The Last Man: A Novel

by D. W. Buffa

  “I was scared, scared that I’d be blamed; that if someone – the police, anyone! – saw me like that, kneeling over her body, blood all over, they’d think I’d done it; that they wouldn’t let me explain, that because of what had happened between us before - engaged, and then the engagement broken off – that I’d killed her in a fit of jealous rage.”

  Rose blinked his eyes and looked at Harlowe, waiting, as it seemed, to see how well he had played his part and whether Harlowe had some suggestion how he could do it better. Other clients, none of them actors, had done the same thing: answered a question the way they thought they should when their case came to trial, and then waited to see if their lawyer thought they should change it. There was usually a trace of disappointment in their eyes when he told them just to tell the truth. What they really wanted to know was how they should act. Driscoll Rose was in a class by himself. He could learn a line easily enough, he did it for a living, but they were just words to him: he did not understand everything that they meant.

  “The knife wasn’t there,” Harlowe reminded him. Rose still did not understand. “The knife wasn’t there, Mr. Rose. Isn’t that what you just told me? You said you didn’t see it. If it wasn’t there, it had to have been taken by whoever killed her. If it wasn’t there, Mr. Rose, you had the perfect defense. You find the body, the murder weapon has disappeared. You couldn’t have taken it. You see where I’m going with this? If you had called the police, if you had not run away, no one would be accusing you of anything.”

  Rose started to retreat into the shell of sullen indifference he had used before. Harlowe pulled him up sharp.

  “You left – you ran away - and there are only two ways to explain it: Either you killed her, and then you ran away and took the knife with you; or you found her, the way you said you did, and the only thought you had was to run like hell because - face it, Mr. Rose - you’re a coward and you never thought about anyone but yourself! That, and the fact that you were too damn stupid to realize that doing the right thing is sometimes the only smart thing to do!”

  Rose was on his feet, screaming obscenities.

  “You’re not the only lawyer I can get, I - !”

  “You said that before.”

  “Why would I want someone who…! Who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like that?”

  A broad smile shot across Michael Harlowe’s supremely confident mouth.

  “Probably the only chance you have to keep off death row. But you’re right, Mr. Rose: There are other lawyers, and I suggest you find one. Now,” he said, waving his hand in a gesture of dismissal, “if you’ll excuse me, I have things I have to do.”

  Rose stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment, and just stood there, with no idea what to do next.

  “It’s what I told you before, Mr. Rose: Stay or go, it doesn’t matter to me what you do. But if you want to talk seriously to me about representing you, you better understand that I’m not impressed by these schoolboy antics of yours and they better stop. If I ask a question, you answer it. You get angry with me, you can go screw yourself. And don’t make the mistake a lot of people make. If I take your case that doesn’t mean – that never means – that I’m working for you. You never tell me what to do. First time you try it, is the last time you see me. I do things my way, or I don’t do them at all. Let me tell you something else. The fact you’re a movie star is the worst thing that ever happened to you. You won’t get a fair trial. It’s impossible. Everyone thinks they know you, everyone who has ever seen you in a movie, everyone who has seen your picture on the cover of some gossip magazine, has an idea about you. They may think you’re a great actor; they all know you’re the ‘bad boy’ of Hollywood.

  “I’m not sure it would make sense to put you on the stand. If a jury hears what I just heard - that you found the body and ran away – after the prosecution has established that the knife wasn’t found at the scene, they’re going to think you’re either guilty or stupid beyond belief. Strange business when your only hope is that a jury thinks you’re the dumbest guy on the planet. If you don’t testify, they may not be able to prove you were even there. But if you don’t take the stand – the actor who supposedly always says what he thinks, no matter whom he might offend – they’re going to think you’ve got something to hide, that you must have done it because otherwise why wouldn’t you tell them face to face that you didn’t? And there is one other thing you better understand. This isn’t Hollywood: the innocent don’t always go free and the guilty don’t always get caught. This is America, Mr. Rose: nothing is ever really quite fair.”

