The Burden of Proof

  “What did you do to my kitchen?” demanded Silvia as she returned. She handed her brother the glass but looked at him scoldingly. Stern made one of his expressions and Silvia smiled, though she went on shaking her head. “Sender,” she said, “you must tell me what is occurring.”

  In her absence, he had pondered how to put this, and he adopted a moderate approach. The government was investigating. They had done so before, but this was a criminal matter and the prosecutors seemed to have hold of evidence of some questionable practices on Dixon’s part. The investigation had grown increasingly complex, but Dixon was attempting to put his head in the sand. The government had demanded the safe, and Dixon, against Stern’s advice, was endeavoring to hide it, a maneuver which would prejudice not only Dixon but Stern. He spoke allusively, hoping his sister would not gather the full impact, but she understood enough.

  “Is he in danger of prison?”

  “He is,” answered Stern. Silvia sat still, a small woman sparely knitted together. She looked tiny, with her bare legs and flat shoes. She clutched her elbows close to her body and drew her face long to maintain her composure. Stern himself, to his enormous surprise, found himself on the verge of tears in sympathy.

  “I have been very concerned for him,” Silvia said.

  “I as well.”

  “You have no idea, Sender.” She knotted her hands. “He coughs for thirty minutes when he wakes up in the morning. His secretary tells me he is terribly forgetful. He does not sleep. He wanders about at all hours. Or leaves in the middle of the night, headed God knows where. For the last week he has not even slept here once.” She glanced up at Stern; this was intended to be a significant remark, referring apparently to something other than Dixon’s travel schedule.

  “I am attempting to help him, but he is resisting.”

  “Of course,” she said, “but I am afraid he will never survive.”

  “He will survive,” said Stern. “He is one of those types who always survive and triumph.” Spoken, the words struck him as merely cordial. He had not realized until now how deep-seated his own fears for Dixon were, even as he felt some swell of resentment rise when he predicted his glory. “I had hoped to come and go today without involving you.”

  “I shall not tell him,” said Silvia.

  Stern weighed this, but remained convinced that it would be wrong to force Silvia to take sides. Dixon was entitled to the comforts of home.

  “That is not necessary.”

  “Unless he asks,” she offered.

  “He is certain to ask once he sees the disorder in the kitchen.”

  “I shall have it repaired. Tomorrow. Today, if possible. I would be very surprised, at any rate, if he spends the night here.” She looked down again at the rug. Years ago, before Silvia had evicted him, Dixon would do this, fail to return. He had an apartment in town where he usually claimed to be, and no doubt often was, enjoying one young woman or another. Once he and Silvia were reunited, however, Dixon seemed to maintain a minimal pretense and confined his roaming to business hours or his many trips out of town. “It is very disturbing,” she said.

  He nearly uttered a word or two in Dixon’s behalf, about the strain recently, but he realized it would be little comfort.

  “Do you ask where he goes?”

  “Work.” She smiled tersely. “Of course, there is no answer when I phone.”

  “I see.” Stern at first said nothing. “I must say, I hope this can be endured. It would be a terrible moment for you both to repeat your separation.”

  Silvia made a face. “There will be no repetition. I am accustomed.” She smiled the same way, briefly, bitterly. “As you know, our difficulty was not only that.”

  Stern looked at his sister without comprehension.

  “Oh, you knew. Clara knew. She told you; I knew she would. You are gallant, Sender, but there is no need to pretend.”

  “I am not pretending,” said Stern.

  “Truly?”

  “Truly.”

  “It is long past,” she said, and flipped a dark slender hand. She was ready to give up the subject, but she saw that Stern was still puzzled and she came forth with the truth abruptly to satisfy him. “He had come home with an illness. Which I was afraid he had inflicted on me. It was repulsive.”

  “An illness?”

  “A disease. You understand.”

  His head was ringing now, and his throat and chest felt terribly constricted. He asked, nonetheless, as he knew he was required to.

  “Herpes?”

  Her mouth opened somewhat and then, to his amazement, Silvia smiled—in a reluctant fashion, part grimace. She would never see through him, she would never understand him. Only from Stern in the entire world might this be tolerable, but if he insisted, she would find humor in the pain of the past. Older brothers, after all, forever reserved the right to tease.

  “Oh, Sender,” she said to him with a girlish wag, “you knew all along.”

  41

  EVENTUALLY, REMO DESCENDED the staircase. He had brought the safe with him, and he took each step sideways, in a straddle, lowering one booted foot, then the other. It was slow work and he stopped at one point and rested the safe. He lit a cigarette and eased down the remaining stairs, with the Marlboro tucked in the corner of his mouth and one eye closed to the smoke. From his seat on a living-room settee, Stern could see Remo coming, but he made no move to assist him, nor did he open his mouth to speak. He was capable of movement, no doubt of that; but he was uninterested. Perhaps he would remain here, with his hands folded, for what was left of his life. He did not feel any emotion with particular strength, except that he was no longer himself. His head was still ringing, and his arms were light; but, predominantly, he was beset with the sensation of difference, departure. A new man—not better or worse—but someone else would leave here.

