by Scott Turow
His daughter ate her large salad, ruminating.
“Do you still count Mommy as a friend?” Marta asked. “Even now?”
Well, here certainly was a question for a child to put to a parent. How much hope could he hold out?
“Am I allowed to answer only yes or no?”
For the first time she displayed a look of impatience, displeased by his forensic gambit.
“Marta, we seem to have done a great deal to disappoint you.”
“I’m not asking you guys to apologize for your lives. I’m really not. I just wonder. It seems so depressing. You know, you spend thirty years and that’s what it comes to—with somebody rotting away in a garage. I think about it. What was she to you at the end? In the beginning? Was she the One? Probably not, huh?”
His first impulse, of course, was not to answer, but Marta in these moments had a sincerity that was unbearable—for all her worldliness, the prickly humor, the boldness, she searched with the same innocent urgency that Sam had manifested gazing at the night sky. It was beyond him not to respond.
“We live in this world, Marta. Nowhere else. As you say, it is disappointing to learn that your parents’ lives are no better than your own. You will not be graduating at some point to a higher order of existence.” Uttered, these words sounded harsher than he had intended, but she accepted them with the same serious look. “No person speaks accurately of the feelings of years and decades in a few lines. I cannot see your mother apart from the life we had. I had the good fortune of most people who find any contentment to have determined what mattered to me and to have achieved some of it. My work. My family. I adored the three of you—I suspect that was never adequately communicated, but it has always been true. And I cared greatly for your mother. I know I disappointed her terribly, over time. I was not as good a friend to her as she was to me. And she disappointed me as well—particularly at the end. I admit, awful as it may be to do so, that I resent that ending terribly. In my inner sanctum there are many rooms which appear closed to visitors—I acknowledge that. But I believe, after months of reflection, that I am a better and more capable person than she was willing to see me as being.” He said this to his daughter stoutly, with his face held high and his voice metered by conviction, even though he realized that Marta had little notion of everything he was referring to. Then he chewed at his steak and swirled his wine. He drank the half glass down, but the tide of strong feeling remained, so that he was unwilling to allow this to be the final word.
“We did our best, Marta. Both of us. Given the vast limitations with which we all deal. We shared an enormous amount. Not just events. But commitments. Values. She was the sum of my entire life. I loved her. Sometimes passionately. And I believe, even today, that she loved me, too. Every parent wishes for his child a life better than his own. But I admit I would be very pleased to see you forge a relationship as enduring.”
Marta nodded gravely. He had answered. Stern noticed that he had continued to hold the ring, the fine stone glinting even in the weak light. He admired it again for a moment and handed it back. When Marta lifted her purse, he asked if there were other treasures she had uncovered in her afternoon of searching.
“No more treasures,” said Marta. “Just something I wondered about.” She brought her face right down to the purse and reached in with both hands. “What kind of medication was she on?”
“Medication?” asked Stern.
It was a silver pillbox, oval, with a hinged lid. It had been in the Japanese box, too, Marta said. She sprung the cover, but even before it lifted, Stern knew what would be inside. He spilled out the small yellow capsules right on the tablecloth. The brand name was printed on their sides. Seventy-nine of them. He counted twice. The same number he had found missing from the bottle in Nate’s medicine cabinet.
Marta looked at Stern in sympathy. His confusion was plain.
“Not possible,” Stern said.
“Maybe,” Marta offered, “you should ask Nate Cawley.”
He sat up late that night. Marta, understandably, preferred her own room, and so Stern, for the first night in months, returned to the bedroom he had shared for twenty years with Clara. Marta had ransacked the bureaus; the drawers hung open, with silky undergarments spilling over the edges. There were a number of cartons on the floor into which items were being sorted—some to be given away, others to keep.
