The Last Trial Page 8

  “And in your testimony, you are simply contrasting what happened to these particular patients against what might have been predicted, had they followed treatments standard before g-Livia became available.”

  “Correct.”

  “But would you agree that the one-year survival rates on g-Livia show that it is a better choice for the first year, even given these isolated reactions?”

  Feld objects on relevance, but Sonny overrules him. Her face has darkened as she looks at the prosecution table.

  “Yes, Mr. Stern, the one-year data is far better. But as you know, we make these judgments based on five-year rates. Because g-Livia has been removed from the market, we don’t have any longer-range data, even anecdotal reports. So we don’t know how many patients would develop a fatal allergic response over the longer period.”

  Stern stops. Something is wrong about what Kapech just said.

  “By ‘anecdotal reports,’ you mean reports about what happened to particular patients, rather than a disciplined study?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you are familiar with some anecdotal reports about extended use of g-Livia, are you not?”

  “Not that I am aware of,” says Kapech.

  Stern knows that isn’t true. Kapech and he have talked not only about Stern’s case but about six other patients who started getting g-Livia after him in late 2013 and early 2014. Stern included, five of them are still alive.

  “Well, Doctor, you are quite familiar with at least one report, are you not, about non–small-cell patients who have survived on g-Livia longer than five years?”

  “No.” Kapech shakes his head firmly.

  “You are not familiar with my medical history, Dr. Kapech?”

  Across the courtroom, Feld shrieks, “Objection!” and behind him Moses booms the word again, in the same tone of outrage he used when Stern mentioned the civil cases during opening.

  Stern looks back. There is an iron rule against a lawyer becoming a witness before the jury. He takes the point and waves at Kapech.

  “Withdrawn,” he says. “Nothing further.”

  “Mr. Stern!” says Sonny. He sees only now when he looks up to the bench that he has badly misunderstood the gravity of the situation. The judge stares down darkly.

  “Remove the jury,” she says with a gesture at Ginny Taylor, the deputy marshal in her blue uniform. The jurors are gone quickly. Stern realizes that he lost track of things. Because of his memories of the trauma of his diagnosis, and his acquaintance with Kapech outside the courtroom, he got entirely caught up in their byplay.

  “I apologize, Your Honor.” He starts to explain but the judge is shaking her gray head quite deliberately.

  “No, Mr. Stern. I have warned you already that I was not going to tolerate any more infractions. You know your medical condition has no place in this case. If you can’t follow the rules, I am telling you right now that I will order that Ms. Stern conduct the defense alone.”

  It is part of the job for defense lawyers to quarrel with judges, but the sharpness of the rebuke, particularly coming from Sonny, whom he counts as a dear friend, makes Stern feel as if he has been run through by a lance. Losing Kiril’s case is an accepted risk. Being removed as out of control, however, is a humiliation that will follow him to the grave. He suddenly feels weak with confusion and grief and falls into a chair at the defense table, leaving it to Marta to approach the bench, while Feld and Moses follow. Feld speaks while the US Attorney, deeply aggravated, turns back to glower at Stern, who suddenly recognizes that he may have permanently damaged this relationship as well.

  Although Marta counts Moses as a friend, Stern and Moses’s connection is principally professional. Yet there has always seemed to be deep respect on both sides. As prosecutors are inevitably, Moses is intensely judgmental, but he also strives to be fair and has always been willing to listen to Stern’s arguments in behalf of his clients. In press interviews, Stern sung Moses’s praises following his appointment as US Attorney two years ago, after nearly a decade as first assistant. Stern was one of the few in the legal community unsurprised that Moses has always been a registered Republican.

