Part 55 (2/2)
”He's an attractive man in his own way. I enjoy his company. I enjoyed being away for a week with him. Pleasure with business, you could call it.”
”There are a lot of things you could call it ” ”Call it anything you prefer,” she said.
”I love this Sandler story.
You're breaking into a terrific story. I want to understand it piece by piece as you uncover it. I have to understand it.” She raised her eyebrows.
”You promised it to me, remember? I promised to help you as much as I could. In return, the story's mine.”
He nodded.
”That was the agreement.”
”What brings you here today? It's Sunday.”
”The Times files.”
”What about them?”
”Can you get me access to them?”
She pondered it for a moment.
”Yes. Why?”
”I want to find out about an airplane crash in 1971,” he said.
”Then I want to go farther back. I want to read everything in the newspaper files pertaining to two men.”
”Who?” she asked.
”Sandler's one, obviously. Who's the other?”
He hesitated only slightly before answering.
”Who were we just discussing?” he asked.
”Why not?” she answered.
”Let's go.”
The microfilm was both the easiest and the most logical place to begin.
Left by Andrea in the archive room of the rambling old building on Forty-third Street, Thomas wandered for several minutes among the rows after rows of catalogued and categorized files.
Occasionally, at random, he would open a drawer and superficially eye the contents. Obituaries of the remote and long-forgotten. Clippings and news stories of events, important and otherwise, which no living person could remember.
Then, for the time, he moved on to the microfilm room. He obtained a spool for June of 1971 and anxiously cranked it to the fourteenth of the month.
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