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.'
Chapter 4
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.
She looked at the dark walnut door. She knocked again at the door and tried the knob. Again, no response. The door was unyielding. Yet she knew she was in the proper place-she could smell the stale odor imparted days ago by the smoke. Besides, the newspapers had mentioned Zenger and Daniels and that was the name on the door.
She noticed a doorbell to the left of the entrance, a feature of an older New York office building. She pressed
