The Sandler Inquiry

by Noel Hynd

  The old man had a rattling, cackling laugh like that of the Devil himself The laughter resounded in Daniels's ears until he quickly bolted forward into the rain and closed the door. He took Leslie's arm and huddled with her very closely beneath the protection of the umbrella. Mercifully, it took only a few steps before the maniacal laughter from the sitting room was drowned by the fury of the cold rain. Moments later, Thomas and Leslie huddled into the chilly car.

  He was angry, disgusted. Her mind was flashing, inquisitive.

  "How well do you know him?" she asked.

  "The more I see him, the less I think I know him he answered, starting the car and gunning the engine. He glanced at her, frowning slightly and seeing her face illuminated dimly by the house lights.

  "I've seen him only a few times in my life," he admitted, 'even though he was my father's partner. Why?"

  "He says I'm an impostor. I say he's lying" she explained briskly and incisively.

  "I wanted to know whom yore inclined to believe ' He started to pull the car away from Zenger's isolated driveway" My father gave me a few pieces of good advice in his lifetime' he said.

  "One tidbit was,

  "Never trust the lawyer for the opposition.

  Assume he's lying."

  She smiled, satisfied.

  "Good. That answers my question' Upon her insistence, they registered under false names at an old guest house the interior of which recalled and celebrated the glorious slaughter of the great whales. They parked the car for the night in an isolated spot near the center of town, but nowhere near their guest house "I don't want anyone to be able to find us tonight," Leslie explained.

  Thomas didn't ask why.

  Chapter 23

  It all began with water, the paleontologists maintain, with life beginning in small tidal pools beside prehistoric oceans. On the next morning in Nantucket, however, as Thomas Daniels and Leslie McAdam drove toward the ferry depot, there seemed a chance that all would end in water just as easily.

  Great sheets of water, ripping across the island. It wasn't a hurricane, nowhere close according to the natives, and the dauntless ferry, the Islander, planned to make its very-early-morning crossing as scheduled.

  Thomas wondered whether the ferry ran through Yankee ingenuity or Yankee stubbornness, or perhaps an ingredient of both.

  There were few passengers, no more than fifteen or twenty, although Thomas and Leslie weren't close enough to any to see their faces, and the ferry ran with a skeletal crew of four. Nonetheless, they were both grateful when the ship left at its appointed hour.

  Having their virtual run of the ship, Thomas and Leslie sat on an upholstered bench on the port side. Both were silent, Leslie having fallen particularly un talkative since the previous evening.

  "Something's bothering you," Thomas had insisted.

  "No, not actually," she'd said.

  "Something about Zenger."

  The statement was followed by silence, then a girlish shrug.

  "He gave me the creeps she'd said.

  Already, he thought he knew her better than that. She was a woman, not a girl, and was given not to irrational 'creeps," but to thoughtful observation and conclusion.

  "Creeps" was the girlish disguise she liked to crawl into. It was a mask for something else, something more disturbing.

  But what? He didn't know.

  Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, asking if she minded. No, not terribly, she said, and if he wanted to nap, she might take a walk around the boat.

  "Walk? To where?"

  "I like to explore," she said. And she left it at that.

  "Try to stay on board," he kidded.

  "I hear it's hell to turn these tubs around " "Just for you., He closed his eyes and an hour passed. He was awakened by the sound of two children whose mother thought nothing of letting them run up and down the aisle between seats. Not surprising that the kids should wake him, he thought, blinking awake. Enough noise to wake the dead. He looked next to him and she was gone.

  The ship was rocking perceptibly. Torrents of water continued to pound it and lash the windows. Thomas looked around, pulling himself up in his seat. Leslie was nowhere to be seen.

  All right, he thought, he'd have a walk, too. There were only so many places, indoors or out, where she could have gone.

  He spent fifteen minutes looking. Indoors, outdoors. Above on the wet deck, down below near the cars. Under cover, in the rain.

