The Burden of Proof

“Correct the record. If it is done immediately, no harm will come to you.”

  “I’ve been there and I’m gone.” She had a terrible sour expression and got to her feet. Anger increased her substance—her hair, her frills, her bright nails, high heels, her smoothly glinting hosiery. Margy was a person of many pieces carefully assembled, but right now every layer was galvanized by her temper. “You don’t have any goddamn idea what’s goin on here, do you?” The way her eyes fixed on him, as she looked down, was frightening—not just the harshness, but the disrespect. She had made, apparently, certain assumptions that to her chagrin she now recognized were incorrect.

  “I should like to know,” he said hollowly. At the moment, he found himself gripped strongly by fear—for Margy’s predicament, and more, by the way she took him to task for his ignorance. So much was swimming beyond his knowledge or control. John. Dixon. Margy herself. They were like bits of matter drifting off into space.

  “Nah,” she said. She shook her head, its many curls. “Not from here, Jackson. You know who you gotta talk to. I got a plane to catch.” She hitched her bag to her shoulder and picked up her purse and her briefcase. “This here thing is a fool contest: who’s the biggest fool. You remember you got told that by Margaret Jane Allison of Polk’s Cowl, Oklahoma.” With bags in both hands, she used a foot to prop open the door, and without a backward glance went through it.

  26

  SOME DEFENSE LAWYERS SAID the worst moments came after indictment, when you saw the evidence assembled by the state—the mountain you could never climb. But Stern always welcomed that challenge; once you knew the prosecutors’ direction, every other angle became a line of escape. It was the times in the midst of an investigation that could be the most unbearable for him. Usually, there were people to interview, records to look at, motions to make. But, on occasion, he was frozen by realization: the government knew something and he knew nothing at all. Lawyer’s terror, he called it—and at the moment it was as bad as it had ever been. Blind and ignorant, you fear that any move will be wrong, the one to send you tumbling from the cliff. And so woeful, beleaguered—the right word, in all respects, was defenseless—you hang there, immobile, in darkness, awaiting the storm, hearing the winds build, feeling the air growing chill. He sat in the witness room, slumped, weary, aware of his weight, his age. He was terrified for Dixon.

  When he looked up, Klonsky was posed in the doorframe, leaning upon it and taking him in.

  “Sonia.”

  “Sonny to my friends.” She smiled; he must have looked pitiable to have softened her so quickly. But he welcomed her kindness. Sonny, then. She sat down in the card chair where Margy had been. “Stan wanted me to see if I could find you.”

  “And you succeeded.” He smiled cordially. “We may speak lawyer to lawyer, Sonny?”

  “Of course.”

  “I was as dismayed as you to learn that those documents were not where they were expected to be.”

  “I assumed as much, Sandy. But it’s a very serious situation for your client.”

  He smiled gently, in order to indicate that he did not need the pointer.

  “That’s what I was talking to Stan about,” she said.

  “Ah, yes,” said Stern. “The mighty United States Attorney.” Just now, in his present mood, he found his feelings much harder to suppress: the thought of Sennett, tight-fisted, rancorous, was the flint against his stone. He cautioned himself to assume a more amiable tone in speaking of her boss. “What does he tell us?”

  “He tells us,” said Sonny, “that he believes you can find the documents.”

  “Does he?” said Stern. “Imagine having fifty-four Assistants to supervise and still taking the time to do my job as well.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “He says he has a message.”

  “Very well.”

  “Find the safe.”

  Nothing moved; not a twitch was allowed; perhaps, for some infinitesimal time, the blood did not flow. This was the training of the courtroom: Betray nothing.

  “Do you understand this remark?” he asked her finally.

  “Do I?” asked Sonny. “Do you think I should answer that?”

  She did not have to; it was clear. Sennett was using her as no more than the messenger. Stern knew what that spelled. ¡Ay, carajo! old words, a curse from childhood. Mr. Sennett and his informant. They seemed to know everything. Perhaps it was not an informant at all? Rather a wiretap. A mike in the wall. A hidden camera. Stern drew a breath. If anything, his fears for Dixon were greater. In company he smiled, a primitive reflex.

