The Sandler Inquiry Part 115

I love him" He would have said more, though he didn't know exactly what.

But then suddenly she was looking past him, over his shoulder. She bolted upright and suddenly screamed,

"Thomas! Jesus!.

She pointed, her soft fatigued expression exploding into a look of wide-eyed terror.

He whirled. He saw it, the submarine, rising near them no less than a hundred yards across the water, streaking straight toward them. His mouth flew open, and like most instants of stark, heart stopping fear, the moment seemed frozen in unreality.

The submarine was going to demolish them. Unmistakably.

They would have jumped, but there was nowhere to jump to.

They would have swum, but swimming was suicidal. The water was too cold, the current brutal, the waves enormous.

The sub steamed in at them. Fifty yards. Thirty.

Then it bore sharply left ward kicking up a gargantuan wake.

Thomas realized, thinking, So that's it! Brilliant to the end! They won't smash us, theyt capsize us instead!

No direct hit on an American s.h.i.+p, merely a deluge of water.

The submarine, slas.h.i.+ng through the surface of the ocean, pa.s.sed within twenty-five yards and then began diving. A ma.s.sive wave, followed by another and another, burst forth from the sub's wake and-rising thirty feet in the water-rolled violently toward the small Chris-craft.

The first wave battered the small boat, the second threw it lopsided up upon its crest. The third wave hit it head-on, propelling it sideways through the water.

Thomas and Leslie clung to the boat with all the strength they had. He remembered yelling

"Hang on! Hang on!" and they did.

But their boat was on its side now, and the frigid water was still rolling over it, rising steadily.

Beneath the waves, Thomas thought. Zenger's words raced back.

Slowly, but inexorably, as the sub dived from sight a final time, their small s.h.i.+p was going down.

Part Nine

Chapter 39 All in all, Aram Sha.s.sad was pleased, as pleased as he could be under the circ.u.mstances. He and Hearn had made an important collar.

The case dated back a while, almost a year in fact. Two holdup men had been working out of town, trying out their show in New Haven, when a ballistics test in a Connecticut liquor store linked them to a holdup slaying in Yorkville a year earlier.

The New Haven police had a lead or two. One gunman's sister, it seemed, lived in New Haven with her three children. She and her kids were scared to death of him and his apparent partner. Some loose talk here and there, and on a warm day in early September 1976 Sha.s.sad, Hearn, and six other detectives and uniformed men closed in on an apartment in Brownsville. Months of detective work ended in a mad scramble for pants.

Then there'd been that other case, the one which Sha.s.sad and Hearn had been rea.s.signed to in the interim per io4 while the Yorkville liquor store trail had gone cold.

The Ryder-Daniels case, as Sha.s.sad termed it generically. Sha.s.sad thought of it that first Monday after Labor Day when he by chance was driving alone across Eighty-ninth Street.

He saw a solitary figure on the southeast corner, standing alone, apparently waiting, while a beehive of construction men and equipment surrounded the old Sandler mansion on the opposite corner.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h' thought Sha.s.sad, pulling his car to a halt alongside a fire hydrant.

"Daniels' His curiosity overwhelmed him. He parked and stepped out.

Ryder-Daniels had been one of the most perplexing cases. It was now d.a.m.ned to remain forever in limbo, solved but not really solved, closed but having never reached a satisfactory conclusion.

Oh, there'd been the token explanation. But Sha.s.sad had never liked it all that much. Too pat. Too set. Too ... too ... Oh, h.e.l.l.

He'd put in a lot of hours. He deserved more than seeing two Federal agents one morning in his office way back during a cold stretch of March.

Rota Films had been a front, they'd explained, as if he couldn't have told them that. A counterfeiting operation, using film cans to smuggle money and plates in and out of the United States. Well, he'd conceded, he'd known they were doing something. But he hadn't known what. As for Mark Ryder, the straying young husband who'd stepped out the wrong door at the wrong moment, the Feds had wrapped that one up for Sha.s.sad and Hearn, also. A bad case of a mistaken victim, they'd confirmed. And Sha.s.sad had already gotten that far, too.

But as for the killers, they'd said, Sha.s.sad needn't bother anymore.

The two men had been dealt with, one having been set afloat beneath the Manhattan Bridge, the other having taken a nasty tumble off a Nantucket ferry. All this in confidence, of course, the agents had told the city detectives. The case was all wrapped up and delivered, including that dark-haired young woman. Nothing further for Sha.s.sad to do.

"What about that p.r.i.c.k Daniels?" Sha.s.sad has asked.

The question had been met with shrugs.

"Forget him they'd said.

"He's in bad shape, anyway."

And Sha.s.sad hadn't seen him again, much less bothered to do anything more than think of him occasionally Not again, that is, until this warm, open morning in September.

"h.e.l.lo, Daniels" said Sha.s.sad, walking amiably and casually to the man standing alone on the corner.

"Nothing quite like an old familiar face, is there?"

Thomas turned toward the voice and saw the detective approaching. For a moment he didn't recognize him. Then he did.

"h.e.l.lo, officer," he answered without acrimony.

Daniels looked back to the house. He watched. Sha.s.sad stood next to him and eyed the large crane in place beside the old structure across the street.

"I know it's not important anymore' Sha.s.sad tried cautiously, 'but I'm a curious sort of guy.

"What's that mean?"

"It means I never really got more than half a story. You. Some girl.

The Sandlers. A boat." He paused, hoping Thomas would expand on it.

When Daniels didn't,. Sha.s.sad tried,

"I'd be grateful for whatever you could tell me. h.e.l.l. I'd just like to know. To scratch my own itch."

Thomas could feel the sun's warmth. It was going to be a hot day, he could tell already, one of those misplaced summer days which arrive too late each year. One breeze did sweep across Eighty-ninth, rustling a few leaves which had prematurely fallen.

"Well?" Sha.s.sad asked.