The Burden of Proof (24 page)

Stern smiled obligingly. It occurred to him that he, too, would soon be entitled to these fond complaints. The prospect today seemed considerably less consoling. The thought of John briefly scuffed at Stern's heart.

"So," said Stern. "You had success?" He sought to bring Radczyk to the subject. He was the kind who would chat about anything else.

The old cop reached to the inside pocket of his sport coat and came up with a single grayish page, a copy of something. He put on his reading glasses and considered the paper as if he had never seen it before. Then he removed his eyeglasses and pointed the temple at Stern.

"You give any thought to talkin with her doctors? That's what I'd do in your shoes."

Immediately, Stern felt the same vexation that had overcome him on his way from the U. S. Attorney's Office. Why had he bothered with this policeman? He was old, and probably never terrifically competent. Trust Radczyk to suggest a starting point where Stern had already been. He was not fully able to conceal his irritation.

"Lieutenant, I am afraid I have already attempted that COurse. ' '

"Mind if I ask what come of it?" asked Radczyk. "What came of it," said Stern, "was that Clara's personal doctor tells me he did not order this test, and I have been unable to determine which physician did."

"Huh." Radczyk looked back down to the sheet he held. "No name here," he said. "Suppose I coulda asked when I was out there." The notion that the name of the treating physician might have been relevant occurred to Radczyk remotely, a far-off idea, like the notion of life on the planets. Stern was finding it increasingly difficult to stifle himself.

"You were at Westlab?"

"Oh, sure, sure. Done just like I told you. Went out-there, got the administrator, you know, showed her my star. Nice gal. Liz something or other. Very professional, you know.

Looked to be a little 'Mexican or Italian gal. I said I was doin routine follow-up, what records did they have? She showed me the whole file right there in her office. Give me a copy of the results." Radczyk hoisted the paper in his hand, and Stern, without invitation, reached across the table and quietly took it.

The hangdog waitress came by with her green pad, saying only "Yours?" to each man. Stern ordered as he studied the copy. It was a half sheet on the letterhead of Westlab. The rest of it contained computer-printed figures. Numbers.

Codes. A meaningless scramble. In his frustration, Stern nearly groaned.

"Did they tell you, Lieutenant, what this test was for?"

"Sure," he said." 'Viral culture." "He took the paper back and with a dirty fingernail showed Stern a tiny box which had been x'd. "A virus?" Radczyk nodd. S. Attorney's Office. Why had he bothered with this policeman? He was old, and probably never terrifically competent. Trust Radczyk to suggest a starting point where Stern had already been. He was not fully able to conceal his irritation.

"Lieutenant, I am afraid I have already attempted that COurse. ' '

"Mind if I ask what come of it?" asked Radczyk. "What came of it," said Stern, "was that Clara's personal doctor tells me he did not order this test, and I have been unable to determine which physician did."

"Huh." Radczyk looked back down to the sheet he held. "No name here," he said. "Suppose I coulda asked when I was out there." The notion that the name of the treating physician might have been relevant occurred to Radczyk remotely, a far-off idea, like the notion of life on the planets. Stern was finding it increasingly difficult to stifle himself.

"You were at Westlab?"

"Oh, sure, sure. Done just like I told you. Went out-there, got the administrator, you know, showed her my star. Nice gal. Liz something or other. Very professional, you know.

Looked to be a little 'Mexican or Italian gal. I said I was doin routine follow-up, what records did they have? She showed me the whole file right there in her office. Give me a copy of the results." Radczyk hoisted the paper in his hand, and Stern, without invitation, reached across the table and quietly took it.

The hangdog waitress came by with her green pad, saying only "Yours?" to each man. Stern ordered as he studied the copy. It was a half sheet on the letterhead of Westlab. The rest of it contained computer-printed figures. Numbers.

Codes. A meaningless scramble. In his frustration, Stern nearly groaned.

"Did they tell you, Lieutenant, what this test was for?"

"Sure," he said." 'Viral culture." "He took the paper back and with a dirty fingernail showed Stern a tiny box which had been x'd. "A virus?" Radczyk nodded.

Stern took this in: Clara had seen the doctor for a virus.

So here was the outcome of nearly two months' pursuit. His wife had the sniffles. A persistent cough. No wonder she had bothered only Peter.

He smiled faintly. For all the pain, it had the quality of a burlesque.

"And they had no more to report?"

Radczyk seemed to have settled himself elsex,here. He considered Stern with his pleasant, rosy look and huddled closer.

"Still don't remember me, do you?"

Stern, who would ordinarily go to considerable lengths to avoid adrmtting something so unflattering, simply shrugged.

He had better sense than to try to fool an old policeman.

"Didn't think so." The cop edged forward. "Marv Ja-coby."

It hit Stern like lightning. "The brother," said Stern. The orphan, he thought. "That was some time ago."

Childishly pleased to be recalled, Radczyk sat there smiling. "Hadn't taken the tags off my sergeant's stripes yet."

So this was the orphan. Stern instantly recalled the entire tale.

Radczyk had been raised by his grandfather, who ran a paper stand, one of those metal shanties on a street comer; in the winter, they took heat from a fire in an oil dram.

One day two young neighborhood hoods, looking for nickels and dimes, tried to stick up the grandfather, and ended up shooting him dead. The beat cop was Harold Jacoby--Jews did not become lieutenants in those days--and he took the grandson home and raised him with his own. Harold had two natural sons, as Stern remembered, and all three became policemen. Ray was the eldest. Eddie eventually quit the force and went to California, where he'd done well in the security business. It was the youngest son, Marvin, who became Stern's client.

Lord, what a thug he was, Stern thought when he remembered Marvin.

Gum-cbewing,' wisecracking, with little black eyes and, as they said on the street, an attitude. Marvin was a wrong cop from the day he got his star. And a daily heartache to Ray here, who took over Marvin's guidance when the father passed away.

Almost a dozen years ago, certain police officers, disgruntled by the usual departmental rivalties, had begun to assemble evidence of wrongdoing in the city's North Branch district. This effort required no intrepidhess. The North Branch was wide open: cops on the pad; bail bondsmen steering cases; judges on the take. Marvin was not the worst offender, but one of the least popular, and at the time he first met Stern he had a subpoena to appear before a state grand jury that was looking into allegations that Marvin had taken monthly payments from certain narcotics dealers to warn them of ensuing police raids.

"I still owe you for all of that;" said Radczyk.

Stern shook his head. It had not been much. He had simply touched the pressure points. Like someone who knew jujitsu.

Stern had paid discreet visits to certain politicians whose alliances he'd estimated would be disturbed by sudden havoc in the North End. The county prosecutor, Raymond Horgan, who had friends like everybody else, had seen fit to quash the investigation. For these efforts, Radczyk had been unreasonably grateful; he had attended each of Marvin's visits, fretting like a mother; he was as garrulous then as now. Marvin simply sat there in his uniform, cracking his gum, while Ray went on reinterpreting every remark and arguing in behalf of Marvin's exculpation. He seemed determined not to believe the worst, the kind of devoted big brother every man should have. None of it had done any good for Marvin, who was discovered a few years later in the trunk of a car being towed from a parking lot in the North End. As Stern heard it,'

Marvin was stark naked, with blowtorch holes burned black through his privates.

Stern said that out loud, that he might not have been much help to Marvin in the end.

"Gave him a chance," said Radczyk. "He was three times seven. Can only give a leila a chance." Stern and he both pondered that observation. "I shoulda known he'd never make a cop. Hell," said Radczyk, "I don't even know what kind of cop I made." Radczyk, caught in his own tender reflections, smiled crookedly. There was something unavoidably touching about this confession--the very plainness of it. Radczyk was pushing retirement but remained in doubt about these fundamental judgments. His woe Stern did not feel; he had no question about his fitness for his calling, no regrets about what he would have done with greater diligence or harder work. It was the costs of that kind of dedication he was now attempting to assess. The thought brought him back to where they had started. Glancing about to find his cases, Stern stood.

"I thank you for all your good work on this matter, Lieutenant. I am in your debt."

Still apparently anchored in the past, Radczyk considered Stern with a tentative, sad&ned look and for the first time had no comment.

"Did my wife have a virus, by the way?" Stern asked. He wondered how remote the glimmer was that he had been chasing.

