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
