Noel Hynd: The Sandler Inquiry

Who'd want to burn him out? Destroy his records? His office?

His livelihood?

Thomas Daniels considered the hundreds of enemies his father must have made. He wondered whom he knew who liked to play with fire.

"This was a good professional torching" said Corrigan, a lieutenant from the New York City Fire Department.

"High-intensity, quick-spreading fire. Would have taken the whole building if the custodian here hadn't found it." Corrigan pointed to the filing room. The air was gray with the vestiges of smoke, and the law offices were permeated with the sweet smell of ashes and water.

Thomas Daniels's eyes smarted. He was looking at the charred remnants of the old wooden files.

"No one was here when it started," Corrigan continued. "That's the usual. A good arsonist uses a fuse."

"An electricity fuse?" asked Jacobus, the janitor, in slightly accented English.

Corrigan shook his head no.

"A timing fuse. A candle, a wire, a clock, even a cigarette sometimes.

Anything that will burn down slowly and not ignite whatever chemical, papers, or rags are being used until the torch man is gone" He glanced around. It was a few minutes past four A.M. "If the fire had done the whole building we'd never have known where the flash point was. Here we know where the blaze started. So we'll go through the debris in the filing room, inch by inch. We'll find a fuse mechanism in there. Bank on it. I'll show you something else Corrigan led Jacobus and Daniels through the two adjoining rooms. He pointed to places and showed them how the flames appeared to have traveled in a path from the flash point.

"See?" he said.

"Tracks. Tracks made by trailers that our firebug left. If we hadn't broke in on the fire early, we wouldn't have these, neither."

The trailers, Corrigan explained, had been some highly flammable substance-chemically treated rags, paper, or plastic-which had been left by the arsonist to be triggered by the fuse. When the fuse had burned down, the traders had been sparked. And a rapidly spreading blaze had shot in every direction. The intense flames consuming the traders had left the tracks.

Thomas Daniels, though working up a dislike for Lieut. Corrigan, knew he was listening to an expert. But the questions which kept recurring to Thomas were ones Corrigan couldn't answer.

Who? And why? A premeditated fire made no sense.

"A pyromaniac?"

The lieutenant seemed amused.

"No. Too neat a trick for a pyro.

Pyros are sloppy. They leave so much evidence you'd think they was trying to get caught." Corrigan shook his head.

"Nope. This was set by somebody who wanted all the tracks covered but wanted the whole area destroyed. Usually that points to one thing."

"What's that?" asked Thomas Daniels.

"Something else was involved. Another crime. Sometimes you dig in the rubble of a fire like this and come up with a grilled cadaver. Get it?

No stiff here, though. That means something else.

Burglary, maybe. Anything of value kept in the office?"

Thomas shook his head.

"No art? jewels? TVs, typewriters? Nothin' like that?"

"Nothing' Corrigan shrugged and used a thick forearm to wipe grime and sweat from his forehead.

"Then there's something else that the detectives are going to suggest"

"What's that?"

"Insurance. A failed business somebody wanted torched to cash in on a policy."

Thomas visibly bristled.

Corrigan pursed his lips.

"Not necessarily you. Maybe the guy upstairs. Or downstairs. The fire spreads and you all go up in the same puff, making it that much harder to figure who lit the fuse' ' Corrigan turned to the janitor.

"By the way howd you find the fire so fast? Doing your nighttime rounds?"

Jacobus considered it, thinking back over the events of the early morning.

"I vas mopping," he finally declared, trying to sound as American as possible, "and I smelled smoke" Shassad and Hearn stepped from the unmarked car and held their shields aloft to Officer Renfrow and a second uniformed patrolman. Renfrow recognized them anyway. The flash of red lights from the blue-and-white New York City police cars was reflected off the wet sidewalk and windows.

"Looks like he resisted' Renfrow suggested.

The homicide detectives looked down. The body was covered by a police blanket.

"That's a heavy finance charge for not coughing up a wallet,"

Shassad said. He looked at the trail of blood on the sidewalk, leading from the body and running along several yards of pavement to the doorway of number 246. The blood on East Seventy-third Street was already partially diluted by the rain.

"Want a look?" Renfrow asked.

"Why the hell not?"

Shassad reached down himself and pulled back the blanket. It was heavy and soggy from the rain. He gagged slightly, though he'd seen hundreds of equally repulsive scenes.

"Jesus' ' The dead man's face was chalk white. Below the neck, on the right side, was an obscene gaping wound, a huge bloody hole carved into the flesh just below the jawbone. A blade, perhaps of butcher-knife dimensions, had slashed upward into the victim's throat, tearing and ripping everything in its path and cutting into the mouth. The front of the man's suit, coat, and shirt was scarlet of varying shades.

Shassad mumbled,

"Can't a guy even step out of the house after dark?"

"No identification said Renfrow.

"Just some change and keys' ' Hearn looked up as Shassad put the blanket back in place, affording the dead some privacy. "No wallet?" he asked.

"All gone," said Renfrow.

They looked to the end of the block where an ambulance was turning the corner and approaching silently, its white headlights and red top lights glaring. The only sounds other than subdued voices were occasional raspy bursts from police radios.

Renfrow's partner waited for it to pass and then crossed the street, coming toward them.

"You from Homicide?" he asked Shassad and Hearn collectively.

"We're not from the garbage men softball team' "It's your lucky night."

"Yeah?"

The young patrolman turned and pointed across the street to a small frightened woman standing in a doorway, wrapped in an old overcoat and clutching one hand in the other.

"You got a witness'" he said.

"Hell," muttered Shassad,

"I was going to slip the Medical Examiner a few bucks and have him mark it 'natural causes' ' The young patrolman watched Shassad as the detective walked across the street to Minnie Yankovich.

Minnie was a bent-over little woman with gray hair, a suspicious wrinkled face, and a prominent aquiline nose. She was also an occasional insomniac, given to sitting up all night watching the streets. Mrs. Yankovich had seen everything. She had been sitting in her window for an hour in the darkened bedroom. One of the cats was on her lap. She'd seen two men, apparently waiting for something or someone. They had, in fact, seemed ordinary enough as she described them for Aram Shassad.

Shassad went back up to the woman's apartment with her and, still somewhat shaky, she insisted on brewing them both a cup of tea as they spoke. Routinely and accurately, and without contradicting herself at any time, she was able to describe what she'd seen.

The two men had been standing on the block for thirty minutes before attacking their victim. One had stayed in a shadow near 246 East 73rd Street. The other twice walked to the corner of Third Avenue, where there was a telephone booth. But both men were near 246 when the door opened and a young man stepped out.

"I thought he was what they were waiting for," Minnie Yankovich said as Shassad sipped tea from an antique blue-porcelain cup. The apartment was small and faded, but comfortable and warm.