Again, he had difficulty sleeping. The raucous Independence Day eve celebration was going on down by the river. After ten, the racket of the fireworks began, a few miles away; from the window in the gable he could see the shuddering glow reflected at instants against the thin clouds. He was one of those immigrants who still became weak with sentiment—and gratitude—on the Fourth of July. What an idea this country was! The flourishing of the liberal democracies, with their ideal of equality, remained in his eyes, along with advances in medical care and the invention of movable type, humankind’s grandest achievement of the millennium. His life in the law—at the criminal bar, in particular—was somehow bound up with those beliefs.
He lay on the bed hoping to slip off. He tried to read, but the turbulence of the day rode with him: his confrontation with Nate; Sonny steaming like some departing ship toward the horizon; the vexing legal complications he was headed for; and the spirits wakened by his conversation with Marta. His daughter asked—demanded—her entire life that her parents speak to her from the soul. It was in some ways the most disturbing event of the day.
At one point he quietly moved downstairs to reexamine the pillbox, but Marta apparently had it with her. Instead, he parted the curtains and stared at the Cawleys’. It was all beyond him now. He would have to speak to Nate once more, but where in God’s name did such a conversation even begin? ‘Now, Nate, as long as we were on the subject, I had just another question or two about your affair with my wife.’ Stern shook his head in the dark.
Then he returned to the bedroom. Even after months, Clara’s scent remained here; as much as the unspeaking furnishings, she was present. Lying in the bed, he expected Clara to emerge from the bathroom at any instant, a comely middle-aged person, flattered by the full lines of her nightgown, hair shining, face creamed, distracted as she often was, humming faintly some musical theme.
Ah! he thought without an instant’s preparation, ah, how he loved her! His recollection of her was suddenly overpowering, the most particular details returning to him with painful exactness: the soft wave in which she wore her hair for years; the harmless sweet smell of her French bathwater; her pink gardening hat; the tiny peculiar ridge, flange-like, on each side of her nose. He remembered her slow way of lifting her hands, her slender fingers and the slim wedding band—gestures somehow articulate with intelligence and grace. These memories stormed over him so powerfully that he felt he could embrace her, as if in this urgent heartsore fondness he could clutch her from the air. The freshness of his love stunned him; it wrung his heart and left him weak. He had no idea what dark crabbed corner of madness she had wandered off to. He could deal solely with the woman he had lived with, the person he knew. That woman, that person, he missed terribly.
There in that moment, close and potent, he waited until at last the ghost was somewhat faded. Here was what he had attempted to communicate to his daughter, this eternal ocean of feeling. Then he lay under the intense beam of his reading light, wrapped in his Paisley robe, unstirring, holding for this particle of time to what little more he could of the presence—mysterious, defined, animate, deep—of Clara Stern.
35
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Marta came down to work with Stern. Claudia and Luke, one of the office men, who had both been with Stern more than a decade, marveled at her—how pretty she was, how mature and poised. Then she and Stern occupied themselves drafting a motion to Chief Judge Winchell, asking that the date of Stern’s grand jury appearance be continued. Although it ended up less than three pages long, the motion took hours to compose, because the problems presented, as Marta recognized first, were complex. Ord
inarily, communications between a lawyer and his client for the purpose of securing legal advice were privileged—the government could not compel either the attorney or the client to disclose them. But was the privilege properly invoked here?
“That’s it?” asked Marta. The safe, a cubic foot of gunmetal, still stood behind Stern’s desk. “And you’ve never opened it?”
“I have no combination, and no permission from your uncle.”
Marta set a toe against it; she wore pink socks under her huaraches. Her leg—as much as showed when her billowy skirt fell away—was, Stern noted, dense with hair.
“Jesus, what is this made of? Lead? This thing would survive nuclear war.”
“Dixon values his privacy,” said Stern simply.
“Well, that’s a problem, don’t you think? How do we say that you received the contents for the purpose of providing legal advice when you’ve never seen them?”
Stern, who had not focused previously on this dilemma, reached for his unlit cigar.
