The Burden of Proof Read online

  No, he said quickly, no sign. He clapped down the phone in a barely suppressed temper. Cal really was a clod, he thought. Stern closed his eyes and took a further moment of retreat in the dark bedroom, listening to the harsh chorus of mingling voices that rang up the stairwell. He was in his soul too solitary to brook this continuing intrusion. It was as if there were some large ear pressed to him, attuned to every breath. The thought of the funeral was suddenly unbearable. A death of this nature would stimulate lurid interest in many. They would be there in teams, in droves, associates and friends and neighbors, come to observe the toll of grief and to eye Stern in a subtle accusatory fashion. Even in those he knew best who had come last night, he could detect that grim curiosity. What was the story? they all wondered. What exactly had he done to her? Clara’s suicide had exposed some dark grisly secret, as if there were a grotesque deformity which previously lay hidden on the body of their married life. Not certain if it was the loss or simply the humiliation, Stern remained a few more minutes, weeping in the dark.

  “Do you want a boy or a girl?” Marta was asking as Stern returned to the card table.

  Some confusion swam across Kate’s fine dark features. This was the first time, of course, that anyone had put the question.

  “We both want a healthy baby,” said Kate.

  “Naturally, you do,” Marta said. “But if you could pick, what would it be—a healthy boy or a healthy girl?”

  “Marta,” Stern said, with his cards fanned before him. He had been counting his points again—it was as if he had never seen the hand. “This is not the kind of question a mother-to-be can always answer.”

  Kate had been thinking. “I’d like a girl.” She smiled at all of them. “Girls are nicer.”

  “Do they let girls on football teams now?” Peter asked. “How far have things gone?”

  “John would love a girl,” Kate responded instantly.

  “Of course,” said Stern.

  Peter touched his sister’s hand to reassure her—he was merely being himself.

  “Mothers always say that girls are harder in the end,” Marta volunteered.

  “That’s not what Mommy said,” Kate answered.

  “That’s what she said to me,” said Marta. With that utterance, the two sisters stared at one another, some darkling learning looming up between them. For all her brash convictions, Marta was a person of humbling doubts about herself and her place in the world, and she had dwelled more openly than any of them in the last few days on memories of Clara. Much unfinished business, Stern estimated. For the moment, she turned to her father for help. “Isn’t that what she said, Dad?”

  “Your mother,” Stern said, “took the rearing of each of you seriously. Which means that from time to time she felt challenged.” Stern smiled diplomatically at Marta. “I believe I said a club.”

  “Pass,” said Marta.

  Kate passed.

  Peter was quiet, his face closed within the same stormy, anguished look of the last few days. He was wondering, perhaps, what his mother had said about boys. Eventually, he became aware of the three of them watching.

  “A heart,” he said, when the bidding had been reviewed for him.

  “Well, I hear congratulations are in order!” Dixon had emerged from the kitchen, where he had been with Silvia. His arms were wide and he was full, as usual, of stuff and personal ceremony. He had missed Kate and John last night and now crushed Kate to his side, where she received her uncle’s embrace stiffly. “Where’s that husband of yours? I didn’t think he had it in him.” Dixon wandered off, presumably to look for John. Kate shot a starchy look at his back, seemingly unimpressed by her uncle’s coarse humor or his jokes at her husband’s expense.

  The truth, Stern knew, was that he tolerated Dixon more freely than anyone else in the family. Dixon’s base side had always impelled in Clara some clear negative response, which, out of loyalty to Silvia, had grown more pointed after the period six or seven years ago when some aspect of Dixon’s sportive sexual life—the details were never shared by Silvia—had led Stern’s sister briefly to dismiss him from their household. With Dixon, as in most things, the children had tended to follow Clara’s lead. Peter and Marta and most especially Kate had always enjoyed an intimate bond with their aunt, who, childless, had showered them with favor. But that attachment had never run to their uncle.

