The Last Trial

by Scott Turow

  “And what is that?”

  “Whatever Kiril says when he calls.”

  “And how often is that, Donatella?”

  She worries her head a little, to indicate the number does not really matter to her. She has dressed for dinner, with a high lace bodice and a heavy necklace in which Stern suspects the many jewels of imposing size are real.

  “Once or twice a week. He keeps asking me to join him there. He has a lawyer who has convinced him that the government of Argentina will never consent to extradition. Do you think that is true?”

  Quite deliberately, Stern has not studied the matter. His guess, however, is that Argentina has the same kind of rich-people’s exceptions to the insider trading laws as the US and that something—the fact that only the grandchildren benefited, or that the medical information about the g-Livia patients was no longer confidential—will provide ample fodder for an argument that what Kiril has been found guilty of is either not a crime under Argentine laws or is not one covered by the extradition treaty between the two countries.

  “Are you considering joining him?” Stern asks.

  “Not really,” Donatella answers. “As you know, we always visit Argentina once or twice a year and I will continue to do that. I have reached the point in my life when a few days with Kiril now and then will be quite enough.” It is none of Stern’s business why, only now, Donatella has reached this decision. He would have thought she had reached her limit a few years ago when Kiril first announced he was abandoning her for Olga. She had asked only to be treated with dignity and respect for appearances while he wandered, and in the end he was unwilling to grant her even that. Although Stern has not worked out the particular geometry of this, he suspects that Donatella’s decision to stand by Kiril during the trial might have been more about protecting Lep than her husband.

  Still, it makes a gloomy end to what had been a grand romance, at least as Kiril told the story. Stern had heard it from him years ago during one of their annual lunches at the Morgan Towers Club during the holiday season when the courts and Kiril’s lab were all but closed. Kiril brought wine from the family vineyard in Mendoza, which they drank slowly as the winter light weakened in the room and the staff turned the other tables for breakfast.

  ‘I was shameless,’ Pafko said, meaning that he had refused to accept Donatella’s insistence that he stop flirting, wooing. He had met her after coming to Buenos Aires as a medical student, determined to ingratiate himself with BA’s prominent families. She was tall and beautiful, six years married and still childless. Her husband, in the Italian way, was two decades older, and perhaps Donatella already sensed that her destiny as a mother was going to be thwarted due to a failure not her own. Certainly, Ricardo, the husband, never fathered any children after the end of his marriage to Donatella. Kiril, with the predatory instincts of a panther when it came to romance, sensed a vulnerability.

  But in his telling, he was stirred by more than just the appetite for a difficult conquest. He felt instantly that Donatella and he operated on their own frequency, a channel only she and he could hear, and one that they each had long assumed had no other listeners. He invented excuses to see her, showing up at events he knew she would attend. Catching her as she went to the cloakroom, he would get as close as possible and whisper that she must agree to meet him. Or in a crowded hall, when others broke off and left them together an instant, he would murmur, ‘I am in a fever.’ She rolled her eyes; she told him to stop. But she never involved any outside authority whom it would be dangerous to ignore, like her husband or her priest. Kiril sent flowers that would arrive midday when Ricardo was at work. He found a drifter on the street, who followed her to a shop and placed a small gift in her hands: a thin chain, a bottle of scent, something too tiny for her husband to notice.

  ‘I wore her down. It took months.’ The day she accepted from him an antique tiger’s-eye ring was the day he knew she would soon be in his arms.

  Kiril says he understood that by then a person of her intellect and capacity would yearn to escape the narrow boundaries of a marriage her parents had regarded as wise to another of BA’s regal families, with large tombs at the Recoleta Cemetery. Kiril promised America. And a life at the forefront of science. They ran off together. He married her in front of a judge in Kindle County, years before her husband actually agreed to a divorce.

  What we hope for in the love of others, Stern has decided, is often illusory. Happy marriages—and Stern has had at least one—begin with an understanding of the limits on what can be asked. For Donatella, it was the deal made by women in the eons when they knew they had little chance to be great themselves. But Kiril had delivered. She was the wife of a Nobel Prize winner and never had to surrender that distinction. He was great because she had helped him be great.

