The Burden of Proof

by Scott Turow

Eventually, the five of them passed the stakes down to Stern. A thousand dollars a man. In cash. They were betting on which elevator would come first.

  Al, a dozen feet ahead of Stern on the floor, pointed to John in the MD trading booth, a narrow gray counter space that looked like a hotel newsstand. Between the pits, the various clearing corps had these tiny preserves where orders and fills could be phoned back and forth from the floor. Every inch down here was precious. Ten people would work in quarters closer than steerage.

  John was on the phone now, writing furiously, talking back. Upstairs at the other end of the line, Dixon, doing his ugly deeds, had found him. He must have asked for John by name. Was he counting on John’s loyalty or his ignorance? Probably both. John was eager to please him. Dixon had mentioned that John had asked repeatedly to be advanced into the hurly-burly of the trading pits. He was not ready, Dixon said, had not been around long enough. He kept John on the order desk, although John filled in down here whenever he could. Like all the runners, the clerks, this business’s perpetual flotsam and jetsam, John apparently shared the common dream: Get experience. Get a seat. Get rich. The pits remained one of the few places left where an unpromising young person, a high-school loser, a kid without an electric guitar or four-three speed could still hit it big. John, Stern took it, wanted one more chance to make it.

  John slid out of the booth while Al took his place. His son-in-law greeted Stern with much the same look of dismay Peter had recently. After a futile effort at conversation, they returned to MD’s office. The only space John had of his own was a desk in the midst of the tumultuous back office. John stopped there to throw down various papers, then directed Stern to a conference room. A magnificent photo of Kate stood on the desk amid John’s piles. His daughter, Stern thought again, was an exceptional beauty.

  Even chatting with his father-in-law, John looked childishly uncomfortable. His huge shoulders sloped, and he idly fingered an envelope on the desk. He wore the uniform of the floor, MD’s unstructured navy cotton jacket, corduroys, and a knotted tie dragged three or four inches below his open collar. A photo ID hung from his pocket.

  What was there about this young man that Stern found so infuriating? He was reminiscent sometimes of a comic-strip oaf, so large and amiable that he deserved a balloon over his head: Duh. He was not dumb. Clara, for years, had been at pains to make that point. He had had no difficulty finishing college, long after his athletic career had ended. But there was a fecklessness about him. Large, apple-cheeked, blond, plumper than in his playing days, he looked like an inflated two-year-old, with as little guile. Stern was convinced that the present matter would render him numb. He would have no intuition about how to proceed and few resources with which to manage the strain of the coming months. Stern had seen these situations throughout his professional life: a family member, a business colleague, thrown a rope by a prosecutor, offered freedom in exchange for testimony. Some tossed it back, with royal indifference. But not many. Most tried to save themselves, bargaining with the truth and appealing to those they implicated for understanding. They ended up scorned by everyone. It was hard to imagine John having the suppleness to endure this storm.

  Stern had stood to close the door and after a brief preface came to the point.

  “Dixon Hartnell is being investigated by a federal grand jury.”

  “Ooo,” said John. He looked like a carpenter who had just walloped his thumb.

  “Yes. It is very unpleasant.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, I think I should let someone else explain the details to you. In general, the government seems to suspect some form of improper trading ahead of customer orders. Has anyone from the FBI attempted to speak with you? A chap named Kyle Horn?”

  John shook his head. He didn’t think so. “What does he look like?”

  “Big fellow.” Big blond goyishe-looking lunk in a cheap sport coat, thought Stern. But that would not do.

  John again shook his head uncertainly. You would think FBI credentials might make an impression, even on John, but there was never any telling. Stern removed the subpoena from his briefcase and tried to explain what it meant.

  “Due to our relationship—yours and mine—the prosecutors were courteous enough to allow me to receive this for you. However, because I already represent Dixon, you should consult with another lawyer before you answer the government’s questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “I could speculate, John, but that would probably not be best.”

  John squinted. He didn’t get it, of course. Stern explained that the government believed he had valuable information.