  She was gone. Damn her, he thought. Always games. Games?

  He was beginning to be concerned. A vision of her being washed overboard flashed before his mind. But he quickly shook it. She was far too careful for that. His mind raced to a murder case his father had once been in. A man had pushed his wife overboard on an otherwise joyful Bahamian cruise. Not guilty. The body of the deceased, the court ruled, had been sodden with alcohol before being immersed in the deep. Accidental drowning. William Ward Daniels had been proud of that one.

  Thomas walked through the interior sitting rooms of the ferry.

  He passed the fire station, with its extinguishers and axes. With each minute that passed he became more anxious that something was wrong. He prowled the rear of the ship, finally stepping outside onto the extremity of the main deck farthest to the rear.

  He looked around, bracing himself against the wind and sheets of rain by holding firmly to a deck railing. He looked around. No Leslie. He heard a noise.

  He turned, leaning against the railing, and saw the door closing again, the same door he'd come through. A wide man in a city raincoat was approaching him. A hat shielded his face from the rain.

  Thomas noticed the sign near him. No PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT. A crew member, Thomas thought, coming to tell him to stay out of that area. It was dangerous. No one anywhere else on the ship could see that section of the rear deck. Why, someone could fall off and never be…

  Thomas froze with the sudden realization. His mind was instantly off Leslie. He wanted to be out of there, preferably back inside.

  Thomas started to move, but his worst fears were suddenly realized. The man grabbed him by the arm, pushing him back to the raU.

  Thomas tried to push the man's grip away, but heard his voice.

  "I want to talk!" the man said, shouting to be heard above the elements.

  The men came eye to eye. The coldness Thomas felt beneath his clothes was not from the wind and water! This was one of the men in the elevator at Anspacher Gallery. This, in fact, was the man with the scarf.

  "Where is she?" he said.

  "Get your hand off me," Thomas countered.

  The gloved hand released his arm. A gesture of good faith?

  "Where'd she go?" he asked.

  "I don't know what you're talking about' A bold lie, which didn't betray the fact that Thomas's heart was pounding so fiercely that he could feel it throughout his chest.

  The man's face, thick with vaguely Eastern European features, broadened into a wide grin.

  "I'll help your memory a little," Said the man. And as if on cue, with the end of the sentence, the inquisitor's fist smacked into the center of Thomas's stomach.

  Thomas was completely unprepared for the shot to the solar plexus. He winced violently and doubled up, gasping and taking in half a mouthful of rain.

  The strong hand went to his shoulder and straightened him into an upright position.

  "Does that help you think?" asked the man.

  "Maybe now you know."

  Thomas coughed. He tried to gasp.

  "I don't know The man shook him and said,

  "Answer me. Answer me!"

  "I don't know!" Thomas barked again, sputtering the words through the rain. His face and head were soaked.

  "Bet you don't know how to swim either Thomas was shoved hard against the rear railing. The ferry's diesel engines ground noisily below. The water swirled.

  "I'm telling you," he insisted angrily and fearfully,

  "I don't know!

  She disa
ppeared! Maybe you already tossed her overboard "Maybe," gloated the man.

  "But not yet. She came on the boat with you. I I want her!"

  "So do I A moment passed as the assailant seemed to decide his next move. Thomas's throat and stomach still pained him. He spoke, playing for time.

  "How'd you find us? Zenger?"

  "Assume whatever you' like Where's the girl?"

  "Then it was Zenger. What'd you do? Fly up last night, knowing we couldn't get off by boat until today? Then you watched the ferry depot until we showed up? Right?"

  "You're smart," he growled.

  "Not as smart as your father. But smart" The man had a trace of a middle-European accent. German? Polish? Something.

  "How's your throat? Hurt?"

  "I like my throat. I like swallowing with it."

  "Like to swallow some water? A whole ocean of water?"

