by D. W. Buffa
Then he started further back, the night he hit her, the night they made so much of at the trial; seeing it all over again, the things she said, the way she looked, that smug defiance in her eyes when she told him she had fallen in love with someone else. He had hated her then – he remembered that – and if he had not killed her it was not because he had not tried. He had hit her with everything he had. He had been in such a rage that he did not stop hating her, did not regret what he had done, until the next morning when he woke up and remembered that he had left her lying on the floor and wondered if he really might have killed her. Driscoll Rose thought about that now; he thought about it a lot. He did not believe in religion, and he did not believe in God, but he could not stop himself believing that he was somehow being punished for what he had done to her, not the night he killed her - he was innocent of that - but the night he almost had.
He did not go entirely without visitors. The night before he was to be sentenced, someone finally came to see him, the judge who had presided at his trial.
“I’ll be just outside,” said the jailer as he showed Walter Bannister into the small, windowless room where Rose sat waiting, his wrists and ankles shackled.
“Would you remove those, please,” Bannister asked the jailer who had started out the door.
A burly, thick faced man with large, pudgy hands, the shirt of his uniform strained against the buttons with such force that he must have sucked in his breath when he put it on. He would have refused to do what he had been asked, and in most cases not even bothered to reply, simply dismissed the request with a caustic glance, but Bannister was a different breed, more than just a judge, a gentleman, polite, well-mannered, the kind you did not see so much anymore.
“Of course, Judge – whatever you say.”
Bannister waited until the jailer was gone.
“I won’t keep you long, Mr. Rose. Sentencing is tomorrow, and I wanted to have a chance to talk with you before that. There are some things that need saying.”
Rose remembered now what, because of everything else that had happened, he had forgotten, what he had not remembered since the time it took place, nearly a year ago at Roger Stanton’s place in Santa Barbara.
“You were the guy – sorry, you were the one who broke up that fight I was in. I didn’t remember. All through the trial, I’m sitting there, you’re up there on the bench, and I didn’t remember. No one told me it was you. I didn’t even get a good look at you at the time. I just remember someone pulled me off that guy I was fighting, that waiter who had said something he shouldn’t have said, who said -”
Bannister held up his hand. “That doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you’ve been found guilty of murder and tomorrow I have to sentence you.”
“Do you always wear a coat and tie?”
The question stunned Bannister by its sheer irrelevance. He watched in silence as Driscoll Rose scratched the red marks on his wrists where the handcuffs had cut into the skin. But Rose only started there. He kept scratching, first on his arms and then on his face, the nervous compulsion of someone under almost unbearable stress. His eyes, as Bannister now noticed, did not stay focused, but darted from one thing to another, the same way, it appeared, that his mind had begun to work: the ability to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds all but gone.
“I have to sentence you tomorrow,” Bannister told him again.
The soothing quality of his voice finally had an effect. Rose stopped scratching, held his hands in his lap and with sad, grief-stricken eyes waited for what Bannister had to tell him next.
“You were found guilty of murder, but I’m not going to sentence you for that. I’m going to sentence you instead for what you did to Gloria Baker before. I’m going to sentence you for assault. You’ll spend a few years in prison, then you’ll be out on parole.”
Rose stared at him. He did not understand any of it.
“I was found guilty of murder, but I’m not going to be sentenced for murder; I’m going to be…?”
Bannister crossed his arms and raised his chin. A thin, rueful smile cut across his mouth.
“The jury found you guilty; there’s nothing I can do about that. But I’m not going to sentence you for something I know you didn’t do.”
“That you know I didn’t do?” said Rose with a gaze that had suddenly become penetrating and acute. “You know I didn’t kill Gloria, you know I didn’t murder…? How do you know that?”
“I know you didn’t kill her because I know who did.” Bannister had not been sure until this moment that he would really say it, make this kind of confession; but having said it, he felt a surge of relief that was like a newfound power, a capacity he had not known he had. “I know all about the murder, and that you’re innocent.”
Rose’s eyes flew open. He reached across the table and grabbed Bannister by the wrist.
“If you know that – if you know who killed her – then get me out of here! Tell the police, tell the D.A. – for God’s sake, tell whoever you have to tell – but get me out of here! I’m innocent. You can’t send me to prison for something I didn’t do!”
“I’m not,” said Bannister as he pulled his arm away. “Listen to me!” he half-shouted. “I just told you what’s going to happen. It’s the most I can do for you. You’re going to prison, what should have happened when you went into of those rages of yours and almost killed her. You should have gone to prison then. None of this would have happened – she’d still be alive – if you had been forced to pay the price for what you had done.”
“But I didn’t kill her –. You said so yourself. How can you…? Who killed her, who murdered Gloria?”
Bannister got up from his chair and shook his head.
“You had a trial. The jury found you guilty. The case is closed.”
“But you know who -”
“You didn’t kill her, but that isn’t the same as saying you don’t have any responsibility for her death. Consider it part of your punishment that everyone will think you’re a murderer.” Bannister paused and seemed to reconsider what he had said, wondering if it was too harsh. “No, I can’t do that. You’re not a murderer, Mr. Rose. Whatever else you are, you’re not that.”