  “Kiril asks me in every call if I have spoken to you,” Donatella says now. “I have a number if you want to talk to him yourself. He knows he put Marta and you in an embarrassing position by departing.”

  Stern shrugs. “He is not the first client to misuse his lawyer. Marta has said from the start, Donatella, that Kiril chose us as his counsel because he knew that I would not challenge his lies.”

  “Well, Sandy, you are an old friend. And still a magnificent lawyer. You were my suggestion, if you must know, and I remain convinced that I gave Kiril excellent advice.”

  “Because I would not demand the truth?”

  “And what truth is that, Sandy?”

  “About Lep, certainly.”

  Donatella, so graceful, tries not to falter, but her eyes dart off quickly at the mention of her son. She fingers the heavy sterling spoon over her Limoges dinner plate, which has been reserved there for dessert.

  “I have a request, Sandy. A personal request.”

  Now, Stern thinks, we get to the point of dinner. He nods, meaning only that he will listen.

  “Please leave dear Lep in peace,” says his mother. “He is a wonderful son, a wonderful scientist, a wonderful father. This has been a horrible time for him. For years now.”

  If the roof caves in on Innis and the prosecutors extract the truth from her, Lep’s horrible time might get considerably worse. But Lep has excellent lawyers and they will know, if they ever hear Innis’s story about Lep’s role, that it is uncorroborated and the word of someone easily attacked as a perjurer. Moses is far too responsible to bring charges on that basis, as long as Lep is wise enough to keep his peace and not contradict himself. Given that, Stern understands why Lep’s legal team has advised him to stay clear of Sandy.

  Donatella watches Stern avidly, as he works these things through.

  “I must address one matter with Lep,” Stern says then. “For my own sake. I do not need to discuss any of the evidence against Kiril—datasets, none of that. But I need to be face-to-face with him. And with respect, I demand that. I would hate to send the Greenwood County Sheriff’s Police to his door. He will understand what I mean by that.” Her dark eyes are stilled by caution, even alarm. He sees the words coming to her and adds, “Please do not ask.”

  “And can you promise, Sandy, that no harm will come to Lep?”

  A challenging question. “I am sorry, Donatella, but I can promise only the reverse. If he will not see me, then his troubles are going to multiply manyfold. Certainly, if we speak, I will remember he is the son of a very dear and valued friend.” He takes Donatella’s old hand as he says this, with a touch firm enough to be reassuring. “But if Lep is evasive with me or shades the truth, I will do as he fears.”

  She nods a bit, then looks at the candles aflame at the center of the table in the heavy sterling silver candlesticks.

  “Now, I have a question for you, Donatella. I understand that you recommended me to Kiril, expecting that I would be reluctant to advise Kiril to turn on his son, whom I have known since he was a boy. But that does not explain Kiril’s compliance, undergoing a trial on murder charges of which he knew he was innocent. What is puzzling is that up to that point, h
e exhibited little ability to restrain himself for Lep’s sake.”

  “Oh that, Sandy. That is simple.” Stern waits. Donatella again eyes the spoon, turning it over in her knotted fingers, while a smile forms, a rare moment in which she exhibits deep appreciation of herself. The heat in the house comes on, adding a whisper behind them that further conceals Donatella’s lowered voice. Stern edges forward to hear her better. “I told him if he accused Lep of having any part in this that I would take Lep’s side, even if that meant giving testimony against Kiril. The law? I know nothing about that really. But Lep’s revenge on his father—that, frankly Sandy, was well deserved.” It was of course a revenge for his mother’s sake, too, whom Kiril was planning to leave in her dotage. Stern has not recognized that part of Lep’s motivation before, but Donatella would have grasped it instantaneously. “Whatever Lep said to escape responsibility, I would raise my hand to God and say that Kiril had admitted to me doing exactly that. Perhaps a brilliant lawyer could poke holes in the government’s case and contrive a way to secure Kiril’s freedom. But the path out of this maze could never come at Lep’s expense.”

