Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

Inside the outer door, Stern waited. A sound? Some sense of disturbance. He paused at the door to his office, which was ordinarily locked but now stood barely ajar. From the threshold, he pushed it wider. Across the rooms on Stern's cream-colored sofa, Dixon was asleep. He had stunk up the space with his cigarettes and the effluvium of his slumbers.

Beside him, on the carpeting, stood the safe. 'Quietly, Stern slipped behind his desk. He worked there for about fifteen minutes, until a client called, the defendant in the waste-dump investigation, a heavy-bellied fellow named Alvin Blumberg. Alvin was one of those types guilty as sin and paralyzed with fear; he wanted what he would never hear-a promise he would go free. Stern listened as Alvin ventilated, complaining about the prosecutors, his business partners, the intolerance of his wife. AfterSsome time, he broke off the call. He would have to introduce Alvin to Sondra. When he replaced the phone, Dixon was just sitting up, stretching out, yawning, rubbing his eyes. He was wearing a simple cotton camp shirt and a pair of pleated trousers; a heavy gold chain was around his neck, and he immediately pounded at his shirt pockets looking for his cigarettes.

"What time is it?"

Stern told him..

"I have to call Silvia. You rind?"

Stern pushed the phone to the corner of the desk and watched as Dixon spoke with his wife: He had come down to Sandy's., there were papers.to look at, he had been here all night. "He"s sitting righthere. He found me asleep. Ask him. You found me asleep, right?" Dixon turned the phone around. Stern, reluctant to be Dixon's prop and his excuse for a night spent God knows where, murmured in the direction of the mouthpiece that Dixon had been asleep. "You see?" Dixon then ran through his schedule for the day with her, every meeting, each person he expected to see. "I love you," said Dixon near the end of the call. Stern watched him, tanned, whiskcry, the flesh beneath his jaw slackening, His wavy hair was beginning to thin. Age was overcoming him, but Dixon still brought to his conversation with Silvia all earthly interest. In their waning years, as they.slipped into dotage, Dixon and Silvia would maintain their happy fixation on one another, aided, no doubt, by some inevitabIe dwindling of Dixon's interest in other pursuits. The recognition, as usual, affected Stern: however thwarted or immature Dixon's emotional life, it was no lie when Dixon told Silvia he loved her. After his discoveries on Sunday Stern would have expected that witnessing this exchange,. as he had so often over the years, would have driven him to rage, but his immediate sensation was of absence, pining the sting of real envy-his own wife was gone,,.

"You want to go get some breakfast?" Dixon asked him. He had cradled the phone.

"What is it you have brought me, Dixon?"

"You wanted the fucking safe? There's the fucking safe. Am you happy now? Problems all solved?"

"The government also wishes an affidavit from me stating that the contents have not been disturbed." ',So give them the affidavit."

"How am I able to do that?"

"You want to see what's in there?"

"On the contrary. I am simply making a point."

"I want you to look." The safe was facing him and Dixon spun the dial.

After reaching in, he threw a single piece of paper down on the glass of the desk. It was Dixon's check, folded in four, the one he had written to cover the debit balance on the Wunderkind account. Stern found his glasses and made a considerable show of studying the document. ' 'No more?"

"You know what the fuck you're looking at?" Dixon had given up all sign of his civilized manners. He was his true self now, agitated and profane.

"I believe I understand the significance of the check to the government." If they turned over only this, Sonny Klonsky would accuse Stern of more bad faith, of conforming the contents of the safe to the contours of the govemment's knowledge. Of course, that would remain one more private grief between them-she would never be able to tell Sennett what she had revealed. "The prosecutors seem to believe that there are account documents somewhere."

"Are?" asked Dixon, with one of his roguish smiles, He was stressing the present tense.

"That would be most foolish, Dixon."

"Well, I kind of agree," he said. "I was having a little bonfire, and then I had second thoughts, but that's MI I could save." He pointed to the check. "They won't complain, They'll have my head on a platter, anyway, if they ever get hold of that."

"Assuming they' have not obtained this check already," said Stern.

"Where would they get it?" "It is possible, of course, that this was what they were llooking for with their subpoenas to your bank."

Absorbing that thought, Dixon proceeded to the obvious: Why bother with the safe if they could already establish Dixon's control of the Wunderkind account? Tactics, Stern explained. Proof that Dixon was withholding documents would provide compelling evidence of his guilty frame of mind.

"You mean I've fallen into their trap?" Dixon asked. "In all likelihood,, said Stern. He had his hands folded: He was relentlessly composed. He had never given a better performance. Dixon, in the meantime, stroked his chin thoughtfully. He sighed, pulled his nose; he shook his head."

"You think I should plead guilty, don't you? That's what you said last time."

"If one is guilty, that is always an alternative that merits serious consideration,.."

"So what'll happen to me? What kind of deal can you cut?"

"The usual wisdom is to attempt to buy freedom. Negotiate for a heavy financial penalty and a lesser prison "How much time?"

"These days? With the federal sentencing guidelines, probably three years."

"And when do I get paroled?"

"There is no longer parole in the federal systems' ' ' 'Jesus.,' ' "Very harsh,"

"And I voted Republican," said Dixon. He smiled stiffly.

"How much do I have to give them to get this three-year bargain?"

"One can only estimate, Dixon. Certainly millions. God only knows how much Stan Sennett will want you to forfeit.

Probably some large portion of the value of your interest in MD. It will be very costly."

"Hmm." Again he gripped his chin and, unpredictably, smiled. "They can't forfeit whatthey can't find, can they?"

This thought, of what was hidden in the Caribbean, seemed to fortify Dixon for a moment. Silvia would be well provided for. Stern saw his logic.

Dixon lit a cigarette.

"If you do not mind, Dixon, it would give me a better sense of our negotiating position if I had an idea of what actually transpired."

"You already know," he said, but ran through it quickly: how he was informed of large orders to be executed in Chicago and immediately called the central order desk to place front-running trades in Kindle.

He described his use of the house error and Wunderkind accounts to gather and shelter the profits. "Pretty fucking clever," concluded Dixon, "if I do say so myself."

"What about that account, Dixon-Wunderkind? What was that?"

"Just a corporate account. I'd had it set up for this."

"And what was John's role in all of this?"

"John? John is a lunkhead. He did what I told him. John would think it was raining if you pissed in his eyes."

Dixon looked at his cigarette and tapped his foot; he was wearing smooth Italian shoes of taupe-colored leather. He seemed at ease.

"A man of your wealth, Dixon. It is-"

"Oh, don't start moralizing, Stern. That's the markets, okay? Down there, we eat our young. Everybody does it.

Shit, the customers do it-the ones who know what's up.

It's humanity in the jungle. I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar, that's all. I want to move on. I want to get this fucking thing over with." He slapped his knees and looked at his brother-in-law directly-ruddy, vital, still handsome, Dixon Harmell, colossus of the marketplace. "I want to plead guilty," he said.