  Thomas felt the grip go tight on his arm again. The man would have little trouble forcing him over the rail. Little, if allowed to strike first. Thomas reached into his coat pocket and gripped his car keys.

  "I'll make you a trade. The girl's life for yours. Where is she?

  Otherwise you both go overboard and-" Thomas's free arm streaked for the man's face, a Volvo key gripped like a blade between forefinger and middle finger, braced by the whole fist.

  A strong forearm flew up to block Thomas's thrust. But it wasn't quite in time. The key savagely slashed into the thick skin beneath the left eye. It dug and it tore and the man bellowed with pain and anger.

  Blood was already streaming from the jagged deep cut.

  Thomas tried to dig the key into the man's eye. He failed. A forearm smashed Thomas's fist so hard that the key, Daniels's only defense, flew across the wet deck. The man's eyes were crazed.

  Both hands clutched Thomas around the neck and throat.

  Thomas knew. He was to be killed. He'd had his one chance and he'd failed. Thomas kicked at the man's shins, trying desperately to dislodge the grip upon him.

  But the hands were at his throat. Then only one hand as the man pulled back a fist and slammed it into Thomas's stomach.

  Thomas winced and doubled again, feeling as if he should crumple to the ground. He staggered and tried to stay up. But he was absolutely no match for a man schooled in violence' A savage chop to the back of his neck, and Thomas went down to the wet deck. He wasn't fully conscious.

  The man tried to pick him up.

  Thomas tried to stay down. Thomas tried to crawl away. Over the railing would be the next stop. Thomas knew it.

  He heard a remote noise in the background.

  The man leaned down and grabbed him by the coat, hoisting him up.

  Thomas was blinded by water in his eyes and pain all over his body. He was coughing and trying to break the grip on him.

  But he kept being lifted, lifted. No matter how much he struggled to stay down, he was being forced upward against the railing until he could feel half his body being forced over it.

  Only a matter of seconds now, for the other half to join the first.

  He was hanging on with one leg and one arm, looking up blearily into the face of his killer, fighting the'rain, the wind, and a man twice as strong as he. He was almost over.

  Then abruptly the man let out an unearthly bellow. A howl. A scream of anguish that belonged in a slaughter-house. The iron grip melted.

  The power in the hands was gone.

  Thomas blinked rapidly and peered through the rain. The man's eyes were bulging, inflated in the most undiluted anguish. He staggered and turned.

  Thomas, clinging to the railing, gawked, almost sickened at the sight.

  The broad back had been hacked open. Blood poured from a huge seven-inch gash that formed a diagonal cross against his upper backbone. The man staggered, trying to reach with his hands behind his back, trying to get to the source of the pain.

  But he couldn't. He could only lurch.

  Then Thomas saw. Leslie.

  She was standing several feet from him, the fire ax gripped defiantly in her hands, hatred -and perhaps fear in her eyes. Blood, washed by rain, dripped from the blade of the ax.

  The man howled obscenely. Thomas was transfixed by what he saw, almost forgetting to pull the part of him that was not on board back from over the rail.

  The man lunged at Leslie, cursing her. She held the ax like a spear, thrusting the blunt handle end forward and thumping it with a loud crack against the man's upper chest bone. Then, slashing with the wooden end, she crashed it against his head, sending him down against the wet floorboards.

  She dropped the ax. She extended a hand to Thomas and pulled him back from the railing. His mind was a mass of confusion, his body still anguished in several parts.

  "Help me," was all she said.

  Help her? he wondered.

  The body was still writhing, still alive but bleeding profusely, "Help me " she repeated.

  He didn't understand. He didn't know what she wanted.

  She went to the body, lifted the struggling assassin by a shoulder, and motioned to Thomas. Motioned to the man's other shoulder.

  And motioned to the rear of the deck.

  He stood there. He knew what she wanted. He couldn't.

  "Do it, damn it!" she screamed.

  "He tried to kill you! Don't you understand? Twice he tried to kill you!"

