Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

You trade ahead of customers, in ten or twenty lots, you don't hurt a soul. Not really.

It's against the rules because if everybody did it the customers would get maimed. But one guy? No harm. It was found money. And it's money that a lot of people down there have found. You think Dixon never traded ahead of a customer?"

"No one has ever cited Dixon as a moral exemplar."

"That's for sure," said Peter with a flash of the same hard light he had shown when he said he wasn't sorry. Stern told his son to go on.

It was at this point, Peter said, that Kate found out.

There was a confession, said Peter, lots of tears.

"She makes him promise that he won't do it again. He's ripped off another 275 K by now, and he reassures her. No way. No chance. He'll never have to do it again. And promptly goes right into the dumper in the market. So he's down to his last twenty, thirty thousand, and he makes The Big Mistake. He hears all these ramors about left-handed sugar. You know about that?"

"Enough," said Stern.

"John thinks he's got inside dope-he bets the ranch that the world sugar market is going to collapse. And he gets creamed. Destroyed. The market goes up so fast he can't even get out. When the smoke clears, not only has he lost every penny in the Wunderkind account he now owes MD $250,000 to pay for the losses in the value of the positions over and above his equity."

"Enter Dixon?" asked Stern.

"Almost," said Peter. "First, John panics. You can say anything you want to about what he did, but it was low risk. Different Exchanges?

And the best bean counter in America couldn't follow the paper trail between the error account and the Wunderkind account without someone to help him. But now, with a quarter-million-dOllar deficit, he's in deep.

Obviously, they have no money. And he can't like come to the family for a loan. So he takes what seems to be the only alternative. He starts trashing all the records that show who owns the account-you know, the idea is that way they can't find him. He zaps the computer system, he cleans out the files here. He fries up the microfiche.

Unfortunately, the duplicate fiche is in Chicago. John had actually called a clerk there with some bullshit and had him ready to send the dupes, but the clerk asked what'shername first. Who's in charge there?"

"Margy Allison."

"That's it." Margy, Peter said, called Dixon, who by then had heard from MD's accounting department about the Wunderkind account and its sizable deficit balance. Dixon told Margy to send him the records John had requested. When he summoned John to his office two days later, Dixon had the pages he'd printed' out off the fiche and the account statements spread across his desk.

"He had John sit down in one of those Corbusier chairs he's got, the deep square ones with the stainless-steel frames?

Then he gets hold of John by the tie, puts his knee in his chest, and beats the living crap out of him. Quite a scene, apparently. Dixon's big,' but he's not John's size. But John lies there like a lump, bleed'me and crying, just sort of begging."

Peter grabbed a bit at his rumpled hair. Dixon by then had written his own check for the deficit in the Wunderkind account. He preferred that to admitting to his best customers, the ones who had placed the large orders John had traded ahead of, that no one noticed while an employee-worse yet, a relation-had stolen them blind. And he couldn't simply write off the debit without drawing a great deal of attention from his in-house accountants. It was all one pocket or the other, anywi, and to cover himself with the customers, Dixon preferred to keep this quiet.

"But, of course," said Peter, "Uncle Dixon was tear-ass.

John's fouled his nest, put the whole business in jeopardy, and Uncle Dixon announces that John's going to pay for it, Dixon-style. Big speech. 'You are now my fucking slave."

"Peter thrust his elbows out in imitation of Dixon and rumbled on; he was an able mimic.

"'You've seen your last raise or bonus in this century, and you'll do anything I decide you'll do, whenever I want. you'll be a floor runner or a window washer or the guy who cleans the latrines, if that's what I say. Aod if you ever think about leaving, or so much as crap crooked, I'll ruin you. I'll take the hit with the customers, and I'll call the CFTC, the FBI, George Bush, anybody I can think of, and I'll tell them this has been laying heavy on my soul, and I'll beg them to fry your ass." And to back it up, Dixon makes a big show of taking all the account records and throwing them in his personal safe and telling John that they're always going to be there."

"John believed Dixon would carry through?"

"You bet your life."

Stern thought about Margy's story and the legend of Dixon's wrath murmured among his employees. Dixon, no doubt, was convincing when he bragged about his own cruelty.

"In fact, Uncle Dixon says, on second thought, he will turn John in.

He's going to turn him in tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and he says it'll be the day after that. Then he's back on the fence. And so this is John's life. He works on the order desk. Then, when everybody's gone, Dixon finds something humiliating for him to do, like sort the, trash.

And then every other day Dixon says he's thought it'over, the best course for him is just to drop the dime on John.

One day he calls John to his office, while he phones the CFtC Enforcement Division and has this long chat about error accounts. He gets hold of a photo of John and draws bars across it. He even gives John the draft of a letter that Dixon says he's sent to the U.S.

Attorney. Every day, it's something else. My beloved uncle is practicing extreme mental cruelty. Hard to believe of him, of course." Stern, tempted to comment, said nothing at all.

"So that's where this thing is when Kate comes to see me.

John is in Uncle Dixon's prison, which by now, he figures, is ten times worse than the real thing. At this point, Kate and he have decided the only thing John can do is bite the bullet: John will call the FBI and confess and go to prison, and Kate will terminate her pregnancy. This is their life plan. And riobody's kidding. All right?"

Peter finished his soda and burped again. He nodded to his father.

"Did you think perhaps," said Stern after a moment, "that I might be helpful in an arena in which I have worked for most of my life?"

"First of all, Dixon was your client, which means he was an object of religious worship. And second, what the hell would you do?"

"Obviously, I would speak with Dixon."

"And how would you prevent him from going to the law?

That's what he said he'd 'do. That would leave John without even the benny of having turned himself. in."

"I ould ask Dixon not to do so.?"

"And he's always done just what you w ' anted; fight His son had lifted his face to a haughty angle. Peter was an angry young man, no doubt about that. Life deeply dissatisfied him-people failed him in all respects. He was not gay, Stern suddenly thought. He was, rather, oddly misanthropic. He rendered help out of some sense of superiority or noble duty, but he expected-perhaps even enjoyed-disappointment, time and again. He had full faith in no one.

In this, Stern realized, to a greater measure than he wished, Peter was his son.

"I thought about this for a long time. I went to dinner out there and I talked to Kate and John all night. I took Dixon's little letter to theUiS. Attorney home with me, where he'd laid out the whole seam. I kept going over the details. And then, of course, I figured out the answer. The obvious fucking answer: John should go to the FBI.

But…" Peter, maestro-like, had lifted both hands. "Yes?"

"But blame Dixon. Say it was,ll Dixon's show. John was minorly involved, just the flunky." They looked intently at one another, "Very clever," said his father at last.