  “They want to use me to get him?”

  “Exactly.”

  The large baffled look Stern would have predicted rose up in John’s eyes. A deer in the road. He had no idea what to do. The conflicts were between all the simple things that he took as harmonious. Loyalty. Truthfulness. Self-preservation.

  “John, you and your lawyer must decide whether you wish to negotiate with the government for immunity. If that is the case, then your lawyer will give the prosecutors a prediction, a proffer, of what you would say.”

  “Yeah,” said John, “but what if I don’t want to talk?”

  “Again, John, that is a good question for you to put to your lawyer. But the government can always choose to grant you immunity without regard to your desires, in which event your choices are between answering questions and jail.”

  “Jail?” John took this in, too, with continuing ponderous reflection. “I really don’t know that much.”

  As this conversation proceeded, Stern had gradually felt his heart declining, and with this response, it plunged the remaining distance. ‘Not that much,’ said John. But more than nothing at all. Dixon would be safe only with virtual amnesia on John’s part. Even the vaguest memory of who was behind the trades would do for the government, especially if they succeeded in tracing the profits into Dixon’s hands. And sitting here, his son-in-law exhibited a discomfort most telling to a practiced eye. There was no outraged inquiry from John about what this trading ahead had to do with him, or how the prosecutors might have gotten his name. He knew the government’s interest in him was well placed.

  “What does he say about all this? Dixon? Can you say?”

  Stern shook his head. But he felt for an instant like holding his breath. A moment of the most delicate sort had arisen. With somebody else, another employee, Stern would have ventured a comment whose direction was as faint but discernible as an idling wind: ‘This is, of course, a critical matter for Dixon, his entire life and business are at stake.’ But John was without subtlety. He might ask an impossible question—‘You mean I should lie?’—or, even worse, take Stern’s comments as a commandment. In all, Dixon—and Stern—would have to trust John’s lawyer to make the appropriate assessments and to offer the correct guidance.

  “Where am I going to get this lawyer from?” John asked.

  “I have some names I might suggest, if you would like.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “MD will indemnify you—pay your expenses—so you need not worry about that.”

  Stern was working on the list right now, writing on a piece of office stationery, names and phone numbers. George Mason. Raymond Horgan. No one would quite manage to reconcile the diverse needs of John’s circumstances as well as he could have, but that was out of the question, and Stern, in any event, saw the wisdom of his not serving as scoutmaster on this trail. Just these few minutes had changed his estimate of John for good.

  John took the list and shrugged. He had better get back to the floor, he said. He continued to wear his usual look, furtive and confused. Watching John hulk off to the elevator, Stern felt a ruthless anger with Dixon gathering again. How could he? How could he have embroiled this boy in the usual piggish market high jinks? But the answer was too obvious. Dixon with his infallible calculation of what was best for himself had no doubt recognized that his greates
t protection was in a family member less experienced in the business. Easiest probably to give sottovoce instructions, knowing they would not be questioned, or, if the time came, willingly recalled. Soon, Stern was going to have to turn his attention to the issue of when and how to get out of the case. If there was an indictment and John was a government witness, Stern could never handle the matter at trial. Cross-examining his daughter’s husband was unthinkable. Perhaps he should also give a list of lawyers to Dixon and exit post haste. But he recognized his own lack of conviction. Just now, Stern was not eager to sever any other long-term relations. And he had resisted breaking with Dixon for many years.

  Part of that, of course, was for Silvia’s sake. Nor should one overlook the force of gratitude. Much of Stern’s present practice, in which he most often represented lawyers and bankers and corporate officials, could be attributed to the fact that he had become known as Dixon’s lawyer. It had been his exit from the grimy world of the police courts into the arena of high-class crime—embezzlements and frauds, tax matters, bribery, and now and then a murder of passion. Dixon—a classy borderline operator—had, by the peculiar logic of these things, elevated Stern, and it was virtually an instinct in him never to give short shrift to anyone who had helped him in his practice.

