Neither Radczyk nor he moved for a moment.
“How may I thank you, Lieutenant?” Stern asked as Radczyk started to leave.
“No need,” said Radczyk, He looked at Stern sadly. “I owed you. I told ya. Never woulda straightened myself out otherwise.”
Radczyk had said he owed him forty times if he had said it once, and Stern had never caught the meaning. But now he did. There was a reason Radczyk sat through each of Marvin’s meetings with Stern. A reason for his nervous garrulousness. He and Marvin, after all, were raised as brothers. They had shared many things. Too many. Radczyk, given a reprieve and the opportunity for reform, had seized it; Marvin took the more familiar course. Stern shared a look with Radczyk, this man whom he barely knew—they possessed many of each other’s most terrible secrets. Then Stern simply nodded, a compact of confidence, gratitude, renewal.
Stern saw the policeman to the outer door and then, on second thought, went back to retrieve the sheet. He wanted no telltale signs when the others arrived here this morning. Then he returned to his office and was alone with the body of his brother-in-law, Dixon Hartnell. There was no comfortable place to sit. The sofa clearly was out, and his desk chair was still beneath the broken glass, which had not been removed or replaced, given the spell of busy activity for Remo’s trial. Stern was required to use one of the upholstered pull-up chairs, cut a bit too narrowly for him. He hauled the chair about to face the body. How sad Dixon looked, how fully depleted. His color was unnatural, that dark gray veinous shade. The spirit had fled.
“Does good always win, Dixon?” Stern asked. “It does on TV.”
He had no idea how the words came to him or why, with them, he began to cry. The tears had been in the offing for some days now; that he knew. He was puzzled merely by the moment. But there was no point in holding back. The storm blew up and through him. He covered his mouth with his hanky and pressed his fist to his lips at moments to suppress his howl.
“My God, Dixon,” he kept repeating when he spoke.
When he was done, he stood, approached the sofa, and decided to pray. He had never been certain what it was he believed. On High Holidays he attended shul and engaged the Lord in direct address. The rest of the year he seemed agnostic. But at this point, he called on his talent for sincerity, since he was his finest self, an advocate not speaking on his own behalf.
Accept, dear God, the soul of Dixon Hartnell, who made his own amends, and who traveled his own way. He failed, as we all fail, and perhaps more often than some. Yet he recognized fundamental things. Not that we are evil; for we are not. But that, by whatever name—self-interest, impulse, anger, lust, or greed—we are inclined that way; and that it is our tragedy to know this can never change; our duty to try at every moment to overcome it; and our glory occasionally to succeed.
An extra suit hung behind the office door, and Stern quickly changed. He had a tie and shirt in a drawer, and a razor. He would not have his attaché case, but in the confusion no one would notice. He went down the hall to shave, returned, and sat before the telephone. When he heard the first stirring of someone else within the office, he would call Silvia to tell her he had just found Dixon, here where he had spent many recent nights, intent, obsessed with assembling his defense.
From this side of the desk, he faced the shelves of the walnut cabinet where the framed photographs of his family remained, the ones Dixon had lingered with last week. They were free. Totally. John. Kate. Even Peter. That thought had not occurred to him until now. With Dixon’s death, the entire matter was over. The events—their shame—would recede into the past. With Clara’s fortune, they were now even prosperous. The three of them would have their second chances, too. He tried to envision their futures and his with them, but nothing came—murky shades, something bleak. Then he recalled. There would be a baby—a child. Children always drew a family together. Even his, he supposed. He had some vision, like a vaguely surreal painting, the strange conjunctions of a dream, of all of them drawn close to this pink, unknown infant in a kind of halo radiance, each face alight with that wonderful instinctive glee. They would surround this child and be, each of them, someone new: parents, grandparent, uncle, aunts. New responsibilities. Fantasies. Dreams. Mistakes, of course, would be made. Bad habits would be repeated and, worse, taught anew. They would succumb, each of them in some measure, to folly, to the grasp of unwanted portions of the dark, indomitable past. Nonetheless. We go on.
In the outer office there was the sound of someone arriving; he reached at once for the phone. When he heard his sister’s voice, he spoke her name and, in spite of the qualm of grief which unexpectedly rifled through him, began. Yet again, he said, a terrible blow. She knew at once.
“We must manage these burdens together,” he told her. “I am able to help.”
NOTE
I have been fortunate to draw on the specialized knowledge of many friends in writing this book. Dr. John Weiss provided invaluable advice about medical matters, as did Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County Medical Examiner, and my father, Dr. David Turow. I am grateful to Nadya Walsh for sharing her recollections of Argentina and to Steve Senderowitz for discussing with me various questions of commodities law. My partners Jim Ferguson and Tom Opferman were of great help on other legal points.
I also should note that Gabriel Turow is the author of most of the good lines in Chapter 29.
Finally, to my friends on the commodity futures exchanges, particularly Frank and Brian Gelber of Gelber Group Inc., I am especially indebted.
The aid of these persons undoubtedly prevented many factual errors. Any that remain are solely my responsibility.
Copyright © 1990 by Scott Turow
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Turow, Scott.
The burden of proof / Scott Turow.
I. Title.
PS3570.U754B87 1990 813’.54—dc20 90-33593 CIP
Scott Turow, The Burden of Proof
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