Star Witness

by D. W. Buffa

  “It’s what you testified, isn’t it?’ she repeated more calmly.

  “Yes.”

  He paused, then added, “But there’s more to it than what Mr. Antonelli described. The wife of the main character—his name is Welles, by the way—has an affair with his partner. That’s true, but that’s only part of the story, and the story—I should tell you this right away— isn’t the same story I started out with. In the new version, his wife doesn’t leave him. She’s murdered and he’s framed for it. Instead of Blue Zephyr, perhaps I’ll call it Falsely Accused. Pretty good title, don’t you think?”

  Everyone had been sitting in the courtroom silence, listening intently to each exchange, measuring the meaning of every shift of tone, every nuanced glance, whether from the witness, the prosecutor, or the judge. Now, suddenly, Stanley Roth had, if only for the moment, taken their minds off the grim realities of a murder trial and made them think of things in the more comfortable guise of pure fiction. A quick breath taken in as a head lifted up; a short burst of air blown out the nostrils as a shoulder rolled forward; everywhere the audible sounds signaling a kind of approbation for the manner in which Stanley Roth had woven together what had happened to his life and what his life had been all about. Then it was as quiet as it had been before, everyone again listening intently, for fear they might otherwise miss the next thing said.

  “You didn’t know about your wife’s affair with Walker Bradley?”

  “No.”

  “But you weren’t surprised?”

  “No.”

  “You never asked her if she was having an affair with Walker Bradley?”

  “No.”

  “You never asked her if she was having an affair with Michael Wirthlin?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re not surprised?”

  “No.”

  “You never asked her if she was having an affair with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re not surprised?”

  “No.”

  “You wrote about someone like yourself in this screenplay of yours—whatever title you want to give it— whose wife has an affair?”

  “Yes.”

  Van Roten pulled her mouth back at a crooked angle, giving herself the look of someone confirming a suspicion.

  “And I suppose he didn’t know about it, but when he found out—he wasn’t surprised?”

  Before Roth could answer, she held up her hand and shook her head. “No, it doesn’t matter. We’re not here to talk about your movie; we’re here to talk about the murder of your wife.”

  Van Roten had begun to pace nervously. She stopped and fixed him with a puzzled stare.

  “If you weren’t surprised to find out that your wife had been having affairs with other men, why were you so surprised when you found out she had had an abortion?”

  For the first time, Roth seemed to have been caught unawares. He gave her a blank look, as if he had not understood the question.

  “What I mean, Mr. Roth,” explained Van Roten, moving a step nearer, “is this: If you had always assumed that she had been having—what was it called earlier?— relations of ‘casual intimacy’—why would you not have assumed, or at least wondered, whether instead of having an abortion because she didn’t want to have your child, she had an abortion because she didn’t want to have some other man’s child?”

  Stanley Roth drew himself up to his full height. Twisting back his head he gave Van Roten an icy stare.

  “It was my child,” he insisted in a stern voice.

  With one hand on her hip, Annabelle Van Roten arched her black pencilled eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Mary Margaret was too smart not to take precautions, precautions she did not take with me.”

  “So far as you know.”

  Roth started to say something, but then changed his mind. His gaze, which had been sharp and clear during the long hours of cross-examination, seemed to soften and lose at least something of the confidence it had until now projected. His shoulder sagged forward, and his head dropped onto his chest, forfeiting for the moment the sense of strength produced by his erect and at times rigid bearing on the stand. A look of anguish swept across his eyes.

  “Why do you keep trying to make her sound like a whore?” he asked. “She wasn’t. She had her faults; she had her failings. She wasn’t this perfect creature you saw on the screen. She was just like you and me, someone who made mistakes. No, she wasn’t perfect, but she was a lot better than the people who took advantage or tried to take advantage of her; she was better than that miserable father of hers who only wanted her money; she was better than that power-crazy former partner of mine who only wanted her because she was famous and because sleeping with someone’s wife is the only way he can ever think of himself in the same league with her husband. There are men like that, you know; men who sleep with the wives of famous men because they think it gives them something in common. You don’t believe me?” asked Roth, becoming enraged and distraught. He clutched the arms of the witness chair. “You want to taunt me with my murdered wife’s infidelities? You want to give me a condescending look when I tell you I knew it was my child? You want to suggest that Mary Margaret was going to leave me—or that I would have or should have left her—because of that phrase you picked up: her ‘casual intimacies’? What about Walker Bradley? Where was all your self-righteous indignation when you had him on the stand? Good God, he slept with every woman in Hollywood— but that doesn’t matter, does it? He’s Walker Bradley. He has that boyish charm—even now, at his age—and it doesn’t matter what he does, how many lives he ruins, because there is something about him you like. He sleeps with my wife, takes advantage of her need to be wanted, and you stand there and talk about her as if she were some cheap streetwalker!” Roth shouted. Fighting back the tears, he buried his face in his hands.

