The Burden of Proof (63 page)

"Now you have," said Stern. "I SUre have."

The two men hung in the silence.

"And what was the outcome with Fiona?" asked Stern. "Can't put that genie back in the bottle. We each went and got a lawyer. We're gonna sell the house. Both live there for the time being and not talk to one another. That whole mess.

"I am truly sorry, Nate."

"Ye, well, I'd say we died a natural death. I think I'm in love with this girl, Sandy. 'Course, I've wanted to be in love with all of them.

I'm like the leila in.the song.

Lookin' in all the wrong places. But I think it's true now.

So I'll try it again from the top. Can't do any worse."

"How did Fiona react?"

"Well, she's gonna beat me into the ground financially. She always told me she would, and Fiona'll keep her word, I'm sorry to say. She's got the evidence, all right. I appreciate the warning." He glanced up at Stern. "Pretty goddamn embarrassing," he said. "Lawyer said to me if I really wanted out so bad, I could have saved myself a lot of money by just writing a note."

Stern, in response, could manage only one of his Latin shrugs. He felt for Nate, though, at the thought of him watching that tape and witnessing all the harm he had done.

That truly was not in Nate's character, the inflicting of pain. Oddly, Stern felt a bond to him, joined by the embarrassments which they'd unwittingly shared. He knew Nate's shame, and Nate, of course, had known his for years.

"All in all, I'd say Fiona was actually kind of spunky. You want to know What she said? This'll tickle you. She said men still find her very attractive. She's certain that as soon as we're divorced there'll be all kinds of fellas in hot pursuit. She actually mentioned your name. After tellin' me how she'd been making up stories. Can you beat that?" Nate laughed, but something in Stern's look made him cut himself off. "You can do what you want, you know."

"Of course," said Stern. No more. It made for an uneasy moment, but he felt obliged not to join any conspffacies against Fiona. They had their own compact now, and Stern sensed from what Nate had said that Fiona and he might have matters to sort out. If so, he had only himself to blame.

Stern saw Nate to the door. When he began to castigate himself again, Stern held up a hand.

"I know what it means to maintain a confidence, Nate. Clara had her secret and you were obliged to keep it."

Nate waited. His mind seemed to be working ahead. Stern wondered if there was more that Nate had determined not to tell him out of some vestigial duty to Clara. Nate seemed to read that thought.

"I don't know who it was, Sandy, if that's what you're wondering."

The sound of it was so gross that Stern's impulse was to deny that he had any curiosity. But of course that was not "She told me years ago that the person, whoever, was aware of the problem. That was the only thing I had the right to be concerned about.

The relationship was already over when she came to me." Nate looked at him helplessly. "I assume it was a man. These'days--" He lifted a hand.

"Yes, ofcoume," said Stern. Of course. This possibility, briefly contemplated, Stern rejected.

They shook hands. When Nate was gone, Stern returned to the solarium and the rOW of family photos lined up in their frames on the game table.

A picture of Clara as a very young woman was at the end. She was dressed in a white blouse and pleated skirt, posing in her page boy with a hand on the newel of the central staircase of the Mittlet family home.

Hdr smile looked coaxed at best, a wrinkle of hope managed against deep currents of resistance. The world was at war then, and even at the age of thirteen or fourteen, Clara Mittler seemed to have her doubts about the future.

IF one thought about it carefully, as Stern had for three days now, this was not a theft. Not legally. The property in question, the safe, was lawfully in his custody, not Dixon s. And the risks of prosecution, in any event, were nil; neither Dixon nor Silvia would ever prefer charges.

This action was simply an expediency. He had taken advantage of Silvia by asking about the safe. Involving her in its return, in light of Dixon's iron,headed determination not to yield to the government, would compromise her unforgivably with her husband. This solution was dramatic, effective, and, given Dixon's conduct, richly deserved. But in the car with Remo, driving from the highway through the wooded h'dls with their subdevelopments and residuum of baronial estates, Stern was beset with considerable anxiety--he had not made a court appearance in twenty years that had frightened him the same way. His bowels and his bladder both seemed on the verge of becoming unpredictable, and throughout his entire upper body there was a palpable tremor. Suppose the brnwny German driver came in and resorted to violence? What if the police were somehow advised and entered with guns drawn? Stern, on a dozen occasions, had imagined Remo and him bloodied or massacred.

