The Sandler Inquiry Part 116

"Come on. Give me a break There was so much, really, and it was all shooting through Daniels's mind. Primarily there had been the frigid water, that's what he was thinking of now. There had been the t.i.tanic wake from the submarine, the swamping of their small craft and his own mad flailing and floundering through the turbulent, freezing water toward the only thing afloat Zenger's boat, the one he'd rode in out to his rendezvous point.

He remembered the panic as he looked through the waves, losing sight of Leslie.

Then, as his arms and legs started going numb from the cold, he'd reached Zenger's abandoned boat and -s.h.i.+vering and chattering his teeth -had blasted the boat horn to attract her, wherever she was. And just a few seconds later, he remembered, he was buckling to the floorboards, exhausted and overexposed, s.h.i.+vering in what was the advent of a near-fatal bout of pneumonia. Moments later, attracted by the horn, she'd climbed aboard beside him, and had collapsed to the floor with him.

An hour afterward a Coast Guard cutter-attracted by something large and unidentifiable on its radar screen -had come upon them in the drifting boat. He'd been in no condition to explain anything. Not for a while.

Leslie was whisked away by a man named La.s.siter from Was.h.i.+ngton. Thomas hadn't seen her again.

Sha.s.sad sighed and was almost about to leave.

"Okay, Daniels,"

he said.

"Have it your way. Don't tell me" There was movement on the crane across the street. The yellow sun glistened off its metal.

"It all revolved around the girl Daniels said. Sha.s.sad froze, knowing when to listen. "A girl in the Sandler family. Sort of."

Daniels glanced at the detective as if he hardly cared whether Sha.s.sad knew or not. He was speaking out of a therapeutic need to talk.

Nothing more. Sha.s.sad knew it and listened.

"A remarkable woman" Daniels said.

"Bright. Perceptive. Educated. Could be ruthless, "could be sensitive. She could do a lot of things" He thought.

"Know what she would do best?"

"What?"

"Teach. She taught me that I should get out of law."

"Oh, yeah?" pondered Sha.s.sad.

"What're you going to do instead?"

"Who knows?" Thomas Daniels answered. Then he exclaimed, "Look!"

Daniels gazed across the street and so did Sha.s.sad. The towering crane was moving now, and suspended from the tallest extremity was the bulbous iron wrecking ball.

The ball crashed into the wall of the mansion, hitting it solidly on the cross town side and caving in the old walls as a gingerbread cake would crumble to a little girl's hands.

The ball swung away and a gaping wound was evident in the side of the house. Girders and rusting pipes were revealed and seemed like a skeleton beneath the mansion's flesh. Then the ball swung again, hit, and swung countless times more. No one bled much for an old building on a prime corner lot; not when a white-faced luxury high rise could soon be erected in its place.

Sha.s.sad watched the destruction, wondering what emotion he should feel and watching Daniels at the same time.

"A wealthy old woman used to live there, didn't she?" Sha.s.sad finally asked.

"The family had a lot of money?"

"Once they did," replied Thomas.

"Not now?"

Sha.s.sad waited for an answer and none was immediately forthcoming.

Finally Thomas, watching the Sandler estate crumble, its history with it, merely uttered a question to answer another question.

"Who knows?" he said.

Sha.s.sad thought about it for a few seconds. Then, seeking to ingratiate himself, he broke into a broad smile and attempted humor.

"Well, what the h.e.l.l?" he suggested.

"Stay a lawyer, Daniels.

Maybe an heiress will turn up and all you smart lawyer boys can get rich."

Daniels turned slowly and looked at Sha.s.sad, his face arranged in an expression which Sha.s.sad simply could not read. Only one thing was clear. Sha.s.sad knew he'd said something wrong.