  Stunned by his outburst and, like the rest of us, mesmerized by the speed and force with which he had spoken, Van Roten had stared in open-eyed amazement. She realized the moment he finished she was in danger of losing control. The sound of Roth’s voice was still echoing in the courtroom when she moved to reestablish her authority. He was bent over, his shoulders heaving, sobbing silently into his hands. She could not pretend not to notice; but she could pretend that it did not matter, that it was nothing more than another lamentable instance of a guilty man trying to act as if he had a conscience.

  “You testified that you went to bed early that night because you had to be up early to be on the set of a motion picture you were making?” she asked in a harsh, unforgiving voice. Roth drew his hands a little away from his face. With his thumbs set against his cheekbones, he pushed the heavy, deeply lined skin back and forth on his forehead. He dropped his right hand, then his left, and with an effort raised his head. He looked around, a weary search that ended when his eyes came to rest on Annabelle Van Roten. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a tear.

  “You went to bed early that night?” she reminded him.

  “Yes,” he said in a husky, barely audible voice.

  “You’ll have to speak louder,” snapped Van Roten. Roth straightened up, blinking his eyes as he struggled to regain his composure. “Yes.”

  “Because you had to be on the set early the next morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t sleep in the same room with your wife— you slept in a different room that night?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “When you got up—early the next morning—you showered, dressed, and went straight to the studio?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t have breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t have even a cup of coffee?”

  “No, I didn’t have anything. I went straight to the studio. I had something there.”

  “I see. So you didn’t go into the kitchen at all?”

  “No.”

  Van Roten was looking down at her shoes. She moved one foot s
lowly in front of the other; then, just as slowly, brought it back.

  “How long had it been since you had last seen your wife?” she asked, pushing the other foot forward. When he did not answer, she looked up.

  “You had been working on this movie for some time, hadn’t you? You were leaving early every morning—and from what you tell us it was your habit to occupy that other bedroom during these periods when you had to be up that early—so how long had it been since you had last seen your wife? A day—two days—a week—a month? How long, Mr. Roth?”

  “A couple of days,” replied Roth.

  “A couple of days!” exclaimed Van Roten with enthusiasm. “Not: ‘We had dinner the night before,’ ‘We had lunch the day before.’”

  Van Roten’s head snapped up, a dark, malicious sparkle in her eyes. “Not: ‘We made love the night before’? You hadn’t seen your wife in a ‘couple of days,’ and you didn’t bother to so much as stick your head inside her door to see if she was all right before you left that morning—is that your testimony, Mr. Roth?”

  “I didn’t kill her,” said Roth, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “I’ll repeat the question, Mr. Roth. You didn’t look in on your wife before you left?”

  Roth blinked, and then looked at Van Roten as if he had just realized she was there. “No,” he said, “I didn’t want to disturb her.”

  “Isn’t it rather because there wasn’t any point to it? Isn’t it rather that you knew she wasn’t there? Isn’t it rather that you knew she was outside, face-down in the pool, where you had left her after you killed her?”

  Roth shook his head and did not say a word.

  “You went to bed early and you got up early. Did you wake up during the night?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing woke you up?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t hear an alarm go off? You didn’t hear the noise of an intruder?”

  “No.”

  Van Roten peered at him with suspicious eyes for what seemed a long time and then turned her gaze on the jury, nodding at them, as if she wanted them to pay particular attention to what she was about to ask the witness.

  “You’re a violent man, aren’t you, Mr. Roth?”

  Roth shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  An eyebrow shot up, but Van Roten’s eyes stayed fixed on the jury. “You wouldn’t say that. You yourself testified that you struck your wife, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” replied Roth, a little reluctantly.

  Van Roten emitted a cruel laugh. “And you’re the one who insisted on bringing to our attention that it was sufficiently serious that your wife called the police— dialed 911—for help. Isn’t that what you testified?”

  There was no response.

  “You have to answer out loud, Mr. Roth. This isn’t some movie where some silent gesture is all that’s needed.”

  Stanley Roth had begun to recover from his earlier distress. His eyes were clear and his manner had some of the same self-assurance as before.

  “Yes,” he said, “I insisted on telling the truth.”

  It made her angry. She turned on him with a vengeance.

  “You beat your wife, and then, while you’re on trial for murder, you tried to kill your partner, Michael Wirthlin, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t try to kill him. I got into a fight with him. That’s true, but I... ”

  “You didn’t want to kill him for trying to take away your studio? You wanted to kill your wife for taking away your child!”

  “No, that’s not true. I didn’t... ”

  “No more questions, Your Honor!” she shouted over Stanley Roth’s attempt to make himself heard. On redirect I gave Roth the chance to say what he had wanted and then asked him a few more questions in an attempt to explain away some of the damage the prosecution had done. I asked him one last time the question only the jury could now decide.

  “Mr. Roth, did you murder your wife, Mary Margaret Flanders?”

  He looked right at the jurors, taking his time, making eye contact with every one of them. “No, I did not.”

  I thanked him and turned to the bench. “Your Honor,” I said in a solemn voice, “the defense rests.”

  I thought it was over, that all we had left were closing arguments and then the long wait while the jury, in their own mysterious way, decided the verdict. I had started gathering up the things I had to put back in my briefcase when I heard Van Roten’s voice.

  “Your Honor, the People wish to offer a witness on rebuttal. The People call Julie Evans.”