Remo, driving his old Mercury, was cheerful. He loved his work. He had urged Stern to allow him to do this alone, but that was unthinkable. If someone intruded, Stern, whatever the embarrassment, could explain, but Remo alone might come to real grief. As it was, the risks--at least as they could be calculated--were minimal. The Hartnells would be at the club, Dixon shooting a late round of golf, Silvia sunning herself by the P91, ind on a Sunday afternoon no one else would be home. The cook and the house-man were both dismissed at 2 p.m. The driver stayed with the car, cooling his heels behind the clubhouse. As long as the weather was good--and the sky was crystalline as they drove--the plan was fiawles.

Behind the wheel, Remo smoked his cigarette and chatted companionably.

"I din' done houses much," said Remo. "Not since I'm young.

There ain't no good guys to work with. Them burglars, they're all crazy. I'll never forget, I'm eighteen, nineteen, a guy got me on a job, one of them places down near the river. You know, real fancy apartment. Knocked the door right off the hinges. Jesus, the stuff these people had, real nice stuff, beautiful." Remo lifted two fingertips to his lips and made a kiss. "We got what we got, and I come in the living room and this son of a buck, Sangretti his. name is, he's got hispants down and he's taking a shit, right there on the rug. I says, What the fuck is this? You know, and .since, I heard all the time about burglars do stuff like that. In somebody's house, for Chrissake?"

Stern, too nervous to respond directly, nodded and for whatever reason felt obliged to explain again that this was not a burglary. The house was his sister's; it was a practical joke of sorts within the family. An ironic glimmer came into Remo's eyes. He needed no excuses; he knew how it was. Everybody wanted things and did what they had to.

Remo was one of those crooks who believe that they are. no worse than anyone else.

Sensing this judgment, Stern nearly spoke up in his own defense. He was not one of those lawyers, the state court shatpies with the razor cuts who worked only for the Boys, and who took payment in cocaine, or hot artwork, or, in one instance Stern had heard of years before, a hit on his wife. As a young lawyer, he had done things for money on occasion, some of them nasty enough that he no 1onge cared to rec and the house-man were both dismissed at 2 p.m. The driver stayed with the car, cooling his heels behind the clubhouse. As long as the weather was good--and the sky was crystalline as they drove--the plan was fiawles.

Behind the wheel, Remo smoked his cigarette and chatted companionably.

"I din' done houses much," said Remo. "Not since I'm young.

There ain't no good guys to work with. Them burglars, they're all crazy. I'll never forget, I'm eighteen, nineteen, a guy got me on a job, one of them places down near the river. You know, real fancy apartment. Knocked the door right off the hinges. Jesus, the stuff these people had, real nice stuff, beautiful." Remo lifted two fingertips to his lips and made a kiss. "We got what we got, and I come in the living room and this son of a buck, Sangretti his. name is, he's got hispants down and he's taking a shit, right there on the rug. I says, What the fuck is this? You know, and .since, I heard all the time about burglars do stuff like that. In somebody's house, for Chrissake?"

Stern, too nervous to respond directly, nodded and for whatever reason felt obliged to explain again that this was not a burglary. The house was his sister's; it was a practical joke of sorts within the family. An ironic glimmer came into Remo's eyes. He needed no excuses; he knew how it was. Everybody wanted things and did what they had to.

Remo was one of those crooks who believe that they are. no worse than anyone else.

