The Burden of Proof (59 page)

They hoped to reach Peter, too. Eager to see Kate in particular, Stern agreed. He went down the hall to terminc if Sondra could assist on Reino's trial, and to solicit a second opinion from her on the strength of the government's case.

When Stern returned to his office, Dixon was sitting on the cream-toned sofa. Wearing a double-breasted blazer and yellow socks, he had his feet up and was smoking a cigareRe. He was brown and wholly at ease; the top of his forehead was peeling. Araazed by his entry, Stern only then noticed the leather key case thrown down on the sofa beside him.

He'd forgotten having given Dixon a key.

"Silvia says you broke up with your girlfriend. I thought you had better judgment than that, Stern. She's an intereating gal."

Stern had heard similar criticisms ften this week, but he did not care to discuss the matter, especially with Dixon, who only meant to divert him.

"Dixon, have I mentioned before that you are my most difficult client?"

"Yes." He flicked his ashes. The crystal tray was on the sofa beside him. "What's up?"

"Many matters."

Dixon turned his wrist. "I've got ten minutes. The car's downstairs. I have a meetingat LaGuardia at 9 p.m. I spend two years working on this thing and it goes to shit in a week. Honest to God," he saia.

Stern considered his brother-in-law with a stark humorless look and sat down behind his desk.

"You are going to prison, Dixon."

"No, I'm not. That's wt/y I hired you."

"I cannot remnke the facts. I have no comprehension of your motives.

But I understand the proof. It is time we consider the alternatives."

Dixon caught on at once.

"You want me to plead guilty?" He stubbed Out his cigarette, eyeing Stern as he did it--there was a yellow cast to his eyes, a hulking fetal power. He, felt, evidently, he was under attack. "You think I'm guilty?"

This, of course, was one further element of their unspoken compact.

Dixon spared Stern the facts; Stern withheld his judgments. He was surprised to find himself even now so reluctant to express himself, but there was o avoiding it.

"Yes," said Stern.

Dixon ran his tongue around inside his mouth. "Dixon, this matter is taking on hopeless proportions. John has been granted immunity and will testify before the grand jury next week." '

Even Dixon was brought up short by that news.

"And he's saying what?"

"That he followed your instructions--each improper order in Kindle came from you. He was a witless sheep led astray. I am sure you can imagine his testimony."

"Did John tell you this?"

"Dixon, as you know, I may not communicate with John about this matter."

"Where do you get this from? His lawyer? What's his name, Toomey? I thought you said he was a snake. Maybe he's bullshitting you to help out his old cornpadres."

"About the testimony of my own son-in-law? I would think not. No, TooIcy has done what he must in this case. He has persuaded John to follow his own interests. He is a young man. He has a pregnant wife.

No one, Dixon, would tell him to turn his back on immunity. No one,"

Stern repeated.

"I won't believe it until I hear it from John." Dixon lifted his chin and dragged on his cigarette. "I could have had a million reasons for placing those orders."

Stern knew that if he asked for one or two Dixon would remain silent for some time.

"Besides," said Dixon, "you've been telling me they have to show I made money through this thing. You said that the profits got shifted into that accountwwhat's its name?"

"Wunderkind."

"They can't find the records," said Dixon.

"I believe they have located them," said Stern.

Dixon abruptly came to his feet. He hitched his trousers and walked behind Stern's desk to check on the safe, on which Stern out of habit had rested a foot, "No, they didn't," said Dixon. He wagged his head and displayed a broad wiseass smile.

Stern groped on his desk until he found the subpoena. Dixon took some time reading it. When he was done, he was considerably sobered.

"How'd they find out where it was?"

"They have their own story, but I tend to suspect it was by the same means they have found out everything else: their informant. Perhaps you were careless in discussing this."

"The only person around who even knew it was moved was Margy, because she cut the check to the cartage guys. I told you that before."

Had he? If so, Stern had forgotten. The detail had not seemed significant then. Dixon was reeXamining the subpoena.

"This thing was due today," he said.

Stern described the hearing.

"You're not going to let theta get it, are you?"

"I shall follow any instruction you give me, Dixon, assuming Marta and I agree 'it is within the law."

"What are you telling me?"

"I can assert the attorney-client privilege."

"And?" ."

"I doubt I shall have to testify about our conversations."

"What about the safe?"

"That is a complex legal question, Dixon."

"But?"

"When all is said and done, Dixon, I suspect we shall have to produce it."

Dixon whistled. He lit another cigarette.

"Look, Stern, you told me, when I sent it here, those bastards woulda't be able to get it" told you, Dixon, that your personal papers would be more secure."

"Fine," said Dixon. "It's pemonal. It's all personal shit in there."

Stern shook his head.

"If I say it's personal," said Dixon, "where the hell do you get off saying it's not?"

"No," said Stern. He would not pretend he had never practiced law that way, but he had allowed himself the luxury of a clear conscience for many years and he was not about to become Dixon's winking collaborator.

"There is no stretch of the imagination, Dixon, under which internal company documents pertaining to the Wunderkind account do not belong to the corporation. They should have been produced by Margy last week."

"Oh, for cry sake," said Dixon. He stood up and threw off his gold-buttoned blazer. He was wearing a shirt of dark vertical stripes, wide open at the throat, with the white hairs of his chest well displayed; his arms were thick, and dark from the sun. "Get the fuck out of my way." Dixon strode around Stern's desk, bent at the knees, and lifted the safe several inches into the air. Then he began to walk with it.