“But, on the other hand,” said Marta, “doesn’t it tend to disclose confidential communications if you admit you’ve never opened the safe? Doesn’t that reveal the client’s instructions and show that the client has, in essence, told the lawyer that the contents are so sensitive he will not or cannot share them? And what about the Fifth Amendment in Dixon’s behalf?”
Marta went on a bit about that. She had a large, subtle mind. Stern, well aware of his daughter’s brilliance, was nonetheless impressed by her facility with matters to which she previously had had little exposure. She had gone to Stern’s library and digested the leading Supreme Court case as soon as they arrived, absorbing its difficult distinctions without lengthy study. Marta was wholly at ease in one of those complex areas where the law’s abstractions occasionally became as unavailable as higher mathematics to Stern himself.
Eventually, as they sat together drafting, they determined that their legal position for now was simple: given the potential applicability of attorney-client privilege, Stern could not properly proceed without instructions from Dixon. Accordingly, they asked the court to continue the subpoena briefly to allow Stern to consult with his client when he returned to town. Marta wrote each sentence on a yellow pad, reciting it aloud, and she and Stern edited, trading words. Stern, who by long habit did all such work alone, was delighted by the ease of this collaboration. When the motion was complete, Marta signed it as Stern’s lawyer.
“What happens if she orders you to testify tomorrow?” Marta asked. She was referring to Judge Winchell.
“I have to refuse, no?”
“And the government will move to hold you in contempt. She won’t put you in jail, will she?”
“Not tomorrow,” said Stern. “I would expect the judge to give me time to reconsider, or at least grant a stay, so we could go to the court of appeals. Eventually, of course, if I persist after being ordered to produce—” His hand drifted off. This happened, on occasion, lawyers jailed for resisting court orders detrimental to their clients. Among the defense bar, such imprisonments—usually brief—were regarded as a badge of honor, but Stern had no interest in martyring himself, particularly in Dixon’s behalf. “I am in your hands,” Stern told his daughter.
“No problem,” Marta said, and hugged him. “But be sure you bring your toothbrush.”
On Thursday morning at ten o’clock, at the precise moment he had been scheduled to appear before the grand jury, Stern and Marta entered the reception area of the chambers of Moira Winchell, chief judge of the federal district court. The allocation of space reflected the proportions of another century; while the judge’s chambers were grand and cavernous, the outer rooms constructed for secretaries, clerks, and criers were stinting, the desks and office equipment wedged together a little like a packed trunk. The narrow waiting area was bounded by a hinged balustrade of broad spindles. When they arrived, Sonny Klonsky sat on the sole available seat, flushed and pretty in spite of her grim demeanor. Stern’s heart spurted at the sight of her, then settled when she fixed him with a baleful look. He reintroduced Marta.
“We’re waiting for Stan,” said Klonsky, and with that, the United States Attorney pushed through the door, narrow and flawlessly kempt, humorless as a hatchet blade. Even to Stern, who regarded himself as fastidious about his personal appearance—treating himself to custom-made suits and shirts and even, once a year, a pair of shoes from a bootmaker in New York—Stan was impressive. He was the sort of fellow who did not cross his legs for fear of wrinkling his trousers. He greeted Stern properly, shaking his hand, and managed a smile when he was introduced to Marta.
With that, they were ushered into the chambers of the chief judge. Because of the secrecy of grand jury matters, the hearing—much to Stern’s good fortune—would be conducted here in private. Although the judge’s court reporter arrived through a side door, carrying his stenotype machine, the transcript would be held under seal, unavailable to reporters, the public, even other lawyers.
In the privacy of her chambers, Moira Winchell was personable. She wore a dark dress—no robe—and came out from behind her enormous mahogany desk, larger than certain small automobiles, to venture a cordial word to each of them. She had met Marta more than a decade ago—Stern had no recollection of this—and greeted her warmly.
“Are you practicing with your father now? How wonderful for him.”
