The Sandler Inquiry

by Noel Hynd

  The microfilm was both the easiest and the most logical place to begin.

  Left by Andrea in the archive room of the rambling old building on Forty-third Street, Thomas wandered for several minutes among the rows after rows of catalogued and categorized files.

  Occasionally, at random, he would open a drawer and superficially eye the contents. Obituaries of the remote and long-forgotten. Clippings and news stories of events, important and otherwise, which no living person could remember.

  Then, for the time, he moved on to the microfilm room. He obtained a spool for June of 1971 and anxiously cranked it to the fourteenth of the month.

  Then to the fifteenth.

  He scanned page one. He saw nothing of the airplane crash which Leslie had mentioned. Nor was there anything on page two or three.

  He scanned to the index and saw nothing there. Then, meticulously, he began again at page four, ready to read every headline on every item in that day's edition. At the bottom of page eight in a quarter-column story hidden in a corner, he saw it. CARACAS TO MIAMI FLIGHT MISSING, read the small headline. 39 ABOARD. Thirty-nine lives, relegated to page eight. The story gave virtually no details, nor any list of passengers.

  Thomas moved quickly to the next day's edition.

  There, this time on page twelve, he found a further elaboration.

  The Avianca flight had crashed sixty minutes after takeoff, going down in clear weather into the Caribbean. The final sentence of the short article implied that sabotage had not been ruled out as a reason for the crash.

  Thomas anxiously cranked the microfilm spool for the next edition's coverage. But there was none. Nor was there any further mention of the crash in any succeeding day's Times.

  He sat there for several minutes trying to draw some implication from the way the story had evaporated from the newspaper. Then he returned the spool and prowled through a microfilm index and directory until he found what else he wanted.

  The Miami Herald. For the same dates.

  In the Miami newspaper the crash had made the front page, since several Florida residents were lost in the crash. On page two of the Herald of June 16, Thomas found what he'd been seeking all along.

  A passenger list.

  Anxiously he read down. It was alphabetical. He quickly skipped through to the middle. To the M's. Then he saw it.

  McAdam, George F, Kilnwick, Surrey, England Of course, he thought to himself An English address instead of a Swiss one. He skipped to the end of the list -the last name in fact.

  Leslie McAdam, or at least the young woman whom he knew as Leslie McAdam, was as good as her word. It read: Whiteside, Peter S." Oxford, Oxfordshire, England Thomas then scanned the list more carefully. He saw no other names he recognized. Nor were there any other British subjects on the flight.

  Thomas removed the spool of microfilm and for several minutes sat before the viewer with the spool of microfilm in his hand. He said nothing and barely moved. Mentally he tried to sort details, to find a flaw in someone's version of the story. He'd met a credible George McAdam. And he'd met a Peter Whiteside who, if not genuine, had to be part of a hoax of staggering proportions.

  And Leslie McAdam? The woman he had encountered in the charred skeleton of his office, the woman who'd raised goosebumps on the back of his neck when she'd related her story, the woman with the savage scars across her throat?

  She, too, was credible. Every bit as credible as the other two. Yet at least one side was lying outright. Someone was dead, someone else was alive. And like the elusive Arthur Sandler himself, who was alive yet couldn't possibly be, each side was a ghostly contradiction of the other. In a world where everything had to be black and white, Thomas was dealing only with emissaries of the gray regions.

  Thomas returned the spool of microfilm that he'd held in his hand. Then he proceeded to the biographical files. And from there, over that afternoon and the entire next day, he withdrew every available shred of material on two men.

  Arthur Sandler. And Thomas's own father.

  He hid himself at a remote table in an isolated corner of the archives.

  He examined even the most infinitesimal details of two lives. He sought, above all, any crosscurrents he could detect, hidden, salient, or otherwise. He sought corresponding patterns to their lives, public or private.

  He waited for some great truth or revelation to leap out at him, for something unseen to become abruptly visible, for something long overlooked to become suddenly and stunningly understood.

