Noel Hynd - The Sandler Inquiry

"Eighteen to twenty-four hours'" said Hammond flatly.

"That's a guess, an educated guess."

Thomas looked back to Hammond, assessing him carefully now.

"I want to bring someone else in here, "Daniels said.

"What?" snapped Hammond. Leslie watched Thomas cautiously and curiously.

Thomas repeated, though it wasn't necessary. Hammond dismissed it out of hand.

"You want to find out about Arthur Sandler?" Thomas asked.

"You want to know about your damned counterfeit? You want to know where the espionage angle leads you? You'll let me bring two more people in here "Who are they?" asked Leslie, ready to negotiate.

"Doesn't matter," said Hammond quickly.

"No-' She held up her hand.

"Who are they?" she repeated.

"I won't tell you. You'll refuse if I tell you."

"Then why should we permit it?"

"Because I can see everything starting to fall into place Thomas explained.

"All of it. Look. When you're an attorney you're trained to put pieces of a story together and form a whole story, something which becomes the functioning truth in a case. That's what I want to do. I want to link your story with another story. I want to eliminate the contradictions. Let me do that, let your mechanics chisel up that floor, and we'll be damned close to a solution."

Hammond was hesitant. Thomas looked to Leslie, then back to Hammond.

"Your alternative is going back to Washington empty fisted " "Thomas said to Hammond.

"And you, Leslie, your alternative is not finding the man who probably still wants to kill you."

Hammond looked to Leslie.

"Trust me" Daniels said simply, preparing to rest his case.

"With any kind of luck, IM produce the missing man you're looking for.

Alive. Within twenty-four hours."

Hammond was indignant.

"I thought you said you didn't-" '-know anything?"

"Yes " "I didn't. But unlike you, I've seen both sides of this. I've figured it out."

A strange look came over Hammond, one of superiority or pomposity. Or was it challenge?

"Including about your father?" he asked.

"I can't be blind forever. It's making sense."

Hammond sighed. He was tired and in a mood to concede a point if it would bring things closer to the point of resolution.

Under normal circumstances, he conceded nothing. Everything was done his way. A man like Daniels would never be out of his sight. And he was as skeptical as he was tired.

"Where do you make contact with these people?"

"One telephone call. And I bring them in' Hammond grimaced. It wasn't that he didn't like it; he hated it.

He looked to Leslie. So did Thomas, seeing where the tie-breaking vote would go.

"Seems to me," she said with gentle intonations to Hammond, 'that we might do well to trust him' "All right, said Hammond.

"It better work. Otherwise I'll find you again., Thomas smiled. It would work. It had to! With all the pieces gliding together as they were, how could they not fit the way he wanted them? Then again, how had he not seen it earlier? How had he been so blind to a man he'd been so close to?

"Watch those damned subway trains when you come out of the crawl way Hammond muttered, by way of send-off.

Thomas recalled. The crawl way Dirty, dark and evoking claustrophobia.

He shuddered.

Thomas stood on the far end of the Eighty-sixth Street subway platform. He looked anxiously at his watch, seeing that it was ten minutes past five A.m. His eyes were!*inging with fatigue. Two subway trains had come and gone. He'looked up and down the platform and did not see the two men he awaited.

He'd been there half an hour. He'd reached them by telephone.

They were late. What, he wondered, was wrong? Nothing? Everything.

"Come on'" he addressed them in their absence.

"Arrive, damn it, arrive!"

A downtown express train rumbled into the station. A pair of transit patrolmen watched Thomas from within the end car, idly wondering why, if he was standing in the station, he wasn't boarding the train.

The train began again. One of the patrolmen reached to a walkie talkie at his waist. The platform was clear again. A man dropped an early edition of the Daily News on a bench. Thomas glanced at a headline' A huge Soviet fishing fleet was in the North Atlantic off Massachusetts, it said. Thomas glanced away.

Hurry up, damn it, he thought again.

He wandered toward the far end of the platform. Then he froze in thought. Footsteps approached and he looked up. He saw the tall, lean man first, then the shorter, stronger one, the one with the beard.

Whiteside and Hunter.

"You look surprised," said Hunter.

"Not at all." Thomas glanced at his watch.

"You're late. Punctuality is next to godliness. Didn't your keeper here ever teach you that?"

"Where's Sandler?" asked Hunter.

"And the girl?" asked Whiteside.

"Around."

"Don't be coy, Mr. Daniels," intoned Whiteside gently "It doesn't become you." He shifted weight from one foot to another, cocked his head, and glinted at Thomas.

"Why did you call us?"

"I told you " said Thomas, folding the newspaper beneath his arm.

"I'm going to give you the' new Leslie McAdam, the source of the bogus British pounds, and Sandler in the bargain. In return, I want the entire background story on Sandler. Everything" "I already agreed" said Whiteside with cunning.

"I agreed an hour ago on the tele@ hone Hunter glared at Thomas, then looked around the platform, clearly unsure of his ground.

"I just wanted to be sure that we understood the ground rules," said Thomas.

"Obviously we do," Whiteside snorted with impatience.

"Otherwise I wouldn't be in this Godforsaken place at a bloody hour like this. Where do we consummate our arrangement? Here?"

Thomas shook his head. He glanced to the tracks. "It's my turn to take you into the tunnel," he said.

"We wait for the next train to pass.

Then we go underground."

Fifteen minutes later, three men slipped onto the tracks and moved quickly northward, then westward beneath the streets of Manhattan. When they came to the narrow crawl way it was apparent that the older Whiteside would only navigate with a certain difficulty. And Hunter insisted that Whiteside travel first, followed by Thomas, then Hunter.

It took another fifteen minutes to arrive before the broken brick wall.

Whiteside and Hunter stepped through the pantry, Whiteside vainly trying to wipe the dirt from his clothing. Hunter's gaze was all around him, nervously anticipating some sort of entrapment.

They passed on to the dining room. There, in the room lit by flashlights and scented by the mustiness of furniture, Whiteside stopped short. His expression froze.

"Well, Whiteside?" asked Daniels.

"Yes or no?"

Hunter, in front of him, acting almost as a shield, stepped to the side, glaring at Leslie, glancing back and forth between Hammond and Thomas Daniels as well as the woman. His own expression, shrouded by his beard, seemed to demand an explanation the explanation owed to his superior.

"It's yes, isn't it?" asked Daniels.

"Yes. Yes, of course it is" said Whiteside softly.

"Hello, Peter," she said. She grinned.

"I guess you didn't get a good look on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade," she suggested.

"No" he said.

"You made sure we didn't. I sensed it was the real Leslie when you turned out to be so elusive." He thought back.

"That poor girl in London. We buried a girl who was the very image of you " "The very image' suggested Thomas, 'but not the original. That seems to be the type of game we're all involved in, isn't it? I may be slow sometimes, but I'm catching on."

"Sir?" asked Whiteside turning.

"A game of doubles," said Thomas.