The arrangement, Marta indicated, was temporary. As the greetings went on, Sonny ended up at Stern’s shoulder. She was almost exactly his height—he had made no note of that before—and he turned, without a thought of resistance, to stare at her, her strong face and handsome features. Like any good trial lawyer’s, her attention was entirely on the judge; she took no notice of Stern at first, and when she finally felt his gaze, she provided him with a quick distracted grin and turned away, following the judge’s suggestion that they all be seated at the conference table.
The furnishings here were in the ponderous Federal mode, massive pieces of handsome dark woods, ornamented only with deep, many-planed edges, American style, with no European gewgaws. Huge arched windows rose on two sides of the chambers, but the light remained somehow indirect, as if, in the dark style of the late nineteenth century, the architects had turned the building obliquely to the path of the sun. The judge as usual spoke her mind without inviting comment.
“Now look, Stan, I’ve read this motion. How can you refuse Sandy time to talk to his client?”
Marta, without expression, caught her father’s eye.
Sonny, rather than Sennett, answered for the government. The United States Attorney was present merely for emphasis, to let the judge know that the government viewed this as a signal matter. There was a history here, Klonsky said. The government had been seeking the documents it believed were in the safe for many weeks.
“Are you telling the court,” asked Marta, “that the grand jury has heard evidence about the contents of the safe?” This was an adroit question, turning the tables on the government in the hope that they might reveal something about their informant in order to support their position. But Klonsky veered at once from that course, saying that she was not commenting at all on what the government or grand jury knew.
“Then on what basis do you even issue the subpoena?”
The two young women went on contending. Stern, who had accepted his daughter’s caution to say nothing, sat back with peculiar detachment. With no speaking part, he did not feel fully himself. Sennett, at the far end of the table, kept his hands crossed primly as he listened; he was customarily a person of few words. The court reporter was taking down nothing, awaiting the judge’s instruction to go on the record. Stern after a moment realized he had lost track of the argument. Without looking back, he could not tell which of the young women was speaking; each had the same heated tone and confident timbre. The thought, for reasons he could not fathom, made him dizzy and sick at heart.
“Look. Look,” said the judge at last, “let’s cut through th
is. With documents missing, the government clearly has a broad right to inquire. So I’m not going to entertain any motion to quash, if that’s what you have in mind next, Marta. But I must say that the privilege questions here are not simple ones—they seldom are when an attorney is subpoenaed—and I cannot conceive of how Sandy could be forced to answer without being given the opportunity to consult with the client. So that will be my ruling.”
She pointed to the court reporter, who began to type now. The parties identified themselves for the record, and the judge permitted Marta and Klonsky to briefly state their positions. Then she allowed the motion.
“Off the record again,” the judge said to the court reporter. “What date do we fix?” She asked Sonny, “When does the grand jury meet again?”
“Next Tuesday, Your Honor,” she answered, “but that’s a special session called to hear just one witness.” She meant John. The government wanted Stern nowhere near when his son-in-law went before the grand jury to implicate Dixon. Apparently, they contemplated lengthy testimony.
After consulting the grand jury’s schedule, Judge Winchell set the subpoena over two weeks. Klonsky looked down the table to Sennett, who shrugged: nothing to do. Clearly, they had wanted to move more quickly. The indictment, as Tooley had guessed, was not far away.
“On the record,” said the judge to the court reporter. “Mr. Stern, you shall appear before the grand jury on July 20. If there are privileges to be asserted, we’ll take them up on a question-by-question basis. I’ll make a note of the date and I will be available if you need me. So ordered,” concluded the judge. The court reporter folded the tripod on his machine.
“One more thing,” said the judge, “for all of you.” She waved away the court reporter, who had paused, thinking they were going on the record again. “I don’t like to see lawyers in the grand jury. It’s a dangerous practice for both sides. I encourage you to resolve this among yourselves. Sandy, you’re ably represented. Very ably. The same is true of the government. With all these good lawyers, I find it hard to believe you can’t arrive at a proper solution among yourselves. I expect reason to prevail.” She flexed her brow and looked about the table at each of them. Hell to pay, in other words, for anyone who was unyielding.
