The Burden of Proof (28 page)

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discharged, he would automatically become a citizen and thus put to rest the family's perpetual concerns about their outdated visas.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."

Ralph was behind the cart a respectful distance with Stern's five iron.

Stern's drive had traveled downhill, but it had trailed to the right of the fairway--the wrong place to be on this hole--so that Stern 'was required to play left. He sliced naturally and positioned himself at an angle to the hole.

Dixon credited misfortune to various deities, like wood elves. Losses on the trading floor belonged to the bean god. Here he paid homage to the god of balls.

"Ball god!" screamed Dixon as Stern's shot tore off for the deepest woods. Ralph turned to watch it go, like an outfielder pining after a homer.

Stern took another from his pocket and hit his shot cleanly. The ball faded, not quite sufficiently, toward an area left of the green, hit the uneven ground there, and kicked, as if drawn magnetically, into a sand trap.

"Beach," said Dixon, in case Stern had not noticed. They parked the cart in the left rough while Ralph crashed around in the woods, making a hopeless search for Stern's ball.

"So what happens?" asked Dixon. "With this thing? They want the money back, right?"

'That is merely the starting point, Dixon. If the prosecutors employ the RICO statute, as I expect, the government will attempt to forfeit the racketeering enterprise--you understand: take it from you as punishment."

"What's the mcketeering enterprise. ,MD,"

"The whole fucking business?"

"Potentially. Not to mention a term in the penitentiary."

"Oh, sure," said Dixon, jumping down from the cart again for his shot, "you couldn't expect them to go easy."

Dixon's bravery was admirable. Stern had actually been ,asked twice in his career by other clients facing the rigors of forfeiture about the legal consequence of suicide: could 'the government still grab their dough if they were dead? Stern avoided answering, fearing the consequences of a truthful response, since all phases of a criminal prosecution were, in fact, terminated by death.

With Dixon, of course, there was no risk of selfdestruction. He probably could not conceive of a world he did not inhabit. But Stern knew nonetheless that he had struck a nerve. To threaten Dixon's business.was to toy with the obsession of a lifetime. He had begun th'my-some years ago, driving all over the Middle West in search of clients, soliciting the small-town ,businessmen whose /velihoods depended on farm prices --the merchants, the feed-lot owners, the rural banks which could use commodity futures to hedge their loan portfolios.

Dixon's strategy, he explained to Stern later, was to sign up the fire chief.

The firemen were volunteers, fought flame and death together; the fire chief was the captain of their souls. If he liked something, all would.

No trick was too low for Dixon. He carried a fireman's helmet in his think.

Now he flew between the coasts, doing deals, but his first .love remained sitting in the office, plotting strategies for the managed accounts, the commodities pools, the large customer Orders. He made money and lost it with every tick, in each future, but Dixon never lost his interest in the game, a mixture of street savvy and balls poker.. Three or four times a year, he would grab his dark jacket and badge and go to the floorSfor part of the day. Even in the chaos of the trading floor, the news would go out that he was there. He stepped into the tiered levels of the pits, shaking hands and tossing greetings like Frank Sinatra onstage, commanding the same reverence, or, in some quarters, subverted 1oathifig. Dixon did not care. Stern had been in the Kindle office one day when Dixon had lost $40,000 in less than half an hour and he was still exhilarated by the tumult of the floor, the jumping and shouting of the trading crowd, what he took as an essential moment in life.

Dixon lofted his ball between the extended foliage of two tree boughs.

The ball did not bite well and rar about twelve feet past the cup.

"Tough par," said Dixon, thinking of his putt:'

Ralph stood at the edge of the sand trap like a well-armed soldier, Stern's sand wedge in one hand and the rake in the other. Stern trod down dutifully into the pit, then bedded himself in, dog-like, shaking his fanny. These shots, hit an inch behind the ball, were all acts of faith. Stern thought of fluid motion, then swung. Amid an aura of sand, the ball rose from the bunker. It traveled almost sideways when it hit the green, but it camertfolios. Dixon's strategy, he explained to Stern later, was to sign up the fire chief.

The firemen were volunteers, fought flame and death together; the fire chief was the captain of their souls. If he liked something, all would.

No trick was too low for Dixon. He carried a fireman's helmet in his think.

Now he flew between the coasts, doing deals, but his first .love remained sitting in the office, plotting strategies for the managed accounts, the commodities pools, the large customer Orders. He made money and lost it with every tick, in each future, but Dixon never lost his interest in the game, a mixture of street savvy and balls poker.. Three or four times a year, he would grab his dark jacket and badge and go to the floorSfor part of the day. Even in the chaos of the trading floor, the news would go out that he was there. He stepped into the tiered levels of the pits, shaking hands and tossing greetings like Frank Sinatra onstage, commanding the same reverence, or, in some quarters, subverted 1oathifig. Dixon did not care. Stern had been in the Kindle office one day when Dixon had lost $40,000 in less than half an hour and he was still exhilarated by the tumult of the floor, the jumping and shouting of the trading crowd, what he took as an essential moment in life.

Dixon lofted his ball between the extended foliage of two tree boughs.

The ball did not bite well and rar about twelve feet past the cup.

"Tough par," said Dixon, thinking of his putt:'

Ralph stood at the edge of the sand trap like a well-armed soldier, Stern's sand wedge in one hand and the rake in the other. Stern trod down dutifully into the pit, then bedded himself in, dog-like, shaking his fanny. These shots, hit an inch behind the ball, were all acts of faith. Stern thought of fluid motion, then swung. Amid an aura of sand, the ball rose from the bunker. It traveled almost sideways when it hit the green, but it came to rest within two yards of the flag.

"Making it hard on me," Dixon said. Stern had a stroke on each hole.