  “What’s funny?” she asked.

  “Oh,” he said, “I do not believe that I have handled a matter for some time that has frightened me more.”

  “Frightened?”

  “The correct word.” He nodded. “I have never been in an investigation where I have received less information.”

  “From the government?”

  “Certainly from the government. You have never even formally confirmed who is being investigated or for what crime.”

  “Sandy, there’s no rule—”

  “Rules are not the point. I speak of fairness. Of what is commonplace.” Having given himself berth to speak, he could not contain his indignation. “Do you not believe that some basic accounting of the government’s suspicions is appropriate by now? Rather than engaging in these highly selective and minimal disclosures in the hope I can be sent scurrying in one direction, then another? Do you think I cannot recognize that these subpoenas are composed with the obvious intention of hiding any scrap of information about the prosecution’s knowledge and interests?”

  “Sandy—look, you know I’m not in charge.”

  “You sit here now. You have been an Assistant long enough to know what is customary—and what is not. Give me just a word or two.”

  “Sandy, Sennett is really hinky on this thing.”

  “Please, I do not ask you to breach any rule of secrecy or standard of propriety. I shall settle for whatever information you can comfortably provide. If you would prefer, I shall tell you what I suspect about your investigation, and you need only state whether I am right or I am wrong. No more. There is no special harm in that, no confidences breached. You may do that, no?”

  Could she? The uncertainty swam across her face. Sonny’s strength would never lie in hiding her feelings.

  “Sonny, please. You are a warm individual and I sense a friendship between us. I do not mean to overreach that. But I have no idea any longer where to turn.”

  “Sandy, maybe I know less than you think.”

  “Certainly it is more than I.”

  They considered one another across the table.

  “I have a million things to do,” she said at last. “I’ll think about what you’ve said.”

  “I would need ten minutes. Fifteen at the most.”

  “Look, Sandy, to tell you the truth, I don’t have a second to breathe. I’ve got four cases going to trial in the next two months. Plus this thing. We’ve had plans since March to take Charlie’s son up to his family’s place in Dulin and stay there over the Fourth to pick strawberries. Now I have to come back here on Monday, and I had to move heaven and earth just to get the weekend free. So you’ll have to forgive me if I tell you that I’m a little bit pressed.”

  “I see,” said Stern, “you have no time to be fair?”

  “Oh, come on, Sandy.” She was frustrated by him, exasperated. He was plucking every chord. “If it’s so important to you to spend fifteen minutes asking me a bunch of questions I’ll never answer, you can drive a hundred miles up to Dulin on Saturday. That’s the best I can do.”

  When he asked her for the directions, she laughed out loud.

  “You’re really going to come?”

  “At this point, I must pursue any avenue. Saturday afternoon?”

  “God,” Sonny said. It was on County D, six miles north of Route 60. Brace’s Cabin. She described it as a glamorized shack.

 
As he jotted this down, she pointed at him.

  “Sandy, I’m not kidding. Maybe I don’t agree with everything Stan’s done, but it’s his show. Don’t think I’ll get out in the sunshine and do something I wouldn’t do here.”

  “Of course not. I shall speak. You need only listen. If you wish, you may take notes and repeat every word I say to Sennett.”

  “It’s a long trip for nothing.”

  “Perhaps not.” Most unexpectedly, he had found again a trace of whimsy. He spoke in the greedy whisper of a child. He was, he said, so very fond of strawberries.

  On the phone, Stern could hear Silvia’s voice resounding down the long, stone corridors of Dixon’s home as she went to summon her husband. Lately, whenever he spoke to his sister, he detected a note of apprehension. But by their long understanding, she would never discuss Dixon’s business with Stern. And Silvia, if the truth were told, was one of those women, come of age in a bygone era, who would never willingly set foot in the sphere they saw reserved to men.

