Noel Hynd - The Sandler Inquiry

"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."

It was well past four o'clock on Friday afternoon. The young woman in the camel's-hair overcoat tried the front door to the Zenger and Daniels offices. The door was locked.