Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

"You know how that thing got itself started? You ever hear that tale?" asked Margy.

"I did not receive what I would call vivid detail," said Stern. "As I recall, it was Dixon's position that the Service had received information from an employee. A tip.

Brady? Was that his name?"

"Right. You remember Merle. With this little mustache sort of split in two. He ran all our operations for a while. A computer.wizard, hack-off, hacker, whatever that is."

Margy flapped a hand. "Remember?"

Stern shrugged: vaguely. Dixon's people came and went. So far as Stern recalled, Mefie's departure, in a dispute over a raise, had been oddly timed with the start of the IRS inquiry. Apparently, he had fulminated and delivered threats before he left: What I know, what I can do. He was out to scuttle Dixon's ship.

"My assumption," said Stern, "was that Merle must have been the person who received certain critical' instructions. ' ' "No, no," said Margy,.with an evasive smile. "Dixon isn't the kind to hand anyone a rope. But Brady, you know, he'd look at that little o1' cathode-ray tube. He'd figure out all sorts of everything. That's how he got Dixon's number."

Stern uttered a sound. This made sense. Brady knew enough to make trouble, but not to deliver the coup de grace.

"Anyway fast forward two years. The IRS had done its own proctoscopy on Dixon-"

"His term," she said. They smiled at one another. Dixon, with his quirks and passions, and his well-concealed inner core, was secret terrain they had both explored. They were initiates. Acolytes. In their shared understanding of this phenomenon, there was a strange intimacy.

"This, as they say back home, this is the good part." Port, she said.

"One day Dixon's in the Union League Club in DuSable, and guess who's there? Why, it's ol' Brady. You'd think Dixon'd pick up an ashtray or somethin and bang this boy on the head, but no, sir, he's downright friendly.

Dixon shakes his hand. Tells him how glad he is to see him, too, sorry they lost touch, all kinds of buddy-boy sweettalk. And Brady, you know, he's like everybody else, he never knew whether to smile or pee in his pants when Dixon showed up, he's' quite relieved. Dixon takes his business card. Brady's working as a back office consultant, and Dixon starts sending Brady work, I couldn't believe it when I saw the cheeks, I got on the phone, I said, 'Dixon, what the hell are you doin now?" He just says, you know, 'Leave me be, lady, I know my business." I figure maybe he's had a character transplant or somethin, he's become forgiving, maybe he's been hearin Billy Graham."

She took a drink and Stern lifted his glass with her. He had never seen this side of Margy before. She was a storyteller in the old tradition.

She needed a porch and a jug of corn whiskey. He had a sense, listening to her, of the way she had grown up watching men, admiring them, taken in by them in a certain way. That perhaps was the key to her longtime attachment to Dixon and the swashbuckling privateers of the markets.

"Anyway, next thing I hear, Dixon and Brady are quite chummy again.

They're goin out, them and the wives. Brady's one of these types married to a skinny little lady who always wants more. You know what I'm talking about? She's got to make up for something. I don't know what it is. But they're at plays, havin dinner. I tell you. Maybe they went out with you and Clara."

"I never heard a word," said Stern.

"No," said Margy, correcting herself, "I wouldn't think.

Then one day I'm talkin to some old boy, I don't remember who, and he says, 'Word is Brady's comin back to MD to run your operations in Kindle." Dixon won't answer me, you know how he gets, but I check, everybody's heard it. Sure enough, word comes from the Kindle office, there's gonna be a big announcement. Dixon sets up this fancy luncheon over at Fina's. He gets all his key people around.! flew my little Oklahoma fanny in there. You know, we're all sittin there havin a nice time. Then Dixon looks at Brady. 'By the way,' he says, right in front of everyone. Cheerful as a chickadee." Margy took a drink and looked straight at Stern with her bright, hard eyes. "'I fucked your wife last night." Just like that. And he had, too. No doubt about that with good-buddy Dixon. Can you imagine this? He's got eight folks around the table to hear this. Lunch was over before they served the soup. I'm not kiddin. Believe me, that made some ripples around here. So that's why I'm tellin you: nobody's sayin diddlydoo about Dixon."

Stern was quiet. He took the bottle and finished off the wine.

"Remarkable," he said at last. He meant it. The story filled him with a peculiar sense of alarm. The truth about Dixon was always uglier than Stern could quite conceive of on his own.

"Ain't it, though. Old Dixon, boy, sometimes I think he oughta have himself a peckerectomy. He's got an unusual way of doin things."

Stern chuckled, but Margy passed him a meaningful look, liquor-loosened and reproving, as if to warn him of the amount he did not understand.

This woman, he knew, comprehended things about men and women, about carnality, that were remote from him.

"Let's get goin with these boring old papers." She smiled, sat up, smoothed her skirt and blouse. But she was not quite done. She looked lost for a moment, glancing away.

Somewhere along in the telling, much of her own pain about Dixon had emerged from hiding. Distress had reduced her good looks, brought a wincing closeness to her features.

"That son of a bitch," she said suddenly. She was somehow penetrated by her forlorn tone and the thought of glamorous Margy, here in her forties, with her career and life in the shadow of Dixon's mountain.

Stern reached out and briefly held her hand.

"WelI, you're a kindly o1' boy, ain't you?" she asked.

Stern knew what was going to happen now. Now that he'd had enough to drink, he realized that he'd known for hours, since she looked at him that way and asked with apparent disinterest about the women hovering around him. Beneath it all perhaps was the polar tug of loneliness, the sore yearning of the isolated soul, but now, adrift on the ether of the alcohol, he was suddenly filled by the hot itch of anticipation. There was a racing tempo in his hands as he waited for the next move.

He did not have to wait long. Margy reverted for a few moments to the papers; she spoke; mumbled; then suddenly peered at him with a drunken intense look of heat, appetite, disorder. If he had been sober, perhaps he might have found it comic, a woman turning a gaze on him hot enough to scale paint. But he wasn't. He simply held his ground and watched as she stood and then leaned down and kissed him as he sat in the brocaded hotel armchair. Her lips were chapped, and, as he would have imagined, somehow erustexl hard. There was a taste of salt from the meal she had eaten.

"How do you like that?" She laid his head against her breast. Dove-soft.

The strong sweet smell of her perfume was all around him, and on his cheek he felt a silky undergarment shifting beneath her blouse. He did not move.

He was certain he would receive further instruction.

She kissed him again, then released him and strode off to the bathroom, the water splashed. Stern moved to the edge of the bed, bracing himself. Dear God, he was drunk. The room had not begun to move, but he sensed that it was unglued, starting to become slippery in the peripheral world just beyond the corners of his eyes. What was the old line? A drop of courage. Well, he felt courageous. He was willing.

The lights went out. Margy was poised by the switch. She wore nothing now but her jasmine-colored silk blouse, which was unbuttoned and parted an inch or two over her chest and hung at the length of a negligee. Her legs were bare, her hair was down, and without her fashionable attire and highheeled shoes, she looked far more delicate. Her skirt and a silky flag of lingerie were bundled in her hand. She tilted her head.