  Moses grew up in the Grace Street projects, coming of age in sadly familiar circumstances, raised by his mother and grandmother while his father, whom Moses never really knew, was doing thirty years at Rudyard penitentiary. Among Moses’s more harrowing stories of his childhood is how his mother would occasionally lay his sister and him in the bathtub to protect them from gunfire in the hallway. Mrs. Appleton worked double shifts on an assembly line to pay for Catholic school for both her children, although their weekends were spent at her side at River of Zion. Moses was one of only twelve boys in his class to finish high school, following which he enlisted in the Marine Corps. Afterward, he went to college on the GI Bill, then enrolled in law school, which he attended at night while driving a UPS truck all day. Along the way, Moses developed fixed views about what is fairest for people like him who start with nothing: Stability. Rules followed by everyone. An evenhanded system of rewards. Notwithstanding the demands of being US Attorney, he still tutors once a week at St. Gregory’s, where he attended grade school.

  The same personal code also makes him an exceptional gentleman. When Judge Klonsky told Stern he could question witnesses while seated, Moses said that if Sandy took that option, the prosecutors would follow suit. Moses’s apparent conclusion that Stern in late age has grown dishonorable makes Stern feel like he did as a scolded schoolchild, scoured by shame.

  In the meantime, Marta, knowing how painful this moment has become for her father, is defending him vehemently.

  “Your Honor,” she says. “I urge you to question Dr. Kapech outside the jury’s presence. I have no doubt that you will find that Dr. Kapech knew his answers were untruthful.”

  Feld, unexpectedly, raises a hand to intervene.

  “While I was preparing Bruno to testify, he told me that he knew Mr. Stern and that he was familiar with Sandy’s medical condition, and I told him that none of that should be mentioned in the courtroom. I didn’t see how it could possibly be relevant. He obviously misunderstood. But I intended to ask Dr. Kapech to correct his testimony on redirect.”

  Sonny closes her eyes to take all of this in, then with a quick hand motion rises and leaves the bench, tossing over her shoulder, “I need five.”

  Marta comes straight back to the defense table, where she whispers for a second to Kiril. Then guiding her father by the elbow, she takes him outside, past two empty courtrooms, until they are alone on one of the walnut pews at the end of the white marble corridor.

  By now, Stern’s mood has followed a predictable course, going from guilt to indignation, especially in light of what Feld has explained. Stern’s dressing down from the judge, he feels, is a response first and foremost to his age. Were he forty years younger, the judge would have known there was more to the story.

  “Hear my vow, Marta. If Sonny tries to remove me, I shall go to the appellate court.”

  “That won’t happen, Dad. She was pissed off about what was going on in the courtroom. I think she hates the murder charges. When Kapech gave that answer about strong probabilities, she looked over at Moses like she was going to murder him. I nearly laughed out loud.”

  It dawns on him that that was the moment when he saw Marta concealing her smile. But for now, Stern remains more concerned about his own fate than his client’s.

  “I am not demented,” he says, “and resent that assumption.”

  “Dad, you’re not demented. I would have barricaded the doors to the courtroom if I thought you were. Your judgment, your reasoning, your overall smarts—they’re still amazing. But your self-control in a situation like that, when Kapech is suddenly pissing you off, it’s not the same. You cried ten times more often in public after Helen died than you did after Mom. I was glad you weren’t as closed off anymore, but it’s different, and you need to promise me, really promise me, when you feel some kind of une
xpected inspiration, you’re going to stop and check in with me. Just give me a look.”

  He nods. He can accept that. Amid all the other shocks, none is deeper than the fact that his feeling for the rules, which has always been like a thin veneer encasing him, failed as his incredulity with Kapech grew.

  When they return to the courtroom, Ginny, the deputy in her uniform, has her hand on the back door, meaning the judge is ready to return to the bench.

  “Well,” Sonny says, once she’s settled there, “I had the court reporter come back and read the transcript to me, and I have to say that I see blame on all sides. Mr. Feld, I accept that you would have tried to remedy the situation on redirect, but once you knew that Dr. Kapech’s answers under oath were not truthful, especially because he misunderstood instructions from you, you needed to come at once to the sidebar or simply stand up and correct him. Mr. Stern, I understand that you were in a difficult situation, but you, too, certainly should have requested a sidebar before asking a question that’s ordinarily so far out of bounds.”

  “I agree,” says Stern quickly. He adds a little miniature bow. “There will be no reoccurrence.”

