The Burden of Proof (79 page)

"Homicide dick is half an undertaker."

When Dixon was dressed again, they carried him out. Radczyk took the ankles and Stern grasped Dixon's hands, clammy to the touch and strangely firm. The feel was like nothing human; cool, almost chilled.

Dead weight, they said. It was a considerable task. Helen walked away, at the sight of the body. They rested Dixon on a sofa in the small den off the kitchen and then Stern backed his' car into the garage.

Together, they laid Dixon out in the back seat and covered him with the same washed-out sheet. "I'll meet you down there," Radczyk said. "I gotta make a call, then I'll be there."

Stern insisted it was not necessary, but Radczyk would not hear of it.

"You gonna go walkin round Center City with a stiff, better have a badge along. Could get pretty peculiar, otherwise."

Radczyk drove off, and Stern returned to Helen, who had sat again on the bench, her place of contemplation for the night. She had dressed in the interval, a black top and stretch pants, and had washed her face clean of any makeup.

She looked plain, drawn but composed. He had been pondering his outburst, haunted now by embarrassment. Something--that high-and-mighty tone--was so wildly hypocritical. He began to apologize.

"Please, Sandy," she said.

He sighed at length.

"You must understand," he said. And so he told her, more directly than he ever could have imagined, about Clara: she and Dixon had had a brief affair some years ago. As he spoke, it occurred to him that there was nothing in the world he could not say to Helen Dudak.

"Oh, Sandy." She covered her open mouth with one hand.

"So you see," he said.

"Yes, of course." She closed her eyes. Then she took his hand. "He must have envied you terribly."

"Envied me?"

"Don't you see?"

The thought was breathtaking.

They sat together on the bench in silence. He would have to move along, he thought, meet Radczyk. She con-. tinued to hold his hand, and now Stern was reluctant to depart, "How's your friend?" she asked presently.

He did not understand.

"Your new friend," Helen said.

"Oh, that." He smiled to himself. "Well past. Temporary insanity," he said. "I seem to have grown up again."

They were both quiet. EventualLy, Helen slumped and held her face in her hands in her familiar, youthful manner. "Do you believe,'; she asked, "that we're doomed to repeat the same mistakes all our lives?"

"There is that tendency," he said. But, of course, if he believed that the soul would forever be a slave to its private fetishes, why had he come to the U. S. ? Why did he cry out for justice for those who were most often unredeemable? What, indeed, had he spent these months trying to transcend? "But I also believe in second chances."

"So do I," said Helen, and reached over again to take his hand.

After he married Helen the following spring, Stern told her on a number of occasions that it had all been foregone from the moment they had sat together on that bench. But this was not really true. For months after, he remained uncertain about many things, particularly himseft, the limits of his strength and the exact form of his wishes.

But as he rose to leave that night, he took her once more in his arms--Helen, who had been in bed with Dixon a few hours ago, and Stern, who had his body in the back seat of his carm and felt, as he embraced her in these impossible circumstances, if only for an instant, the clear bright light of desire. It was what he had felt when he greeted her tonight, but the events that had unfolded since had added a new urgency.

What was it? He could never explain, but as he had absorbed her peculiar confession, he had been full of strong emotion. In her disorder, her confusion, her hasty admission that she, like the rest of us, was still, for all her effort, partly invisible to herself, he adored her. So he held her another moment and told her a bit more of the story. About the latest turn of events with D'Lxon.

And the fact that his children were involved. He did not say how.

Helen, he knew, would want to share every secret, to tell each of hers and to hear from him everything he told no one else. And in time, he realized, he would probably do that. It was that moment, those discoveries, he would be talking about the following spring.

Then Mr. Alejandro Stern, heavy with thought and feeling, drove through the night, eerily aware of the presence behind him. At every light, he ffited down the rearview mirror so that he could look at the form in the back seat.

"My God, Dixon," he said out loud at one point. Envied him.

