Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

"It was over the line. The way he handled it." She fingered the ribbon on her hat. "Listen, Sandy, I wasn't doing you a special favor. At least, I don't think I was. I just got really uneasy with the idea of enforcing a subpoena based on that kind of information if we hadn't disclosed the source. I could just see it: the judge locks you up and then finds out there was a sensitive issue which the government never mentioned. She could land on us with both feet. I thought if you wrote a brief, maybe you'd raise it, maybe we would. It would give me a chance to talk to Stan again,"

Stern nodded. Her reasoning had been cautious, sound. More thoughtful-more lawyerlymthan her boss's.

"Don't think I'm not still pissed at you," Sonny said." "I am. That was an ugly little charade out in the cofntry -asking me questions about those account papers, like you'd never seen them in your life."

"I had not seen them," he said simply. "Ever in my life."

She studied him intently, trying to figure it out, whether he was telling the truth, and if he was, how it could be.

"I really don't understand," she said, then raised a hand.

"I know. You've got your confidences, right?"

"Correct."

"It must be a hell of a story." She shrugged. "I suppose that's why you don't want to tell it to the grand jury."

For an instant, he said nothing.

"Sonny, when we were in the country you shared as much as you could with me out of a sense of fairness. I would like to respond in kind.

Speaking with Stan this morning, I am sure I left him with the impression that I wished to meet in order to complain about the goverp. ment's use of my son as an informant. No question, I shall do a good deal of that. But assuming that Mr. Sennett is willing to make the concessions he ought to in the circumstances, I would expect our discussion to lead eventually to an agreement for Dixon to enter a guilty plea."

She took that in and then tipped her head admiringly. "Nice timing," she said.

"I believe so." They both lingered with the thought of how far Sennerr would go to prevent Stern from causing a stir about the government's tactics with Peter. "So, you see, there will be no further grand jury investigation or contempt proceedings."

She smiled when she made the connection.

"You want me to kiss and make up with Stan before he knows?

Right?".Sonny laughed out loud. "0o, that's sneaky," she said. "And, boy, does he deserve it."

Stern smiled with her, but did not speak. Sonny fanned herself again with her hat.

"Look, Sandy, I'm okay with him. He didn't fire me. He knew he should have clued me in a long time before on something this delicate. And besides, he's political enough to figure out the angles. An Assistant out there criticizing him on the issue? No way he can have that. He hasto keep me inside the tent. He just took me off the case. He said I'm not objective about you." With that, due to the heat perhaps, or what she had said, or one of the many bodily quirks of pregnancy, her color rose again-her cheeks grew bright, so that for all the world he had the impression of a flower unfolding. "Which I'm not," she added quickly, showing a swift, rueful smile and allowing her eyes to drift to him, where they remained.

It was, Stern thought, a sweet look they shared.

"I think I might have mn away with you that night," she said quietly,

"if you had asked."

"And I was so close to asking," he answered. Until he heard himself, it did not occur to him that they both had spoken of something in the past, but now, for the first time, that seemed to suit him just as well.

Speaking, he had found some touch of grace, a perfect note, so that neither she nor he nor anyone passing would ever know precisely where the meter fell, how much of even one syllable was uttered in the kindliest jest or the truest lost ardor.

"Regrettably," he continued, "you are married."

She placed both hands on her stomach. "Lucky for me."

"Just so," he answered.

"I told Charlie we got married so we could be crazy together, so we just have to go on that way." She laughed at herself, flipped her hat, took her feet. "Tell me you approve."

"I do," he said.

"That makes one of us."

He laughed out loud.

"Sonny, you have inspired me," he said. He took a step closer, and she averted her face slightly, giving him her cheek. But he did not kiss her. Instead, moved or, as he would have it, inspired, he placed one of his soft hands on each of her bare shoulders, and then in some peculiar ceremony, standing just a few inches from her, let them travel down her arms, a strange would-be embrace. He grasped her above the elbows, on the forearms, at last her hands. She had raised her face by then to greet him, eye to eye.

"When I grow up," she said, "I want to be like Sandy Stern.

SO that was life, thought Stern. He descended in the Morgan Towers elevators, blinking off the presence of this young woman as if he were emerging from strong light. For an instant he was full of doubt. On another day, when he was less weakened by lack of sleep, might there have been a different outcome? The doors fell open to the noon sun blazing through the 1obby's enormous plate-glass windows, and as he stepped forward, eyes stinging, light-headed, he was amazed to find again that he felt more positively himself than he had in months. The core thingsnot simply the safe items, but matters of faith and influence-remained in place, impervious to the stamp of failure. He touched the center button on his suit jacket'and lifted his chin properly, as he so often did. Mr. Alejandro Stern.

He did not return to the office. Instead, he drove home and went immediately to bed. He would rise and re-dress in time for his appointment with Sennett. But right now he 'needed solemn contemplation. One of the philosophers, Descartes, Stern believed, had chosen his bed as the site for intense reflection, and for unknown reasons Stern had long followed his example. Most of his closing arguments were composed here, with a bed tray beside him amply laid with food and a yellow pad. He wrote down very little. Instead, he weaved the arguments and phrases in his mind-the same sentences, the same notions, again and again, until his consciousness was little more than the passionate speech he was going to deliver. Today it was Clara. Her last hours now belonged to him.

Stern had known a number of suicides. It was one more sad facet of his practice-so many of his clients were intent on doing harm to themselves one way or the other. He had stopped asking himself why decades ago.

For too many of them, the answers were obvious: the self-negation, the willful personal abuse, the deficits, shames, the scars. In the late fifties, when he was starting out, Stern had defended the drag case brought against a local rock'n'roll star who went by the name of Harky Malarky. Harky was full of the untamed moonstruck bleakness of an Irish bard and always danced along the precipice. Morphine addiction.

Destructive women. Violent friends. He died, blind drank, on a motorcycle he purposely raced from the roadside into a magnificent Utah canyon.

And there were others, not as vivid as Harky, but they 'all had the same unshakable belief that they were doomed.

And Clara had it, too. He had always known that. A terrible hard-bitten pessimism, an absolute gloom, She never foresaw a future in which she was included. A psychiatrist he had met over the years, Guy Pieace, confessed to Stern one night at a private moment, during a party at the Cawleys', that he wrestled with the impulse to commit suicide each day. He got up every morning and it was a task as certain as shaving and going to the office: he must not kill himself. That night, Pieace said, he had seen a goblin of sorts beckoning to him from a lamppost. He had driven around the block three times to be certain it was not there.. His wife, who was accustomed to this, took it calmly, knowing that he would have to satisfy himself.