  Rose had settled back in the chair, listening attentively and with a kind of grudging admiration as Harlowe listed the various disadvantages anyone who defended him would have somehow to overcome. The brutal honesty of it appealed to his own disgust at the hypocrisy he saw all around him, the cringing duplicity of people who wanted to be known as his friends. Harlowe was someone he would trust in a fight.

  “Does that mean you want to represent me?” Certain of the answer, a grim smile cut across the jagged line of his mouth.

  “No, I’m afraid it does not.” Harlowe paused to let him feel the full weight of his refusal. He waited until the smile on Rose’s face faded away. “I won’t even consider it, unless you tell me the truth, the whole truth, about what happened that night. And let’s start with the most important question of all. Did you do it, Mr. Rose? Did you murder Gloria Baker?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was an unconscious gesture that had become habitual. Hector Alfonso straightened his tie and only then began to speak. It was not much, a brief announcement that would ordinarily have passed unnoticed; a single addition to a list of possible witnesses, a name without significance other than that it was well-known.

  “I may call Roger Stanton as a witness for the prosecution.”

  They were sitting in Walter Bannister’s judicial chambers, the judge and the two attorneys: Hector Alfonso for the prosecution and Michael Harlowe for the defense. It was late on a Friday afternoon. The trial of Driscoll Rose for the murder of Gloria Baker was scheduled to start Monday morning. Though the murder had taken place early in the fall, few things move as slowly as the justice system and six months had passed before the defendant was finally going to have his day in court. It was now early in the spring, the second week of April to be exact. The days were getting longer instead of shorter, and there was a cleaner, less arid, feel to the air, but the heat was still everywhere and the traffic still relentless. There was only one season in Los Angeles.

  Bannister raised an eyebrow. He seemed to meditate a question of some delicacy.

  “By itself, the fact that a judge knows a witness is not a reason to recuse himself. If he did, there wouldn’t be many trials over which he could preside. Most judges have at least a nodding acquaintance with many of the expert witnesses – the coroner, the people from the crime lab, police officers – the prosecution normally calls. But a relative, that may be a different matter. What do you think, Michael? Roger Stanton is my wife’s brother. Should I recuse myself, have another judge preside?”

  It was the last thing Michael Harlowe wanted. It did not matter to him if Roger Stanton was Bannister’s brother-in-law – if he had been his father or his son, it would not have mattered – Bannister was the most fair-minded judge he knew. And besides, Stanton was only a witness, and not a very important one at that. His testimony would be brief and straightforward. If there were an objection, it would be to the form of the question, a legal argument between the lawyers, nothing that would compel the judge to take sides in an issue that had consequences for his brother-in-law.

  “This isn’t a civil case, your Honor. He doesn’t have any stake in the outcome. I don’t see any reason why you should recuse yourself. And frankly, I would not like it if you did.”

  Sitting straight, his left elbow on the arm of the chair, Bannister rubbed two fingers against his thumb. All business, he looked immediately to
the district attorney.

  “And what about you, Hector? Do you see any conflict?”

  The indifference with which Harlowe had seemed to view the announcement that Stanton might be called as a witness made Alfonso wonder whether the defense attorney understood how damaging that testimony might be. Murderers often lied to their lawyers about what they had done. It was possible that Driscoll Rose had not mentioned that just months before her murder he had beaten Gloria Baker within an inch of her life.

  “No, your Honor; not at all.” Alfonso flashed a bright smile. “Michael and I agree: you’re the only judge we want.”

  But Bannister appeared still to have reservations. He turned to Harlowe, but as he did he seemed to change his mind about something.

  “You may wish to file a motion to limit his testimony, the way you might with any witness. I don’t think it would be right to rule on that. I suppose what I could do, should you file such a motion, is to have another judge hear and decide it.”

  Harlowe ran his hand over his tousled brown hair and scratched the back of his head as he started to smile. Then, leaning in the opposite direction from Alfonso, he gave him a sly, sideways look.