  “I realize that. And frankly, looking back at the transcript, I am not even certain about the relevance of this part of Dr. Kapech’s testimony, but let’s leave the matter where it is for now and go on to redirect.”

  Once a witness is on the stand, he may not discuss his testimony with the lawyers for either side. Thus, Feld’s efforts to recover depend on Kapech’s ability to take clues from the questions. Kapech does well, considering his lack of courtroom experience.

  “When you answered Mr. Stern about ‘strong probabilities’—is that a defined epidemiological term?”

  “No. Not at all. I was just answering about my own impressions.”

  “And you certainly weren’t using that term in the legal sense.”

  “No, no. Not at all. I’m a doctor after all. Not a lawyer.”

  When Kapech steps down, the judge reminds the jurors not to discuss the case with anyone and recesses for the week. Monday was jury selection, an elaborate process given the amount of publicity Kiril’s case has had. Sonny does not try cases on Fridays, which are reserved for motions in the hundreds of other cases on her calendar.

  When the session ends, Stern catches Kiril by the sleeve and asks to see him back at the office. “Alone,” Stern adds quietly. Pafko nods quickly, as if he knows the subject and says he will arrange transportation home for Donatella, then drive to Stern’s office.

  Downstairs, Stern meets Ardent at the curb. He is completely wrung out again from the emotional toll of what transpired with Sonny. In the end, he thinks she held Feld more to task than him. But that doesn’t matter, because he knows that the Sandy Stern of old, the lawyer with the majestic reputation, would have figured out a more skilled response to Kapech’s false answers than violating the century-old rule against becoming a witness in the case. In the sealed privacy of the car, he can face the uncomfortable truth that has been gathering like a sad fog around his heart: He is no longer up to this. Marta was right. He should never have agreed to represent Kiril.

  But he is already seated on the speeding train. For Kiril’s sake, and his own, he needs to summon everything—reinforce his mental discipline, redouble his will. There must be no more foolish mistakes, no more incompetence, no further dancing along the cliff edge of catastrophe. He will never be who he was, but he owes everyone—Sonny, Marta, Moses, himself, and most of all, Pafko—his very best imitation.

  10. Kiril

  How had he met Kiril Pafko? As the publicity about US v. Pafko has mounted, people have asked Stern now and then, but he has no precise memory. It was more than forty years ago. They were both émigrés from Argentina, both with young families, both gaining traction in their professional communities; there was also the fact, beyond polite mention, that each had been adroit enough to marry a woman of wealth. More than one person had suggested they get to know one another, but all Stern retains of the initial meeting is the sight of Kiril, tall, polished, and handsome, advancing across a large room with a self-assured smile and his hand extended, uttering the standard slang greeting of Buenos Aires: “Che, pibe.” Hey, kid.

  At that point, Kiril had arrived in the Tri-Cities as a young med school professor, fresh from Harvard and already surrounded by an air of renown. Stern was also becoming better established. His years of hustling cases in the corridors of the Kindle County Superior Court, to which he’d resorted after leaving the cushy practice in his father-in-law’s office, were behind him, but not the constant immigrant anxiety about whether he would succeed. Because his in-laws were always suspicious of his motives for marrying Clara, Stern begged his wife not to accept a penny from her parents, but that made the challenge to prove himself more extreme. Words in English still eluded him at the most critical moments in court, and he knew the accent he could not shake bred distrust from judges, cops, and worst, potential clients. Whenever he felt he was failing, he became acutely aware of the three children at home, clamorous with need. As other humans required food, water, shelter, Stern longed to feel secure.

  Kiril, on the other hand, was already larger than life. Stern at first saw little common ground. Because of everything he still held against his father, Stern avoided the company of physicians. Pafko was also a fine athlete. Year after year, Kiril reigned as the tennis singles champion at the country club where Stern’s in-laws were also members, while Stern barely knew how to hold a racket. Most grating perhaps was Kiril’s confidence that everyone liked him, as he overwhelmed them with well-lubricated foreign charm.