Envied, Helen said. For what? He was a fat man with a foreign accent.

The respect he claimed, esteem, was nothing, minor, transitory. What, really, were his achievements? A disordered family life? Poor Dixon.

His cravings were unending. Great men, thought Stern, had great appetites. Had someone said that? He was not certain, nor was he sure what name he would put to Dixon. Great something, was the thought tonight.

Radczyk's car, an old Reliant, was in the loading zone behind the building. Stern took the door handle and was ready to alight when he was struck again with that sensation, clear as d.jd vu, that none of this had happened, that this actual moment was not occurring. Not this or anything of the last week, weeks, months. He was someone else, somewhere else. This was all the concoction of some stupefied wreck in the comer cot of a distant bedlam. He stared at the amber circles thrown down by the crane-necked street lamps and returned gradually to his life.

They carried Dixon under the sheet. Radczyk propped the building's from doors open with pieces of' cardboard and they hauled Dixon around to the back service elevator. In a building tenanted principally by lawyers, someone was likely to be here, even at 5:45 in the morning. In the dirty elevator, they kept Dixon, taller than both of them, between them, under his pale blue sheet. Radczyk held the body upright with a hand on D'nton's belt.

In Stern's office, they attempted to position him, as he had been on those two recent nights, on the sofa. Stern crossed Dixon's legs, and with that the body rolled slowly forward, collapsing by stages, until it arrived with a heavy helpless thump on the floor.

Stern covered his face. It could not be avoided. Both Radczyk and he laughed out loud.

Then they placed him once more on the sofa, holding him there. Stern unbuttoned Dixon's jacket, lifted his hands.

He was like a store mannequin now. When Stern bent Dixon's legs to position his feet, Dixon's head fell backward, his mouth open, agape, in an unmistakable pose of death.

Neither Radczyk nor he moved for a moment.:

"How may I thank you, Lieutenant?" Stern asked as Radczyk started to leave.

"No need," said Radczyk, He looked at Stern sadly. "I owed you. I told ya. Never woulda straightened myself out otherwise."

Radczyk had said he owed him forty ftmes if he had said it once, and Stern had never caught the meaning But now he did. There was a reason Radczyk sat through each of Marvin's meetings with Stern. A reason for his nervous garrulousness. He and Marvin, after all, were raised as brothers. They had shared many things. Too many. Rad-czyk, given a reprieve and the opportunity for reform, had seized it; Marvin took the more familiar cturse. Stern shared a look with Radczyk, this man whom he barely knew--:they possessed many of each other's most terrible secrets. Then Stern simply nodded, a compact of confidence, gratitude, renewal.

Stern saw the policeman to the outer door and then, on second thought, went back to retrieve the sheet. He wanted no telltale signs when the others arrived here this morning.

Then he returned to his office and was alone with the body of his brother-in-law, Dixon Harmell. There was no comfortable place to. sit.

The sofa clearly was out, and his desk chair was still beneath the broken glass, which had not been removed or replaced, given the spell of busy activity for Remo's trial. Stern was required to use one of the uphol stered pull-up chairs, cut a bit too narrowly for him. He hauled the chair about to face the body. How sad Dixon looked, how fully depleted. His color was unnatural, that dark gray veiced him once more on the sofa, holding him there. Stern unbuttoned Dixon's jacket, lifted his hands.

He was like a store mannequin now. When Stern bent Dixon's legs to position his feet, Dixon's head fell backward, his mouth open, agape, in an unmistakable pose of death.

Neither Radczyk nor he moved for a moment.:

"How may I thank you, Lieutenant?" Stern asked as Radczyk started to leave.

"No need," said Radczyk, He looked at Stern sadly. "I owed you. I told ya. Never woulda straightened myself out otherwise."

