police, for starters. But you didn’t call the police; you just left. Why?”

  “She was dead. There was nothing I could do.”

  “Nothing you could do! – How dense are you? It didn’t occur to you that you should call the police, report what had happened? If what you told me is true, do you have any idea how this looks? You were there. You didn’t call the police. What do you think a prosecutor will do with that; what do you think he will tell a jury? You don’t think he might just suggest that the reason you didn’t call the police is because you killed her and didn’t want to get caught?”

  “Why are you getting all worked up? I didn’t do it; I told you that.”

  “Worked up?” laughed Harlowe. “Upset? Me? I’m not upset; I’m not the one who is going to be spending the rest of his life in a prison cell, if they don’t execute me instead!”

  “I didn’t do it,” repeated Rose with dull insistence.

  “Unfortunately, in matters of this kind, they don’t just take your word for it.” Harlowe shook his head, incredulous to the point of feeling half-sorry for him, a fool willing to play make believe with his own life. “All right, let’s go back to the beginning. I read the newspapers like everyone else. I know you were supposed to meet with her – with Gloria Baker – that night to discuss something about a movie you were going to make together. That’s what the story said. Is it true?”

  “Yeah; I said I’d come over. I don’t know if I said the time,” he added vaguely. “Probably didn’t; just said sometime that night, later on.”

  “She would have known what that meant – ‘later on’?”

  “Yeah, sure; you know: later on – ten, eleven, midnight; sometime around then.”

  “Ten, eleven, twelve….What time did you get there?”

  “I don’t know. After eleven, I think.”

  “After eleven, you think. You didn’t notice the time when you were driving over there, didn’t check your watch.”

  “I don’t wear a watch.”

  Harlowe was jotting down a note. He looked up and raised his eyebrows.

  “You don’t wear a watch. That’s helpful.” He tossed the pen onto the yellow legal pad and sighed. “So, you get there, sometime that night, but you can’t say exactly when – sometime around eleven, but you can’t really say for sure – and you find her, you find Gloria Baker, dead on the floor. Terrific! Did you knock on the door when you got there?”

  “Did I what -? Knock on the door? No, the door was wide open, and the lights were all on.”

  “What did that tell you?”

  “Tell me?”

  “She was expecting you, but she didn’t know when, because you hadn’t told her. Sometime that night – ‘later on,’ remember? – ten, eleven, or maybe midnight. So why would the door be wide open?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. Suddenly, he broke into the boyish sly smile that women had always seemed to find irresistible. It changed him so completely that even Harlowe, who never forgot anything, almost forgot what he had looked like before, as if by that smile alone all the surly, sullen self-indulgence had been banished to a place from which it could never come back.

  “With Gloria you never knew what she was going to do. The door might be locked; it might be left standing wide open, the way it was that night. It all depended on her mood, what she happened to feel like at any one moment. Once, when we were living together, she started talking about a movie Natalie Wood made, Inside Daisy Clover. It’s about a girl who becomes a huge star. She lives on the beach and at the end of the movie, because she feels like a prisoner, she lets the oven catch fire and as she walks down the beach the house explodes in the background. And you know what Gloria wanted to do? – She wanted to go home and burn down the house, just to see what it felt like. She would have done it, too. I’m not kidding; she was crazy that way. She didn’t care what she did, just so long as it was something she hadn’t done before. One day she decided she wanted to marry me; a few weeks later she’s going out with someone else.

  “You can think what you want about me, Mr. Harlowe,” he said with a shrewd look Harlowe had not expected. “I know what people say about me – and some of it is true: I am impulsive, and I get really pissed off when someone pushes me too far – but compared to Gloria and the way she was I’m a rock of stability. She was beautiful, and exciting, and when I was with her I never wanted to be with anyone else; but if she hadn’t been in the movies, been able to change all the time, always be someone else, she would have been in an asylum. No one likes to admit it, but Hollywood is the only place you don’t get locked up for being crazy.”

  He said this with a growing sense of wonder, as if only now, after her death, had he begun to realize how different she had really been, and how much he had been in love with her. The smile on his mouth faded into insignificance, became inward and remote. He began to fidget nervously with his hands.

  “The door was open,” he said in a hollow, faraway voice. “She was on the floor. There was a lot of blood.” He clutched one hand with the other to stop them shaking. “A lot of blood,” he repeated, staring into the middle distance.

  “You were sure she was dead?” asked Harlowe, gently. “Did you check her pulse, check for a heartbeat? Did you -?”

  “There was a lot of blood, goddamn it! What the hell did I just tell you?” he demanded, turning on Harlowe with a scornful, imperious glance. “Check her pulse, check for a heartbeat! Her eyes were wide open; she was all cut up. The shirt she was wearing – the damn thing was all in rags; blood was still oozing out of her -.”

  “Still -? She couldn’t have been dead very long. What did you see? She was stabbed. Did you see a knife?”

  “I didn’t see anything. Christ, I’d just seen her; I didn’t go looking around to see what the killer might have left.” He started grinding his jaw back and forth as the anger built up in his eyes. Clenching his left hand into a fist, he opened it, and then did it again, over and over, beating time to his own sense of rage at being caught in a trap. �
�She was dead, murdered, and I knew I had to get out of there.”

  Harlowe had seen enough to know that Driscoll Rose was a marvel of volatility, and that anything could set him off. The real question was how much of it was his own half-demented temper and how much done for effect: a show of outrage and emotion to prove his innocence. Harlowe leaned closer.

  “You say you knew you had to get out of there. Did you think the killer might still be somewhere in the house; that he – or she – might come after you next?”

  This seemed to catch Rose off guard. He had not thought of it before, and now he seemed to wonder if he should have. Harlowe sensed immediately the doubt, and the caution.

  “You didn’t think the killer was still there. That isn’t the reason you thought you had to get out of there as quickly as you did?”

  He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from him. He had had other clients charged with murder make the same excuse, tell the same inevitable lie: blame their own panic-stricken cowardice for running away from the scene of a crime they swore they did not commit.

  “Well, what’s the answer, Mr. Rose? You didn’t think the killer was still there – and of course that raises a question itself, doesn’t it? – But you knew you had to leave, to ‘get out of there’ as you put it. Why was that, Mr. Rose? Imagine you’re on trial for your life, you’re testifying – not here, in the privacy of my office where anything you tell me is a secret I have to take to my grave, but in open court to twelve people on a jury - What do you tell them, Mr. Rose? What do you say to explain why, having just found the woman you say you loved and with whom you had only recently been engaged, your only thought was to get out of there, get away as fast as you could?”

  It was the actor’s genius to picture in his mind all the details of the scene he was asked to play. A jury, a courtroom packed with eager spectators, lawyers and a judge, and Rose himself on the witness stand listening to the question, all flashed in front of him the same way he would have seen a room he had just entered. Without conscious intent, he actually sat straight up and turned slightly to his left.