Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

"I'm going for broke," Dixon yelled.

What else was new? Ralph could be heard quarreling. He was telling Dixon he could never do it. The sun gleamed through the foliage behind the two figures.

The shot, bedded on dried leaves and twigs, sounded cleanly, but a second or two on in its course took a tree with the round musical sound of marimbas. The ball rattled around in the wooded heights, breaking branches, then suddenly fell heavily to earth, like a gift from heaven, only twenty or thirty yards from the green. Dixon came crashing out of the bushes in time to see the ball drop. He turned back to Stern with a magnificent smile.

"Member's bounce."

Ralph followed along, carrying the club and shaking his head.

Watching Dixon march across the fairway toward the cart as he continued congratulating himself, Stern was taken by an intimation, soft as a whisper, of the young soldier he had met decades ago, during basic training in the desert at Fort Grambel. They had encountered one another some-how-in the barracks or the latrines. At this point Stern would have preferred some auspicious recollection of their meeting, but he remembered little, only the predictable bad judgment of youth. He had liked Dixon; worse, he had admired him. Dixon was one of those large commanding figures that Stern could never be-a shrewd country boy, a good talker with a disflnct, twangy hill accent, who looked like a mallion in his uniform, square-shouldered and jutjawed, with wavy dark blond hair. With the advent of war and the death of his mother, Dixon, full of red-hot ambition, had joined up. The service, with its grand traditions, its medals, its legends, was like a cast for an ingot. Dixon saw himself as an American hero in the making.

Stern had enlisted, too, but with ambitions less grand.

When he was honorably discharged, he would automatically become a citizen and thus put to rest the family's perpetual concerns about their outdated visas. He was twenty years old and already a college graduate, having raced through school, a dark sunken-cheeked sort with heavy black hair, much slimmer than today's model. He had done better in the-service than those who knew him now might expect; he had sealed the walls and carried the packs without relish, but he was dull to discomfort of most kinds in those days. His hungers inspired him.

Stern was never certain what there was about him that had drawn Dixon's interest-probably the fact that Stern was college-educated and quickly marked for OCS. It mattered not. The alliances of a soldier's life were easily founded, and in 1953 a hillbilly, or a Jew with a Latin accent, picked from limited entrees on the American social smorgasbord.

There was a night when he and Dixon had sat on a bunk, passing back and forth a smuggled bottle of-Jack Daniel's and a pack of Camels, talking.

About what? The future, Stern believed. They both had plans.

For Stern, the future was nearer than he imagined. One day, at the end of basic training, as he was readying to ship out for Officer Candidate School, his major announced that Stern was required at home. The officer did not explain, but the orders Stern was handed had a typical military brusqueness. In a blank was written, "Hardship furlough -mother critical."? She had had a stroke. In the hospital, he found her paralyzed and unable to speak. Her dark roaming eyes seemed to search his face meaningfully, but he was never certain that she recognized him. She was dead within a week, and Stern, now Silvia's sole support, was honorably discharged. He never returned to Fort Grambel.

All of it was left behind, his kit and duffel bag, the sadistic sergeants, OCS-and Dixon Hartnell. By now, over thirty years later, Dixon had as many faces to Stern as a totem pole-Silvia's husband, an important client, a local powerhouse in the avenues of commerce, one of the few men Stern knew well whose accomplishments he thought of as markedly overshadowing his own. He seldom remembered that yearning young man who had attached himself to him in that vaguely supplicating fashion.

Dixon hopped back in the cart, still radiant at his miracle shot. He would never willingly return to the subject of the investigation. Like someone who learned in his sleep, however, he expected Stern to force him to listen. They were at the stage now where Dixon-any client-had to recognize he was in mounting jeopardy.

"Dixon, this is a grave matter. These records are very damaging,"

"Maybe I should have taken a look at them before you turned them over," said Dixon. "Some of the problems might have disappeared." He smiled tersely.

"Dixon, I suggest you abandon such thoughts. If you follow that course, you may as well walk straight to the penitentiary and skip the intervening steps. Too many people have seen your business records. The company that put them on microfiche. Margy. Me." Stern let that sink in.

"Not to mention the chatty fellow who told the government to look for them in the first place."

Dixon looked at Stern directly, full face. His eyes were greenish, gray, a color hard to name.

"My thing get there?" Dixon asked. Eventually, Stern realized he was referring to the safe. He decided not to ask why the present discussion brought it to mind.

"Quite secure," Stern answered.

"I did it the way you said. Handled it myself. I even got Margy to cut a check in Chicago to pay the trucking company." The trucker, characteristically, had refused to take the safe any farther than the very center of Stern's office. Not much more than a foot square, the gunmetal cube must have weighed 150 pounds. After a week, Stern and Claudia had struggled to get the safe as far as it'was now, behind his desk. Out of an arch impulse, Stern had begun using it as a footrest.

"Where's my key, by the way? You said you'd send one."

"Shortly," Said Stern. He would have to remind Claudia, in as much as Dixon remained intent on keeping the contents to himself. The dial of chrome and steel on the safe looked as if it could withstand a dynamite charge. At odd moments, Stern had examined it already. Dixon, meanwhile, had floored the cart, racing toward Stern's ball. Stern held his hat again and yelled over the wind, "I warn you, this situation is perilous."

"You've said that about other situations."

"And I was correct. You were fortunate."

"So I'll be fortunate again." Near Stern's ball, they came abruptly to a halt. "Can't you do something, file something? Make some kind of motion?"

"There are no credible motions to make for the time being, Dixon. Judge Winchell will not put up with delaying tactics. It would be unwise to irritate her, as we may need her patience later."

Dixon dismounted from the cart and lit a cigarette, his back to Stern as he suddenly took to studying the woods.

Stern went on, notwithstanding.

"Dixon, your records give clear indication that someone at MD was trading ahead of your largest customer orders."

Dixon pivoted. With his chin lowered, he looked like a glowering fighter on a magazine cover, the whites of his eyes showing large and luminous with a smoldering shrewd anger. He never enjoyed being found out, one of many reasons that Stern had avoided any further mention of Margy.

"No kidding," said Dixon.

"Indeed, I am not," said Stern. "It was very cleverly done.

Smaller orders were placed on the Kindle Exchange just before you went into the Chicago markets with large orders that would affect prices everywhere. And these Kin-die orders were always written with botched account numbers, so that, after clearing, they would end up being credited in the house error account. Countervailing buys and sells, leaving a profit just a few pennies shy of $600,000. It was a brilliant scheme."

"Six hundred thousand," said Dixon. He pointed to the ball.

"Your shot."