  In response, Dixon adhered to the example of potentates throughout the centuries: he purchased indulgence. Over the years, he had taken every opportunity to employ the members of Stern’s family. He had Stern and John on his payroll now, and each of the children had worked as a runner for MD on the floor of the Kindle County Futures Exchange during school vacations. When Peter had gone into private practice, Dixon had enrolled MD with Peter’s HMO, and even made a short-lived attempt to utilize Peter as his personal physician, although, predictably, they did not get along, quarreling over Dixon’s smoking and his general unwillingness to follow advice. Perhaps, Stern had long thought, all this family employment represented Dixon’s best efforts—a way to share his imposing wealth, with which he himself was so involved, while maintaining the centrality that he desired in any circumstance.

  “Will you name her for Mommy?” Marta inquired of Kate. She seemed more absorbed than her sister with this baby. Silvia, passing through the solarium, frowned at Marta’s directness, but both young women were accustomed to it. Marta had always had her way with Kate.

  “I suppose,” said Kate. “Either a boy or a girl. Unless you would mind, Daddy.”

  Stern looked up from his cards—but he had not missed a word.

  “It would please me if you chose to do this.” He smiled gently at Kate. In his tie, he felt a sudden closeness in the room. Dear God, the turmoil. Things seemed to come at him from all directions. He felt like those paintings he would sometimes see in museums and churches, of St. Sebastian shot full of arrows and holes, bleeding like a leaking hose. To his enormous chagrin and surprise, he found he had started, silently, to cry again. The tears ran down both sides of his nose. Around him, his children watched, but made no comment. The days, he supposed, would go like this. He removed his handkerchief from his back pocket and found the medical laboratory bill he had examined early this morning. He had entirely forgotten it.

  “I shall return in a moment.” He headed off to find a Kleenex. Better jam his pockets. From the kitchen, he looked back to the sun room, where his children, grown up but wounded by their grief, awaited him.

  Oh, how these children had mattered to Clara! he thought suddenly. What a worshipful passion. She had been raised with servants, by well-intentioned but limited nannies and governesses. She would have none of that with her own. Again an image: Coming home, one of those occasional evenings when he was here before they were all in bed, to find her on her knees in the kitchen. Peter sat at the table reading; Marta was crying; Kate was having her dress hemmed. The little girl, her shins blotched, stood motionless as her mother fingered the garment. On the stove, a pot was boiling over. Lord, the clamor and the ferment. Clara looked up to greet him and puckered out a lip to blow a stray lock that had fallen down into her eyes. She smiled, smiled. It was miserable, hard work, as it had always been, a numbing routine of humdrum tasks, but Clara found music in the banging and tumult of family life. Stern, in his simpleminded way, thought little of this. Only now could he see that she made herself a devoted audience to their sounds—their needs—as a distraction from that dismal bleat that must have always whistled away within her.

  “Sender?” Silvia was standing beside him, concerned. His sister wore her hair in her usual upswept hairdo, a person of simple, graceful beauty her entire life, still smooth-faced and radiant at the age of fifty-one. She had always called him by his Yiddish name, as their mother had.

  He smiled faintly to reassure her, then cast his eyes down. The medical invoice, he noticed, was still in his hand and he passed it with little thought to Silvia, addressing her in a circumspect tone. He asked if
Clara had ever spoken of this.

  Once more, the doorbell rang. Down the long hall, Stern saw Marta admit two young men in sport coats. They waited inside the foyer, as Marta called out for Dixon. One of the two looked familiar. Henchmen or flunkies, Stern estimated. Dixon had retainers around him like a Mafia don. His business never ceased and his need to learn what was occurring was constant. The one Stern thought he’d seen before was carrying an envelope and a blue vinyl briefcase. Papers to sign, perhaps? Dixon was going to do a deal on the casket.

  Silvia, in the interval, had examined the bill and handed it back. Alone they communicated as they always had, few words.

  “Dr. Cawley, Nate, next door—he would know, no?” she asked.

  Of course. Trust Silvia. Nate Cawley, their next-door neighbor, a gynecologist, was Clara’s principal physician. He certainly should have the answer. Stern thought of phoning right now, then recollected that Fiona, Nate’s wife, who had been among the visitors last evening, had mentioned, in her usual notable lament, that he was gone for a week on a medical conference. He reminded Silvia.