  Even the fact that Alejandro and Kiril were both Argentinian did not really unite them, since they hailed from far different social strata. The disorder in Europe that began in the 1880s and led to the World Wars brought hundreds of thousands of Europeans to the Land of Silver, which was viewed then as a place of opportunities to rival the US. The Pafkos, wine growers whose vineyards were not far from Bratislava, had left Slovakia for Argentina in 1919, almost a decade ahead of when the Sterns had fled Germany in the face of the rising tide of anti-Semitism. The Pafkos flourished as vintners in Mendoza. The Sterns floundered. Stern’s father, a fragile ne’er-do-well doctor, moved his family from place to place, leaving them impoverished when he died at an early age.

  It was the two wives, Clara and Donatella, who formed the initial bond. They were kindred souls, both born to wealth, both well-educated, both with deep minds and unyielding discretion. Each was a trained musician. They looked forward to the afternoons once a month when they had lunch and attended the symphony. The families often ended up together in the summer months, when the Sterns were frequent guests at the country club. Whatever his initial reluctance, Stern began enjoying Kiril’s quick mind, his humor, and his skills as a raconteur.

  And then, out of nowhere, both men were struck by lightning, united by what passed locally for fame. Their friendship was reinforced because there were few companions who understood what it was like to ride a rocket into the stratosphere of sudden renown. In 1986, Stern defended the chief deputy in the Kindle County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, a married man accused of the murder of a fellow prosecutor, alleged to be his former lover. Tangled with a local election campaign for prosecuting attorney, the case, with its torrid aspects, generated attention coast-to-coast, and Stern found photos of himself, burdened with brown document cases as he lumbered toward court, appearing in publications like Time and People. He soon learned the workings of the American media, in which attention begets attention. Important clients came with it—corporate executives, then Kindle County’s Catholic archbishop, whom Stern kept out of prison despite the many frauds involved in hiding the child born of His Eminence’s affair with a fourteen-year-old girl. It became routine for Stern to be introduced to strangers as ‘a famous lawyer.’ Occasionally, if the new acquaintance seemed to have a sense of humor, and Clara, or later Helen, were present, he would add, ‘Please do
not be impressed. There are no groupies.’

  Kiril’s moment came in 1990 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Stern was thrilled for Kiril, for Easton, and for Kindle County, always struggling with its designation as ‘a second-tier city.’ Kiril accepted fame with none of the ambivalence Stern felt about the spotlight. If attention is a narcotic, then Kiril mainlined it. He recounted for months the story of walking into the Matchbook, a tony restaurant in Center City, and having every patron rise to give him a standing ovation the day after the announcement in Stockholm. g-Livia had inspired another round of national acclaim for Kiril—until the Wall Street Journal painted him as a fraud.

  Stern has not been in the office long after his moment of resolve in the Cadillac when Kiril arrives. Pafko, as ever, is gallant.

  “Sandy, if you are feeling some need to explain about the judge, please do not. I know she is your friend, but it is clear to both Donatella and me that she is quite short-tempered.”

  Knowing how wrong he was, Stern has not considered how Sonny’s agitation with him might have struck the jurors. Kiril could be right that she appeared quick to anger. But it is not the judge whom Stern wants to discuss.

  “Kiril, I asked to see you without Donatella to talk for a second about Innis.” He is referring to Dr. Innis McVie, Kiril’s longtime lover, who left PT in January 2017, after g-Livia was approved and Kiril had taken up with PT’s forty-year-old marketing director, Olga Fernandez.

  “I see,” says Pafko, a bit wary. “What about her?”

  “She has finally agreed to meet with me. I am going to Florida to see her tomorrow. I wanted you to know. Pinky is supposed to go out to PT to collect Innis’s personnel file, to help me prepare.”

  “Ah,” says Pafko with a wry smile. “Make sure you bring earplugs. You will hear terrible things about me. And truth will not be an obstacle. You know what Shakespeare said, Sandy. ‘Hell hath no fury.’”

  “Better to know what is coming, Kiril.”