by Scott Turow
“Got it all figured out?” Margy Allison, Dixon’s chief operating officer, had returned for a moment to check on his progress. She had been in this business most of her adult life, almost exclusively for Maison Dixon, and, apparently, still found it thrilling. Nothin’ to it, she seemed to suggest, as she motioned to the stacks of paper around Stern—even a silly old Okie gal could git it. Margy loved to do routines like that, for the amusement of her friends up North. An M.B.A., she preferred to come on like an oilfield roughneck. ‘Mar-gee,’ she would say, when introducing herself. ‘Hard g. Hard girl.’
“I believe we shall need an accountant,” Stern told her.
Margy made a face. She was the paymaster in these parts and a legend for her tightfistedness. Every time she signed a check, she told you what a dollar used to buy in the country.
“I can put all that stuff together for you.”
She was capable, no question, but unlikely to find the time. With the advent of overseas trading, and night sessions of the markets, Maison Dixon was open twenty-four hours a day, and there were problems to solve at every juncture. At her door at any hour, there was usually a line: clerks and secretaries and boys up from the floor in the unstructured jackets with the large square plastic badges on the pockets. Stern, accordingly, told her she could not afford to spend the hours this job would require.
“If you’re billin’ us your usual hourly rate, Sandy, I can afford a lotta time.” She smiled, but her point, of course, was made. “I’m sure you got one of those hotel rooms like you usually do when we’re payin, big enough to hold the opera with the elephants. We can take this whole mess there and look it over. Assumin a’ course”—Margy hooded her shadowed eyes—“you’re willing to chance bein alone with me.” She cast herself in a vampy role, a female sexual braggart. It was part of her low routine, coming on tough and crude, like the kind of woman you imagined finding smoking a cigarette at the bar of some mid-city lounge. Stern had no idea where the truth resided, but she had laid it on thick with him over the years, perhaps as a way to flatter him, or simply on the assumption he was harmless. Now, of course, the mere suggestion inflamed his new libidinal itch. Being himself, he changed the subject.
“Do any of these records, Margy, have anything to do with the house error account?” He had Dixon’s recent phone call in mind.
“They want that now, too?” Margy, nearly as irritated as Dixon by the government’s persistence, went off at once to find a clerk to gather the records. This was why he traveled to the documents, Stern thought. Something else was always needed.
Stern took it that, sometime in the past twenty years, Margy had been one of Dixon’s women. She was far too attractive not to have drawn Dixon’s attention. But it had not gone along happily. The amount of surmise and conjecture which Stern had quietly made about this matter surprised even him. Gradually, he had filled in the blanks, tested these guesses against what was observable, and taken them as true. He had long assumed that Margy had waited interminably for Dixon to leave Silvia; that she was somehow the focus of the crisis that had erupted years ago when Silvia briefly ejected Dixon from the household; and that she had declared the struggle lost when Dixon moved back in with his wife. For a year or two, Margy had disappeared to work for another house. But there really was no way to run MD without her. Even Silvia would have recognized that. Instead, she was offered Chicago as a domain of her own, and the title of president of half a dozen of the subsidiaries, not to mention an enormous annual salary. So she had labored under those terms, devoted to Dixon’s business, and probably still to him, the deprived and rejected heroic woman of one of the country ballads she had grown up humming. That was whom Margy reminded you of—those down-home ladies who stood onstage, with their twangy voices, their coiffed hair and stage makeup, sad and glamorous, hard and wise.
Eventually, the clerk arrived. The records of the house error account were laid on the table with the rest. Stern glanced through the papers, but he knew he was getting nowhere. Every time Stern found himself facing a room full of documents, he cursed the avarice that led him to do what was decorously referred to as white-collar work, and to a clientele of con artists in suits and ties who hid their crimes by laying waste to forests.
Margy reappeared in time, placing her face against a brightly manicured hand and leaning languorously on the metal doorframe. His bemusement was apparent, but Margy smiled indulgently; she had always liked Stern.
“You want me to help you out? I really am willin. We’ll do like I said. Get the hell out of here. Gimme fifteen minutes.”
It was more than an hour and a half, but eventually one of the messengers had brought down four transfer cases of documents and loaded them into Margy’s car. She tore off down the Loop streets for the Ritz. She handled her automobile, a red foreign model, like a stock-car driver. His mother had been high-strung, hysterical. Clara was soft and dignified. That, to Stern, comprised the familiar range for female behavior. This woman, if truth be told, was stronger than he was. She could sprint an obstacle course faster or hold out longer in the face of torture. Watching her behind the wheel, he felt admiring and daunted.
This evidence of Margy’s capacities was, Stern suddenly thought, instructive about Dixon. It was a mistake to see him merely as some smutty conquistador seeking notches on his gun, butterflies for his collection. Dixon valued women, trusted them, counted on their counsel. In a woman’s presence, his charm and humor, and an enormous, almost electrical human force beset him. Even Stern, whatever his innate sense of rivalry, felt he liked Dixon more. And women responded to Dixon’s attention. It was one of the symmetries of nature.
