Star Witness

by D. W. Buffa

  “Now, Mr. Roth,” I said with renewed intensity as I looked up, my finger still pressed against the page, “you’ve been working for some time on a screenplay of your own, haven’t you? A story about the way Hollywood really works. You call it Blue Zephyr, the same name as the studio, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” replied Roth. “It was the name of the studio.”

  “It’s the story of someone rather like yourself, isn’t it? Someone who started out with nothing, did what he had to do to survive while he learned everything he could until he got his chance. He becomes successful, creates his own studio, takes an unknown actress, makes her into a star and marries her. Isn’t that what happened to you? You made Marian Walsh into Mary Margaret Flanders, didn’t you?”

  Stanley Roth placed his left elbow on the arm of the witness chair. He spread his thumb and forefinger around the contour of his chin. With an abstracted gaze, he thought for a moment.

  “She wasn’t particularly well trained, and she hadn’t had any real experience. She had something you can’t teach, and no amount of experience can ever give: she drew you toward her. You couldn’t help yourself. When she walked into a room everything stopped. The effect on the screen ... well, you’ve all seen her,” said Roth, addressing himself directly to the jury. “There weren’t many actresses who wanted to be in a scene with her—not many major actresses, I mean. It didn’t matter that it was their scene, that they were the ones speaking the lines. If Mary Margaret was anywhere in the shot—standing off in the distance somewhere—they knew that everyone in the theater would be looking at her, waiting to see what she was going to do next.” Roth shrugged his shoulders. “There’s no good way of explaining why it happened. It wasn’t because she was the best-looking woman anyone had ever seen. Who knows why we feel drawn to one person and not another, why every once in a while there is someone like her, someone who seems to draw everyone’s eye. All I know is that more than anyone I had ever seen on camera, Mary Margaret had that ability, that gift.”

  “But you were the first one to see that, weren’t you?”

  “I knew she could be a star.”

  “In the screenplay, the one you’ve written, the moviestar wife runs off with her husband’s partner, and together they start a studio of their own—correct?” I asked, with my head down, moving toward the jury box.

  “Yes.”

  “He loses not only his wife, but his studio as well—or rather is about to lose it—right? And he decides to risk everything on one last picture, one that is going to expose the whole thing—what they did to him—his partner and his wife—and expose a lot of other things as well. He makes the movie, but the movie never gets shown. Why is that? What happens in the end?”

  Stanley Roth smiled. “He dies.”

  “Someone kills him?”

  “In one version.”

  “To stop anyone from ever seeing the movie?” I persisted.

  “Yes.”

  “Your wife was sleeping with your partner, wasn’t she?”

  Roth looked at me and did not answer.

  “You were here, in court, when your partner, Michael Wirthlin, admitted it, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t know about it at the time?”

  “No.”

  “But you knew—or you suspected—that she had affairs with other men, didn’t you?”

  Roth nodded grimly and then, abruptly, shook his head. “Mary Margaret needed attention, constant attention. She needed to be told how much everyone loved her; she needed to feel that. You may think that strange,” he said to the jury, “that a woman like that, a woman as well-known and admired as she was, would need that. She was incredibly insecure. If you get just below the surface, they all are—all those famous faces you see in the movies. Millions of people go to see them, but they don’t have an audience when they work. No one applauds; they don’t get standing ovations when they do something particularly well. They do the same thing, shoot the same scene, speak the same few words, dozens, sometimes hundreds of times, before the director decides it’s the way he wants it to be. Mary Margaret needed to know she was wanted. Did I know she was having an affair with Michael Wirthlin, or with Walker Bradley, or with anyone else? No. Did I think that she had never slept with anyone else while we were married? I never asked, and I tried not to think about it.”

  I put it to him directly. “Did you have Michael Wirthlin and your wife in mind when you wrote Blue Zephyr?”

  “Yes, but not because I knew there was something going on between them, or even suspected it. It was because I knew Michael was completely ruthless when it came to getting what he wanted. It was also because, like a lot of men in this business who only think in terms of money—especially the ones who got into the business only because of the money they already had—he found the idea of sleeping with a famous movie star irresistible.”

  Folding his arms, Roth crossed one leg over the other. He noticed a piece of lint on his pant leg and flicked it off with the back of his finger.

  “And because,” he continued, “Mary Margaret had the kind of driving ambition that I wanted to capture in the character I was creating: a woman who can’t stand the thought that she can’t decide everything for herself.”

  “If Blue Zephyr were made into a movie, would Michael Wirthlin recognize himself as the partner?”

  The expression on Roth’s face changed immediately. His eyes sparkled and a mischievous grin shot across his mouth. He bounced up in the chair.

  “Michael Wirthlin wouldn’t recognize himself in the mirror. He thinks he’s a creative genius; he isn’t even a very good bookkeeper.”

  “Would other people who saw it think it was Michael Wirthlin?”

  “I don’t know, they might.”