  Chapter Twenty Six

  I HAD NOT SEEN JULIE EVANS since the night we had dinner, the night Jack Walsh threw a drink in my face. If she had known she was going to be a witness for the prosecution, she had not said anything to me. Whenever Julie first knew, whenever she was first served with a subpoena compelling her attendance at trial, she had not bothered to give Stanley Roth or me a warning. Perhaps, after everything that had happened, she had decided that both of us deserved a little surprise. The questions, at least at the beginning, were all about Detective Crenshaw and the formal agreement into which he had entered with the studio.

  “This was a contract under which Detective Crenshaw was to serve as a consultant on a single motion picture, is that correct?” inquired Van Roten with an air of casual indifference, as if the question, and not just that question, answered itself.

  Julie sat easily on the witness stand, one long leg crossed over the other. She was dressed in a tan silk skirt and jacket. Her blonde hair was pulled back and she wore a pair of large round glasses. Everything about her suggested a conscious effort to look businesslike and efficient. I tried not to think about what she had looked like that night she had taken me back to her place, but even here, in a courtroom filled with daylight, I could not entirely put out of my mind what we had done. With the strange premonition of a chance not taken, with the bittersweet certainty that something worth having had been lost, I listened half conscious to her soft, thrilling voice as she gave answers to questions, wishing I had gone off with her to Santa Barbara and not worried about whom it might hurt.

  “Yes,” said Julie; “it was a consulting contract. Mr. Crenshaw—Detective Crenshaw—was paid $250,000 for his work.”

  Annabelle Van Roten nodded her approval, and then asked: “Were there any other agreements between the studio and Detective Crenshaw? Let me be specific: Was there a contract for an option on a screenplay written by Detective Crenshaw?”

  Making all the noise I could, I pushed back my chair and got to my feet.

  “Your Honor, the defendant testified that instead of an option on the Crenshaw screenplay, there was a consulting contract. And he also explained why he did it that way. There is no rebuttal in anything this witness has said.”

  Van Roten lifted her proud chin and with a brief smile announcing imminent vindication, informed the court that the very next question would challenge the veracity of a key statement made by the defendant. Honigman waved his hand impatiently and urged her to move things along as quickly as she could.

  “You can answer the question,” Van Roten advised the witness. “Was there an option on a screenplay?”

  “No, there’s no record of one.”

  “Now, Ms. Evans, to your knowledge, did Detective Crenshaw serve as a consultant on a motion picture in which Mary Margaret Flanders was the star?”

  Julie drew her eyebrows together and bent her head to the side.

  “Let me rephrase the question,” said Van Roten in the face of Julie’s puzzled silence. “During the filming of that motion picture, how many times—according to the records kept at the main gate of the studio—did Detective Crenshaw enter the studio?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “He was there fourteen times while that movie was in production?”

  “Yes.”

  “And on each of the fourteen occasions Detective Crenshaw entered the studio, was Mary Margaret Flanders on the s
et?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, in other words, he was there when work was going on, work on the movie for which he had this consulting contract, correct?”

  Julie was careful. “On the days he was there, Mary Margaret was there, yes.”

  Van Roten glanced at the jury to make sure they understood the full implications of what had just been said. Then, briefly, she looked at Stanley Roth.

  “And tell us this, Ms. Evans: Did you ever yourself see Detective Crenshaw on the set with Mary Margaret Flanders?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Once, or more than once?”

  “More than once, but just how often, I can’t be sure.”

  “Did you ever see Detective Crenshaw talking to Mary Margaret Flanders?”

  “Yes, at least once that I remember.”

  “What were they talking about, do you know?”

  Julie shook her head. “No, I wasn’t close enough to hear anything.”

  With an encouraging smile, Van Roten asked: “ you tell what kind of conversation it was? I mean, were they having an argument, exchanging words, anything of that sort?”

  “No, nothing like that at all. They seemed quite friendly.”

  “The kind of conversation someone hired to give advice might have with one of the actors or actresses in a movie?”

  “I suppose,” replied Julie with a shrug.

  Van Roten turned away and walked the few steps to her place at the counsel table. I thought she was about to announce that she had no more questions. I was trying to decide what I should ask on cross, or whether I should ask anything at all. It was odd that Crenshaw had been there, on the set, and that Stanley Roth had not known anything about it. Or was it? Stanley Roth would not return his phone calls, but that did not mean that Mary Margaret Flanders had not. Perhaps Crenshaw had called her; perhaps he had told her that he had been hired as a consultant, that he really thought he would enjoy it. What was it Stanley Roth had said? People would do almost anything to get into the business. He had said something else as well: Crenshaw had practically stood at attention that night at The Palms when Mary Margaret Flanders, holding an ice bag to her eye, walked into the room. He had done her a favor by keeping the press from finding out what had happened, saved her from the consequences of her own impetuous act. If he wanted to play at being a consultant—and he was certainly getting enough money for it—what did it matter to her if she was surrounded by one more adoring fan? I was halfway out of my chair, ready with the question I had decided to ask, when Annabelle Van Roten looked up from the table toward which she had bent her head and asked: