Why did a man take off his wedding ring and slip it into his jacket? If there were two reasons, neither Shassad nor Hearn could think of the second one. No matter. The presence of the ring and its location in the victim's pocket indicated that there had been at least one extra woman in his life. Within the band was engraved: K.FM. R. -6-12-72.
The report from the Medical Examiner arrived at the Nineteenth Precinct toward three that afternoon. Shassad was the first to glance through it. The report confirmed what he and Hearn had already surmised. The Seventy-third Street victim had had sexual intercourse less than an hour before he'd been transformed from a live man into a butchered corpse.
"The penis" said Shassad philosophically as he handed the report 'nd's tragic flaw. If this guy had kept his prick in to Hearn, 'is his pants, or at least home where it belonged, he'd probably be alive today."
"Probably," mumbled Hearn, reading the report.
"So' said Shassad aloud and ruminatively, 'he's screwing around till three in the morning. Then he gets up, gets dressed, goes down to the street, and meets a reception committee." Shassad paused.
"Why did he leave? Is he going to come sneaking home at an hour like that?"
"Maybe he's divorced," offered Hearn.
"If he's divorced why does he carry the ring at all?"
"Habit?" shrugged Hearn.
"Habits are for nuns. I say he was still married Neither man was satisfied. But it was essential that they toss ideas back and forth like tennis balls, keeping it up until something made sense. Knowing each other so well for so many years, they'd refined this Socratic method of crime detection to a fine art.
"Why is he leaving at three A.M.?" mused Hearn, leaning back in his chair.
"Maybe his girl friend's husband arrived home unexpectedly."
"Or," said Shassad, a man familiar with the delights of the flesh, maybe he didn't pay for the entire night." I They held that thought for a moment. It was three twenty, almost twelve hours exactly after the slaying. Their telephone rang.
At Bradford, Mehr amp; Company, an investment firm at 440 Madison Avenue, one of the junior account executives had not appeared that morning for work. At first, since the man came in from the suburbs, his office believed him snarled in the trains which, with luck, bring commuters in and out of the city each morning. But when Mark Ryder had not yet appeared by noon, a secretary called his home.
His wife answered the telephone and was immediately alarmed.
No, she said, her husband had not been home last night, either.
She explained that he'd called her late the previous afternoon and maintained that he'd be having a late business conference and then had stacks of paper work to catch up on. So, he'd explained to her, he'd chosen to stay overnight in Manhattan at his university club.
Did she mind terribly?
One call to the club indicated that he'd never registered there.
One glance around the office revealed that he'd never arrived for work on the morning of the twentieth, not even a fast in and out.
So one hour later, at one o'clock, the Missing Persons section of the New York City Police Department was notified. They were given a description of the man by a very, very upset wife named Kyle.
The call went through the proper channels, through hospital lists, through precinct reports, and through the city morgue. Eventually lab assistant Gary Dedmarsh, whom on prior cases Shassad had dealt with, thought the description sounded familiar.
Dedmarsh checked the recentarrivals, then telephoned the Fourth Detective Zone headquarters to learn who was assigned to the case.
Several more minutes passed. Then at three twenty, Dedmar h, a gangly pale twenty-two-year-old, telephoned Shassad and Hearn's desk.
Mr. Shay-sod?" Dedmarsh asked, pronouncing it as if it were the infield turf where the New York Mets play.
"Guess what I got in the freezer. A gorgeous red-haired teenage prostitute. Came in last night. Strangled. Not a mark on her."
Shassad already knew Gary. A 'weird kid" as Shassad termed him.
"What's the real reason you're calling, Gary?" Shassad asked with impatience. Gary sounded particularly gleeful today and would whistle faint tunes when he wasn't speaking.
"A missing person named Mark Ryder," Dedmarsh said.
"He sounds like the guy you sent me last night" Shassad considered the initials within the gold band. He listened to the Missing Persons description as Dedmarsh falteringly read it over the telephone.
"Indeed, it does " Shassad said. The Seventy-third Street corpse had reassumed its real name.
Thomas Daniels sat in the lone cleared area in the charred ruins of his offices. The entire suite stank of smoke and obviously would for weeks to come. Ashes and soot were everywhere; much of the carpeting was still wet. The arson investigation was going nowhere.
What Thomas had left was a free desk, telephone service which had been restored, and a vivid memory of a day six years earlier, the day he'd joined his father's firm. Age twenty-seven, an iconoclastic young lawyer with an affinity for civil-liberties cases.
