The Burden of Proof

  When Dixon completed his conversion course, Silvia and he were married beneath a canopy. Stern stood immediately behind the bride and groom. He began weeping halfway through the ceremony and could not stop. He had not carried on like that in front of others before or since, but his circumstances had overpowered him: he was twenty-four years old now and utterly alone. His search for a wife, never a matter of conscious priority, started at that moment.

  As for Dixon and Silvia, there was no saying years later who was right and who was wrong. Silvia relished the comforts time provided and Dixon’s almost celestial admiration of her; but her pain, particularly with her husband’s wandering, was sometimes intense. Given the history, she never dared speak against him to Stern, except during that short period several years ago when Dixon was banished from the household. One evening then, Stern had come home and found Silvia and Clara at the dining table. There was a sherry snifter between them and he could tell from Clara’s warning look that something was amiss. Red-eyed and tipsy, Silvia spoke at once to her brother.

  “I always thought it was all because he wanted children so badly,” she said, offering her own explanation for Dixon’s wanderlust. That barrenness, which the doctors could not explain, was Silvia’s heartbreak in those years; she talked of it often to Clara, but only in private, for Dixon was far too humiliated by their failure to bear the thought that anyone else knew. “But he’s taking advantage,” said Silvia. “He always has. I did not even realize he had been lying to the rabbi until he took off his pants on our wedding night.”

  This remark seemed entirely mysterious at first, and then deeply shocking. The revelations seemed to ripple off, not around Silvia, but about Stern himself. He was being informed of something deeply telling, yet he could not read the message. By then he had engaged in dozens of athletic competitions with Dixon, stood with him time and again in various club locker rooms. Dixon did no fan dance; the fact, as it was, was plainly displayed. He must have assumed that among men, creatures of the here and now, this centuries-old ritual could be disregarded as brutal or passé. Who ever knew exactly what Dixon thought? But certainly he would not believe that Stern had simply not noticed that Dixon had never been circumcised.

  On a knotty-pine bench by the door—the entire restaurant motif was of a basement rec room—Stern’s daughters waited for him, drinking club soda, engrossed in one another. Stern took Kate in his arms.

  As they were seated, Marta offered Peter’s apologies. He had been unable to reschedule his late rounds.

  “And where is John?”

  Kate’s dark eyes skated quickly toward her sister. They had struck some agreement.

  “He’s with his lawyer,” said Kate. “You know where. They have him looking at papers all night.” Marta, obviously, had encouraged Kate to be plain, but the subject made her quiet and glum.

  “This is a hell of a situation,” said Marta in a tone that was largely devoid of blame. She had had many of the details from Stern, but clearly had learned more from Kate during the day.

  “If there is not a complete resolution shortly, then I shall be stepping out of the case,” said Stern. Marta knew this, but he repeated it for Kate’s benefit. Seeing her made him more resolute. He took the hand that Kate had laid on the table beside him. Her eyes smarting, she suddenly hugged her father and brought her face to his shoulder in the small booth.

  After debating whether Stern or Kate should be the one to take Marta to the airport, they agreed to go down together in Stern’s Cadillac. They left Marta at the metal detectors, then Stern swung back to drop Kate at her car. The parking lot for the Bygone was on the restaurant’s roof, and the location offered impressive vistas of the airport, the highways, the hills, and the violet sky being pinched of the last light. Kate kissed her father quickly and was gone, but Stern, sensing he had not said all he meant to, threw open his door and called after her. He trotted a few steps to catch up and took her hand.

  “This business with your uncle, Kate—the blame for it does not fall on John. If it is any consolation, you must tell him I said so.”

  Kate did not answer. She looked all around, in every direction, and for no apparent reason began tapping her foot. Stern’s impression was that she was about to cry. She rooted in her purse. It was not until the flame rose in the dark that he realized what she was doing.

  “Katy! You smoke?”

  “Oh, Daddy.” She looked about again, all ways, as she had just done.

  “How long is this?”