  “I heard you talking in the hallway,” said Remo when he finally arrived. He knew his presence was no secret.

  “Of course,” said Stern. “Remo Cavarelli, Silvia Hartnell.”

  Silvia nodded properly to the man who had broken into her house.

  “We goin or what?” asked Remo.

  “Sender, are you all right?” asked Silvia. This was not the first time.

  “Quite all right.” Stern managed a smile. His voice sounded peculiar to him, weak. It was as if his spirit had fled his body and was outside, examining him.

  “We still takin this thing?” Remo nodded to the safe at his feet. Stern, after recalling what he was speaking about, smiled fleetingly again.

  “Oh, yes.”

  Remo departed for the car. Silvia, too, left the room to make a phone call. There was a local fireman who did work around the house and might even be available on Sunday to repair the kitchen.

  Stern was left alone with the safe. Remarkable, really, Stern thought, that he had spoken Spanish to Silvia—he would have wagered a large sum that he could not finish a sentence. Occasionally over the years, certain latino gentlemen appeared in Stern’s office, Cubans usually, who needed the assistance of bilingual counsel. And of course, during the 1970s there were the pathetic impoverished Mexicans who were arrested here by the gross for distributing brown heroin, sad, unlettered men, spewing their chingas and begging Stern to take their case at any price. Stern had always declined such representations. It was not the drugs that bothered him; it was the old fear of being recognized for what he feared he was, someone else who did not belong here. But he saw very clearly, as he held off more pressing thoughts, that that period and those attitudes were behind him. Those clients would henceforth be welcome. The words, he was sure, would come back to him over time.

  He reached for his soft drink and tasted it. Silvia had said he knew all along. She had meant something else, naturally, but alone here he wondered if the unintended meanings were also correct. A part of him remained solidly composed with the truth; his first faith would always be in the facts. But in another region—someplace silent but still known to him??
?the toll was mounting, the damages were still being assessed. If he had foreseen this, it was only with that inner eye that always envisions the bad dreams—the worst dreams—coming true. It was clear now that it was who much more than what that Clara dared not live to tell. Her choice of a lover was no accident; he would never be persuaded otherwise. Clara knew her husband too well. Afterwards, even she must have been frightened by the sheer ferocious spite that had moved her. It was that which she trembled to reveal. Well, at least the evidence of his senses had not failed him. Clara indeed had no use for Dixon after he returned to Silvia. She must have been disgusted with him. And herself. What transpired between them? What conversations? He was back here again, a familiar point of arrival, feeling he would probably rather not know.

  Stern hunched forward on the settee and brought a toe to the door of the safe. It was still open and Stern with the sole of his shoe wedged the little door wider. The lump of papers was in there. Oh, why not? he thought. He could put up with anything.

  There were two full sheets from a microfilm printer, heavy with toner, each folded in four. As he removed them from the safe, various items, about which the records were wrapped, fell out: two checks and a number of the gray celluloid squares which Stern recognized as microfiche cards.

  “The phones are not working,” said Silvia, coming back to the living room; she was deeply perturbed. “How can I reach him?”

  Remo returned at that moment.

  “Who’s that?” he asked. “Who’s comin?” Remo’d had enough time in the closet to notice the weights and, all things considered, wished to be gone when the man of the house arrived. Silvia explained her difficulty, and they disappeared together so Remo could reconnect the phone lines. In the interval, Stern went through the papers from the safe, studying them for some time. Remo returned first, then Silvia breezed back in.

  “He’s on his way now,” Silvia said. She seemed consoled by the thought that the disorder in her kitchen would be quickly repaired.

  “Well, let’s get goin,” said Remo, a hasty departure still on his mind. He bent over the safe. “Alley-oop,” he said.

  Stern and his sister followed as he lumbered through the stone hallway. Stern had all the papers from the safe cradled in his hands. Silvia held the screen for Remo, and at his request opened the rear door to the Mercury. Squinting in the brilliant sunshine, Stern and his sister watched as Remo sank to his knees to lower the safe onto the dirty floor of his spring-shot Cougar. He stood up straight and dusted off his hands while he waited to catch his breath. A rill of sweat had run down his temple.

  “On second thought,” said Stern suddenly, “we shall leave it.”

  Remo’s jaw fell open, revealing a mouth full of bad teeth.

  “If you would, Remo, I shall ask you to replace the safe where we found it.”

  “No,” he said, in disbelief.

  “Please,” said Stern. He had assumed, without thought, his most commanding manner, and Remo looked at him uncertainly, reluctant to obey but unwilling to object further. Stern turned to Silvia. “It shall all be as it was. You need say nothing.”

  She, too, appeared confused, but, like Remo, did not know how to respond to the change in his manner.