His father's son? It would hardly have seemed so at first. The father, the arch conservative criminal attorney, and the son, a hard eyed idealist, had had to come to an understanding before they'd join each other. The younger Daniels could handle as many freedom-of-speech or civil-rights cases as he'd handle of tax law or divorce. The son would defend none of the racketeers or white-collar frauds whom the father seemed not only to relish, but also acquit with astonishing frequency.
"Tom," William Ward Daniels would often postulate while his son was in the midst of a civil-liberties case, "sometimes I think there's too much freedom in this country."
"How can you say that?" the son would implore, taking the bait.
"How, in light of the people you defend?"
"Ah," the old man would opine, throwing back his curly head of graying hair, 'all my clients are innocent. Check the court records" Thomas reached to the restored telephone. He dialed Andrea's number at work.
It was Tuesday evening, seven thirty, but she would be at her desk in the New York Times building, retyping a feature article not due until Wednesday, the copy spread neatly on her desk.
"Andrea Parker," she answered.
"Want a story you can't print yet?"
"Sure," she said.
"Give it to me in confidence tonight, read it in the Times tomorrow."
"This is serious" he said.
"Can you tell me over the telephone?"
"I know why my offices got torched," he said simply.
"I think I know what they were after."
"Who are 'they'?"
"I can show you everything. It's a story."
"Now?"
"If you're interested "I am" she said.
"Twenty minutes?"
"Twenty minutes" She hung up, straightened the copy on her desk and locked it into the desk's bottom drawer. She left the Times building, walked out onto Forty-fourth Street, found a yellow cab which had just discharged theatergoers and arrived at 457 Park Avenue South fifteen minutes later.
Thomas was waiting in the locked lobby. Jacobus, the night custodian, unlocked the plate-glass doors, admitted her without speaking, then cautiously relocked the doors. Jacobus remained in the lobby watching their elevator, making sure that the young Daniels kid and the girl went to the right floor. Jacobus was even-natured: He trusted no one at any time.
Thomas led Andrea through the front doors of his offices. It was her second look at the destruction.
Do I still need hip boots to walk through here?" she asked.
"Just a clothespin for that reporter's nose of yours. Itll be months before the next tenants get the stench out of here" "Next tenants?" she asked.
It was too late to retract his words. He stammered slightly.
"It's not-ah-what I called you down here for," he explained slowly, 'but, yes, I'm giving thought to closing the offices. For good."
They arrived at his cleared working area. It was adjacent to the filing room, the flash point of the blaze.
" Quitting law?" she asked.
"Is that what you're talking about "I guess it is" he said without emotion, his hands in his pockets.
"I don't understand people who quit things' she said flatly.
"I know you don't. But you show me the @temative. My two associate attorneys need work at a steady salary. They've already contacted other firms. Take a look around here." He held his hand aloft, indicating the scene of ruin.
"Damned little that can be salvaged. And the insurance company isn't going to pay. I've got to drag them kicking and screaming into court.
That'll be my big case for the year."
"What did you bring me down here for?" she asked.
"To give you a pep talk on why you should stay in law?"
He sat down on the rim of his desk and looked at her.
"No," he answered.
"That's just what I don't want. The proper circumstances have been presented for making an exit. It's time for me to get out."
"Ridiculous. Quit your only livelihood?"
"My only livelihood?" he scoffed.
"My only livelihood has been killing me all my life' He stared at her.
"Christ" he said, 'if your father had been the great Willaim Ward Daniels and if you'd been shoved along in his footsteps, you'd have been a lawyer, too, by now. But that doesn't mean your old man's shoes would have fit you, either."
Andrea looked at him, half with contempt, half with understanding as she thought of her own father, who had worked for United Press.
"And you'd hate it, too," he said, "just as I do. You would have been seduced along the way with the summer jobs in law firms, the clerking for important judges, the tricky legalese draft deferments, and the silver-platter offer to join the firm that bore your name.
Ah, yes. My ordained future. But no one knew I wasn't going to be brilliant like the old man. And no one knew that once he was gone the clients wouldn't flock to me' Thomas paused. In the mind's eye of the son, William Ward Daniels stood in the center of a silenced courtroom, a somber expression on his craggy face, his hands thrust into jacket pockets, his graying head lowered and gazing absently at the floor. He would seem to be contemplating the process of justice, all eyes on him the virtuoso. Then the trained voice would rise and fall as the large, square-shouldered, fastidiously dressed attorney launched into defense arguments that could draw tears from a jury -of granite blocks.
Opposing attorneys wondered what had hit them.