  “Always, Daddy. Just a few puffs. Since college. Exams. You know: heavy stress. It’s terrible for the baby. I have to cut it out,” she said, but then inhaled deeply and turned her face up into the aura of smoke she released.

  “Kate, I realize this has been difficult.”

  She made a sound, almost laughter, a bit derisive.

  “Daddy, I wish it weren’t so easy for me to shock you.” She spoke almost harshly and stopped herself. They were silent. Then she took a last drag; in the dark he saw the cigarette fall, the lighted bit tumbling end over end and splitting in three on the pavement. She made a long business of crushing out the embers, twisting them repeatedly under her foot. “Look, Daddy, we’ll get through this. We have to.”

  Inches taller than he, she brought her soft cheek against his, then hiked off toward her car, her high heels clacking, her keys jingling in her hand. He stood in the parking lot, poorly lit, watching as she backed her car out quickly, then gunned the Chevy into a turn, leaving behind a ghost of dark smoke.

  Who was that, he wondered, that woman? Of all things, the image that remained with him was of the way she had crushed out that cigarette, with her toe pivoting so harshly on the asphalt. There was a certain fierce purpose in that which he had never been certain existed in her. He thought of her tonight and as lie had seen her at the ballpark and suddenly had the clearest intimation of how it was with Kate. Her whispering. Her murmurs with John. She was a person with secrets, with a secret life. And the greatest secret of all, perhaps, was that she was someone else—someone different from the beautiful innocent thing her parents wished her or allowed her to be. Stern’s deepest impression, that she was a person very much like her aunt, like Silvia—lovely, capable, kind, but limited by choice—was merely the impression she had found it easiest to leave, so that she could otherwise elude them, with no trace. Who was she? he thought again. Really? He stood in the mild summer night and turned back to where she had been, but even the smoky cloud of exhaust had cleared away.

  Stern slowly drove home. Approaching the dark house, he was tense. If he had anywhere else to go, he might not have gone in. The weeks, months really, he had spent overcome by various women and the ether of sexuality were, if not at an end, at least in abeyance for the night. Without that, he felt in some ways more familiarly himself—round, solitary, solid like a stone. As he knew it would be, the large house was as wholly empty as it had been full the night before with that spirit of visitation. Now he was alone. The silence loomed about him with the power of some wayward force; he felt his own figure somehow dwindling in the unoccupied space. He stood in the slate foyer, where he inevitably seemed to tune in on his own soul, and thought quite distinctly that his life had gone on without Clara. It was an absurd notion; what he meant was well beyond expression. The fact, such as it was, had been clear at one level from the instant he stood here months ago, white with panic, yet still able to draw breath. But it seemed that it was not until this very moment that he actually had believed it. Yet he felt it now, his own life, that particular strand drawn out of the intricate tangle of mutual things he and his wife had created and shared. It was like electrical work, finding the line that drew power—he could feel the hum of his peculiar, isolated existence, which had continued with the persistent unmusical rhythm of a beating heart—his own heart, lugging on. He was by himself, neither pleased nor embittered, but aware of the fact. His mind lit somehow on Helen then, and he closed his eyes and worried his head a bit, full of r
egrets.

  He slept again that night in the bed he had shared with Clara—solid dreamless sleep, if brief. He was up by six and, reverting to old habits, was at his desk by seven. He went through piles of mail that had gone unread for weeks. He felt calm at the core, purposeful. But in the office something was amiss. It took him at least an hour to notice.

  The safe was gone.

  38

  “THIS ISN’T FUNNY,” Marta said when he reached her in New York on Friday. “You’ve got to get it back. I don’t know how much of this is privileged, but even if you told the whole story, no one will ever believe he just took the thing without your help. You’re going to end up in jail.”

  Stern, at the end of the line, made a grave sound. Marta’s analysis was much the same as his.

  “This scares me,” she said. “I think you should get a real lawyer.”

  “You are a real lawyer,” said Stern.

  “I mean someone who knows what they’re doing. With experience.”

  What kind of experience might that be? asked Stern. There were no defense attorneys expert, so far as he knew, in explaining the disappearance of critical evidence.