  As she says, it is simple—even if it reveals more of the brutal truths of her marriage to Kiril.

  At the door, Stern hugs her. At this age, it is common for him to wonder when he parts with old friends if he will ever be with them again, and in this case, he knows he has seen far too much of the pain in Donatella’s life for her to seek out his company in the future. After the door opens, he lifts her hand to kiss it and then says, resolutely, “Goodbye, dear Donatella.”

  38. The Other Dr. Pafko

  The following evening, Stern and Pinky have just returned from the office and are about to settle down to soup when the front doorbell rings. Pinky goes off to answer, but Stern recognizes Lep Pafko’s voice and rises as Pinky admits Lep through the storm door. The fur-trimmed hood of Lep’s parka is around his face. Pinky says nothing to him but instead strikes one index finger against the other, as if making fire. The gesture seems comical, but Lep stops cold when he takes in the fierce look Pinky is giving him. Stern eases her out of the doorway, and Pinky stalks off without further word.

  He points Lep to the living room. This is the only space in the whole house that feels slightly haunted to Stern. He has never experienced any discomfort about continuing to inhabit the place he shared with Helen or sleeping in their bed. He feels her presence and enjoys it. The living room is another matter. It had a kind of mausoleum quality even when Helen was alive. It was reserved for guests and always pristine. Despite owning two housefuls of furniture between them, Helen insisted on newly redecorating this room and, once that was done, barely used it. Formality was never a comfort to Helen. There was not a breath of it in her. Stern always adored Helen’s unwillingness to be guided by other people’s social expectations, an attitude she had helped him assume to a degree.

  As for the living room, it is a nice enough space with a beautiful malachite hearth on the fireplace, but when he is in here Stern feels like a visitor. Nonetheless, with Pinky about to throttle Lep, it is a safer choice than the family room behind the kitchen, where Lep would feel the weight of Pinky’s black stare.

  He offers a drink to Lep, who asks only for a glass of water without ice, and Stern returns to the kitchen.

  “Give me a minute alone with him,” Pinky says, as she’s studying her phone, “and I’ll beat down his scientific ass.” Pinky would be giving away at least eight inches and seventy pounds, but if Stern had to wager on the outcome of those fisticuffs, his money would be on his granddaughter.

  “Very gallant, Pinky. I shall let you know if I need any help.”

  Returning, Stern puts the water on the coffee table in front of Lep. With his forlorn expression, he has the look of a prisoner who knows that his interrogation may devolve at any second to brutality. He has declined to remove his coat, simply pulling back the hood and opening the zipper, and is perching on the edge of the sofa. He clearly wants nothing to detain him if he decides to race for the door.

  “Donatella said you needed to talk to me,” he says.

  “I assume you understand why.”

  Despite his natural good looks, the blondish froth of hair and sharp features, Lep did not weather the trial especially well, and no wonder. His eye sockets are now rings of gray, and his nostrils seem permanently edged in red. Has he been crying? Possibly. Possibly for years now.

  “Maybe it’s better, Sandy, if you just tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Lep is not about to volunteer any confessions, which is not a promising start.

  “What is on my mind, Lep, is that you tried to kill me on the highway.”

  Assuming Donatella passed along Stern’s remark about the Greenwood County Sheriff’s Police, Lep has arrived knowing the subject of their conversation, but even so his eyes go still, and his jaw moves unconsciously.

  “Do you deny that?” Stern asks.

  Lep shakes his head but still doesn’t speak.

  Stern continues to stare hard at Lep and says finally, “Explain yourself, please.”

