The Burden of Proof (29 page)

Ralph handed them their putters, then drove the cart off toward the next tee.

"They have to prove it's me, don't they?" Dixon asked as the two men stood on the green. "All this crap, taking the business--they don't take my business away because somebody else did this without me knowing.

Right?"

"Correct," said Stern. He moved his putter near his shoes.

"If that is what occurred."

"Look, Stern, everybody in the place puts on trades that end up in the error account. There are a hundred, hundred fifty trades a month that go through there." This was the point which Margy had seized on. "Maybe somebody's trying to screw me, make me look like a bad guy."

"I see," said Stern. "The govemmeut, Dixon, not to mention a jury, is rarely persuaded that an employee is willing to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars and then give it to his employer out of spite."

'Me?"

"It is your account, Dixon."

"Oh, bullshit, it's the house account."

"It is your house, Dixon. And it is logical to attribute all of this to you, if the money remains in the account." Dixon suddenly showed a quick, scornful smile.

"Is that what they think?" he asked. He tossed away his cigarette and removed a piece of tobacco from his tongue, while he fixed Stern with a dry look. The message was plain: I am not that dumb. Apparently, Dixun had exercised more care than Margy had made out. There was another layer of involvement in Dixon's scheme, one that somehow isolated the error account and the unlawful profits. A flash of something, say a smile, passed between the two men before they moved off on either side of the flag.

Dixon putted first, and swore freely as the ball danced around the cup.

Stern, with a short putt to halve the whole, shocked himself by making it.

"Goddamn it," said Dixon, not for the first time. They moved onto the next tee and sat on a bench under a tree, holding their drivers, while the foursome ahead approached their second shots. The fairway was long, gleaming under the sun on the par-five hole. There were ten traps--Stern called this hole 'the march across the desert." Idling there, he briefly reconsidered the govemment's scrutiny of Dixon's bank account. Perhaps that had to do with the devices Dixon had used to conceal the money. In all likelihood. They were still. looking.

"There is another problem," Stern said. "Naturally," his brother-in-law responded. Stern told him that John had been subpoenaed. "Meaning -what?"

"They want to ask him questions about this matter."

"So?

He's a good kid. Let them ask questions."

"They are suggesting that they may grant him immunity."

Dixon squinted and studied Stern.

"What are you telling me?"

"I'm telling you that they believe he has critical knowledge. They are interested in making him a witness against you."

"And what am I supposed to say?"

"Is that prospect of concern to you?"

Dixon, perpetually cryptic, made a face--a philosopher could not have done better. Who knows what about whom? "It might be."

"I see." Stern briefly looked away. But he had known this was coming.

The tickets from the orders that had been entered in Kindle ahead of the large Chicago trades had reached his office yesterday, and John's awkward scrawl, even his initials sometimes, were on each form. The prosecutors' hopes for John were obvious: they wanted him to finger Dixon as the man who'd called .the Kindle orders in each time. But it was not clear yet that John could oblige. He took hundreds of orders a day. The possibility remained that Dixon had used John regularly because he was as un-impressionable as a stone, the man on the desk most likely to forget, and that there had been nothing memorable or overt in their dealings that would ignite John's recollections now. There was no point in asking Dixon. He could not say what John remembered, and would never answer precisely, in any event.

"Then we had best find him another lawyer," Stern said at last.

"If you think so."

"I do. I cannot represent someone whose best interests may lie in testifying against you. How could I be loyal to John and loyal to you?

It would be a hopeless conflict of interests."

For an instant the bleak morass of family difficulties, framed in this way, confronted both men. Even Dixon, Stern thought, had a mildly sheepish look.

"Who will you get for him?"

"The choice is John's. I will suggest some names. Lawyers I am familiar with." Lawyers who would talk to Stern, who would do their best to moderate the danger of John's testimony. This was very delicate.

Stern, in spite of everything, smiled at his next thought. "Your employees' manual provides that he will be indemnified for his legal fees."

Dixon rolled his eyes. "Great."

The momentary humor, however, seemed to do nothing to allay the heavy mood between them.

"Look," said Dixon, He was about to explain, but he caught something in Stern's look that stopped him. Suddenly it was obvious to them both how harshly Stern judged him for leading John into this swamp. Dixon endured this reproof another instant before turning away.

Ralph, by the cart, mentioned that they could hit. Dixon strode to the tee, swung mightily, and hooked his shot miserably, deep into the trees.

He walked across the tee, outraged, slamming his club head repeatedly into the sod, and finally flung the wood away.

Stern was standing when he returned.

"Do you have something to say?" Dixon demanded.

There was no pretense he might have been referring to his shot.

"My fee does not include lectures, Dixon."

"You think it was a stupid-ass thing to do, right? The whole fucking idea. Dumb, as bad as anything else. And you'd expect me at least to be smarter."

Stern waited.

"Just so," he answered.

With his driver, he began walking forward on the tee, but Dixon caught his hand with his gloved hand before his brother-in-law could pass. He suddenly seemed too put out for courtesies. He presented his natural self, large, rough, expansive. Since Stern had known it all along, he admitted his nasty secret--in spite of his expensive haircut and Sea Island cotton shirts, Dixon was a vulgarJan. He pointed.

"Stern, do you know why a dog licks his balls?" Stern: considered that a moment. "No, Dixon, I do not."

"Because he can," said Dixon, and looked at his brother-inlaw squarely.

Before he headed toward the cart, alone, he repeated it. "Because he can."