  “What’s up?” Dixon was not reluctant to be brusque. “I’m on the social fast track. Your sister’s got us entertaining half the Museum Board in fifteen minutes.” Silvia, her mother’s daughter, never tired of the involvements of a high-toned social life: women’s auxiliaries, charity committees, the country club. Dixon mocked her rather than admit out loud that he loved doing what he imagined rich people did, but their nights were absorbed with charity balls and fund-raising occasions, gallery openings, exclusive parties. Stern often caught their picture in the papers, a remarkably handsome couple, looking smooth, stately, carefree. Silvia over the years had become preoccupied—as Dixon wished her to be—with acting her part, adjourning by limousine to the city for a luncheon, a trunk show at a tony ladies’ shop, the typical flesh-touching exercises with the wives of other very wealthy men who had welcomed the Hartnells into their company. Other days, she played golf or tennis, or even rode.

  Were it someone else, Stern would have been inclined to disparage the frivolity of this life-style, but there was no flaw in his sister which he had not wholeheartedly forgiven. In some ways, Silvia reminded him of Kate, with whom, in fact, she was uncommonly close—she had allowed beauty to be her fate. She had been treated to a privileged education and it had led her to Dixon. End of story. Even in the years when Dixon was out tromping in the cornfields to establish his clientele, he had commanded her not to work, and Silvia, with no apparent misgivings, complied.

  Yet Silvia was graced—redeemed—by kindness. She remained an extraordinary person whose generosity far outran the customary or typical. Clara, who had little use for empty vessels, loved and valued Silvia. They talked two or three times a week, met for lunch, lectures at the County Art Museum, theater matinees. For decades, they had attended the symphony’s Wednesday afternoon performances together. And whatever motivated others, Stern could voice no complaints. Silvia, as no one else in the world, adored her brother. In certain moods, she sent him brief notes, bought him gifts. She called every day and he continued to speak to her in a way he shared with no others. Difficult to define, but there was a pitch to their exchanges as easy as humming. He remained the moon to her, the stars—galaxies, a universe. How was Stern to describe as deficient a life in which he still played such a stellar part?

  “We need to see one another,” said Stern to Silvia’s husband now. “The sooner, the better.”

  “Problems?”

  “Many.”

  “Give me a hint.”

  “I would rather do this in person, Dixon. We have a great deal to discuss.”

  “I’m on my way to New York on the 5:45 tomorrow morning. I’ll be there the rest of the week.” Dixon, again, was hoping for a breakthrough on the Consumer Price Index future, going to meetings in New York or Washington twice each week. “Then Silvia and I are going to the island over the Fourth.” He was referring to another of their homes, one in the Caribbean, a serene cliffside refuge on a tax-haven island; the IRS, during its investigation a few years ago, had been driven to a frenzy by the inability to trace so much as a penny going down there. Stern, in his office behind his glass desk, drummed his fingers. Dixon, apparently, did not have time to be in trouble.

  “I spent the day with Margy and Ms. Klonsky.”

  “I heard that was happening.”

  “Yes,” said Stern. Of course, Dixon had heard. That was the point. Stern felt at a terrible disadvantage over the phone. “There were a number of disturbing developments.”

  “Such as?”

  “The prosecutors seem to know about your safe, for one. I believe they will be looking for it shortly, if they are not right now.”

  On the other end of the line, Dixon did not stir.

  “Where the fuck do they find out about that?”

  Where, indeed? Stern had not needed Dixon for that question. There was a certain obvious, if disquieting logic: Margy goes into the grand jury and the records are missing; Margy comes out and the government mentions the safe. In her anger, Margy could have disclosed anything. Perhaps Dixon had been prudent enough never to mention the safe or its movements to her, but that was doubtful. In his present mood of dark suspicion it had even struck Stern that Margy might have been the government’s source of information all along. A ridiculous thought, really, but one that continued to reemerge. In that scenario, everything today and for many days—and nights—before had been no more than well-acted melodrama. Highly unlikely, of course. But such charades had occurred in the past. There were cases where the government had indicted their informants to maintain their cover. Stern at this point ruled out nothing.

  “I was hoping, Dixon, you could shed some light.”

  “Hardly,” said Dixon.

  “Would John—”

  “John? John’s still lookin for the men’s room, Stern. Come on.”