Only Walter Bannister could have done what he did the next day and avoided a public lynching. With the utmost gravity, he announced from the bench that while the jury had returned a verdict of guilty, the court was not persuaded that the verdict was right, “and because we are under an obligation to dispense justice, we cannot in conscience sentence the defendant to a life in prison. The defendant, like everyone else accused of a crime should be punished in proportion to what he has actually done.” Without any further explanation, he sentenced Driscoll Rose to eight years in prison, the term that would have been imposed for a serious assault. Rose would be eligible for parole in less than three years.
No one knew quite what to make of it, but because of Walter Bannister’s perfect reputation for rectitude and learning, no one tried to make much of it at all. Within a few short weeks, the murder of Gloria Baker was all but forgotten, and what happened to Driscoll Rose, found guilty of a murder the judge in the case seemed to think he might not have done, had become a mystery not worth investigating.
Despite the insistence of his loyal clerk that he take a long and much deserved vacation, Bannister did not miss a day on the bench. He continued the same routine, presiding over trials, listening to legal arguments, deciding motions, as if the trial of Driscoll Rose had been no different than any of the other, countless proceedings with which he had been involved. He still took as much work home as before, and was still the first, or one of the first, to arrive at the courthouse in the morning. He still went on his regular, late night walk in the neighborhood where he lived. The only difference, if it was a difference, was that he refused the frequent invitations to accompany his wife, Meredith, to the various social events that occupied so many of her nights and weekends. He had not gone anywhere, except to the
courthouse, for more than a month when, finally, he relented, and then only because it was another one of those large, anonymous gatherings at Roger Stanton’s Santa Barbara retreat.
“Why do you sigh like that?” chided Meredith as they approached the gated entrance. A long line of cars stretched in front of them, inching forward to valet parking. “It’s a gorgeous day, not a cloud in the sky. Everyone will be here. And we haven’t seen Roger since…since….”
“Since the trial,” he finished for her.
“It was all very disturbing,” she remarked, frowning at the memory of it. “Especially for Roger.”
“Especially for Roger? What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” replied Meredith with nervous impatience. She was trying to catch a glimpse of the couple just emerging from their car. They were famous, but she could not quite remember their names. “All the work he has had to do, putting things back together at the studio.”
“Yes, that must have been difficult,” said Bannister with a short, and rather weary, smile.
They waited for their turn to be ferried up to Stanton’s villa, high on the hill, and then, when they were there, they soon lost sight of each other. Meredith, as she often did, gravitated immediately toward a small crowd of people she had known for years, most of them born into the upper echelons of Hollywood life, while her husband, left to his own devices, wandered all alone down the long expanse of terraced, sun-drenched lawns, passing as he did hundreds of eager sun-tanned faces, all of them glowing in the knowledge, the shared secret, that they were important because you had to be, to have been invited to something like this, the first party thrown by Roger Stanton in more than a year.
“It’s really a strange business, isn’t it?”
Bannister felt a hand on his sleeve. The director, Irving Leonard, was standing next to him, a wry expression in his aging eyes.
“A strange business?”
“Everything. All of it. The house – more rooms than you can count, the long view out to the Pacific. A perfectly beautiful day, blue sky, green grass – Christ, this place has more lawns than a cemetery. How did your brother-in-law - how did any of us – get what he has? Making motion pictures… it’s a strange business, if you think about it. People go into a room so dark you can’t see anything and for maybe two hours watch pictures on a screen – moving pictures – of a scene like this: people, good looking people, with smiling, cheerful faces and private, maybe not too nice ambitions and desires, on a nice sunny day that if they hadn’t decided to sit in the dark they could have been outside enjoying themselves.”
Leonard laughed in a dry, understated way. He looked out at the well-dressed crowd, and then back at Bannister.
“I’m not complaining, you understand. We all do pretty well because people like to watch other people pretend to be someone they’re not; but what the hell, you have to admit it’s a strange business. Though maybe not so strange as the business you’re in. I always try to make my pictures have an ending people can understand. What happened in that trial of yours; that sentence you gave -”
Bannister felt himself tense, not much, but enough for Leonard to notice.
“I’m sure you had your reasons,” he added quickly as he bent closer. “Everyone was upset, but only because they thought they were supposed to be – upset, I mean, that Driscoll could murder Gloria and get a sentence that meant he might be out in just a couple of years.” Leonard tightened his grip on Bannister’s arm, and then let go. “It did not last long. Someone pointed out that even if he had only gotten a year, Driscoll Rose was dead in Hollywood. He’d never make another movie.” A shrewd grin paraded unashamed across Irving Leonard’s mouth. “What could be more final than that? And if there was any doubt about it, now we have the party to prove it.”
“The party to prove it…?”
