For Stern, like thousands of other cancer patients after him, the medication has been a miracle. While his cancer is not totally erased, the lesions have retreated throughout his body. For that reason, Stern feels an intense obligation to Kiril—and also to the large universe of other cancer sufferers. The FDA has declared its approval of g-Livia void. The product is off the market in the US, caught up in a maelstrom of lawsuits and administrative actions, while the FDA refuses to set conditions to make the medication available even to patients with no other hope. The outcome of Kiril’s trial will clearly push the agency one way or the other. In the meantime, Stern’s supply comes from a factory in India and is shipped across the border in brown paper and a shoebox.
So he said yes to Kiril. Pafko, whose old face has something of the texture of a walnut, was brought close to tears.
‘Sandy, Sandy,’ he said, and toured around the desk to hug his friend. A good eight inches taller than Stern, Kiril held Sandy by the shoulders and sought his eye. ‘Truly, Sandy. Truly. You must believe this. What the prosecutors think, that I altered those test results. Truly, I know nothing about that.’
Like a doctor who must face the fact that every body can be overcome by disease, Stern’s practice has taught him that almost all souls are vulnerable to wrongdoing. In Pafko’s case, there are plenty of what defense lawyers politely call ‘bad facts.’ Kiril’s declaration that he knew nothing about the rash of sudden deaths on g-Livia is flatly contradicted by a screenshot of the clinical trial database, before it was altered, that was found on Kiril’s office computer. In fact he even e-mailed the same image to Olga Fernandez, the PT marketing director with whom, back in 2016, he had recently started sleeping. Then there is what Kiril neglected to mention to his lawyers for months, namely that he had sold $20 million worth of the PT shares in his grandchildren’s trust, virtually as soon as he was off the phone with the Journal reporter in August of 2018.
As a result, Marta long ago wrote off the case—and Kiril. Her judgment was confirmed when the Sterns undertook the pretrial exercise now familiar for deep-pocketed litigants and presented the case to three different mock juries of hired strangers. Supervised by a team of jury consultants, Stern played himself and Marta took Moses’s role, and they gave each side’s anticipated opening statements. Every time, Kiril was convicted of fraud, as well as insider trading—even murder on the first run-through.
Given those results, Stern, if not his client, accepts that they face long odds at trial. Should the real jury return the same verdicts as the mock groups, Stern has recognized in cold instants alone that Kiril is likely to die in prison. And yet his mind has returned time and again to that first meeting in his office, when Kiril hugged Stern and, with tears brimming in his murky gray eyes, declared that he did not do as the prosecutors claimed. Whatever the lessons of logic and experience, a rush of hope, like a spring rising through the earth, had saturated Stern’s heart. He responded as habit and professional detachment had long taught him not to. Nonetheless, in the instant, he meant each word.
Stern had told Kiril, ‘I believe you.’
6. Marta
Here on the thirty-eighth floor of the Morgan Towers, once the Tri-Cities’ tallest building, Marta and Sandy have made their offices throughout the thirty-year duration of Stern & Stern. From the two huge windows in his office, he has often taken a meditative moment, staring down at the silver ribbon of the River Kindle, known to the original French trappers who settled here as ‘La Chandelle,’ the Candle. The word was corrupted by English speakers to ‘Kindle,’ giving rise to the name of the county, by which this metropolitan area of three million is generally known.
Last weekend, daylight saving time ended, leaving Stern with lingering jet lag. Now, at four thirty, some stunted sun remains, which means that on the plate glass, Stern can see his reflection, which he usually makes a studied effort to avoid. There he confronts the time-scarred face of the other old men he has seen his entire life. The pumpkin-cheeked look he’d become resigned to in middle age is gone. With the cancer, twelve years ago, he lost dangerous amounts of weight, which, for whatever reason, he’s largely not regained. According to the scale, he should be the same nimble shape as the slender young man of sixty years ago. And yet, after decades of failing regularly at dieting, he has been chagrined to find he looks, if anything, worse. There is a dark hollowness to his cheeks that suggests illness. His flesh is loose and pallid, like a dish of pudding, and after chemo, he regained only a few patches of white hair behind his ears.
Mired, as he is often, in memories, Stern forces himself back to his desk to check his voice mail, which has been transformed to text on his computer screen. In the old days, after court, he would receive a fistful of phone messages, which he returned late into the night. Today neither call is even about a case. Both are social invitations, one from a widow he’s known for many years. At the age of eighty-five, after two marriages, Stern has decided to leave the playing field as a winner. He feels no inclination for companionship or whatever rubric could be applied to romance at his age.
Just as Stern is lifting the phone, Marta stalks into his office without so much as grazing her knuckles on the door. He doesn’t need to ask what she is upset about and she is quick to tell him anyway.
“What the hell was that crap in your opening about the civil cases? I can’t tell you how relieved I was when Moses stood up to object, because I was about to do it myself.”
He does not really have an answer. He tells her, as he’s told himself, that he was caught up in the moment.
“Dad, did you see Sonny grab me as we were leaving chambers? She wanted to know if you’re losing it.” It feels like a thorn in his heart to think that Sonny, who for years joked that when she grew up she wanted to be like Sandy Stern, now sees him as possibly addled.
“Dear God,” he says.
“I reassured her, but Jesus, Dad.”
It has always been part of the rhythm between them, going back to Marta’s college years, that she will assail her father, sometimes ferociously, which he must accept in a mood of calm. The reverse has never been true, even now when Marta has reached her late fifties. When it comes to her father’s criticisms, Marta remains as delicate as vellum.
Stern would prefer that their last trial together be handled in a mood of celebration, but he knows that expectation is as unrealistically sentimental as a corny greeting card. The truth is that Marta is out of sorts for many reasons about this case. When Kiril first phoned Stern, he could not resist sharing the news about this new engagement in an air of triumph as he strode into Marta’s office. Instead, he confronted shock and alarm on his daughter’s face.
‘Dad, are you completely crazy? A case like that could kill you. It’s been years since you had a trial longer than two days. Forget about cancer. Your heart could never stand that.’
‘My heart is fine,’ he answered sharply.
‘Really? Is that why Al has you coming in for an EKG every ninety days?’ Al Clemente, Stern’s internist, has been Marta’s close friend since high school. He is an outstanding doctor, but not good at resisting Marta’s badgering to disclose supposedly confidential information. ‘And besides, Dad, you’re the wrong lawyer for Pafko. You and I have seen this a hundred times. Some white-collar big shot in hot water goes to a close friend, so he doesn’t have to deal with an attorney who will make him face up to the fact he’s guilty. Kiril wants someone he can lie to.’