Thomas looked up.
"Do you remember the Luther Adley case?"
"The black militant?"
He nodded. '1970," he said.
"Adley was up on charges of armed robbery and possession of narcotics.
He'd been a militant in the civil-rights movement and-' "-and claimed he was being framed," she, recalled He nodded again.
"My father brought the case into the firm" Thomas said.
"Good practice for you," he said to me. And he dumped it in my lap.
"Here," he said.
"Here's a big liberties case for you." I "You won it, didn't you?" she said.
"Surel he said sullenly.
"On perjured testimony."
"What?" Her mouth flew open.
He remembered that she was a reporter as well as his friend.
"Off the record, of course," he said quickly, raising his hand. She grimaced, conceding the point, and so he went on.
"My dear father arranged a key witness for me. The witness was pure fabrication.
Perjury all the way." Seeing her incredulity, he added,
"I had no idea at the time. None at all" "But afterward?"
"We were hardly back in the office when my father told me what he'd done. It was to serve a point' Thomas said, "a point my father considered a crucial principle' of courtroom justice" Thomas' paused and recalled with acrimony,
"That will teach you two lessons, Tom,he said to me.
"Nothing, but nothing is black and white.
And never trust another attorney. Even me'" Thomas let his words sink in, waiting for her to speak next.
Her face was contorted into an inquisitive frown. Her mind was racing ahead, wondering if someday she could print the story.
"Is that what you wanted to tell me?" she asked with a certain degree of sympathy.
"No," he said, "that's only background. It explains why I'm a bit of a disappointment. I wasn't honest enough to come forward to tell the court the truth after the trial. I wasn't dishonest enough to do the same sort of thing again. It was as if the old man had been testing me, seeing how corrupt he could make me' ' "A strange sort of challenge to throw down to an only son," she said, hoping he'd keep talking. She almost felt like taking notes, but her memory would suffice.
"He was a strange man'" Thomas said.
"Sometimes I think I never really knew the man. He left me with that feeling. And the feeling that he must have been disappointed because I'm just plain nowhere near as good as he was. Similarly, I disappoint you."
"What?"
"Which is why you and I will never make it on a permanent basis, and why you persist with your casual liaisons with other men.
Which, as you know, drive me insane."
"Thomas-" she snapped.
He held up his hand, cutting her short.
"Please. My final point."
She was silent.
"There is, however, someone I have not disappointed. That person burned me out. And that is why you're here. That is the beginning of the story I'm letting you in on. But it's also all I know."
"Who burned the offices?" she asked flatly.
"I don't know," he said.
"But someone had to have a certain folder from my files. Imagine.
Something so valuable in those crumbling old files that someone went to these lengths to get it. The old man would have appreciated that wouldn't he?"
"All right," she said.
"You've got me. I want to know. What was it?"
"Don't know," he said with exasperated amusement.
"Something long forgotten, but so valuable that it had to be taken without anyone even learning that it was missing. Want more?"
"I didn't come for the lecture," she said.
"Wonderful." He smiled.
"Follow me" He led her into the filing room and gestured her toward the burned frames and ashen contents of the wooden filing cabinets.
He could see her discomfort.
He walked to one of the remaining files. A drawer was open, just as he had left it before calling her.
"I have a good memory," he said, pointing toward the cabinet.
"These drawers were the Ss" He patted the charred frame of the file.
"The beginning of the Ss.
"S' as in Sandler."
"Sandler as in Victoria Sandler?"
"The same " "Cut the bullshit, Tom. I want to know what you're talking about."
"With pleasure," he said.
Carefully he drew her closer to the open file drawer. He fingered the drawer's contents. The drawer had not been tightly shut during the blaze, and much of the fire had crept in. Yet the folders and papers hadn't been completely destroyed. The tops and corners had been burned or blackened, but the lower half of each particular folder was intact.
"I would never have noticed this if I hadn't seen Victoria Sandler's obituary," he said.
"Her death was reported the day of the fire."
"Yes." Andrea had an inquisitive frown on her forehead.
"So?"
"So it made me curious. My father represented the Sandler family in several cases. Zenger and Daniels handled the Sandler fortune for years. So Victoria finally died, long after most people had forgotten about her." He smiled and his tone changed.
"What do dead people leave besides bodies?"
"Wills " "Exactly. That old woman had been out of her mind for years.
Probably didn't know where her own will was. The previous will, Arthur Sandler's, was probated by Zenger and Daniels. That made me wonder if-' if Victoria Sandler's will was in your Ale" she said.