  Yet he knew that the things that attached him to Dixon were not simply external. After thirty-two years practicing law, though his acquaintances were legion, his admirers many, Stern, in a way he seldom felt inclined to meditate upon, was apt at times to feel somehow abandoned—left to himself. Oh, there were hundreds of persons he cared for, whose lives and ideas interested him, and with whom he felt an eager mutuality. He got on the elevator in the courthouse and there were always half a dozen people to greet him. He was well known, likable, eager to please, and reluctant to give offense. Stern had his circle, mostly men near his age, primarily lawyers and judges, a number of them Yiddish speakers like his mother, subtle, clever people whose talk of books and sports and business gossip he regularly shared over lunch and sincerely valued. Good company. But he had in mind more than that. He meant the kind of unguarded male affinity that young men on teams, in gangs, on street corners had. Did women, domestication, destroy that? Or the fierce struggles of the daily world where every man was your enemy? Who knew? Yet Dixon remained. He was present. Stern could pay him no further compliment. But, like a granite marker beside the road, Dixon seemed to be the man who had always been nearby.

  My brother-in-law, thought Stern, alone in the tiny room where John had abandoned him. Brother. In. Law. What kind of peculiar term was that?

  18

  TO KINDLE COUNTY SYMPHONY HALL, with its wedding-cake balconies and ceiling frosted with wreaths of gold, where Clara Mittler and Alejandro Stern had passed their initial evening together, Stern now came on his first night out with Helen Dudak. The coincidence did not strike him until Adolph Fronz, the elderly conductor, raised his baton, and then the thought quickly added to Stern’s discomfort. He had very nearly broken this engagement; only his kindly impulses toward Helen and his reluctance to offend her had made him carry through. It was a sad fact, shameful, awful—choose your pejorative adjective—but Radczyk’s report had taken something from him that even the moment in the garage doorway had not. He had been a larger and more essential failure than he had imagined. Sex mattered. Ever and always. This he was learning, and his feelings now—alternating between vertiginous rage and desolation—left him deeply disinclined toward any female. The notion of spending an entire night attempting to be the charming, alluring gentleman of a few weeks before was simply out of the question. At the last moment, having spied tonight’s tickets for one of Clara’s many symphony series thumbtacked to the kitchen bulletin board, he had phoned Helen to propose this change.

  ‘I cooked,’ Helen said simply.

  Music, then supper later, perhaps?

  ‘All right.’ Helen was obliging. He found himself enormously relieved. In the dark hall, while Fronz twirled and the players strummed and tooted, he would be alone, free from the need to prattle. Afterwards, the weariness of the work week could overcome him.

  “I don’t quite know why,” Helen told him at intermission, “but I wouldn’t have picked you for symphonic music. More quartets,” she said, “or a single guitar.” They stood in the lobby, blinking in the sudden lights. Couples Clara and he had seen here for years lifted their hands in greeting. But no one came near. With an entirely unpredictable force, a gust of grief and remorse blew into Stern, as he realized he had started his new life. For Helen, he smiled ruefully.

  “I am indiscriminate.” Stern touched his ear. “Tone deaf. I cannot tell the difference between the Kindle symphony and the high-school band.” He had kept this fact from Clara for thirty-some years, though when it turned out that Marta could not tell one note from another, she must have entertained suspicions.

  “Oh, Sandy.” Helen held his wrist as they laughed together at his failings. Why was it that he always forgot how much he liked Helen Dudak until he was beside her? She looked marvelous. Her fox-colored hair had a crisp outline that betrayed a trip to the beauty shop, and she wore a simple black dress peeled back from her shoulders. Against all expectation, as the lights went down once more, he found himself pleased to be here.

  “So you went to the symphony for all those years and never knew what you were listening to?” asked Helen, as they were driving off afterwards. She was turned fully about to face him, seated girlishly on her knees. It was typical of Helen and her instinct for important nuance that she had returned to this subject. They were headed toward her home for dinner. In the end, there was no way to say no. Besides, Helen’s company was soothing. And after all his laments over the untrustworthiness of women, he was now full of a more familiar feeling which they had always reliably satisfied: he was extremely hungry.