In answer, Radczyk showed the paper. His thick finger lay in the findings section of the form. Stern squinted across the table: "HSV-2

Positive." When Stern looked to him inquiringly, Radczyk shrugged.

Whatever that meant. Medical gibberish.

"Maybe I oughta go back there and get that doc's name for you," said Radczyk.

This time Stern caught it, a, savvy flash that passed through Radczyk's worn cheerful face, sharp and sudden as the reflection off a blade--something you see, then don't.

He had seen this clever gleam in Radczyk before, Stern realized, and let it go by. It amazed him, after all these years, that he could still be taken in by the police.

Stern set down his cases and resumed his seat. He spOke precisely, as he would in court, "You must excuse me, Lieutenant, but I believe you did not answer my question."

Radczyk's happy mug took on an oafish expression. Caught, he looked both ways and weighed something, probably an impulse to try another feint: What question? He did not do that.

"Yea, verily," said Radczyk at last- "I did not."

"What was this test for?"

"Oh," said Radczyk. He pushed the few clumped strands of hair over his red scalp. "That's what the doctor should be telling you, Sandy. I'd rather not."

"I see. Are you refusing?"

The pOliceman looked around, big and unhappy.

"No, I ain't refusin' you, Sandy. You ask, I'll tell ya the truth."

"Well, then?"

Radczyk's old face was soft and drained.

"Herpes," Radczyk said.

"Herpes?"

"I asked the lady. That's what she told me. Herpes."

Radczyk passed his hand over his mouth, wiping it in a fashion, and said, "Genital herpes."

Stern found himself pondering the dirty river, the flecks of wood pulp, disintegrating cardboard, whitish foam that floated by. He had felt just this way recently, he thought with idle precision. When was it?

Then he remembered opening the door to the garage. Peering down, he noticed that one of his hands was gripping the dirty gray table by the edge.

"The test was positive?" he asked. Of course, he knew what the paper had said.

"Sandy, you're askin a guy who don't know a thing. I'm repeating what the lady told me. Who knows? Who knows what we're talkin about? I'm goin right back there. I'm gonna get this doc's name, I'll have it for you in no time fast."

"Please do not bother, Lieutenant."

"No bother."

"You have done enough." Of course, it came out the wrong way. stern stood there, reeling, suffering, unable just now to do anything to make amends.

My God, Clara, he thought.

Stern insisted on paying the check. He grabbed the old policeman's rough hand and shook it solemnly, and Rad-czyk, in some kind of conciliatory gesture, took the copied page and placed it in the pocket of Stern's suit. Then Mr. Alejandro Stern, with his empty cases, turned to go, wondering where so early in the day he could find a place to be alone.

PART

Clara Mittler was already too old when she met him. It was 1956.

Their acquaintance was first struck in the auspicious climate of her father s law office, where Stern had let one room in Henry Mittler's suite. In those years Stern revered Henry; by the end, he saw his father-in-law as a man with too little justice in him to be admired. But in 1956, with his large and sometimes volcanic personality, and, more pertinently, his influence and wealth, Henry Mittler loomed before Stern, fresh from Easton Law School, like some diorama giant, a majestic emblem of the attainments possible in a life at the bar. He was.a sizable fellow, with a formidable belly and whitish hair pushed straight back from a widow's peak, distinct as an arrow, and his manner was, by turns, shrewd and scholarly and ruthless. In many ways, Henry was the most refined of gentlemen; he collected stamps, and for many years thereafter Stern would watch with amazement as Henry, with his jeweler's glass and tweezers, studied, stored, and filed. In other moods, he was a person of utter commonness. Whatever his temper, he projected the imposing aura of an orchestral maestro, This impressive congregation of qualities--and, as Stern learned later, a fortunate marriage to a woman of significant standing--had made him a business counselor whose insight and discretion were prized throughout the city' s small but wealthy German Jewish community. Two of the larger independent banks downtown were his clients; so were the Hartzog and Bergstein families, only then conquering the first terrains in their future kingdoms in air travel and hostelry. Henry had come of age in an era when those he served stood for sweatshops and union busting and heartless home foreclosures--the entire pristine empire of wealth, accepted as being in the Order of Things. It was a different world now;