  “Wirthlin knew about the screenplay, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Michael Wirthlin had an affair with your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Blue Zephyr—the studio—the studio you built—no longer exists, does it?”

  “No.”

  “Michael Wirthlin used the fact that you were on trial for murder to take the studio away from you, didn’t he? He threatened to pull his own money and make sure you couldn’t raise it anywhere else, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was the reason that at the home of your other partner, Louis Griffin, you got into a fight with Michael Wirthlin, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, because you’re on trial for the murder of your wife, your partner, the one who had been having an affair with your wife, takes away your studio and, if you’re convicted of that murder, won’t have to worry about anyone seeing a movie exposing him for what he is. Does that about sum up the situation in which you find yourself? It’s almost as good as the ending you wrote, isn’t it? Except of course that your partner didn’t have to kill anyone. Or did he?

  “No further questions,” I said before Annabelle Van Roten could finish objecting to what I had just done.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  IF I HAD EVER THOUGHT that this was going to be like any other murder trial, that, despite the almost morbid fascination with which millions of people followed each day’s developments, there would be no substantial departure in the way the case itself was conducted, Annabelle Van Roten now showed me just how wrong I was. Another defendant, someone no one had ever heard of, one of that vast, largely anonymous, horde of violent predators charged with taking a life, might have been treated with the same withering contempt which she now lavished on Stanley Roth, but it would have been over in no time at all and it would have concentrated on the weakest points in the defendant’s own account.

  Few lawyers, and scarcely any prosecuting attorneys, take seriously the first rule of cross-examination, which is not to do it unless there is not any choice. It has become, for many of them, the way to prove their own importance, this itching eagerness to tell a witness to his face that he is lying, or t
hrough the skepticism in their voice or the look of incredulity in their eyes show the jury that they know the witness is not telling the truth. But if there are not many lawyers left who understand the advantages of limiting the number and the nature of the questions Final Pages 12/5 12/5/04 10:26 AM Page 366 they ask, most still recognize that there is some point at which things have to come to an end and some need to organize their inquiry around the issues crucial to the case. Annabelle Van Roten seemed to want to know everything there was to know about Stanley Roth whether it had anything to do with the murder of Mary Margaret Flanders or not. She began to ask questions before I had quite settled in my chair, and she continued to ask them with scarcely any pause between all the rest of that day and through most of the next, probing first one aspect of Stanley Roth’s life, then another, circling around the witness stand, her dark eyes flashing, gesturing with her long-fingered hands like some rapacious shiny-feathered bird of prey.

  How much time must she have spent thinking about this moment, lying awake late into the night, watching the way it was going to be, the moment she matched wits, not with some inarticulate criminal, but with the great Stanley Roth, who had taught an entire generation, if not precisely what to think, then certainly what to feel. It was the chance of a lifetime, the chance to become nearly as famous, nearly as much a celebrity as Stanley Roth himself. Famous people had been killed so that the sick souls who killed them could share in their fame by becoming permanently associated with their deaths. Annabelle Van Roten could accomplish the same thing not only without infamy but with honor by connecting her name with the death, the execution of Stanley Roth, not a man she had murdered, but a man who had murdered his wife.

  It did not much matter whether she tricked Stanley Roth into a damaging admission or caught him in a deadly half-truth. It was not even necessary that he make one of those small mistakes, something so subtle no one at first notices: the single, seemingly minor inconsistency that shows that everything was a lie. The lengthy and grueling cross-examination of Stanley Roth was not done because there was either a need or an expectation that he was going to make a mistake. It was done so that when he was convicted, everyone would remember how for the better part of two days Annabelle Van Roten had subjected him to this remorseless, withering attack, hammering him hour after hour with accusations of his guilt. Even among those who had been there every day and had heard every word of testimony and seen every witness testify, few would remember much about what had happened in the middle of the trial, but all of them would remember what had happened at the end when that woman, that deputy district attorney with the blazing black eyes went after Stanley Roth in a way they had seldom seen anyone go after a witness before. They would remember—everyone would remember—that Stanley Roth had been convicted of murder and that Annabelle Van Roten had been the one who did it.

  “I’m a little confused,” said Van Roten, practically laughing in his face. “You knew, but you didn’t know, your wife was having an affair?”

  “No, I said I didn’t know that she had affairs, but that I think I always assumed that she had.”

  “You assumed she was having affairs? You assumed— just assumed—your wife was sleeping with other men; and yet, despite this assumption, you never confronted her, never asked if it was true?”

  “No, I never asked.”

  Roth never took his eyes off her. They followed her when she wheeled around to face the jury or when she stalked away, waving her arms in a gesture of disbelief. He looked right back at her and, though I was probably reading into it something that was not there, seemed almost amused when she tried to stare him down. There were moments when I thought he had forgotten he was in court, a witness at his own trial, and imagined himself studying through a lens a scene he was attempting to film. Once or twice I thought he gave an answer for no other reason than to see the effect it would have on her.