Sensing this judgment, Stern nearly spoke up in his own defense. He was not one of those lawyers, the state court shatpies with the razor cuts who worked only for the Boys, and who took payment in cocaine, or hot artwork, or, in one instance Stern had heard of years before, a hit on his wife. As a young lawyer, he had done things for money on occasion, some of them nasty enough that he no 1onge cared to recall them. But one of the clearest grams in his character as a lawyer was the desire to let his clients know that he did not wade in the same polluted waters they did. The utter meanness of this convict'Ion--and its dubious basis--came home to him with sudden disturbing clarity'. a visit to yet one more unattractive aspect of his soul. These months of gazing inward had been a little like a trip to a freak show, with the sheer ugliness Of what he found never quite overcoming his compulsion to look.

Following Stern's d'ections, Remo proceeded down the narrow wooded road fronting Dixon and Silvia's home. The house itself, erected more than a century ago of stone and heavy joints of mortar, was below them, behind a quarter mile of lawn, which itself was interrupted by a lighted tennis court. Behind the house, Lake Fowler twinkled, dotted with speedboats and small craft under sail "Nice," Remo said. He turned the car around and parked so that it was partially obscured by the untamed shrubbery that grew up with summer lushness along the roadside. They would walk in, Remo said, down the long gravel drive. After they had the safe, one of them could bring the car down.

Never park, Remo told him, where it was easy to cut you off. Stern absorbed these lessons in silence, noting that Remo accepted none of his reassurances about the safety of the job.

They walked to the rear of the house, Remo appreciatively examining the grounds. A number of large blue spruce rose throughout the sloping lawn, and the air was freshened somehow by the clear water of the lake.

Behind the patio, the gardeners this year had laid out a bright patch of small summer flowers, most so exotic that Stern did not know their names. He looked down to the lake. The boathouse was below and, beside it, a waterfront cottage that Dixon had winterized and filled with athletic equipment. Last year, he had also added a lap pool, and the long finger of still, blue water glimmered. Beside a large screened porch, Remo now looked the great house up and down. Following Remo's eye, Stern saw that it was the power and phone lines, not the architecture, Remo was assessing. He questioned Stern again about the burglar alarm. Remo had a hand on the metal junction box, and he reached to his back pocket for a tool. He worked there awhile, then waved a number of wires that he had pulled free.

"Is that all?" asked Stern;across the yard.

"That's it."

Remo entered through the screen porch. He had a slap hammer with him, inserted like the other tools in various pockets and covered by the tails of a long velour shirt. For his day on Lake Fowler, Remo had worn blue jeans and cowboy boots. Stern thought he looked very much like a burglar, thickset, with bulky arms and bowed legs.

Remo had driven the lock through the barrel of the doorknob by the time Stern had followed him onto the porch. The back door was secured by a chain. Remo asked if he should pull it free or break the glass.

Whichever was more authentic, Stern answered. It was important that it look like a burglary, not for Dixon's sake--he would know what had happened--but for everyone else's. After the break-in was discovered, the police would comb the house but find nothing missing. Only Dixon, eventually, would recognize what was gone and he was in no position to file a police report admitting that the safe had ever been here. Stern regretted upsetting his sister--he might let her know somehow that he was involved--but Dixon's consternation he would savor. Done in on his own turf. Dixon would be livid, unhinged with rage. Standing in the shade of the porch, Stern actually chuckled.

Remo, preoccupied, raised one heavy boot, bracing himself against the wall of the porch, and gave the door a tremendous kick. It flew open with an explosion of plaster dust and the breaking of glass. "Shit," said Remo. The back window had shattered from the impact as the door sprang. back. The first plan, thought Stern in spite of himself gone awry.

Like much of the house, the hallways were stone; the taps on Remo's heels resounded. He looked about freely as Stern showed him to the staircase. The home had been built in the 1870s, with period elegance--twelve-foot ceilings and tiered moldings. In the dining room a circular mosaic of Venetian tiles was laid in the stone floor. The stillness of the unoccupied house set a shiver in the bottom of Stern's, spine. He thought about using the toilet, but he wanted to get in and out quickly. This was a bad idea, he thought suddenly. Terrible.

Something was sure to go wrong.

Remo leaned into a front parlor to admire the French antiques andl the pictures on the walls, English watercolors mounted in heavy frames.