Radczyk had said he owed him forty ftmes if he had said it once, and Stern had never caught the meaning But now he did. There was a reason Radczyk sat through each of Marvin's meetings with Stern. A reason for his nervous garrulousness. He and Marvin, after all, were raised as brothers. They had shared many things. Too many. Rad-czyk, given a reprieve and the opportunity for reform, had seized it; Marvin took the more familiar cturse. Stern shared a look with Radczyk, this man whom he barely knew--:they possessed many of each other's most terrible secrets. Then Stern simply nodded, a compact of confidence, gratitude, renewal.

Stern saw the policeman to the outer door and then, on second thought, went back to retrieve the sheet. He wanted no telltale signs when the others arrived here this morning.

Then he returned to his office and was alone with the body of his brother-in-law, Dixon Harmell. There was no comfortable place to. sit.

The sofa clearly was out, and his desk chair was still beneath the broken glass, which had not been removed or replaced, given the spell of busy activity for Remo's trial. Stern was required to use one of the uphol stered pull-up chairs, cut a bit too narrowly for him. He hauled the chair about to face the body. How sad Dixon looked, how fully depleted. His color was unnatural, that dark gray veinous shade. The spirit had red.

"Does good always win, Dixon?" Stern asked. "It does on TV."

He had no idea how the words came to him or why, with them, he began to cry. The tears ha,d been in the offing for some days now; that he knew.

He.was puzzled merely by the tuoment. But there was no point in holding back. The storm blew up and through him. He covered his mouth with his hanky and pressed his fist to his lips at moments to suppress his howl.

"My God, Dixon," he kept repeating when he spoke. When he was done, he stood, approached the sofa, and decided to pray. He had never been certain what it was he believed. On High Holidays he attended shul and engaged the Lord in direct address. The rest of the year he seemed agnostic. But at this point, he called on his talent for sincerity, since he was his finest self, an advocate not speaking on his own behalf.

Accept, dear God, the soul of Dixon Hartnell, who made his own amends, and who traveled his own way. He failed, as we all fail, and perhaps more often than some. Yet he recognized fundamental things. Not that we are evil; for we are not. But that, by whatever name--self-interest, impulse, anger, lust, or greedrowe are inclined that way; and that it is our tragedy to know this can never change; our duty to try at every moment to overcome it; and our glory occasionally to succeed.

An extra suit hung behind the office door, and Stern quickly changed. He had a tie and shirt in a drawer, and a razor. He would not have his attache case, but in the confusion no one would notice. He went down the hall to shave, returned, and sat before the telephone. When he heard the first stirring of someone else within the office, he would call Silvia to tell her he had just found Dixon, here where he had spent many recent nights, intent, obsessed with assembling his defense.

From this side of the desk, he faced the shelves of the walnut cabinet where the framed photographs of his family remained, the ones Dixon had lingered with last week. They were free. Totally. John. Kate. Even Peter. That thought had not occurred to him until now. With Dixon's death, the entire matter was over. The events--theft shamemwould recede into the past. With Clara's fortune, they were now even prosperous. The three of them would have their second chances, too. He tried to envision theft futures and his with them, but nothing came--murky shades, something bleak.

Then he recalled. There would be a baby--a child. Children always drew a family together. Even his, he supposed. He had some vision, like a vaguely surreal painting, the strange conjunctions of a dream, of all of them drawn close to this pink, unknown infant in a kind of halo radiance, each face alight with that wonderful instinctive glee. They would surround this child and be, each of them, someone new: parents, grandparent, uncle, aunts. New responsibilities. Fantasies. Dreams.

Mistakes, of course, would be made. Bad habits would be repeated and, worse, taught anew. They would succumb, each of them in some measure, to folly, to the grasp of unwanted portions of the dark, indomitable past. Nonetheless. We go on.

In the outer office there was the sound of someone arriving; he reached at once for the phone. When he heard his sister's voice, he spoke her name and, in spite of the qualm of grief which unexpectedly rifled through him, began. Yet again, he said, a terrible blow. She knew at once.