"And if you were sitting on a massive probate case."
"Brilliant deduction."
She smiled coyly.
"In other words, if the probate fee were enormous enough you wouldn't mind being a lawyer again?"
"With the probate fee on a will like that I'd gladly accept it as my first and last big case. Then I'd take the money and get out of this sleazy profession. To be specific, I'd be able to buy my freedom."
Her grayish-blue eyes glanced to where his fingers ran up and down the charred center drawer of that filing cabinet.
"What did you find?"
"A black hole in space," he said.
"There's enough left in this drawer for me to know what was here when the fire started. The beginnings of the Ss. Lbok." He fingered each file as he spoke.
"Eugene Sabato. Margaret Saichter. Robert Samuelson He reached a space filled only with ashes from the other folders.
"Here it skips' he said excitedly.
"No Sandler. It continues with Saperstein, @oward. Then Saxon, Reginald. And that's the end of the drawer." His hand moved back to the center.
"Nothing but ashes and an empty space where the biggest frigging folder in the whole office should be."
He looked at her. Her expression was pensive yet skeptical.
"What do you think?" he asked.
Her eyes met his.
"Flimsy," she said.
"What's flimsy?"
"Your whole theory."
"Why?" His tone was almost belligerent.
"One of your associates could have taken the file' ' "They'd have no reason to," he said.
"Anyway, I asked them.
They didn't "When's the last time you definitely saw it?"
He shrugged. He had no idea.
"See?" she asked.
"The Sandler file could have disappeared months ago. Maybe even years ago. Linking its disappearance to the fire is an excellent theory. But it's farfetched. Where's the motive?"
"I don't know," he said.
"Who's alive who'd even have a motive?"
He shrugged again.
"Somewhere someone must be," he said.
"Whoever burned me out knew what he was doing. And he didn't start in my filing room for fun "I'm not disputing that," she said.
"But I say you're leaping to conclusions. Whoever burned you might have taken twenty folders out of your file. And who knows what they might have been taken for. He might have used them for kindling in this same room' He thought about it.
"Possible he conceded.
"But I could have some fun with the only clues to me. I could find out what was in the Sandler file " "How?" she asked.
A sly smile crossed his face. He led her from the blackened filing room back to the one clear working area in the office.
"I talked to the old man's former associate," he said.
"Zenger?" she asked.
"Zenger."
"I'd forgotten he was even alive."
"It's not hard. He's eighty-two. Lucid, though. His mind works even though I suspect the body is failing. He lives on Nantucket.
Genteel retirement "What did he say?"
"About the Sandlers? Nothing" "Big help that is," she said. He sat behind the desk. Failing to find a chair, she sat on the edge of the desk. He was aware of her gracefulness and figure as she sat and looked him in the eye.
"He said he'd talk to me personally about it," Thomas said.
"I'd have to go up there to meet him."
"How's he going to remember what's in a ten-year-old file?"
"He's not" Thomas said.
"But I think with old Victoria dead he's ready to tell me about the Sandler family."
"Are you going up to Massachusetts to see him?" she inquired.
He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms in front of him.
"It would be intriguing," he said.
"But no. I won't. It doesn't matter enough. I'm ending my involvement with this once-corrupt firm here and now."
"What's that mean?" she asked.
"Remember I told you I was thinking of closing the office?"
"Yes " she said.
I'm not'thinkin@ about it. I'm doing it. I'm closing this office on Friday and I'm getting out of law."
There was a silence as she weighed his words.
"I don't believe you" she said.
"You'll come back to it. It's… it's in your blood: " "No' he said, shaking his head in resignation.
"If I don't do it now, I'll never do it. I'm broke. The office is bankrupt. All the past has been burned gloriously away."
He looked out the dark window at the empty office building across the street, a building much like the one he was in. The lights were off across the street. But the offices waited for their workers the following morning. And the morning after that and every morning thereafter.
"I'm thirty-three," he said.
"I figure I have half of my life ahead of me. I'm not going to spend it in this office. I'm not going to grow old and die doing something I hate and something I'm not that good at."
"What will you do?" she asked.
He held his hands apart, as if in wonder.
"All I know is what I won? do " He moved back to his -desk and sat down. He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back.
"I'd love to solve a mystery," he said.
"And I'd love to play amateur sleuth. But nothing here matters enough anymore. Everything was my father's, not mine" "I, He glanced in the direction of the charred filing cabinets. in closing the doors" he said.
"And you know what? I'm not unhappy about it."