  “Tell him he’s a big fucking asshole,” offered Marta near the end of the call.

  “If I can get him on the phone,” answered Stern.

  Dixon avoided Stern until Monday, but when he came on the line, after Stern had made repeated demands of Elise, he was as innocent as a coquette. “I’d file an insurance claim,” Dixon suggested. “Notify the cops. There’s important stuff in there.” With Stern broiling in silence, Stern’s brother-in-law pressed on with this shameless routine. “You’re not blaming me, are you?”

  Stern spoke into the telephone in a mood of absolute violence.

  “Dixon, if you insist on convicting yourself with ludicrous antics, so be it. But it is my livelihood and my reputation at stake. The safe must be returned promptly.” He pounded down the phone.

  The next morning, he came to the office hopeful. But the safe was not there. The Berber carpet where it had rested for weeks was now permanently dimpled with the impress of the four heavy feet.

  At moments during the week, he actually indulged the thought that Dixon might not be involved. He had been in New York late that night, Dixon insisted. He had gone to his meeting. How could he have swiped a safe? What about the maintenance people, he asked, the late-night cleaner-uppers? They all had keys. Maybe one of them had noticed the safe after it was moved and decided to carry the thing off, hoping it contained real valuables. The notion, although preposterous, was urged by Dixon relentlessly. Trying to resolve every last doubt, Stern, despite his warnings to himself, offhandedly mentioned the safe to Silvia, in the midst of their daily conversation on Wednesday.

  “Oh, that,” she said with sudden exasperation. “You would never believe what went on here.” She proceeded to describe a scene last week involving Dixon and Rory, their driver. Silvia, recovering from jet lag, had apparently been roused from a sound sleep by the two figures who stood at the closet arguing. The driver, with a heavy German accent, had spoken to Dixon severely, warning him that he was out of breath and should leave the lifting to him, while Silvia sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to her chest, addressing both men, who, she said, ignored her. Dixon was swearing, fuming, carrying on in a violent temper about Stern. He had gone off to the airport to rent a private jet.

  “Sender, whatever is going on between you two?”

  Stern, who always had an easy time putting Silvia off, did so again. A business disagreement, he told her. Upon reflection, he said it would be best if she made no mention to Dixon of his call. His sister hung on the line, troubled and confounded, caught between the North Pole and the South, the two men who dominated her life. Resting the phone, Stern again regretted having acted impulsively. For one thing, he recognized only now that his conversation with his sister was probably not privileged. He sat scolding himself, while he contemplated the law’s obliviousness to family affection. In the worst case, Stern would face ugly choices when he was called before the grand jury: implicating Dixon and abusing Silvia’s confidence or, on the other hand, disregarding the oath.

  What a trial Dixon could have, Stern thought suddenly. First, his daughter’s husband would incriminate Dixon; then the government would call Stern himself. Under the compulsion of a court order to respond, he would describe Dixon’s ape-walk with the safe and its disappearance shortly after. Then, for the coup de grâce, the prosecutors would try to find an exception to the marital privilege in order to force Silvia to testify about the sale, too. How Stan Sennett would enjoy it. The entire Stern family versus Dixon Hartnell. Looking down at the phone, Stern shuddered. It would breach the faith of a lifetime to testify against a client, any client, let alone Dixon, whatever he was.

  Stern had come of age in the state courts. There in the dim hallways lit with schoolhouse fixtures, with the old wainscoting bearing the intaglio of hundreds of teenagers’ initials, with the crotchety political retainers, who displayed an almost pathetic craving for any form of gratuity, he felt at ease. That was a scene of royal characters: Zeb Mayal, the bail bondsman and ward committeeman who, late into the 1960s, still sat in open view at a desk in one branch courtroom issuing instructions to everyone present, including many of the judges called to preside; Wally McTavish, the deputy p.a. who would cross-examine the defendants in death-pen ally cases by sneaking close to them and whispering, “Bzzz” and of course the rogues, the thieves—Louie De Vivo, for one. who planted a time bomb in his own car in an effort to distract the judge at his sentencing. Oh God, he loved them, loved them. A staid man, a man of little courage when it came to his own behavior, Stern felt an aesthete’s appreciation for the knavishness, the guile, the selfish cleverness of so many of these people who made it possible to embrace human misbehavior for its own miserable creativity.