  Both men breathed into the phone.

  “There are also some records, Dixon, that seem to have disappeared.”

  “Records?” asked Dixon, far less impulsively.

  “Concerning the Wunderkind account. Are you aware of that?”

  “Aware of what?”

  “The account. The documents. Their disappearance?”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you. We’ll have to talk about this next week.”

  “Dixon, it is quite clearly the disappearance of these records that is inspiring the government’s interest in the safe.”

  “So?”

  “If the records could be located—”

  “No chance,” Dixon said harshly. For an instant again, both men were silent, equally set back, it seemed, by the many implications of this remark and its tone. Then Dixon went on, making a token effort to be more ambiguous. “I don’t think there’s much hope that’ll happen.”

  “Dixon, this will go very badly for you. Very badly. I have told you before, it is the absolute zenith of stupidity.” With Dixon’s lapse, Stern found himself able to be more direct; he imagined a certain air of affront on the other end, but he continued. “In the current atmosphere, Dixon, if this safe is accurately traced, it will provoke many difficulties. Not to mention that it would be sorely embarrassing to me.”

  “Embarrassing?”

  “Damaging to my credibility. You understand. And the blame will be laid to you, nevertheless. The prosecutors will know the safe did not fall to its present location from the sky.” On the phone, Stern felt obliged to exercise some circumspection. Even with a wiretap, the government was prohibited from overhearing this kind of conversation between an attorney and his client. But you could never tell, particularly in a house as large as Dixon’s, who might inadvertently pick up an extension.

  “You mean, after telling me to hand the thing over, you want to give it back?”

  “Not at all. I am telling you that you are exercising poor judgment and creating a perilous circumstance.”

  “I’ll take it. Send it back.”

  “Dixon.”

  “Listen, I have to put o
n my fricking tuxedo. I’ll be back on the sixth.”

  “Dixon, this is not an opportune time for a vacation. I must ask you to return as soon as your business is concluded in New York.”

  “Come on. To me it sounds like a great time to get away. It’s a few days. This’ll hold. Law things always do.”

  “Dixon, I have many questions and I expect plain answers.”

  “Sure,” said Dixon. “Right. Coming,” he yelled, as if Silvia was calling, though Stern heard not the faintest echo of his sister’s voice.

  27

  ARRIVING HOME LATE FRIDAY NIGHT, Stern stood in the foyer of his empty home. Helen was out of town, jetted off to someplace in Texas to inspect a convention site; she would not be back until Sunday. With a certain resolve, Stern prepared to undergo the weekend by himself. While a leftover chop warmed, he wandered about the house, read the mail, and hung in the eddies of various dissatisfactions. A trying week.

  Before the huge windows of the solarium, he paused. By grace of prior work and fortuitous rain, Clara’s garden had flourished. The bulbs that had gone into the ground last fall now rose in glory—round peonies, lilies expressive as hands. Stern, utterly oblivious all these months, was suddenly struck by the perfect rows and stepped out into the mild evening air. Then in the fading light and rain-sweet breeze, he froze, lurching a bit as he came to a complete halt. Across the hedgerow, he caught sight of Fiona Cawley stooping in her yard.

  To say that he had avoided Fiona was not correct. He had hidden from her; he sneaked in and out of his own home like a commando. To his present mind, that incident had absolutely not occurred. Only with the prospect of confrontation did it recur to him with a harrowing pang. What had he done? What grand figure of macho revenge had he thought to imitate? Now, a week later, he was unwilling to accept the image of Alejandro Stern as a reprobate, a bounder making unwelcome passes at the neighborhood wives. Other men might have been more casual with their honor, but since a few hours afterwards, everything surrounding the episode seemed to have been smashed into storage. He had never phoned Cal. He had stopped searching for Nate, and even felt somewhat relieved of his urge, so great a week ago, to grind Dr. Cawley like pumice. No doubt, he’d have it out with Nate sooner or later. But only when Stern had accepted his own conduct, when he was ready to chat, one cad to another; only, frankly, when he had a better grip on himself and the mysterious world of his intentions.