  “Yes, yes.” His sister, light-eyed and still striking, studied him earnestly. Apparently, she now shared some of the same thoughts Stern had had earlier.

  Through the breakfast-room window, Stern saw the funeral parlor’s limousine, dove-gray, swing smoothly into the circular drive before the house, parking behind the dark sedan of Dixon’s visitors. Silvia headed off to summon the family. Girding himself, Stern stood.

  But down the hall the commotion of angry voices suddenly rose. An alarming scene was taking place near the front door. Dixon was shouting. “What is this?” he yelled at the two men who had arrived only moments before. “What is this!” Above his head, he waved a sheet or two of paper.

  Halfway there, Stern realized what had taken place. Now this! He could not manage the sudden ignition of anger; it had waited for days so near at hand, and now his heart felt as if it would fly out of his breast, like some NASA rocket trailing flame.

  “You crummy so-and-sos!” yelled Dixon. “You couldn’t wait?”

  Stern rushed to place himself between Dixon and the two men. He had realized where he’d seen the man he recognized—in the federal courthouse, not Dixon’s offices. His name was Kyle Horn, and he was a special agent of the FBI.

  Dixon was still carrying on. Stern by now had seized the paper from his hand and bulled Dixon a few steps farther back into the foyer. Then he briefly examined the grand jury subpoena. All as usual: a printed form embossed with the court seal. It was directed to Dixon Hartnell, Chairman MD Holdings, and commanded his appearance before a United States grand jury here, four days from now, at 2 p.m. Investigation 89–86. Attached was a long list of documents Dixon was to have in hand. The initials of Sonia Klonsky, the Assistant United States Attorney, appeared at the bottom of the page.

  “I refuse to allow this to take place,” said Stern. Half a foot shorter than the agents, he maintained, in rage, the erect bearing of a martinet. “If you call my office next week, I shall accept service there. But not at this time. I require you to leave. Immediately. You may tell Assistant United States Attorney Klonsky that I deplore these tactics and shall not abide them.” Stern opened the front door.

  Horn was past forty. He looked like all the other FBI agents, with a cheap sport coat and a carefully trimmed haircut, but there was a weathered, leathery look to the skin about his eyes: too much sun, or alcohol. He had a bad reputation, the wrong type of agent, a petty tyrant full of resentments.

  “No, sir,” he said. He gestured toward the subpoena, which Stern had returned to its envelope and was now extending toward him. “That sucker is served.”

  “If you file a return of service with the court, I shall move to have you both held in contempt.” It occurred to Stern vaguely that this threat was ludicrous, but he gave no ground. “Have you no idea of the nature of this occasion?”

  Horn made no move. For a moment, none of the four men moved. Marta had crept to the edge of the living room and watched in grim amazement.

  “We are preparing to depart for a funeral,” Stern said at last. He pointed out the front windows to the mortuary limousine and the driver in his dead-black suit. “Of Mr. Hartnell’s sister-in-law,” said Stern. “My wife.”

  The second agent, a younger man with blond hair, straightened up.

  “I didn’t know that,” he said, then turned to Horn. “Did you know that?”

  Horn stared at Stern.

  “I know I can’t seem to get a call back from Dixon Hartnell. That’s what I know,” Horn said. “I know I come by the front door and he’s gone out the back.”

  “I’m sorry,” the younger agent said. He touched his chest. “All I knew was they said this was where we could find him.” The agents, thwarted, had undoubtedly employed their usual techniques. A pretext call, as they referred to it. ‘This is the Bank of Boston. We have a problem with a million-dollar wire transfer for Mr. Hartnell. Where can we find him?’ The courts for decades had allowed the use of this kind of adolescent cunning.

  “Hey,” said Horn to his colleague, “shit happens.” He took the subpoena without looking at Stern. Then Horn tapped the envelope. “This guy’ll be in your office Monday morning, nine sharp.”

  Stern applied both hands to the front door to close it behind the agents. Peter had drawn Marta away, but Dixon remained in the foyer. He had lit a cigarette and was grinning.

  “Got you fired up, didn’t they?”

