Noel Hynd: The Sandler Inquiry

Then, as his arms and legs started going numb from the cold, he'd reached Zenger's abandoned boat and -shivering 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, shivering 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 Lassiter from Washington. Thomas hadn't seen her again.

Shassad 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. Shassad froze, knowing when to listen. "A girl in the Sandler family. Sort of."

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

Nothing more. Shassad 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 Shassad.

"What're you going to do instead?"

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

Daniels gazed across the street and so did Shassad. 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.

Shassad 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?" Shassad finally asked.

"The family had a lot of money?"

"Once they did," replied Thomas.

"Not now?"

Shassad 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.

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

"Well, what the hell?" 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 Shassad, his face arranged in an expression which Shassad simply could not read. Only one thing was clear. Shassad knew he'd said something wrong.