Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

Margy promised to recall the order tickets from storage and have them sent to Stern; he could identify the order takers and contact them directly. She would send a memo to Kindle, asking all employees on the desk to cooperate with their lawyer.

"Course, this still isn't what I'd call comical," said Margy. "The Exchange'll bang the bullpucky out of the company. They'll give us a whole bunch of fines and censures and make a big stink. Then they'll hand it over to the CFTC and let them make some stink, too. But ole youknow-who, he'll be okay. He'll be fussin and stinkin along with the rest of them, makin out like how'd this awful thing happen right under my nose. And then he'll turn around and fire someone to cover his hillbilly fanny."

Margy inclined her head slightly so that she was more or less eye to eye with the excited area of Stern's shorts.

Looking back, she gave him a little knowing grin, which he thought was at his expense, but it was not.. She was still thinking about whom Dixon would fire. "Prob'ly me," she said with a sad little buttoned-up smile. "Probably me," she repeated, and laughed then, laughed and raised her arms to Stern again and pulled him down to her for comfort. parting at the hotel-room door, he promised to call her.

"That'd be nice," Margy answered simply. Clearly, she did not believe him; men said that all the time. As soon as the cab had deposited him at O'Hare, he thumbed through the yellow pages and sent an enormous bouquet, without a card, to her office. Seated in the cramped booth, behind the perforated stainless-steel partitions, he was visited by images of the night and morning and he almost shivered with the staggering thrill of it all. Had that truly been he, Ale-jandro Stern, gentleman lawyer, child of a Catholic country, humping his brains out a few hours ago? Yes, indeed. His spirit was on alert, his flag unfurled. He had Margy's smoky taste on his lips, the touch of her silks in his palm. When was he returning? He laughed out loud at himself, so that a woman in a booth across the way actually looked straight at him. Slightly shamed, he found suddenly the splinter of something more abiding buried closer to his heart. Gratitude. Oh yes, he was grateful to Margy, to the entire race of women, who, unbelievably, had seen fit to take him in once more. With his hand still on the telephone, he pondered the sheer blessing of another human being's embrace.

At the gate, the attendant announced that the plane for his short flight back to the tri-cities was delayed. "Equipment problems." As usual!

Stern, even in his buoyant mood, could not pull free of his hatred for this airport, with its endless corridors and sickly light, its teeming, hurtling bodies and worried faces. He located the airline's executive lounge, all black leather and granite, and telephoned his office.

".Claudia, please call Ms. Klonsky and schedule an appointment for Friday. Tell her I wish to deliver the documents she has subpoenaed from MD." Stern had not spoken with the prosecutor in a month now.

Raphael had called to beg an additional week on the return date, and reported that Klonsky sounded on the verge of rage. Stern did not like to beard the Assistants-it was not his style, and more to the point, enmity among lawyers complicated a case.

He would have to make amends somehow with Klonsky. The lawyer's life, he thought, always toadying. Judges.

Prosecutors. Certain clients.

"You want your messages?"

Stern was seated on a sofa; the telephone console was cleverly inserted in the granite top of a cocktail table.

Claudia reported a call from Remo Cavarelli, an old hustler under indictment, who wanted the status date for his next appearance before Judge Winchell. There was also a message from a Ms. Helen Dudak, who wanted to speak to Stern: a personal matter. And Cal Hopkinson had phoned.

Developments, he thought with a sudden surge of something undefined, interest or apprehension, when he heard Cal's name. He had Claudia put him through, but Cal's secretary said he was on another call. Stern held a bit, then decided to call back and punched in the number Helen had left. She had told him she worked at home, with a headset plugged into the phone-connected earpieces and a tiny suspended mike, smaller than a thimble. He imagined her like that.

"I'm picking up on the end of our conversation the other.night," said Helen.

"Yes, of come," he answered, not truly certain what she meant.

"I wanted to invite you to dinner here. Two weeks from Saturday. The two of us."

"Ah," said Stern, and felt his heart palpably squirm. Now what? Helen meant well, he thought. And she was charmning.

But could he manage these complications? Yes, said some voice suddenly.

Yes, indeed.

Yet, having accepted, he dwelled on Margy and quarreled with himself as he put down the phone. Eating, after all, was not a formof sexual intercourse. But then again, he slyly thought, he was becoming quite a fellow. In the crowded airport lounge, with the stalled travelers murmuring around him, he once more laughed aloud.

This time he got through to Cal.

"Sandy!" Cal cried. "Where are you?" Cal told him the story of his most recent unscheduled layover at O'Hare. Stern eventually asked about the bank.

"That's why I was calling," said Cal. '-'Just to let you know the story." River National, Cal said, was being perfectly neurotic about this transaction in Clara's investment account. Any time a will was involved, the bank worried over everything: the probate court, the Attorney General's Office. They insisted on retrieving every single piece of paper before they would meet. Cal was pressing for a conference in the next week. He spoke with the selfcongratulatory air that Stern himself often assumed with clients, describing his communications with the bankers and file clerks as if it were mortal combat.

"Really, Cal," said Stern. He did not want to be one more complaining client, and ended the conversation rather than speak his mind. Cal was too fussy to be forceful-he, too, would want to see each paper-and besides, he was probably in no position with the bankers, who in all likelihood sent him business-wealthy customers who needed trusts drawn, wills updated. But it was unfair, Stern decided in a moment, to blame Cal for the complications Clara had made.

Stern had lived decades never wholly knowing what was occurring behind Clara's composed and gracious facade. And still the wondering went on.

All that old simmering frustration was boiling up in him again.

He redialed his secretary's number.

"Claudia, did Dr. Cawley return my call?" Following his evening at Kate and John's, Stern had chased Nate about, leaving word at the office, the hospital, at home, asking Nate to call the lab. It was not clear that Nate had even gotten the messages, and Stern remained unsure that he would follow through, in any event. Nate, after all, had other worries.

"Should I try someone at his office?" asked Claudia. Stern drummed his fingers on the tabletop and did not answer. Out the window, the view was obstructed by a 747 which was being washed by workers mounted on a series of movable scaffolds-Stern was reminded of zookeepers and a giraffe.

He certainly could venture to Westlab himself-wherevei: it might be. As Clara's executor, he had a legal right to inquire. But if the administrators at Westlab were sticklers about privacy, as Nate suspected, Stern would need credentials, which would mean involving Cal.

Better patience, Stern thought. Nate would get to it eventually.

But there was a soreness here, more persistent than his curiosity about Clara, which seemed to rise and fall with the tide of his grief. It took Stern an instant to fix upon it: Peter. The suspicion born at Kate and John's that he had been outdone by his son had not proved easy to put aside. Oh, he knew it was unfair, unlikely, unbecoming to believe that Peter in his great anguish had had the presence of mind, or the cunning, to manipulate his father about the autopsy. But Peter, to Stern's memory, had been so insistent-he could still recall his voice resounding down the corridors at its wailing pitch as he upbraided that poor bewildered cop, the frantic glint in Peter's eyes. Questions lingered. With Peter, Stern supposed, questions always would."