The Burden of Proof

  The first was awaiting Stern when he reached the office. Dr. Cawley had called, Claudia said, and needed to see him. She had compared schedules and agreed to a meeting at five o’clock at Nate’s office. “He said it was personal,” said Claudia, “and that he didn’t want to see you at home. That’s all.”

  Personal and not at home. Mano a mano, in other words—away from Fiona. Nate had tiptoed around Stern for months. Now he wanted a meet? Stern sorted the possibilities. Had Fiona spoken up, as Stern suspected she would? Were Nate and he about to have a scene? Perhaps Nate was going to clear the air completely—hand Stern the check and declare a lasting peace. His sense of intrigue for once was greater than his anxiety.

  Later in the morning, he also heard from Mel Tooley. Stern was on the phone, attempting one last time to persuade AUSA Moses Appleton to soften his position on Remo, when Claudia laid down a note saying Tooley was on hold. Stern ended his conversation with Moses promptly.

  “None of this goes any further,” Tooley said.

  “Of course.”

  “Sennett’s sneaking around like some spook. He hears I talked, he’ll go ballistic. You didn’t get this here.”

  Stern once more assured Mel of his confidence.

  “My guy is going in the grand jury next week.”

  “I see. May I ask the terms?”

  “Immunity. Letters. Court orders. I got him everything. It was a white sale at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

  “And the prognosis for my client?”

  “Bad.”

  “I see.”

  “Very bad. There’s a bunch of papers and tickets my guy wrote and your guy told him how to do it, every i, t, and comma.”

  “I see. And yur client recalls this clearly?”

  “Like a vision. My guy was new to the business, didn’t know what was going on, so all this stood out.” Mel waited. “You know that song and dance.”

  Stern said nothing. John had done the predictable thing. There was justice in this. Dixon, after all, deserved what he was going to get.

  “He really feels like shit about this,” Tooley said. “You know, it’s family stuff. Very messy. Well, I don’t have to tell you.”

  “No,” Stern agreed.

  “I keep telling him he’s got to think ‘Me first.’ He doesn’t have a long way to wander on this thing. If he fucks around with them, they land on him with both feet.” Tooley meant that MD’s records implicated John as well. Whatever John’s protests that all this had been over his head, the prosecutors knew that no one, no matter how naïve, could have regarded this maneuvering as wholesome. But wanting its case to be ironclad, the government preferred to have John’s testimony, rather than a woebegone lower-down sharing the charge and defense table with Dixon. This, too, was an entirely predictable turn of events. “He’ll look like a whipped dog up there, if that does you any good.” Mel was talking about John’s trial testimony. That would be another lawyer’s problem, in any event.

  “When does he appear before the grand jury, Mel?”

  “A week from tomorrow. I don’t think the indictment’s far away. They’ve got it all pretty well organized. I imagine they’re going to D.C. for RICO approval right now.”

  “Yes,” said Stern again. The racketeering charge, the one by which the government would divest Dixon of the business in which he’d invested a lifetime, required approval in Washington. Stern would have to request an audience at the Department of Justice. The bureaucrats in D.C. would sometimes act with greater restraint than the U.S. Attorney, although there were unlikely to be any soft hearts in this case.

  Tooley and he concluded with a vague promise to speak again. It was unlike Mel to be so forthcoming. Usually there was a hidden agenda, two or three of them, in fact. Was it possible he was actually acting at Sennett’s instruction? Yes—but it would be hard to mislead Stern about the testimony of his daughter’s husband. That probably accounted for Mel’s candor, the fact that Stern would inevitably learn about this. Realizing that, Tooley wanted credit for being the first with the news. Stern drummed his fingertips on his desk and picked up a cigar. Of late, he had taken to twirling them between his fingers, unlit, never letting the ends touch his lips. Dixon was going to have to be made to think seriously about a guilty plea. In cases like this, the best that generally could be managed was to agree to a staggering financial penalty in hopes of sharply limiting the time in jail. Whatever was hidden in the islands, many of the visible assets here were in jeopardy—the stone house, the chauffeured cars. Dixon would want to save what he could, for Silvia’s sake. Perhaps Stan would accept forfeiture of a discrete sum—millions—and Dixon’s resignation from the business in lieu of all the stock.