“You don’t know what this means? The chapter is closed, the story is over. Gloria Baker and Driscoll Rose are officially forgotten, part of the past we’re no longer required to remember. Everyone is here to have a good time – a good time: the bright sunny future we all deserve to enjoy, everyone free to dream that they’re the next Driscoll Rose, the next Gloria Baker, the next great star that next year, or maybe much sooner than that, everyone will want to know. Look at them, down there, starting to dance, where Driscoll damn near killed that kid, and would have, too, if you hadn’t stopped him. You see anyone thinking about him now, worried what he might think, worried he might on a hair trigger’s instant go from being their best friend to the worst enemy they’ve ever had? He was a bum; he deserved more than what you gave him – after what he did – but he’s gone and he won’t be coming back.”
They walked, the way they had before, down toward the silk awnings of the pavilion where a small orchestra was playing and a few couples had begun to dance. Leonard grabbed a glass from a passing waiter, took a drink, and then, with a strange, insistent look, as if nothing could stop him learning what he wanted to know, told Bannister that he knew his secret.
“I heard what you said in court: that you weren’t convinced Rose did it. You know something. What is it? You know who did it, don’t you? That would be a story worth telling.”
A sudden surge of heat coursed through Bannister’s veins. His mouth began to twitch uncontrollably. A wave of fatigue swept over him. He wondered now why he had come, why he did not just leave well enough alone. In a voice that seemed to belong to someone else, he dismissed the suggestion of some evil knowledge with an empty phrase.
“I gave the sentence that under the circumstances seemed appropriate.”
Under the circumstances! What a multitude of sins against morality that could cover: the omission of common obligations, the too cheap forgiveness of the weakness of others, the blind eye to mistakes made and crimes committed - the whole dismal catalogue of human greed and ambition, the whole dumb chronicle of human failure! Bannister turned to the dance floor, put up the night before, to be taken down late that night or early the next morning, part of the temporary permanence of things, and for a moment stared at his own regretted past, at Driscoll Rose moving closer and closer to the watching crowd, and then….If he had not done anything, if he had let the fight continue, if….He shook his head abruptly, trying to force all the imponderable ‘might have beens’ out of his mind.
He found Roger Stanton on the terrace, alone in the middle of the crowd, talking casually with whomever he had, by a turn of his head or a change of expression, allowed to come closer. It was one of the things Bannister liked most about him: the quiet dominance, the easy assumption of his own unquestioned importance. Everything came to him, and he was never surprised when it did. He saw Bannister almost before Bannister saw him. With a slight smile, Stanton moved toward him.
“Can we talk somewhere?” said Bannister as they shook hands.
“It’ll be a few minutes before I can get away. Do you mind? We can talk inside, in the study.”
It was a room that, as Bannister remembered from the last time he was in it, the day he had let his brother-in-law persuade him not to decide right away to report what Driscoll Rose had done, was somewhere the other side of the boundary between the world of senses, where there were things you could touch, and the world of dreams, where, if you tried to touch anything, your hand would pass right through it. The ceiling, twenty feet above the Italian marble floor; the endless, empty shelves, facing each other across fifty feet of cool, empty distance; the hand-carved stone where the wall had been left uncovered; the enormous carpet, the hand carved desk, all the tangible traces of opulence and a taste that, if perhaps questionable, was still a serious attempt to make a statement.. But a statement about what? – What others thought a room like this should be? A study that was actually used for the study of something serious?
Reality and the world of illusion converged, and the room became, in the sudden clarity of Walter Bannister’s mind, a coherent whole. It was precisely what the study of what an earlier generation call
ed a movie mogul should look like, a room that, except for the absence of cameras, was what a movie set was like. The empty shelves – that was the key. The only books, the hundred or so never opened volumes on the wall directly behind Roger Stanton’s desk, seen through a camera lens, would make it seem that there were books everywhere. Everything was an illusion, an inference drawn from things that only appeared to be true. There seemed to Bannister a marvelous consistency in that: the way the fragmentary parts of a life were made to seem the whole of what a person really was.
“Sorry you had to wait,” said Roger Stanton as he walked across to the chair, close to the French doors, where Bannister sat, still and serious. Opening the door, Stanton leaned against the casement and took the distant sun full on his face, basking for a moment in the comfort of its warmth.
“I wanted to see you – I came here – to make a confession.”
“A confession?” Stanton, reluctantly, turned his face from the sun. “What could you possibly have to confess?” He leaned back, lounging, one foot crossed over the other, against the open door. There was a hint of mischief in his eyes. He refused to take at face value what Bannister had just said. “Are you finally going to divorce Meredith?”
“I’m serious, Roger; more serious than I’ve ever been about anything.”
Stanton was still doubtful. “You’ve come here to make your confession? All right; go ahead. I’ll play the priest, sit quietly, and listen to what you have to say.”
“It’s about the murder of Gloria Baker.”
The last remnant of a smile vanished slowly from Stanton’s fine, straight mouth.
“That’s all over.”
“Driscoll Rose didn’t kill her.”
“What makes you think he didn’t?” asked Stanton, looking at him with a deeper interest. “I know you had your doubts - I know what you said at sentencing – but didn’t everything come out at the trial?”
“Nothing came out at the trial! I was there that night, Roger; I know what happened! Rose told the truth. She was dead when he got there….”