  The federal courts, which were now in a fashion his home, were a more solemn place. This was the forum preferred by the lawyers with fancy law school degrees and prominent clients, and admittedly, it was a more ideal place to practice law. The judges had the time and the inclination to consider the briefs filed before them. Here, unlike the state courts, it was a rarity for lawyers to engage in fistfights in the halls. The clerks and marshals were genial and, in proud contradistinction to their colleagues in the county courthouse, incorruptible. But Stern never left behind the feeling that he was an intruder. He had won his place of prominence across town, watching his backside, avoiding, whenever possible, the questionable dealings in the corridors, proving over time that skill and cleverness could prevail, even in that brass-knuckles arena, and he still felt that he belonged there, where the real lawyers of his definition were—in the Kindle County Courthouse, with its grimy corridors and pathetic rococo columns.

  These thoughts of one more fugitive border crossed came to Stern in the idle moments before the commencement of the afternoon session in Moira Winchell’s courtroom. Remo Cavarelli, cowed and silent, sat beside Stern, biting anxiously at his sloppy mustache and upper lip. Notwithstanding Remo’s agitation, the indulgent somnolescent air of the early afternoon had fallen over the courtroom. Judge Winchell, like her colleagues, allowed an hour and a half for lunch—time enough for wine with the meal, a screw on the sneak, a run for the athletic. Then, without warning, a door flew open and Judge Winchell stalked from her chambers and assumed the bench, as Stern and Appleton and Remo and the few elderly spectators came to their feet.

  Wilbur, the sad-faced clerk, called Remo’s case for trial. In spite of Stern’s frequent reassurances that nothing would actually transpire today, Stern could feel Remo quaking at his side. Wilbur already knew there would be a motion for a continuance, and no jury had been summoned.

  “Defendant is ready for trial,” said Stern, for the sake of the record, as soon as he reached the podium.

  Appleton, Stern knew, was not. He was trying a two-pound buy-bust cocaine case before Judge Horka and would need another we
ek or so before he was ready to go on to this case. With an Assistant less cordial than Moses, Stern might have fussed—there were, after all, fifty other prosecutors down the street who could try this matter—but he listened in silence to Appleton’s request, adding merely, “I object,” at the conclusion of Moses’s presentation, a remark which Judge Winchell ignored with the studied indifference she would have applied to a stray sound from the hall.

  “How’s next Thursday?” asked the judge. “I have a grand jury matter that may require some attention, but that’s all.” The judge, marking in her docket book, let her dark eyes find Stern. “Mr. Stern,” she said with practiced discretion, “as I recall, you have some involvement with that matter. Have the parties resolved their impasse?”

  “Not as yet, Your Honor.”

  “Oh,” said the judge, “how disappointing.” The arch mannerisms did not conceal the predictable: Moira was displeased.

  Klonsky had called Stern first thing that morning. ‘I don’t have your daughter’s number in New York. I thought we better talk. You’re in the grand jury next Thursday.’ It was Friday today.

  Her voice still stimulated wild feelings. How goes it with your husband? he wanted to ask. How do you feel? He read out Marta’s number from his book.

  ‘Has the government reconsidered, perhaps?’

  ‘We’ll compromise,’ said Sonny. ‘You deliver the safe and an affidavit that says that it’s in the same condition as when you received it, and you won’t have to appear before the grand jury.’

  ‘I see.’ The government, as usual, would get everything it wanted, but their moderated stance would please the judge.

  ‘I think this is fair, Sandy,’ said Sonny. ‘I really do. The fact that you have the safe just isn’t privileged. All we want is the safe and to know that we have everything that was in it. We’d be entitled to get the thing if he’d left it at MD, where it belonged. We can’t allow someone to avoid a subpoena duces tecum by conveying what we want to his lawyer.’