"Dixon, this subpoena is directed to me, not to you, and I must comply with it. You may not remove the safe from these premises."

With the safe slung between his knees, Dixon started toward the door, lumbering like an ape.

"Dixon, you are placing me in an impossible position."

"Ditto," he said.

"Marta is extremely clever, Dixon. Much more so than I.

There are motions to file. With an appeal, we may keep the government at bay for months. I promise you we shall resist by every lawful means."

"You'll lose." He had little breath, but be continued' swinging along.

"You've already told me you don't have a leg to stand on,"

"Dixon, for God's sake. This is madness. You are assuming," said Stern, "that the government has no other way to prove you controlled that account."

Dixon, past the desk, eased the safe to the floor and turned back.

"What other way would they have to prove that?"

"'There must be other means," Stern offered lamely. For an instant he'd had a thought of mentioning the check Dixon had written to cover the deficit balance in the Wunderkind account. But that impulse was past.

On a giddy night in the woods, he had made an irrevocable promise.

Whatever may have occurred since he surely would not go back on his word. At best. he could be indirect. Dixon, the account application cannot be the only means to determine who was responsible for the account. Perhaps John knows."

Dixon peered at Stern in determined silence. At length, he shook his head with painstaking slowness, a gesture of absolute refusal.

"No dice," said Dixon. He bent at the knees again and took hold of both sides of the safe.

"Dixon, if I appear without the safe or an explanation for its disappearance, Judge Winchell, I promise you, will remand me to the custody of the marshal."

"Oh, they won't put you in jail. They all think you walk on water." .

Dixon, I insist."

"Me, too."

"I must withdraw, then, as your lawyer."

Dixon took a moment with that.

"So withdraw," he said at last. He adjusted his shoulders with a practiced groan, hoisted the safe again. txon, you are committing a federal offense right before my eyes. And one in which I am implicated. You are forcing me to notify the government."

Dixon, near the door, glanced back over his shoulder with a sullen, challenging darkness.

"Dixon, I mean it." Stern reached for the phone and dia/ed the U. S.

Attorney's Office. At this hour, they were unlikely to answer. "Sonia Klonsky," said Stern into the instrument, while in the earpiece he continued to. hear the ring.

By the door, Dixon dropped the safe; he was red-faced, heaving for breath. As Stern replaced the phone, Dixon waved a hand disgustedly. He took a step out, then came back to the sofa and stuffed his cigarettes and his keys into a pocket of his sport coat. He shook a finger at Stern, but he did not yet have enough breath to speak, and left without another word.

STERN had agreed to meet his children at the Bygone, one of those clever chain restaurants plunked down by their corporate parents at commercially S availing spots in every major city in America. The one in Dallas looked just like the one in the tri-cities-the same old cast-iron lampposts, bell jars for bar glasses, and little girls' trading cards with pictures of kittens cutely cemented under the urethane tabletops. The restaurant stood on a bluff overlooking the network of highways near the Greater Kindle County Airfield. Stuck in traffic, Stern could see it miles away.

The airport now was what the river had been to Kindle County a century ago, a point of confluence for the vast urges of commerce. Great office buildings--rhomboid shapes of shining glass--had risen in what were hayfields only fifteen years before; enormous warehouses with corrugated doors and various chain hotels constructed of pre-formed concrete stood at the roadside, and the highway was heavily posted with signs for other projects that would be under development to the end of the century. The traffic at all hours was thick. Stern, stalled intermittently, snapped off the radio in the Cadillac so he could give vent to various thoughts about Dixon.

Perhaps, Stern thought, tracing the trouble back to its roots, if Silvia had felt more secure in the aftermath of their mother's death, she would have found Dixon less compelling. Stern had done his best, planned carefully for both of them. He sold some of his mother's furniture and two rings to raise capital, and by the following fall, Easton University, the pastoral haven of privileged education in the Middle West, became the refuge of the, orphaned Sterns. Silvia, a gifted student, ahead of herself in school like her brother, enrolled in the college on a full scholarship; he attended law school on the G. I. Bill.

Stern for the sake of economy, and continuity, lived in their mother's apartment in Du-Sable, riding the train downach morning, while Silvia was soon invited to join a sorority.

For financial support, Stern resumed the punchboard route he had driven throughout college. The punchboards were minor attractions utilized by small-town merchants; for a dime a chance, customers poked tiny paper rolls out of the board and read a joke or, far less often, word they had won a washer or a TV. On Friday mornings, Stern loaded new boards and the prizes won a week before into the aging track his boss Milkie provided him, and rambled in fourth gear along the prairie highways, visiting the small-town stores to make his deliveries and split the fees. By the time he returned to the tri-cities late Sunday, Silvia had taken the train up and was in their mother's apartment preparing dinner.

These were rewarding, expansive moments, coming off the road with the dust of several states on his suit, and he looked forward to his sister's company, their hours as a family of two.

One Sunday night he turned the key and found Silvia seated at the dining-room table with Dixon Hartnell, who was still in uniform. Passing through the city on leave, he had searched out Stern's address and Silvia had let him in.

She claimed to have remembered Dixon's name, but there was no way to be sure. Silvia was smitten with all of Stern's law school friends, and from the first moment you could see that these two young, goodlooking people were intent on each other.

Stern was horrified to find Dixon, long consigned to the past, beside his precious sister. Dixon still had the fiossy gleam of a cheap suit, and having been shot at in Korea, having served as the commander of other men, he was if anything more brash. Stern treated him correctly, and sent him on his way after dinner, fairly certain they would not see him again.