The Burden of Proof (64 page)

"Beautiful, beautiful," said Remo. The wealth of the house, perfectly composed here in its unoccupied state, impressed even Stern.

Upstairs, they moved into the enormous master suite. Dixon years ago had combined three or four rooms to get what he wanted, a bedroom area on the palatiaI scale of Beverly Hills. There were two baths, his and hers. Dixon's, through which they walked, a cavern of travertine, held a Jacuzzi the size of a small swimming pool, and a one-bay wooden sauna attached to the shower. The bedroom itself was not particularly Iarge, but it was lesttoned with various gizmos--intercoms, a telescope, an old market ticker, a large projection TV which pivoted on a remote control over the bed. A deck out the French doors provided a commanding view of the lake. On the side of the bed where Dixon slept, the antique night table was stacked with busineSS magazines and a number of thrillers. An ashtray held the butts Of three cigarettes. Stern felt oddly thrilled by the chance to spy.

"Here," Remo called. He had entered the walk-in closet on Dixon's side of the room and cleared away his suits.

"That it?"

The safe was right there, dull gray, the color of seawater under clouds, turned on its back, so that the silver numerical dial was face up. A set of free weights was beside it, the plates haphazardly stacked; a bar, with three dishes on each side; had been rolled to the wall..

"Just so," said Stern.

"Getback," said Remo. Stern moved into the room. "Oh, my fucking God." Remo swung the safe out the door and set it down promptly. 'That's a fuckin ton." to mb his back. "We He stood up straight shotdrift brOught help."

Both men stared at the safe.

"Thing's open," said Remo. With the safe set on its bottom again, its small door indeed hung open a dark fin gerbreadth.

Dixon, evidently, had checked the contents, perhaps to be certain that Stern had left them undisturbed.

Or could it be that whatever the government was seeking had been removed? With this thought, that the safe had been emptied, Stern knelt immediately and pulled the door wider.

The light was poor, but he could see that there was a wad of papers inside, folded, doubled and tripled over.

There, on his hands and knees, even before he made out the sound, Stern could feel the vibration of the garage door opening.

"Oh, my LOrd." He rose awkwardly and ran a few steps to the doorway to listen. He faced Remo. "Someone is here." Outside, he had heard the gravel crunching, but by the time he reached the bedroom window he could see only the rear fender of a Mercedes as it pulled into the farthest bay of the four-car garage.

"Oh, for Godsake," said Stern. He had not fully imagined how humiliating this was going to be. It.was a shocking breach of decorum--inexcusable, inexplicable-breaking into someone's home.

"Hide," said Stern.

"Hide?" asked Remo. "What for?" An eyebrow low- ered. "You mean this ain' really your sister's?"

"Of course it is. But I prefer not to be apprehended in this silly exercise."

"I been caught," said Remo. "Lots. I don't never hide. Guys get shot like that. Just siddown. Be quiet. Maybe they ain't comin upstairs."

Following his own advice, Remo found one of the eighteenth-century French chairs beside Silvia's writing desk. He crossed his legs and smiled patiently at Stern. He reached to his pocket for a cigarette, then thought better of that.

Remo was right, Stern thought. His own reactions were juvenile.

Particularly if it was the houseman or the driver, there would be real danger in some effort to avoid him. But Stern's skin still' crawled.

Dixon would never let him live this down. He would ridicule, threaten--whatever advantage he could wring from having caught Stern in fiagrante burglary would be utilized repeatedly. Stern crept into the carpeted corridor, stepping forward with breathtaking precision, like a pantomime character. In some unconscious japcry of this task, he had dressed all in black, in slacks and a cotton golf shirt, and he hung back now in the shadows.

He could hear the steps rapping out in the stone hallways downstairs, an even slapping rather than the sharp clack of a woman's high heels. Would Dixon be violent? His temper with Stern was ordinarily restrained, but this was a much different setting. If someone popped out of the shadows in Stern's home, what would his reaction be? Probably to run.

But that was Stern.

The footfalls drew near the stairs. Stern pushed back into one of the doorways. Whoever was down there lingered, then walked away. With a desperate plunge of his heart, Stern recalled the kitcben. The narrow hall from the garage emerged right beside it; if the person who'd entered noticed the broken glass, he would surely hale the police.

Stern listened intently; if there was a voice on the phone, he was determined to ran. He looked about to see where he was--Dixon's den.

Fax, computers, three telephones. The old rolltop desk was heaped with papers, and the shades, for whatever reason, were drawn. A pillow and a blanket were on the sofa. Dixon, he took it, was not sleeping well.

This room, more than the rest of the house, was rank with the rancid smell of cigarettes.

The footsteps came back. Then nothing. After a short time, he realized the visitor had started up the carpeted stairs.

Stern pushed back farther, so that he could see only the landing. The person was upstairs now, but Stern had not yet caught sight of the figure. Then Silvia, in a graffitipatterned beach cover-up ahd fiat shoes, passed by, looking about, wholly abstracted, mumbling to herself.

She pushed her sunglasses up so they sat atop her upswept hairdo. Like Dixon, she was richly tanned. She was headed for the bedroom where Remo waited.

Stern held his head and, after one more second's faltering, called his sister's name.

She shrieked--not for long, but at a high, hysterical pitch. "Oh, my God," said Silvia. She had laid one hand, with its polished nails, over her heart and the other touched the Wall. She was breathing deeply.

"Sender," she said. "You nearly killed me."

"Forgive me."

"What in the world?" she asked.

Stern actually deliberated saying that he had come to go swimming. But enough was enough.

"I am stealing something," he answered.

She took only a second with that. "The safe?"

He nodded. Silvia's expression became cross--power-fully irritated. She spoke to him in Spanish for the first time in probably forty years: What is in the safe?

"dQud es 1o que contiene la caja de seguridad?"

"No s." I do not know.

"dEsto es para ayudarlo?" This is to help him?

Stern shrugged. "I believe so," he answered in English "I must do this, in any event."

"Give me a moment. I want to speak with you about all of this. I came back for a book." She turned again toward her room, but Stern took her hand. There was a man he had brought with him in there, he told her.

"Oh, Alejandro!" She shook her head in severest reproof. "You are like two boys, you and Dixon."

"This is a serious matter."

She made a disgusted sound. She refused to believe it.

Stern led her downstairs to the living room. Silvia, unfailingly polite, offered him a drink, and he asked for soda. She tapped her shoe for a moment on the servant's button, in the carpet beside the sofa, then, recalling it was Sunday, went off by herself. Stern looked about the vast living room. Silvia and her decorator had strived for a crowded, almost Egyptian effect; the colors were dark, with many eruptions of gold in the fabrics, and there was furniture in all corners--chaises, heavy drapes, twin antimacassars with a whiskery fringe, adorned, for no apparent reason, with voile shawls. On a table was a huge vase of woolly protea, dark desert plants with a primeval look. The far wall of the room was all stone, like the facing walls of the house, with an. enormous hearth of double-width beams. An original oil by a well-known Spanish artist--one of his savage women, purchased years ago by Dixon, with his inevitably astute eye--hung fearsomely over the fireplace. In the winter, logs the size of tree trunks burned here all day. They left, even now, a smoky residue, as if the air had been cure&

"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.

"Stern," 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 clutdhed 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, Stern." 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 thatjt 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 rag. 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, Stern, 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 tinging 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 reltictant 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 tight to tease,.

"Oh, Stern," she said to him with a girlish wag, "you knew all along."