  “Very good,” said Stern to both of them. He walked back into the house, turning to ask Remo to bring the safe into the living room for a moment. Stern had continued to hold all the items from the safe, and he sat again on the settee and laid them out on the raw-silk fabric so that he could arrange the papers as he had found them. The two copied pages were first, then the microfiche squares, then, at last, the two checks, one nested inside the other. He studied them again. The first was Dixon’s canceled personal check for $252,646 made payable to MD Clearing Corp. The note in the memo section said “Debit A/c 06894412,” which was surely the number of the Wunderkind account. This was the check which the government, according to what Sonny had told him in Dulin, had already obtained a microfilm copy of through the subpoena to Dixon’s bank.

  The other check, the one Stern examined at greater length, was printed on the long green bank stock of River National and was a certified draft drawn on Clara’s investment account and made payable to Dixon Hartnell personally. The amount, inscribed correctly in numbers and figures, was $851,198. Stern held the check, full of the strong emotion that contact with Clara’s possessions continued often to bring over him. Then he refolded both checks and wrapped them and the microfiche cards in the two printed pages, along the same creases on which they had been folded before. These sheets reproduced the first and last pages from the account agreement for Wunderkind Associates where identifying information for the account holder would appear—name, address, social-security number. On the last page, after dozens of paragraphs of warnings and disclaimers, the customer executed the agreement. Before replacing the papers in the safe, which Remo obediently had set at his feet, Stern peeked again at the final line where in her steady fluid hand Katherine Stern had signed her name.

  42

  CERTAINLY, HE WAS NO HAPPIER. Much of what had transpired in the last few days had left him more confused than ever. But somehow an old ability to distract himself with work had revived. Recently, Stern had resumed his habit of being the first person in the office, and in the last week, he had agreed to take on three major new matters—an insider trading case already under indictment; a defense fraud investigation conducted out of Washington; and a county case in which the owner of a waste dump faced possible manslaughter charges. Beleaguered, Sondra and Raphael pleaded that they were too shorthanded for more work. But Stern himself was ready. In the office, he felt an energy and relish that had been previously lacking. The toil of man in society! The rushing about, the telephone calls, the small breaks of light in the tangle of egos and rules. Mr. Alejandro Stern adored the practice of law. His clients, his clients! No siren song was ever more compelling than a call to Stern from someone in dire straits—a tough in the precinct lockup in his early days, or a businessperson with an IRS agent at the door, as happened more commonly now. Either way, it excited him to a kind of heat: ‘Speak to no one. I shall be there momentarily.’

  What was it? What was this mad devotion to people who balked at paying fees, who scorned him the moment a case was lost, lied to him routinely, withheld critical information, and ignored his instructions? They needed him. Needed him! These weak, injured, even buffoonish characters required the assistance of Alejandro Stern to make their way. Disaster loomed. Life destruction. They wept in his office and swore to murder their turncoat comrades. When sanity returned, they dried their eyes and waited, pathetically, for Stern to tell them what to do. He drew on his cigar. ‘Now,’ he would say quietly.

  In the afternoon on Monday, he found a moment to call Cal.

  “Just to let you know,” said Stern, “that the matter of the elusive check has been resolved.”

  “Oh, really?” asked Cal. He waited.

  “So, if you would be so kind, Cal, let our friends at River National know that all is well and thank them for their cooperation.”

  “I will,” said Cal, “I will.” He cleared his throat. “May I ask?”

  “Quite a complicated matter,” Stern said.

  “The beneficiary, I meant. The payee.”

  “It is difficult to say,” said Stern, striving for a frank tone, “just at the moment. But the matter is well in hand, Cal. Have no doubt. My deepest thanks to you.”

  “I see,” said Cal. He was hurt, of course. He expected greater veneration and confidence from Stern, as a matter of professional courtesy, if nothing else.

  Returning home that evening, he found an enormous hanging case in the foyer. He bent to examine the luggage tag. Marta was back. She usually traveled with a backpack and a briefcase, the baggage of her diversified life.

  She was not in the house. Instead, after circling the first floor and calling, he spied her out the solarium windows, leaning across the hedge in animated conversation with Fiona. Marta was listening,
with far more interest than she generally showed their neighbor. Stern ventured out. When Marta saw him, she broke off to embrace him, and Stern, by some peculiar logic, then reached over the hedge, took Fiona’s tanned hand, and kissed her as well. She was in her gardening attire, a few leaves in her hair with stray vegetation, and she seemed to blush at Stern’s enthusiasm.

  “Doesn’t she look wonderful!” Fiona declared, motioning to Marta, who was in the usual formless floor-length frock. Fiona undoubtedly held the private belief that Marta was dressed like one of the women who had walked behind the wagon trains across the prairie. “I was just giving Marta the news,” said Fiona.

  “Oh, yes?” asked Stern, with some foreboding.

  “About Nate and me,” said Fiona more definitely.

  “Ah, yes. Nate mentioned that. I am sad to hear it, Fiona.”

  “We’re probably both better off.” Like many people on the other side of a dread event, Fiona appeared, as she said, better off—more resilient than one might have expected.

  Marta was beginning to slip away toward the house. Stern made a remark about stumbling over her suitcase.

  “I’m planning to stay for a while,” she told him. “I quit my job.”