  “Clara enjoyed it.”

  “I recall. But—” Helen said, then stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Please.”

  “I guess I was wondering why you would go now.”

  “Ah,” said Stern, hoping to conjure up some tactful response, and vaguely frightened to find her so astute. Out the window, the center city flashed by, uninhabited, ghostly in the isolated pools of mercury light, the doorways dark. Helen, to his relief, continued on her own.

  “I suppose I was going to give you advice.”

  “Feel free.”

  “No,” she said. “There’s really no comparison between my circumstance and yours.”

  “Duly noted,” Stern said. “You were thinking?”

  “Oh, just that, as awful as it is, there are things to enjoy in being alone again. The liberty of it. Finding what’s your own.” As the streetlights flowed across her, Helen turned back to measure his response. “I’m sure this is terribly offensive.”

  “No, no,” said Stern. He was eager to agree, pleased to show that he understood her good intentions, and happy to foster the thought that he had suggested the symphony out of some unthinking reflex. And, in fact, this was a valuable notion. A good solid person of real judgment, Helen had hit on something that he otherwise would have missed. Whatever his misery, parts—large parts of him—had accepted his new bachelorhood with relish. Not just the brief period of cavorting. The moment right now was one more instance—relaxed, at ease, and able to speak about himself in a way Clara seldom encouraged. Clara had her minute agendas, her quiet steps which she always danced. For many years (Too many years! he thought, and felt again the accustomed iron point of guilt) he had recognized in some unspoken way that she utilized all this silent planning as a means to escape torpor and depression. But the point was that she had done it, he had known it, adjusted to it, and now it was no longer there, like a ticking metronome gone silent. Wounded and reeling, his soul had nonetheless expanded in the recent circumstance, reentering regions closed off for years.

  Helen served a splendid supper. She made a salad of shrimp rémo
ulade, and cooked a small piece of blackened fish. She stood over the iron skillet with the smoke rising, drinking her wine and chatting, like a cooking-show host. Rick, her younger child, a sophomore now at Easton, dreamed, like many nineteen-year-olds, of being a criminal defense lawyer. Helen relayed his questions. Did Stern believe most of his clients were innocent? How could he defend them if he didn’t? How did he feel when he found out they were guilty?

  These were old questions, the puzzles of a lifetime, and Stern enjoyed answering Helen, who listened alertly. Some spoke of the nobility of the law. Stern did not believe in that. Too much of the grubby boneshop, the odor of the abattoir, emanated from every courtroom he had entered. It was often a nasty business. But the law, at least, sought to govern misfortune, the slights and injuries of our social existence that were otherwise wholly random. The law’s object was to let the seas engulf only those who had been selected for drowning on an orderly basis. In human affairs, reason would never fully triumph; but there was no better cause to champion. Helen sat back, drinking her wine, attentive.

  For dessert, she brought out berries. She lifted the wine bottle toward Stern, but he shook it off. Helen had drunk freely; Stern had had a single glass. He was drinking too much lately, which never before had been his habit; his head was sore on many occasions.

  “As usual,” he said, “I have done all the talking, and about myself.”

  “You’re wonderful to listen to, Sandy. You know that.”

  “Do I? Well, I appreciate a receptive audience.”

  Helen looked at him directly.

  “You have one here,” she said somewhat softly. They were silent, considering one another. “Look,” said Helen Dudak. “You know it. I know it. So I’ll say it. I’m available. All right?”

  “Why, certainly.”

  She raised her dark eyebrows. “In all senses.”

  For an instant, Stern’s heart actually seemed to shiver. What was it about Helen? She had a way with facts which could be utterly disarming. She laid out what was on her mind with no more ceremony than a butcher tossing meat onto the scale. But they both knew they had come to an auspicious pass.