  “You never asked?” repeated Van Roten in a vengeful tone. Roth waited with an indulgent smile while what had by now become her patented look of incredulity began to freeze into an awkward, twitching, self-conscious stare.

  “As I explained before,” finally replied Roth in a calm, patient voice, “there are some things you’re better off not knowing.”

  “You knew she was going to divorce you, though, didn’t you?” asked Van Roten, anxious to distract attention from what had been a momentary embarrassment.

  “If Mary Margaret was going to divorce me, I would have known about it. I didn’t know about it.”

  Van Roten had just turned toward the jury. With her chin held high, she whirled back around.

  “She told her father, though, didn’t she?”

  Stanley Roth laughed. “Jack Walsh? He wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the head.”

  Roth bent forward, his eyes narrowed. “If Mary Margaret had ever thought about getting a divorce, the last person in the world she would have told was ... I was about to say her father, but she never thought of him as that. Jack Walsh abandoned her as a child and then, years later, when she’s famous and he thinks she can do something for him, he shows up and asks for money.”

  Van Roten turned toward the bench. “Your Honor, would you please instruct the witness that... ”

  “And she gave it to him,” continued Roth, talking over her objection. “But he kept asking for more, and finally she refused to see him. I told him that, told him not to come around anymore.”

  “Your Honor ... !”

  “Maybe he’s the one who killed her. Did you ever think of that? He thought she owed him. You imagine that?—After what he did to her. You think he was content just to walk away, be cut off from all that money his daughter had?”

  “Your Honor!” insisted Van Roten. Honigman had done nothing to stop Roth from saying what he wanted. When he was finally finished, the judge leaned toward him and issued a mild reproof:

  “The witness is admonished that he is to restrict himself to answering the questions put to him. He is not to make statements on his own.”

  Roth nodded like someone seconding something that had been his own idea. Van Roten flashed an irritated smile at the judge and then glared at the witness.

  “Do you have any proof that Jack Walsh murdered his own daughter?”

  “Do you have any proof that I did?” Roth shot back as if they were sparring over a matter that had no serious consequences for himself.

  She had him now. “Yes, more than I need.”

  “From the mouth of the admitted liar, Richard Crenshaw?” he retorted with a confident grin. It drove her a little crazy.

  “From the mouth of a distinguished and decorated police officer who once made the mistake of trying to do you a favor. And,” she added, arching her neck in a way that made her eyes look positively lethal, “from the expert testimony that the blood found on the clothing you tried to hide in a laundry hamper was blood that streamed from the slaughtered body of the woman you killed!”

  “Objection!” I cried, rising quickly from my chair. “Who is making speeches now?”

  She gave me a sharp look, as if to tell me that I had no business telling her what to do. She immediately back to the witness, ready with the next question. The judge stopped her.

  “Counsel will please refrain from arguing with the witness.” Honigman moved his mouth from side to side, not quite satisfied with what he had done. “This is cross-examination,” he said presently, “not closing argument. Ask questions. And if you don’t have any more you want to ask, then sit down. Do I make myself clear?”

  Van Roten replied with a quick, cursory nod, a gesture that bragged indifference. She moved a step closer to the witness stand.

  “Do I make myself clear?” asked Honigman, furious at what he took to be a deliberate act of disrespect.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” at once replied Van Roten. “I’m sorry,” she added with an innocent, apologetic smile. “Didn’t I say that?”

  His mouth pinched tight, Honigman slowly lifted his eyebrows,
subjecting her to the kind of close unfavorable scrutiny judges often employ before imposing a prison sentence of the utmost severity.

  “No, you did not,” he replied. With that same implacable smile, Van Roten waited until she was sure she would not interrupt him. “May I resume my questioning of the witness, Your Honor?”

  “Yes. Questioning,” said Honigman, repeating the word as a warning. Van Roten stepped back to the counsel table. She briefly consulted the notes she had made on the lined page of a light gray legal pad.

  “Mr. Roth,” she said, lifting her eyes, “is it your testimony that you didn’t know your wife was having an affair with your partner, Michael Wirthlin?”

  Roth looked straight at her. “Yes.”

  Van Roten stood up. “And it is also your testimony that you were not surprised when you found out that she had?”

  “Yes.”

  Van Roten walked behind me and took a position at the end of the jury box.

  “You wrote a screenplay about a man whose partner had an affair with his wife, a man who loses his studio when his wife—his movie-star wife—leaves him for his partner and they start a studio of their own. Is that correct?” she asked with a pleasant smile, as if she was talking Hollywood gossip with an old friend.

  “It’s something I’ve been working on for a long time.”

  “I take it that’s a yes?”

  “There’s more to it than what you’ve described, but... ”

  “It’s what you testified when your attorney asked, isn’t it?” she insisted more irritably than she meant to. Roth had better instincts—his work had given him better training—than most witnesses, certainly better than most defendants. He knew she had not wanted to let down the mask and he was not about to help her put it back on. He did not answer. He just looked at her, as if he half expected her to apologize for the interruption.