Of course, this interest was not detached. With Dixon, one was always well advised to remember the base elements. The markets, the pits, tense, fast, trying, were full of cokeheads and types lost in the bottle; Dixon’s release was more natural: fucking. The quickest zipper in the West, someone had once called him. Not that Stern was often treated to the details. He was the brother-in-law, Silvia’s blood ally, and Dixon had better sense than to test Stern’s loyalties. But no one, least of all Dixon, could make a complete secret of so persistent a preoccupation. Occasionally, his pure delight overcame him, and he confided to Stern, as he did to so many other men. Dixon, for example, engaged in a personal sport in which he kept track of the exact number of women he saw in a day who inspired his most basic fantasies. ‘Thirty-one,’ he’d say to you, as you were greeted by a hotel clerk. ‘Thirty-two,’ when he looked out the window to see a woman getting on a bus. At the Rose Bowl one year, amid the coeds and cheerleaders, he claimed to have reached two sixty-three by half-time, despite giving complete attention to the game.
Usually, the extent of Dixon’s interest was less amusing. Stern had been with him at the airport, passing through the metal detector, when Dixon emptied his pockets into the tray meant to receive valuables and tossed in a package of prophylactics as naturally as a pack of gum. This was a few years ago, when such items were still not the subject of polite discussion. From subsequent commentary, Stern took it that in these matters of personal hygiene, as in so many other things, Dixon was a pioneer, meticulous about protecting himself long before the current mania. But the security guard, a young woman, reddened noticeably, far more horrified than if Dixon had pulled a knife. Even Dixon, walking toward the airport gate, was chagrined. ‘I should just have my thing coated in plastic.’ Like a membership card or a snapshot. Neither abstinence nor restraint apparently suggested themselves as alternatives.
Witnessing these misadventures, Stern attempted to evince no interest. But he paid attention. Who wouldn’t? It sometimes seemed as if he could recollect the details of each one of Dixon’s randy stories. And Dixon, never one to miss a point of vulnerability, had made note of Stern’s penchant long before. Once, when the two of them were traveling in New York, Dixon carried on with special animation with a young waitress, a smooth-featured young Puerto Rican woman of haunting beauty who seemed to be responding to Di
xon’s sly smiles and lascivious humor. He watched her trail away from the table and caught in Stern a look not much different from his own.
‘Do you know what it feels like to touch a woman that age?’
‘Dixon, please.’
‘It’s different.’
‘Dixon!’
Stern recollected that he took his knife and fork to what was on his plate with particular vigor, chewing with bovine single-mindedness. But when he glanced up, Dixon was still watching, shrewd and handsome, made merry by the sight of the disturbance he had caused.
At the hotel, Margy made herself at home. She had kicked off her shoes before the bellman had dropped the cases, and threw the straw-colored silk jacket to her tailored suit on the bed. Grabbing a menu, she called room service for dinner, then opened the minibar. “God, do I need a drink!” she declared. Stern asked for sherry, but they had none, and so he drank Scotch with Margy.
As Stern began emptying the document cases, she took his hand.
“So how you doin, Sandy Stern?” She had a sweet solicitous look, seated on the bed. No mention had been made of Clara’s death; Stern had wondered if she even knew. Now, at once, she seemed soft enough to cry on, with the beckoning availability of an open field. He was never quite sure what to make of her. She had an imposing appearance, the kind other women referred to as ‘put together.’ Her hair was frosted and curled; she was expensively dressed. Her eyebrows were penciled so that they extended almost to the corners of her eyes, lending her the mysterious look of a Siamese cat. She was a large, handsome woman, strongly built, with a pleasant, expansive bottom—something happened across Margy’s hips that Stern, for whatever reason, had found notable for a number of years, watching her march about in her tweed skirts or bend over a cabinet. She was bright and ambitious; in her career, she’d moved from secretary to top executive. But she had a look of being written on by life. I am the blank slate. Inscribe. The message left was sad.
“I am making do, Margy,” Stern said. “There have been better times, of course. It seems to be a matter of adjustment. Day by day.”
“That’s right,” said Margy. She nodded. You could tell that she regarded herself as an expert on tragedy, well informed. “You are a sweet fella, Sandy. It’s always the ones that don’t deserve it that get all of life’s troubles.”
This country formulation made Stern smile. He looked at Margy, slumped somewhat and sitting on the bedside in her stocking feet.
“I shall survive,” he said. Even this prediction, he recognized, struck some note of improvement.
“Shore,” she told him. After a second, she dropped his hand. “Life goes on. You’re gonna have all those softhearted old gals just hoverin around pretty soon, so you don’t feel so lonely. You know, widows and divorcées just stopping to say Hi, hope you ain’t too blue, on their way home from the beauty parlor.”
Margy always thought she had everybody’s number. Stern laughed out loud. In spite of himself, he recalled Helen Dudak’s visit. Even Margy, it seemed, was more flirtatious than she would have been two months ago. In any event, he was unaccustomed to this kind of attention. Women had always found him solid and charming in a social way, but he had never sensed any allure.
