The Burden of Proof Read Online Free PDF Page B

fact.
    "Business questions?" he asked Dixon.
    "That kind of item. I don't need to trouble you now. I want to hear about your trip to Chicago."
    Ah yes, thought Stern, the paths of ego were deep and the living needed to go on.
    "'I understand your concern, Dixon. The situation may be somewhat involved, however. It i's best that we discuss it another time."
    A shadow Passed, predictably, over Dixon. Fifty-five years old, he. was tan, trim, and, even with this darkened look, the image of vitality. He was a powerful man; he worked out every day with weight equipment. Dixon worshipped at the same altar as so many others in America: the body and its uses. His dark brass-colored hair had grown paler and more brittle with age, but was cleverly barbered to give him a mannerly business-like look.
    "You didn't like what you heard?" he asked Stern.
    In fact, Stern had learned little of substance, The documents he had examined in Chicago account statements and trading records of the clients for an eight- or nine-month period, had been revealing. There was no telling what offense the government was investigating, or even who had suggested to them the prospect of a crime.
    "There may be a problem, Dixon. It is too early to become greatly alarmed."
    "Sure." Dixon drew a cigarette from an inside pocket. He was smoking heavily again, an old bad habit recently grown worse, which Stern took as a sign of concern. Three years ago the IRS set up a full-scale encampment in Dixon's conference room, with barely a riffle in his breezy style.
    This time, however, Dixon was on edge. With word of the first subpoena, he had been on the phone to Stern, demanding that the government be stopped. For the present, however, Stern was loath to contact Ms.
    Klonsky, the Assistant United States Attorney. At the U. S. Attorney's Office they seldom told you more than they wanted you to know. Moreover, Stern feared that a call from him might somehow focus the government's attention on Dixon, whose name as yet had gone unmentioned. Perhaps the grand jury was looking at a number of brokerage houses. Perhaps something besides MD connected the customers. For the present it was best to tiptoe about, observing the government from cover. "They're always looking for something," Dixon said bravely now, and went off to find Silvia.
    In the sun room, Stern's children were still speaking about the baby.
    "Will John help out?" Marta asked. "Change diapers and stuff?."
    Kate reared back, astonished.
    "Of course. He's in heaven. Why wouldn't he?" Marta shrugged. At moments like this, it concerned Stern that she seemed so dumbfounded by men. Her father's daughter, Marta, regrettably, was not a pretty woman.
    She had Stern's broad nose and small dark eyes. Worse still, she shat his figure.
    Stern and his daughter were short, with a tendency to gather weight in their lower parts. Marta submitted herself almost masochistically to the rigors of diet and exercise, but you could never escape what nature had provided. It was not, she was apt to say, the form favored by' fashion magazines. Notwithstanding, Marta had always attracted her admirers--but there seemed an inevitable doom in her' relations. In her conversation there were, by idle reference, a procession of men who carne and went. Older, younger. Things always foundered. Marta, in the meantime, now came to her own defense.
    "Daddy didn't change diapers," she said.
    "I did not?" asked Stern. Surprisingly, he could not recall precisely.
    "How could you have changed diapers?" asked Peter, awakened somewhat by the opportunity to challenge his father. "You were never here. I remember I couldn't figure out what a trial was. I thought it was like a place you went. Another city."
    Marta called out for John: "Are you going to change the baby's diapers?"
    John, carrying a thirty-cup percolator, entered the sun room for a moment. He looked as bad as everyone else, baffled and grieved. He shrugged gently in response to Marta's question. John was