  In the meantime, Stern would have to call Kate—and John—take them to dinner as soon as the grand jury appearance was past. Dixon’s wayward path had detoured the life of his family long enough. Stern wanted to be sure that his daughter, and even his son-in-law, knew that he was prepared to go on with this episode in the past. If Dixon decided to resist the government, Stern would help him search for another lawyer; the time was at hand. That, however, would not be a complete solution. It was difficult to imagine a family gathering with Silvia, whose husband was in prison, occupying one corner and John, who sent him there, the other. Stern let a sound of some distress escape him. They would all remember this year.

  Nate’s nurse, who showed Stern back to the consultation room seemed familiar—he had seen her timid smile and slender good looks somewhere before. Stern watched the young woman depart and spent an instant trying to place her, before Nate bade him sit in a gooseneck chair of maroon leather.

  They asked, conventionally, about one another’s health, then lapsed into silence. Stern had never been here and that fact seemed to underscore the unusual nature of their meeting—right faces, wrong setting. The atmosphere grew tenebrous. The consultation room was far more ample than Peter’s, furnished, like the Cawley home, out of Ethan Allen, with an imposing wallpaper of green vertical stripes and a heavy paddle-shaped clock on one wall. Nate sat in his long white coat behind a substantial walnut desk, his certificates arrayed about him, rocking a bit in his tall leather chair. Eventually, he eased forward and came to the point.

  “I want you to know, Sandy, that I’m going to ask Fiona for a divorce.”

  Stern was dumbstruck, not by the news, of course, but by the notion that this was Nate’s revelation.

  “Are you asking my advice, Nate?”

  “Not really. If you have some, I’ll take it.”

  “No,” said Stern, then added wickedly, “It may be expensive.” Nate let the back of his hand drift out in space: no matter. He could afford it. Stern found his jaw setting harshly, as if there had been a graft of iron. “Have you told Fiona?”

  “Not exactly. I wanted you to know first.”

  “Me to know?”

  “You,” said Nate. He fiddled with the little ornaments on his desktop, an onyx-bladed letter opener, a matching paperweight; then, eventually, he folded his hands. “Sandy, I don’t care,” he said. “About what happened between you and Fiona.”

  “I see,” said Stern.

  “She told me.”

  “Apparently.” He had his feet on the floor and his hands in his lap. So far, he was holding on better than he might have expected.

  “I found a piece of your mail in the john off our bedroom a couple weeks ago. We ended up having it out then.”

  “My mail?” asked Stern, but he realized then what Nate meant: Marta’s note, the one Stern had carried out of the house that night. He had been looking for the letter just the other day, having been unable to reach Marta by phone and wondering when she was due to arrive.

  “As I said,” said Nate. “I don’t care. I really don’t. It sounds a little bizarre to say I don’t care, but I don’t.”

  “Very well.”

  “You slept with Fiona, so you slept with her.” Nate threw up his hands magnanimously.

  Stern
found that he had hold of both arms of the chair, his fingers gripped down to the studs; perhaps he feared that the furniture was going to fly. Slept with his wife! What had she done? Fiona’s killer instinct, he saw, had taken her far from the facts. Did she think that, by setting them even, she could get a new start with Nate? No, Stern decided, probably not. Fiona had just hunkered down, abandoned all caution, and taken her greatest pleasure—retribution: I want to see the look on the dirty bastard’s face.

  “Am I to respond?” he asked eventually.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Because, to say the least, Nate, you have not received an accurate portrayal.” Stern stopped then, recognizing his dilemma. What were his lines? ‘It is not true, Nate, that I fucked your wife. I only attempted to do so.’ That would not be an especially stirring defense. Nor, for that matter, did Nate seem to believe him.

  “Listen, Sandy, that’s not the point of this.”

