Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

"Sandy, Sennett is really hinky on this thing."

"'Please, I do not ask you to breach any rule of secrecy or standard of propriety. I shall settle for whatever information you can comfortably provide. If you would prefer, I shall tell you what I suspect about your investigation, and you need only state whether I am right or I am wrong. No more. There is no special harm in that, no confidences breached. You may do that, no?"

Could she? The uncertainty swam across her face. Sonny's strength would never lie in hiding her feelings.

"Sonny, please. You are a warm individual and I sense a friendship between us. Ido not mean to overreach that. But I have no idea any longer where to turn."

"Sandy, maybe I know less than you think."

"Certainly it is more than I."

They considered one another across the table.

"I have a million things to do," she said at last. "I'll think about what you've said."

"I would need ten minutes. Fifteen at the most."

"Look, Sandy, to tell yo.u the truth, I don't have a second to breathe.

I've got four cases going to trial in the next two months. Plus this thing. We've had plans since March to take Charlie's son up to his family's place in Dulin and stay there over the Fourth to pick strawberries. Now I have to come back here on Monday, and I had to move heaven and earth just to get the weekend free. So you'll have to forgive me if I tell you that I'm a little bit pressed."

"I see," said Stern, "you have no time to be fair?"

"Oh, come on, Sandy." She was frustrated by him, exasperated. He was plucking every chord. "If it's so important to you to spend fifteen minutes asking me a bunch of questions I'll never answer, you can drive a hundred miles up to Dulin on Saturday. That'i the best I can do."

When he asked her for the directions, she laughed out loud.

"You're.really going to come?"

"At this point, I must pursue any avenue. Saturday afternoon?"

"God," Sonny said. It was on County D, six miles north of Route 60.

Brace's Cabin. She described it as a glamorized shack.

As he jotted this down, she pointed at him.

"Sandy, I'm not kidding. Maybe I don't agree with everything Stan's done, but it's his show. Don't think I'll get out in the sunshine and do something I wouldn,t do "Of course not. I shall speak. You need only listen. If you wish, you may take notes and repeat every word I say to Sennett."

"It's a long trip for nothing."

"Perhaps not." Most unexpectedly, he had found again a trace of whimsy.

He spoke in the greedy whisper of a child.

He was, he said, so very fond of strawberries.

On the phone, Stern could hear Silvia's voice resounding down the long, stone corridors of Dixon's home as she went to summon her husband.

Lately, whenever he spoke to his sister, he detected a note of apprehension. But by their long understanding, she would never discuss Dixon's business with Stern. And Silvia, if the truth were told, was one of those women, come of age in a bygone era, who would never willingly set foot in the sphere they saw reserved to men.

"What's up?" Dixon was not reluctant to be brusque. "I'm on the social fast track. Your sister's got us entertaining half the Museum Board in fifteen minutes." Silvia, her mother's daughter, never tired of the involvements of a high-toned social life: women's auxiliaries, charity committees, the Country club. Dixon mocked her rather than admit out loud that he loved doing what he imagined rich people did, but their nights were absorbed with charity balls and fund-raising occasions, gallery openings, exclusive parties. Stern often caught their picture in the papers, a remarkably handsome couple, looking smooth, stately, carefree. Silvia over the years had become preoccupied- as Dixon wished her to he-with acting her part, adjourning by limousine to the city for a luncheon, a trunk show at a tony ladies' shop, the typical fleshtouching exercises with the wives of other very wealthy men who had welcomed the Harmells into ointed at him.

"Sandy, I'm not kidding. Maybe I don't agree with everything Stan's done, but it's his show. Don't think I'll get out in the sunshine and do something I wouldn,t do "Of course not. I shall speak. You need only listen. If you wish, you may take notes and repeat every word I say to Sennett."

"It's a long trip for nothing."

"Perhaps not." Most unexpectedly, he had found again a trace of whimsy.

He spoke in the greedy whisper of a child.

He was, he said, so very fond of strawberries.

On the phone, Stern could hear Silvia's voice resounding down the long, stone corridors of Dixon's home as she went to summon her husband.

Lately, whenever he spoke to his sister, he detected a note of apprehension. But by their long understanding, she would never discuss Dixon's business with Stern. And Silvia, if the truth were told, was one of those women, come of age in a bygone era, who would never willingly set foot in the sphere they saw reserved to men.

"What's up?" Dixon was not reluctant to be brusque. "I'm on the social fast track. Your sister's got us entertaining half the Museum Board in fifteen minutes." Silvia, her mother's daughter, never tired of the involvements of a high-toned social life: women's auxiliaries, charity committees, the Country club. Dixon mocked her rather than admit out loud that he loved doing what he imagined rich people did, but their nights were absorbed with charity balls and fund-raising occasions, gallery openings, exclusive parties. Stern often caught their picture in the papers, a remarkably handsome couple, looking smooth, stately, carefree. Silvia over the years had become preoccupied- as Dixon wished her to he-with acting her part, adjourning by limousine to the city for a luncheon, a trunk show at a tony ladies' shop, the typical fleshtouching exercises with the wives of other very wealthy men who had welcomed the Harmells into their company. Other days, she played golf or tennis, or even rode.

Were it someone else, Stern would have been inclined to disparage the frivolity of this life-style, but there was no flaw in his sister which he had not wholeheartedly forgiven. In some ways, Silvia reminded him of Kate, with whom, in fact, she was uncommonly close-she had allowed beauty to be her fate. She had been treated to a privileged education and it had led her to Dixon. End of story. Even in the years when Dixon was out tromping in the cornfields to establish his clientele, he had commanded her not to work, and Silvia, with no apparent misgivings, complied.

Yet Silvia was graced-redeemed--by kindness. She remained an extraordinary person whose generosity far outran the customary or typical. Clara, who had little use for empty vessels, loved and valued Silvia. They talked two or three times a week, met for lunch, lectures at the County Art Museum, theater matinees. For decades, they had attended the symphony's Wednesday afternoon performances together.

And whatever motivated others, Stern could voice no complaints. Silvia, as no one else in the world, adored her brother. In certain moods, she sent him brief notes, bought him gifts. She called every day and he continued to speak to her in a way he shared with no others. Difficult to define, but there was a pitch to their exchanges as easy as humming.

He remained the moon to her, the stars-galaxies, a universe. How was Stern to describe as deficient a life in which he still played such a stellar part?

"We need to see one another," said Stern to Silvia's husband now. "The sooner, the better."

"Problems?"

"Many."

"Give me a hint."

"I would rather do this in person, Dixon. We have a great deal to discuss."

"I'm on my way to New York on the 5:45 tomorrow morning.

I'll be there the rest of the week." Dixon, again, was hoping for a breakthrough on the Consumer Price Index future, going to meetings in New York or Washington twice each week. "Then Silvia and I are going to the island over the Fourth." He was referring to another of their homes, one in the Caribbean, a serene /tffside refuge on a taxhaven island; the IRS, during its investigation a few years ago, had been driven to a frenzy by the inability to tmee so much as a penny going down there.