Noel Hynd - The Sandler Inquiry

"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."