  What was the point? Stern studied Nate, who did not quite have the fortitude to look back. He had always taken Nate as a person of little malice—a healer, a caring type, with that easy, quiet manner that many women took for masculine gentleness. All in all, in spite of Stern’s moments of dizzy rage, those judgments held. Nate had no real will to do injury. Instead, he muddled about, full of warm feelings and covert impulse, inadvertently knocking over lives like plates in a china closet. He had grown up in Wyoming and had come to the big city as a medical student. At times, he still liked to play the befuddled cowboy. Over the years, Stern had decided that pose concealed laziness, sloth, a weakness of spirit. That was why he so easily surrendered to female temptation or, more pertinently, maintained his unsatisfying life with Fiona. The same remained true now. He clearly savored the sheer ease of the solution Fiona’s supposed confession presented: You’ve screwed my wife, and I don’t care. Now take her off my hands and let us go on in peace. The matter of Clara was far from his mind—a secret he took to be entombed and thus forgotten. He dealt merely with the present. Fiona could be dismissed and cared for in a single stroke, and at a cheaper price. He would dust off his hands and move on.

  Assessing all of this, Stern, amazingly, felt at considerable advantage. Not so much with the facts. That Fiona was lying was almost beside the point. She’d said what she’d said. Go disprove it. But he was much better equipped than Nate to deal with a circumstance of this sort. He saw suddenly, decisively, how this would play out, and knew that Nate, whatever his plans, was about to be badly outflanked. He told him so directly.

  “I believe, Nate, you have miscalculated.”

  Nate pulled a face. He was going to deny any cunning, but thought twice of that and said nothing at all.

  “Were I you, Nate, I would proceed to divorce court with caution.”

  Nate stiffened. Clearly, he had more here than he had bargained for. He flipped his hand again, as he had before.

  “Sandy, I—Listen, this isn’t a holdup. Or whatever you think. Don’t take it that way.”

  “No, of course not,” said Stern. “I know you would not mean to threaten me. Nor I you.”

  “You?” asked Nate.

  “I,” said Stern. “But let me offer a word of warning, nonetheless. Do not, Nate, attempt to involve me in your bloodbath with Fiona. Do not dare. After all, we both know, I am not a witness to your good character or your veracity.”

  Nate wound his head about as if he’d been kicked.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “If I am placed under oath, Nate, I shall speak truthfully about all matters. Including those most painful to me. Do not think that pride will prevent me from disclosing the manner in which you and Clara deceived me.”

  Nate for an instant was absolutely still, his mouth open in a small dark o. Then he took his hand and covered his eyes. He heaved a bit.

  “Look.” Nate eyed his desktop, considered his thumb. “Look,” he said again.

  “Yes?” said Stern. He had known, instinctively, that Nate would be helpless. “As long as you have chosen to speak plainly, Nate, let me do the same: there is a large check which I believe you owe Clara’s estate.” Nothing—no scruple, no sense of taste, not even the recollection of his own discomfort—could dull Stern’s delight in this moment. With a whetted look of absolute malice, he considered Nate, who sat back in his tall chair, his sparse hair in disarray from the sudden pulling at his face and scalp, looking overwhelmed, sorely confounded, scared.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” said Nate.

  “I have a lawyer looking into this matter.”

  “I was afraid of that, too.”

  Stern nodded. He finally understood Nate’s plan. He’d held the check, not merely to hide it from Fiona’s future attorney, but from Cal now. He wanted to see if the coast was clear or if he’d been discovered.

  “I would suggest you do the same, and have the attorneys make contact,” said Stern.

  Nate absorbed that in silence, but finally looked at Stern.

  “I knew you’d find out eventually,” said Nate. “I’ve eaten myself up alive about this whole thing. You may not believe that, but I have. Really. It’s on my mind every day. I know you probably think I’m responsible for what she did. At the end.”

  “I do not blame you solely, Nate. I offer you that solace. I am sure that the ultimate denouement was a shock to you as well. But I bear you heavy resentment, notwithstanding. Clara’s choice to take a lover was, of course, her own. But as a doctor, Nate, particularly one experienced with this sort of”—Stern waited, then fastened something down in himself and pushed on—“this sort of sexually transmitted disease and its course, I would certainly have expected you to have exercised greater care. And I take it from what I see that you were entirely indifferent to Clara’s needs at the end.”

