The Burden of Proof kc-2 Read online

  "Where's my key, by the way? You said you'd send one."

  "Shortly," Said Stern. He would have to remind Claudia, in as much as Dixon remained intent on keeping the contents to himself. The dial of chrome and steel on the safe looked as if it could withstand a dynamite charge. At odd moments, Stern had examined it already. Dixon, meanwhile, had floored the cart, racing toward Stern's ball. Stern held his hat again and yelled over the wind, "I warn you, this situation is perilous."

  "You've said that about other situations."

  "And I was correct. You were fortunate."

  "So I'll be fortunate again." Near Stern's ball, they came abruptly to a halt. "Can't you do something, file something? Make some kind of motion?"

  "There are no credible motions to make for the time being, Dixon. Judge Winchell will not put up with delaying tactics. It would be unwise to irritate her, as we may need her patience later."

  Dixon dismounted from the cart and lit a cigarette, his back to Stern as he suddenly took to studying the woods.

  Stern went on, notwithstanding.

  "Dixon, your records give clear indication that someone at MD was trading ahead of your largest customer orders."

  Dixon pivoted. With his chin lowered, he looked like a glowering fighter on a magazine cover, the whites of his eyes showing large and luminous with a smoldering shrewd anger. He never enjoyed being found out, one of many reasons that Stern had avoided any further mention of Margy.

  "No kidding," said Dixon.

  "Indeed, I am not," said Stern. "It was very cleverly done.

  Smaller orders were placed on the Kindle Exchange just before you went into the Chicago markets with large orders that would affect prices everywhere. And these Kin-die orders were always written with botched account numbers, so that, after clearing, they would end up being credited in the house error account. Countervailing buys and sells, leaving a profit just a few pennies shy of $600,000. It was a brilliant scheme."

  "Six hundred thousand," said Dixon. He pointed to the ball.

  "Your shot."

  Ralph was behind the cart a respectful distance with Stern's five iron.

  Stern's drive had traveled downhill, but it had trailed to the right of the fairway-the wrong place to be on this hole-so that Stern 'was required to play left. He sliced naturally and positioned himself at an angle to the hole.

  Dixon credited misfortune to various deities, like wood elves. Losses on the trading floor belonged to the bean god. Here he paid homage to the god of balls.

  "Ball god!" screamed Dixon as Stern's shot tore off for the deepest woods. Ralph turned to watch it go, like an outfielder pining after a homer.

  Stern took another from his pocket and hit his shot cleanly. The ball faded, not quite sufficiently, toward an area left of the green, hit the uneven ground there, and kicked, as if drawn magnetically, into a sand trap.

  "Beach," said Dixon, in case Stern had not noticed. They parked the cart in the left rough while Ralph crashed around in the woods, making a hopeless search for Stern's ball.

  "So what happens?" asked Dixon. "With this thing? They want the money back, right?" 'That is merely the starting point, Dixon. If the prosecutors employ the RICO statute, as I expect, the government will attempt to forfeit the racketeering enterprise-you understand: take it from you as punishment."

  "What's the mcketeering enterprise.,MD,"

  "The whole fucking business?"

  "Potentially. Not to mention a term in the penitentiary."

  "Oh, sure," said Dixon, jumping down from the cart again for his shot,

  "you couldn't expect them to go easy."

  Dixon's bravery was admirable. Stern had actually been,asked twice in his career by other clients facing the rigors of forfeiture about the legal consequence of suicide: could 'the government still grab their dough if they were dead? Stern avoided answering, fearing the consequences of a truthful response, since all phases of a criminal prosecution were, in fact, terminated by death.

  With Dixon, of course, there was no risk of selfdestruction. He probably could not conceive of a world he did not inhabit. But Stern knew nonetheless that he had struck a nerve. To threaten Dixon's business.was to toy with the obsession of a lifetime. He had begun th'my-some years ago, driving all over the Middle West in search of clients, soliciting the small-town,businessmen whose /velihoods depended on farm prices -the merchants, the feed-lot owners, the rural banks which could use commodity futures to hedge their loan portfolios.

  Dixon's strategy, he explained to Stern later, was to sign up the fire chief.

  The firemen were volunteers, fought flame and death together; the fire chief was the captain of their souls. If he liked something, all would.

  No trick was too low for Dixon. He carried a fireman's helmet in his think.

  Now he flew between the coasts, doing deals, but his first.love remained sitting in the office, plotting strategies for the managed accounts, the commodities pools, the large customer Orders. He made money and lost it with every tick, in each future, but Dixon never lost his interest in the game, a mixture of street savvy and balls poker..Three or four times a year, he would grab his dark jacket and badge and go to the floorSfor part of the day. Even in the chaos of the trading floor, the news would go out that he was there. He stepped into the tiered levels of the pits, shaking hands and tossing greetings like Frank Sinatra onstage, commanding the same reverence, or, in some quarters, subverted 1oathifig. Dixon did not care. Stern had been in the Kindle office one day when Dixon had lost $40,000 in less than half an hour and he was still exhilarated by the tumult of the floor, the jumping and shouting of the trading crowd, what he took as an essential moment in life.

  Dixon lofted his ball between the extended foliage of two tree boughs.

  The ball did not bite well and rar about twelve feet past the cup.

  "Tough par," said Dixon, thinking of his putt:'

  Ralph stood at the edge of the sand trap like a well-armed soldier, Stern's sand wedge in one hand and the rake in the other. Stern trod down dutifully into the pit, then bedded himself in, dog-like, shaking his fanny. These shots, hit an inch behind the ball, were all acts of faith. Stern thought of fluid motion, then swung. Amid an aura of sand, the ball rose from the bunker. It traveled almost sideways when it hit the green, but it camertfolios. Dixon's strategy, he explained to Stern later, was to sign up the fire chief.

  The firemen were volunteers, fought flame and death together; the fire chief was the captain of their souls. If he liked something, all would.

  No trick was too low for Dixon. He carried a fireman's helmet in his think.

  Now he flew between the coasts, doing deals, but his first.love remained sitting in the office, plotting strategies for the managed accounts, the commodities pools, the large customer Orders. He made money and lost it with every tick, in each future, but Dixon never lost his interest in the game, a mixture of street savvy and balls poker..Three or four times a year, he would grab his dark jacket and badge and go to the floorSfor part of the day. Even in the chaos of the trading floor, the news would go out that he was there. He stepped into the tiered levels of the pits, shaking hands and tossing greetings like Frank Sinatra onstage, commanding the same reverence, or, in some quarters, subverted 1oathifig. Dixon did not care. Stern had been in the Kindle office one day when Dixon had lost $40,000 in less than half an hour and he was still exhilarated by the tumult of the floor, the jumping and shouting of the trading crowd, what he took as an essential moment in life.

  Dixon lofted his ball between the extended foliage of two tree boughs.

  The ball did not bite well and rar about twelve feet past the cup.

  "Tough par," said Dixon, thinking of his putt:'

  Ralph stood at the edge of the sand trap like a well-armed soldier, Stern's sand wedge in one hand and the rake in the other. Stern trod down dutifully into the pit, then bedded himself in, dog-like, shaking his fanny. These shots, hit an inch behind the ball, were all acts of fait
h. Stern thought of fluid motion, then swung. Amid an aura of sand, the ball rose from the bunker. It traveled almost sideways when it hit the green, but it came to rest within two yards of the flag.

  "Making it hard on me," Dixon said. Stern had a stroke on each hole.

  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 bai
ng 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.