  He grabbed the other shoulder, and with a quick motion across ten feet of wet deck they ran the man to the railing, using their momentum, the man's momentum and the ship's to send him hurtling against the railing, then up and over it.

  Thomas expected to hear a splash.

  He didn't. The rain, the wind, and the engines covered it.

  They were both soaked, of course, and Thomas knew he was going to be sick. He looked at the wide wake left by the boat and tried to see the body.

  He couldn't. The indeterminate mixture of sea and rain covered everything with gray. The man was gone. No visibility on Nantucket Sound in a squall. Fifty feet at best.

  He turned and faced Leslie. She was surprisingly calm, as if it were all in a day's work. She looked at him inquisitively as if to say,

  "My, wasn't that close." Then she picked up the ax, carefully holding it by the handle, and glancing around to assure herself that they remained unobserved.

  Then she flung it in a twisting, spinning arc over the rear railing, perhaps to act as a tombstone for the nameless man they'd buried.

  Again, they heard no splash.

  She took his hand.

  "I wouldn't trust Zenger again" she said in a most appalling understatement.

  "He's not on our side. Shifty eyes."

  She gave his hand a pull.

  "Come on," she said.

  "Let's get' dry She gathered his car keys for him. Some women think of everything.

  He pulled back and shook his head.

  "Nlot yet," he said. He motioned to the rail and indicated the turbulence in his digestive system.

  "Ah, yes. I see," she said. She paused.

  "Well, when you're finished come inside and well have some tea. It will make you feel better." . He nodded. She disappeared inside and he spent a sickened moment at the rail, alone this time, looking at the gray sea behind the ship and marveling how nature covers everything.

  He turned. The rain washed across the floorboards of the deck and the runoff joined the sea. A moment ago the floorboards had been pink with the suggestion of blood. But within another half minute all traces of blood were gone and the color of the deck was a glimmering green again.

  He went inside to where the two children were running up and down a different aisle now, shrieking and playing pirates.

  Chapter 24

  He watched through the drawn front gate of the ferry as the vessel neared land. Occasionally he glanced in his rearview mirror, half expecting the car to be surrounded by police.

  "Who was the man you threw over the side?" they'd ask him.

  "Why'd you kill him?" th
ey'd demand.

  "She swung the ax" he'd answer. And they'd never believe it.

  Was that her game? He chied himself She'd saved his life twice and he'd caught himself still being suspicious.

  "I've never been involved in this sort of thing," he mused absently.

  He could feel the jitteriness in his stomach. He was shaken.

  She looked at him sternly, almost inquisitively.

  "Your father was in plenty of them. Wasn't he?" It sounded like a probe.

  He turned to her, frowning, sensing an implication but unable to grasp it.

  "What makes you say that?"

  Her face softened and she gave an innocent shrug.

  "Just that I've heard your father's reputation" she said.

  "A fairly well-known criminal lawyer, wasn't he?"

  "The word criminal is a noun, not an adjective," he said.

  "My father's got nothing to do with me She laughed slightly, raising her eyebrows.

  "Oh, come now," she said.

  "He has everything to do with you. He drew you into this."

  He searched her face, begging for more.

  "If you know more than I do, I'd love to hear it ' "Of course I don't," she scoffed.

  "All I'm saying is that if you search your memory-" "I don't know one bit more than you do!" he snapped at her quickly, tension and a vibrating headache getting the better of his nerves.

  "How many times do I have to tell you that?"

  She lowered her eyes demurely, not challenging him, but rather embarrassing him. He sighed.

  "I'm sorry. I don't mean to yell at you He tried to smile.

  "I owe you too much, I guess' She returned his smile. She could forgive as easily as she could sketch or dispose of a body.

  They were no more than a hundred feet from docking now. The buildings of the Woods Hole wharf were visible through a misting rain, and a gray fog.

  "Ever paint seascapes?" he asked.

  She wore a fleeting smile, her artistry being recalled to her.