SOMEONE had once observed that when a man was wearing a hat it is harder to tell his troubles. Stern found surprising accuracy in this peculiar commonplace. Under a bright straw boater, with a brilliant red, white, and blue band, he proceeded down the avenues toward the River National Bank, where he would meet with Cal Hopkinson and the officer in charge of Clara's trust' accounts. The day was bright, the perfect sweet late May you expected in Kindle County.

The hat was Marta's--from a high-school play a decade ago.

Stern had found it in her room, and during one of the lengthy long-distance conversations they had recently been having late at night, she had urged him to wear it, hoping it might improve his mood. He was certain he would feel like a clown as soon as he set foot outside the house.

Instead, it proved oddly heating to think that people who knew him well might not recognize him, could believe he was someone else.

Across the marble lobby of River National, Cai Hopkin-son waved.

Together, he and Stern found the office of the bank vice president, Jack Wagoner. Wagoner was your usual inoffensive gentleman in banking, immaculately groomed and well mannered. Henry Mittler, long ago, had permanently damaged all bankers in Stern's estimate with his grudging private opinions of the baing clients who had made him rich.

Whatever disparaging bromide Henry might have employed about Jack, he was smart enough to know there was a problem. His mission was to explain to a man what his wife had done, without his knowledge, with most of a million dollars. Furthermore, the man was a lawyer. A suicide was involved. A will was in question. Bad medicine for a banker, or anyone else. The air in Wagoner's office full of antique reproductions and a good Oriental rug was decidedly uneasy. A single file folder lay in the center of Wagoner's otherwise immaculate desk.

"Mrs. Stern issued written instructions to dissolve at least $850,000 in assets in her investment account on March 20th." With that, Wagoner produced a handwritten letter on Clara's stationery. Cal and Stern looked it over together on the corner of Wagoner's desk, then Stern took up the document himself. The hand was strong and clear. She wrote a one-sentence direction, setting forth the amount and granting the bank the discretion to liquidate those securities it deemed best. Holding the note, he recalled the other piece of correspondence Clara had set herself to a few days after. Many messages left behind, but no long explanatiops. Stern, without thinking, briefly worried his head.

"May I ask who dealt with her?"

Wagoner knew all the answers. His assistant, Betty Fiori, had received Mrs. Stern's call and told her that written instructions were necessary with an amount of that size.

"And what then became of those funds?" asked Stern.

"They were disbursed," said Jack, "pursuant to Mrs. Stern's directions."

"How?" asked Cal.

"By certified check drawn against her investment account."

Wagoner had obviously spoken to his lawyer and was answering only as questions were asked. He now presented a white slip by which Clara had requested certification; she had wanted to reassure someone that her check would be good. Stern recognized her signature on the form, but the amount, a little over $850,000, was written in another hand.

"Whose writing?" he asked, pointing.

"Betty's."

"And to whom," asked Stern, "was' this check made payable?"

"We looked for the canceled check." He pushed a button on his telephone console and asked that Ms. Fiofi be summoned.

She appeared at once, another person in a dark blue suit.

She recited the steps she had taken to find the wayward check. Their own check-reconciliation department had searched; their bank; the Fed.

The trust officers, who normally received the canceled checks and statements on this account, had looked high and low. It was this tracing process, clearly, which had gone on while the bank had been holding Cal at bay.

"I'm positive it hasn't cleared," Ms. Fiofi said. "Can we stop it?" asked Cal.

"Stop?" asked Wagoner. "It's a certified check. We've guaranteed payment."

"It hasn't been presented."

"How could we stop it?" asked Wagoner.

"It's stale, isn't it?"

Stern spoke up. The question he had asked before had not yet been answered.

"To whom was this check made payable?""

Ms. Fiofi looked to Wagoner.

"We don't ordinarily make a record of that," he said. "We have no reason to."

"You do not know?" Stern spoke to Ms. Fiofi. Wagoner might never answer directly.

"We don't know," she said. "Usually, you have the returned check.

Sometimes we'll put a note on the requisition. It wasn't made payable to Mrs. Stern, if it helps. I remember that."

"You do?" asked Stern. "Yes."

"Clearly?"

He was in the mode of cross-examination now. Familiar ground.

Something, he suspected, had made an impression on her.

"There is a particular reason you recall?" She shrugged.

"Not really."

"You remember the name?"

"I don't, Mr. Stern. I've racked my brain."

"But it was not an entity? A corporation? Partnership?"

"No, I'm sure of that."

"Not a charity or a foundation?"

"No."

"An individual?"

"I believe so."

"I see," said Stern. He knew the rest. It was obvious now why she remembered. "A man's name," said Stern finally.

Ms. Fiori, involuntarily, allowed her teeth to close a bit against her upper lip.

"Yes," she said.

Yes, thought Stern. Of course.

For a moment no one in the room spoke.

"So some fellow is walking around with my wife's check for $850,000 in his pocket?"

It was absurd, of course, but the humiliation was unbearable. It raced through him, like acrid fumes, and seemed to rome its way to his eyes. He knew he was flushed. Cal at last said something.

"Jack, there has to be a way to stop that check."

"Cal, it's certified. We'd be buying ourselves a lawsuit for wrongful dishonor. We don't know what kind of transaction was involved here."

Wagoner, provoked by Cal, glanced as an afterthought at Stern. He had been indelicate. "I promise you this much. We'll let you know when the check is presented. If you want to get an injunction at that point, God bless you."