  “‘Explain’ myself?” He manages a sound that approaches a sardonic laugh. “Sandy, you hear people say they’re losing their grip? I lost my grip about five years ago. In my whole life, I was never an impulsive person. I mean, even as a teenager, I’d look at what other kids did and think it was crazy. Climbing the water tower to write your name? Or jumping off the Heights into the Kindle? What was the point? But then I got involved with her.” He is reluctant even to pronounce Olga’s name. “Before that, I sort of thought I understood the way things go. You look at a woman, but you’re married. Your father makes your blood boil, but everybody’s got a father. But once I, I don’t know, gave in, whatever you call it—now it’s like there’s a leak in me somewhere. Something happens and there are moments when I can’t seem to pull back.”

  Many of the persons Stern represented throughout his career could have given Stern the same speech, but most were not even self-aware enough to recognize their condition. After Clara died, Stern had found himself shockingly out of control for a brief period. And overall, it had informed the rest of his life—and for the better. He restrained himself out of wisdom, not fear. But Lep, thus far, does not seem to have learned many lessons.

  “Were you in love with Olga, Lep?”

  Lep looks up abruptly. Stern might have pinched him. Sandy wonders if he’s the first person to ask Lep that question out loud. It is actually none of Stern’s business, although it explains why Lep’s persistent anger with Kiril boiled over. But the younger Dr. Pafko turns his head ruefully several times.

  “I really don’t know. It was exciting. It was really, really exciting, and new that way. She said she was in love with me. But I love my family. I always knew I loved my family.”

  Stern decides he is not entitled to any follow-up. Affairs, by their nature, rarely follow an established etiquette. He returns to the subject that brought Lep here.

  “And what was it I did to turn you toward homicide?”

  “I was terrified, Sandy. Completely terrified. Back in March, that afternoon, Olga came to my office as soon as you left her. We don’t speak much. Never, really, now. So it was very strange to see her there, but she said, ‘I want to warn you. Your father’s lawyer was asking me a lot of questions about our relationship. Me and you.’ She seemed to think you might have figured that out.”

  Stern asks, “And if I had?”

  “Then you’d figure out everything else eventually.”

  Was that true? Possibly, yes. He certainly would have been well on the track once he recognized the dimension of the rage Lep had to feel for Kiril and the perversity of their situation.

  “Lep, I could not offer a defense your father did not approve of.”

  “I wasn’t thinking like that. And besides, Kiril will always do what’s best for him in the end. It just seemed to me that if you knew, sooner or later it would all come out in court. I’d lose m
y family. And maybe end up in the defendant’s chair, too.” Lep flaps his arms like a flightless bird. Even describing his fears does not seem to do justice to their magnitude. “I mean, I’d waited every day for two and a half years for the whole thing to unravel. And then I was terrified it had. I was barely holding it together with Kiril under indictment, and then, thinking you’d pieced it all together, I really felt like I should just swallow a bottle of pills.” He actually reaches forward and sips sparingly from his water.

  “You’ve probably never had a real panic attack, Sandy, but it doesn’t necessarily get better with time to think about things. Sometimes, when you get in your head, your fantasies, it all just multiplies. I was sitting there with my heart flying apart for about an hour after Olga left, and then I saw you limping out to the parking lot.”

  “So you signed out a car?”

  “I already had the keys. Once I became CEO, I mean Acting, there were weeks at a time when I was in the office later than the train ran. Oscar would just sign out a car to me and bring the keys by my office. When my schedule lightened up, I’d return it. Nobody really asks you questions, Sandy, when you’re the boss.”

  “But looking out the window, you decided to kill me?”

  “I decided to follow you. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I don’t know, maybe I thought I’d signal you to pull over and explain the whole thing to you and beg you to keep quiet. I don’t know. The thinking part doesn’t have a lot of room next to the panic. I was literally driving ninety down the highway, and then I saw your car. And swerved into you. But at the last second, I pulled away from the driver’s door, I really did. And I can’t tell you how I felt when I hit you. It was like, No, no, now it’s all worse. Now I had something even more terrible to be panicked about. I was so happy you recovered. Really. I know how stupid it is to say that, but I was, like, ecstatic when I heard you were going to be okay.”

  “Especially when it turned out that after brain surgery, I was none the wiser about Olga and you. I assume you took the Malibu directly to a body shop?”