  “You’re going to have Stanton testify that Gloria Baker called him the night Rose broke her jaw; testify that he found her like that, called a doctor and had her taken to a private hospital. I know all that. The only thing I don’t know is why he wasn’t on your witness list from the beginning.” That first, fugitive smile turned into a broad, boyish grin. “Did you think by adding him late you could catch me by surprise, that I wouldn’t have time to prepare?”

  If Alfonso felt any embarrassment, he did not show it. To the contrary, he seemed to enjoy the chance to exchange the mild accusations of friendly adversaries getting ready for a courtroom fight. He grinned from ear to ear.

  “How could I catch you by surprise, when your client, honest man that he is, must have told you everything: how he beat her up one night, sent her to the hospital; and how, a few months later, he did not stop with that but -”

  “Honest man that he is, he denies he did anything to her ‘a few months later.’ But back to the issue at hand: That is the reason you intend to call him, isn’t it?”

  The district attorney had a duty to disclose all the evidence the prosecution had, including what he expected to be the testimony of each of the witnesses he intended to call. Harlowe was right, and he told him so. This satisfied Harlowe; it did not satisfy Walter Bannister.

  “Michael is too polite to ask directly, but he alluded to it earlier: why have you just added the name now, just days before the trial is scheduled to start? Why wasn’t the name Roger Stanton on your witness list when it was first submitted as part of discovery, along with everything else you’re required to turn over to the defense?”

  Alfonso looked away, past Bannister to the window behind him; and then, a moment later, he stared down at his hands as if preparing himself for an act of contrition. He was stalling for time, trying to decide how much he should reveal of what had been in reality a protracted negotiation. He did not want to admit that he had negotiated anything. It had been unavoidable given who Roger Stanton was, but it made him look indecisive and weak, and he did not like it.

  “He didn’t want to testify at first. You can understand his reluctance,” said Alfonso, his eyes full of practiced sympathy, turning first to Bannister then to Harlowe. “He knew them both, the victim and the accused; and I’m sure he didn’t want to believe Driscoll Rose could really have done it, murder Gloria Baker. And perhaps he feels a little responsible for what happened.”

  “Responsible?” asked Bannister with a sudden, searching glance.

  “He knew what Rose could do. He was the one who found her the night Rose beat her up. He sent for a doctor, got her to the hospital – but he never called the police. Perhaps he thinks that if….”

  It was incredible the way Hector Alfonso, all instinct and reaction, could draw on his own experience to talk about the failures of others. Bannister thought it an interesting question whether he even remembered that he had refused to do anything when Bannister told him what Driscoll Rose had done in Santa Barbara. And now, here he was, offering his own analysis of why Roger Stanton might have some latent sense of guilt for not having done anything to stop Driscoll Rose when he had had the chance to do so. Everyone was right about Hector Alfonso: he was truly a gifted politician, the next Bill Clinton.

  This was unfair to Hector Alfonso. Had he known what Walter Bannister was thinking, he could have replied that an important distinction needed to be drawn. Bannister had come to him with the report of an incident that, given the people involved, would have been difficult to prosecute even had it happened in a place where he had jurisdiction. Roger Stanton, on the other hand, had witnessed the bloody aftermath of a brutal assault and for reasons of his own had chosen to do nothing about it. On the evidence Bannister had, Driscoll Rose would probably have been acquitted, if the case had ever actually gone to trial; what Roger Stanton had seen would have sent Rose to prison. It was easy to second guess, to talk about what others should have done, but Alfonso dealt in realities, and that meant having a provable case. He did not have one on what Bannister had told him; but he had one now and it was rock solid.