  “You think I mistreated her?”

  “How else am I to feel?”

  With an unhappy look, slumped in his chair, Nate nodded, mostly to himself.

  “Not to mention the fact that you abused me, Nate, and our friendship. You lied to me. Quite boldly.”

  Nate again closed his eyes, then licked his lips so he could speak.

  “I was afraid of what you would do when you found out. I admit that. But I want you to know something—I followed her lead. At all times. I did what she wanted.”

  Cornered, cowed, Nate took a coward’s response. He blamed Clara. He was too weak perhaps to focus upon the sheer nasty bite of these words. But this meanness, intended or not, hit Stern like a blow. Yes, of course. This was the rebuke he had coming: she liked it. For an instant, he was close to responding with gutter obscenities. Even when he recovered, his accent, to his own ear, suddenly seemed peculiarly distinct.

  “Nate, you are a scoundrel.”

  “Jesus,” Nate said again.

  Stern resumed his feet. This confrontation, long imagined, like so much else, seemed far more difficult in actuality than in prospect. He had no wish to prolong it. But Nate’s comment still left a wake of ruthless emotion.

  “One last word, Nate,” said Stern. “A piece of friendly advice.” Nate, who, all in all, looked thoroughly wrecked by this conversation, sat up on alert: he knew something else was coming. And he was certainly correct, for Stern had had a flash of the insight that for three decades had saved his life in the courtroom, some adrenalized ability of the synapses to suddenly connect, no more explicable than the gift of tongues or flight. “I suggest you fire your nurse before you head off for divorce court. Fiona has some damaging evidence, and the cross-examination will be even nastier if that young woman remains on your payroll.”

  The nurse was there, fiddling with some charts, when Stern threw open the office door. She had taken a message from his office and handed Stern the slip. He did not bother examining it now. He was in a courtroom mode, playing for appearance, knowing his behavior would be carefully recounted. He looked her up and down, just like that, an entire once-over, which she took in almost innocently, with the same uncert
ain smile, the same unruffled bland beauty. Then he showed himself out, having decided, with Fiona’s videotape well in mind, that the young woman belonged to that small class of human beings who look worse with their clothes on.

  33

  “CLAUDIA CALLED—URGENT,” read the pink message slip the nurse had handed him. He reached her on the car phone, driving back to the office.

  “They got you,” said Claudia.

  “I have something somewhat pressing of my own. Please find the number at Dr. and Mrs. Cawley’s home and patch me through.” They were on the line together while it rang a number of times; Fiona was not in. Stern swore—old words—in Spanish.

  “Did they give you the message about Ms. Klonsky?”

  “Klonsky?”

  “That’s what’s urgent. She’s called here three times in the last hour. She says she has to see you today. Personal business. I wasn’t sure where you were going from there, but she said she’d go to your house and wait for you. I gave her the address. Is that all right?”

  It was nearly six now. Stern slammed on the brakes and jerked the car to the curb. His hands were shaking. He was already turning around.

  “Hello?” asked Claudia.

  “Yes, yes. How long are you there tonight, Claudia?” Another few hours, she answered, working on a brief for Raphael. Stern asked her to try Mrs. Cawley every fifteen minutes and to give her this message: Mr. Stern apologized for not reaching her directly, but he was unavailable and thought it important that she know Dr. Cawley and he had met this afternoon and had a very thorough and candid discussion. “And then tell her,” said Stern, “that I want to know, with all respect, if she has lost her mind. You must repeat it just so.”

  Claudia was mumbling and laughing as she made notes; she always enjoyed Stern.

  He put down the phone then and shot off through the traffic. The auto clock said 6:02. Urgent and personal. Yes! He was flying.

  The yellow Volkswagen was in the circular drive of Stern’s home. He could see it as he approached, driving too fast down the block. It was an instant before he picked out Sonny. She sat on the slate front steps, her legs spread to make way for her belly, and her face turned to the sun—Ms. Natural, as she had called herself last month. Stern did not bother putting the car in the garage. Instead, he parked behind her and hiked up the drive, exhilarated and self-conscious.