They worked for some time before dinner arrived. Stern stacked the documents on the carpeting in the categories called for by the subpoena and showed them to her. She lay casually on the bed, chin down, shoes off, tossing her legs around girlishly. She had found a can of pistachio nuts in the minibar, and she pried them open with her bright fingernails, the shells making a tinny drumming noise as each hit the bottom of the wastebasket. Arriving with dinner, the room-service waiter rolled in a small cart and lifted the sides to form a table. Margy had ordered wine, too. The waiter attempted to pour Stern a glass, but his head was whirling already from the Scotch.
She threw the documents down and began as soon as the waiter lifted the steel warming top on her dish, eating robustly. People teased her, she said, about how fast she ate, but she had grown up with four older brothers and had learned better than to wait. Done, she threw her napkin down on the bed and pushed herself back.
“So what-all is this thing about?” she asked. “I can’t get much out of Dixon.”
Stern, with his mouth full, shook his head. He was enjoying his meal, lingering. He seldom of late had anything worth eating at this hour, when he preferred it.
“You think he got his toe in the bear trap? That old boy is too smart to let them catch him.” Margy, like anyone else who knew Dixon well, did not presume that he walked straight lines. They all knew better.
“My concern,” said Stern, “is not so much with Dixon’s discretion as with that of others.” Margy cocked her head, not comprehending. “From the precision with which the government is moving, I suspect they have an informant.”
“Those Exchange compliance types,” said Margy, “they do a lot with their computers.”
“That is what Dixon assumes. But they have too much personal information. I would look to someone who once enjoyed Dixon’s confidence. A business colleague.” As evenly as he could, Stern added, “A friend.” A part of him, on guard, watched her for any telltale response; in this sort of matter, no one was ever above suspicion.
“Naw,” said Margy. “I don’t think you’ll find a lot of folks on the street too eager to take out after Mr. Dixon there. They all heard the story. They know better’n that.”
“What story is that?” asked Stern.
“Mean you never heard that?” Margy hooted. She poured more wine for both of them. Stern demurred but picked up his glass as soon as it was filled. It seemed to him she had drunk a great deal, three Scotches before dinner and most of the wine, but you would hardly notice. “This is a great one.” She laughed again.
“I am the brother-in-law,” said Stern. “Over the years, I have no doubt missed many stories.”
“You can bet on that,” said Margy with a knowing, heavy-lidded look. She sat up on the bed, legs crossed, seemingly indifferent to her daytime image of the businesswoman vamp, her touseled hair, heavy makeup, and perfume. Instead, she seemed jazzed up, high, inspired, Stern realized, to be speaking confidentially about Dixon. “Let me tell you about Mr. Dixon Hartnell. Old Dixon, he can take care of himself, Sandy. You remember the IRS thing? You were the attorney, right?”
The problem, as Dixon liked to put it, was that his wife had refurnished, as the cost of readmitting Dixon to the household. When Silvia was done, the decorator presented them with a final bill, not counting payments along the way, for $175,000; according to the financial records of both Dixon and the decorator, this sum was never paid. Instead, the decorator, an amiable, high-strung fellow who annually spent every sou that passed through his hands, inexplicably took an interest in the currency futures markets and opened a Maison Dixon account in which an astonishing flurry of activity took place. In a ten-day period, he traded sixty times. When the dust settled, $15,000 equity was now $190,000 and change, a clear profit of $175,000, most of it a long-term capital gain, taxed at two-fifths the rate it would have been had Dixon simply written the decorator a check. The IRS spent nearly two years trying to unravel the devices they suspected Dixon of employing—the intervening brokers, the offshore trusts—before giving up. Dixon remained cheerful throughout, while Stern was on pins and needles, having discovered, as the IRS had not, that Dixon’s Mercedes dealer and the contractor who had added an addition to his home had also gone unpaid, while experiencing great success as traders of futures in heating oil and cotton, respectively.
“You know how that thing got itself started? You ever hear that tale?” asked Margy.
“I did not receive what I would call vivid detail,” said Stern. “As I recall, it was Dixon’s position that the Service had received information from an employee. A tip. Brady? Was that his name?”
“Right. You remember Merle. With this little mustache sort of split in two. He ran all our operations for a while. A computer wizard, hack
-off, hacker, whatever that is.” Margy flapped a hand. “Remember?”
Stern shrugged: vaguely. Dixon’s people came and went. So far as Stern recalled, Merle’s departure, in a dispute over a raise, had been oddly timed with the start of the IRS inquiry. Apparently, he had fulminated and delivered threats before he left: What I know, what I can do. He was out to scuttle Dixon’s ship.
“My assumption,” said Stern, “was that Merle must have been the person who received certain critical instructions.”
“No, no,” said Margy, with an evasive smile. “Dixon isn’t the kind to hand anyone a rope. But Brady, you know, he’d look at that little ol’ cathode-ray tube. He’d figure out all sorts of everything. That’s how he got Dixon’s number.”
Stern uttered a sound. This made sense. Brady knew enough to make trouble, but not to deliver the coup de grâce.
“Anyway, fast forward two years. The IRS has done its ol’ proctoscopy on Dixon—”