  “There is of course one other matter,” said Bannister as he got to his feet and stood next to the window, looking out. It had rained the night before - not much, less than a quarter of an inch: a light sprinkle in most of the rest of the country; a significant development according to all the local television weather reports – and for a while at least the yellow brown haze had disappeared. It was one of those days when those who had lived here all their lives remembered, without quite knowing why they remembered, what it had been like before the freeways brought all the cars and there were still orange groves at the end of long dust covered roads. With a slight smile full of nostalgia, Walter Bannister gazed out at the crowded flat lands of Los Angeles, wondering why now, after all this time, he still saw everything the way it had been, and why he so much regretted the change. He was, he thought, too much in love with the past; and yet he could still feel what it had been like, his bare feet sinking into the sand on the beach, the grip of his hand on the ladder when he climbed to pick oranges from the tree, all of it gone forever, but somehow still alive, even if he was the only one to know it. There was nothing now, except a great emptiness that was sometimes unbearable, burdened as he was by a new and corrosive sense of guilt.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, coming back to himself. “I forgot where I was. Oh, yes; there is one other matter. I know the defendant; I have had dealing of my own with him.”

  “You sentenced him on a drug conviction; put him on probation, required that he get treatment,” said Harlowe with a shrug of indifference.

  Bannister looked at Alfonso, expecting him to say something. Alfonso was not sure what that look meant, or what it meant that Bannister had phrased his familiarity with Driscoll Rose in such general terms. Bannister had broken up a fight, pulled Rose off a young man he might otherwise have beaten senseless; he must have assumed that they both knew about it. Bannister had told Hector himself; Rose must have told Harlowe. Still, it seemed curious that he did not mention it. It did not matter, of course; and if the defense attorney did not think it a reason to ask Bannister to disqualify himself, he certainly was not going to bring it up. Walter Bannister was always scrupulously impartial, and while he might not have the best feelings toward Driscoll Rose, that would not affect how he conducted himself in court. Judges usually thought criminal defendants were guilty – nearly all of them were – but that did not stop them presiding fairly over their trials. It was not that long ago that in the privacy of chambers they had, the three of them, discussed the sickening depravity of that notorious murderer, Daniel Lee Atkinson, who, precisely because his guilt was so obvious, was given the benefit of every close question of evidence. And if Harlowe did not know, if he had not heard - again, what diff
erence did it make?

  Alfonso did the only prudent thing. In response to Bannister’s questioning look, he just shook his head and said the judge’s involvement with Driscoll Rose was a matter of public record.

  “Then we’re set to go on Monday,” said Bannister. Placing his hands on the small of his back, he rose up on his tip toes and stretched. “This is a murder trial, and jury selection in cases like this can take forever. Let’s try to do it in a couple of days. You’re not going to find anyone who doesn’t know something – or think they know something – about the victim and the defendant. Everyone knew who she was; everyone knows him. So let’s not try to find the impossible. Everyone has a bias. If they’re honest about it, if they admit it, if they don’t insist they don’t have any opinion at all, that’s probably good enough.”

  It was the considered, and completely private, opinion of Walter Bannister that the most dishonest people in the world were the men and women who served in juries. They did not lie about everything, only about what was most important. The first juror in the trial of Driscoll Rose was no exception to the rule. Smiling and serious at the same time, Hector Alfonso asked all the usual preliminary questions, drawing forth the bare bones biography of an anonymous citizen called out of the obscurity of her private life to pass judgment on a man she had never met but knew better than her next door neighbor. Rebecca Smart was thirty eight years old and a college graduate. Married with two teenage children, she was the manager of a downtown coffee shop, part of a national chain. She answered each question in a small, firm voice, and never let her eyes wander from Hector Alfonso’s friendly gaze. Alfonso was good at that, making people he had only just met think he had been looking forward to it all day, and better yet, would not forget them now that he had. He spoke to her, asked her questions, as if instead of a crowded courtroom they were the only two people in the room. She gave him all the answers he wanted, said exactly what was expected. She knew who the defendant was, and had seen a number of the victim’s motion pictures; and, yes, she had seen some of the television coverage of the crime and had read about it in the papers, but no, she had not formed an opinion, one way or the other, about the case. She was lying, but she did not know it. She believed it when she said it because it was what she was supposed to say, what any fair-minded person would say.