The Sandler Inquiry Part 66

"Tom, boy!" Zenger called.

"There's something else. As long as I'm in the business of shattering images this evening. I've got something else."

Daniels stood in the doorway, saying nothing but waiting to hear.

Leslie stood outside, struggling to put up an umbrella against the rain.

"Do you know what your own old man did during the war? Big brave Bill Daniels? Remember all those high command stories he told you when you were a boy? A younger boy?"

Thomas listened, waiting.

"A pack of lies, Tommy. A mound of bulls.h.i.t'" shouted the old man enthusiastically.

"You can check it for yourself, but Bill Daniels sat on his cowardly a.s.s in New York for the whole war. He was a recruiting sergeant. Get that? Too chickens.h.i.t to go out and pull a trigger himself So he lined up other people to do the fighting. Ask De Septio what a'recruiting sergeant' is, if you live long enough to find him!"

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.

a.s.sume 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 h.e.l.l to turn these tubs around " "Just for you., He closed his eyes and an hour pa.s.sed. 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. d.a.m.n 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 pa.s.sed the fire station, with its extinguishers and axes. With each minute that pa.s.sed 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 Pa.s.sENGERS 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 . . .