  “How long have they been trying to serve you, Dixon?”

  Dixon meditatively watched a plume of smoke drift away. He was always disturbed when Stern saw through him.

  “Elise says men have been calling for a week or two. I didn’t know what it was about,” said Dixon. “Honestly.” His mouth shifted as Stern looked at him. “I really wasn’t sure. That’s one of the things I’ve been meaning to talk with you about.”

  “Ah, Dixon,” said Stern. It was unbelievable. A man who earned $2 million last year, who called himself a business leader, creeping down the back halls and thinking he could hide from the FBI. Stern put one foot on the stairwell, trying to focus on the enormous task at hand. He needed his coat. It was time, he told himself. Time. He was dizzy and faint at heart.

  Family, he thought, with despair.

  3

  FOUR DAYS AFTER THE FUNERAL, Stern returned to the office. He wore no tie, a means to signify that he was not formally present. He would look at the mail, answer questions. What was the term? Touch base.

  He had occupied this space for nearly a decade and had cultivated it with almost the same attention as his home. Small as it might be, this was Stern’s empire, and there was inevitably some tonic effect in the electronic chatter of the telephones and business machines, the energetic movements of the dozen people he employed. Not, of course, today. The office, like everything else, seemed flattened, depleted, less color, less music. Entering through the back door, he stood by the desk of Claudia, his secretary, as he considered his lost universe. He looked for something hopeful in the mail.

  “Mr. Hartnell is here.”

  The agents, as promised, had arrived with the subpoena yesterday. Over the phone, Stern had dictated a letter to prosecutor Klonsky, stating that he represented Dixon and his company, and directing the government to contact Stern if it wanted to speak with anyone who worked for MD—a request the government would inevitably not follow. Then Stern had summoned Dixon for this meeting. His brother-in-law waited in Stern’s office, his feet on the sofa, the Tribune open before him, while he smoked one of Stern’s cigars. His sport coat—double-breasted, with its many glittering buttons—had been tossed aside, and his thick forearms, still dark from an island vacation, were revealed. He rose and welcomed Stern to his own office.

  “I made myself at home.”

  “Of course.” Stern apologized for being late, then, removing his sport coat, surveyed. Given his trip to Chicago, it had been more than a week since he had
been here, but it all looked the same. He was not sure if he was comforted or horrified by the constancy. Stern’s office was decorated in cream-colored tones. Clara had insisted on hiring someone’s favorite interior decorator, and the result, Stern often thought, would have been more appropriate to the bedroom of some sophisticated adolescent. There was a sofa with plush pillows, pull-up chairs in the same nubby beige material, and drapes to match. Behind his desk was an English cabinet of dark walnut—a recent addition and more Stern’s taste—but his desk was not a desk at all, rather four chromed standards topped by an inch-thick slab of smoky glass. Stern, years later, was still not accustomed to looking down and seeing the soft expanse of his lap. Now he was at liberty to refurnish. The thought came to him plainly and he closed his eyes and made a small sound. He reached for a pad.

  “What is this about, Dixon? Have you any idea?”

  Dixon shook his large head. “I’m really not sure.”

  Dixon did not say he did not know. Only that he was not certain. Using the intercom, Stern asked Claudia to get Assistant United States Attorney Klonsky on the phone. She had left a number of phone messages, and Stern wanted to arrange an extension of the date when they would have to comply with her subpoena.

  “We must answer certain questions at the threshold, Dixon. What are they investigating? Who is it they seek to prosecute? Is it, in particular, you?”

  “Do you think this thing’s about me?”

  “Probably,” said Stern evenly.

  Dixon did not flinch, but he took his cigar from his mouth and very carefully removed the ash. He finally made a sound, quiet and ruminative.

  “This is a subpoena duces tecum, Dixon—a request for records. Ordinarily, the government would not send two agents to serve it. The prosecutors were attempting to deliver a message.”

  “They want to scare the shit out of me.”

  “As you would have it.” Stern nodded. “I imagine they felt you would soon hear of the investigation. No doubt, had I not intervened, the agents would have sought to interrogate you while you were carrying on.”