“We say that did not happen.
“We say you will find Kiril Pafko not guilty.”
5. Innocent
The moments after a trial session ends have always felt to Stern like the aftermath of a play, as the pin-drop silence gives way abruptly to hubbub. In Sonny’s courtroom, the spectators drift to the doors, while the reporters, eager to file their stories, edge ahead. Members of the judge’s office staff climb the stairs to the bench to bring Her Honor messages. In the meantime, a herd of attorneys who were waiting in the corridor sift in for Sonny’s next matter.
Stern steers his client across the corridor to the attorney-witness room to brief Kiril on what is ahead tomorrow and to wait for the wide-eared reporters loitering in the hallway to disperse. This is where those who are to testify wait before being called into the courtroom, and where attorneys can offer brief counsel to their clients. The preservationists who lovingly tend the public areas of the courthouse don’t pay any attention here. The old desk is splintered on its edges, and the wooden barrel chairs are shaky. A single nondescript travel poster for the Skageon region up north hangs askew on the wall beside a discolored venetian blind.
As soon as they are alone, Kiril grasps Stern’s hand between both of his own. Pafko’s liver-spotted flesh is bedecked in gold, a ring the size of a doubloon and a heavy Rolex on his wrist.
“I stole several glances at the jury,” Pafko says about the opening, “and they could not take their eyes from you.” Stern tempers his pleasure in his client’s compliments with the knowledge that Kiril has never abandoned the Argentinian way and frequently brings forth a river of fulsome bullshit.
Stern briefs Kiril on what to expect tomorrow when the testimony starts, then opens the door. Donatella is on a bench opposite with Dara, their daughter. Striking and dark, Dara bears a strong resemblance to her mother. As such, Dara unwittingly demonstrates what drove Kiril to pursue Donatella relentlessly decades ago in Buenos Aires, notwithstanding the fact that she was already married. As for Donatella, even in her late age, she retains strong cheekbones and penetrating dark eyes. Despite her white hair, her thick eyebrows have remained completely black, like smears of greasepaint.
Stern directs the three Pafkos to the courthouse’s central alabaster staircase. With his cane, Stern must go one step at a time. Outside the courthouse doors, he guides Kiril and Donatella and Dara through the melee of reporters shouting questions, and the camera operators who charge like rhinos to get their close-ups. Kiril smiles and waves gamely, as if they were here to hail him, until Stern has the Pafkos safely in the black SUV that has slid to the curb, stealthy as a shark. One of Kiril’s principal indulgences since g-Livia was approved is a maroon Maserati convertible, which he drives everywhere. Stern convinced his client it is not a good idea for a man accused of a crime of greed to be photographed at the wheel of a car that costs more than a house in some local neighborhoods. Sonny has told the jurors to shun media coverage of the case, but the instruction is hard to heed for anyone who gets near any kind of screen. In a couple days, after the news organizations have their file footage and photos for the archive, Kiril will be able to drive himself again.
Stern then clumps along the curb, greeting several reporters but otherwise saying nothing to them, until he reaches his Cadillac. The car is driven by a longtime employee of the law office, Ardent Trainor, a long, slender man in his late sixties, who alights to help Stern into the rear seat. The car still has that new-car aroma, which to Stern, in his unrelenting desire to be a real American, has always been the smell of success.
Stern’s near-death experience on the highway back in March had many troubling consequences. His Cadillac, a gray 2017 CTS coupe, was totaled. The good news, as they say, is that insurance provided most of the cost of a replacement. The bad is that his children will not let him drive it. With Peter, Stern’s doctor son, as their leader, the three made their father promise to limit his time behind the wheel to a rare spin to the local grocery store or the dry cleaners in the little suburban town where he lives.
In the sudden silence as the car door slams, the events of the day can finally be absorbed. Overall, he would say, so far, so good, except for blurting out about the civil settlements, which remains confounding. Every lawyer now and then loses their way as they are speaking, don’t they? The lapse, however, is unusual for him.
Yet Stern’s principal concern is for his client, who already seems fatigued and old, but worse, uncharacteristically vague. Like many clients, during the investigation and the months leading up to trial, Pafko tried to avoid talking about the case. He has four different phone numbers—home, office, personal cell, business cell—and Stern often had to leave several messages on each line before hearing back. But now that it is all in his face, Kiril is evincing a kind of simpering optimism. Given Pafko’s age, one might even fear early dementia, but Stern knows it is more likely the decimating effect of public accusation. For white-collar defendants like Kiril, people accustomed to the power of wealth or prominence, the months after indictment are a special hell. They confront scorn in the eyes of virtually everyone who hears their name, while they are consumed by relentless anxiety over the future, in which the only certainty is it will bear no resemblance to the past.
Yet Stern feared Kiril was on the road to this sad torment once he saw the Wall Street Journal story in August 2018. Kiril called Stern a few weeks later to ask Sandy to represent him, within minutes of Pafko being served with a federal grand jury subpoena. The documents the government was seeking made it obvious that the prosecutors already believed the clinical trial for g-Livia had been tampered with. Stern experienced the inevitable schadenfreude of his profession. He was distressed for Kiril but thrilled for himself. A lawyer called upon to salvage the entire social existence of a person formerly held in the highest esteem is like a sorcerer being asked to turn back time. At eighty-five the opportunities to display that wizardry came, even to Sandy Stern, far more rarely. But a few days later, when Kiril had taken the seat customarily occupied by Stern’s clients, a crimson leather chair in front of Stern’s desk, better sense had prevailed. He told Kiril his best choice would be a younger lawyer, more certain to be beside him for what lay ahead.
‘Do you feel incapable?’ Kiril had asked. ‘To my eye, Sandy, you seem every bit the man I met forty years ago.’
‘Well, then, Kiril, our first task is to find someone to check your vision.’
Kiril enjoyed the joke but nevertheless insisted. Knowing his case was in Stern’s hands, he said, would give him his first night’s sleep in weeks.
Stern continued to resist, yet he realized that it would violate his own deeply rooted sense of loyalty to say no. The truth can be reduced to a few words: He owes Kiril Pafko his life.
In 2007, Stern was first diagnosed with non–small-cell lung cancer. The left lobe of his lung was removed, and he underwent chemotherapy. By 2009, there was a spot on the other side and he received chemo again. In 2011, there was another recurrence and treatment with yet another drug. By 2013, he had full-blown metastatic disease. Al, his internist, who is on staff at Easton Hospital and was aware of Sandy’s friendship with Kiril, urged Stern to speak to Dr. Pafko. So far as Stern knew, he was the first human to receive g-Livia, several months before the FDA approved it for initial experimental use on patients. It was an act of mercy by Kiril for a dying friend, and one that, if disclosed, would subject Pafko to risks with both the university and the government.