  Instead, nothing. Only the ordinary.

  Arthur Sandler, the industrialist. William Ward Daniels, the attorney. Linked together in only the most obvious manner, a client lawyer relationship.

  Or was it?

  On the third day, a Tuesday, Thomas returned to the Times archives. He searched for implications: He would examine not what he saw, but what he didn't see. And slowly, a small portion of the darkness lifted. 1954, frozen for eternity on microfilm. Thomas could remember the year. His eleventh birthday had been in October and he could remember the catch Willie Mays had made off Vic Wertz in the World Series.

  Eleven years old. He recalled the family home in Westchester County.

  Back then, William Ward Daniels was still a certifiable hero to his only son. So what that in that year Daniels, Senior, was defending a sleazy character named Vincent De Septio?

  The boy never knew about it. Until now.

  The name De Septio rang a distant bell for Thomas. Somewhere he'd seen the name before. Recently. Very recently. Within the search of the previous two days.

  He began the paper chase again from the beginning. And he was well into the afternoon when he discovered where he'd first seen the name.

  De Septio, had been a client in 1938, 1939, and 1940. Each time he'd. been arraigned on various charges involving currency violations. just as Sandler had been, thought Thomas as he reread the scant, un detailed mention of Vincent De Septio, a Runyonesque underworld character who, for his imitative talents with pen and voice, was known as Vinnie the Parrot. Thomas muttered to himself, wishing those extensive files which had been destroyed by arson could some way be reclaimed from their ashes. Who was De Septio? What could his father's files have told Thomas?

  He pondered it for a moment. Then, quickly looking back to notes he'd made on the life of Arthur Sandler, he posed to himself another unanswerable question. Why, he wondered, did it happen that De Septio was a client at the same time as Sandler? What was the connection, if any, considering they were operating in the same realm of criminal activity?

  Thomas returned to another file in the Times archives, his palms wet with anxiety now, and withdrew a meager file on a middle echelon crook named De Septio.

  Once again, the file spoke through what it left unsaid.

  A brief biographical sketch traced De Septio's birth to Palermo in 1920. He entered the United States with his parents two years later, settling in New York City in an ethnic enclave around Mulberry and Canal. By the late 1930s De Septio had earned himself a solid police record, yet, unlike that of many of his peers, nothing touching on physical violence. De Septio's art was that of the swindle or, by 1940, the skillfully forged check.

  Everything was predictable enough, Thomas noted. Then after recurring legal trouble which threatened to set him on the gloomy side of prison walls, De Septio happened upon an attorney who could work miracles.

  William Ward Daniels represented De Septio.

  And William Ward Daniels somehow managed to get three separate indictments dismissed.

  Dismissed not in court, Thomas noted with increasing incredulity. But by a special prosecutor. A man named McFedrics, the special prosecutor for espionage cases, the man before whom the F.B.I. agents had once dragged Sandler.

  Then a gap. Nothing in the biography accounted for the years after 1941. No deportation order, no armed forces. Nothing.

  Then De Septio surfaced in the 1950s. He'd been indicted. He'd gone to William Ward Daniels for help. And app
arently he'd received it.

  The year was 1954 and again De Septio had involved himself with bogus money. In the autumn of that year his case had gone to court. And, according to newspaper accounts of the day, William Ward Daniels had managed to stall the trial date into November.

  Then something had happened, though the newspapers and chroniclers of the day were unable to tell exactly what.

  On November eleventh, Armistice Day, court had not been in session. On the twelfth, the court had never convened. And on the thirteenth, Vincent De Septio's case was dismissed.

  Thomas sat down slowly in a wooden chair in the archives and tried mightily to grapple with what he was reading. What he saw before him was clear, yet carried no explanation. It was self-explanatory, yet was wide open to so many potential interpretations. And both stories, the De Septio story and the Sandler story, had been almost side by side within the same day's newspaper. November 12, 1954. But with no apparent link.

  On that crisp day in November, some twenty-one years before Thomas Daniels sat in a grim quiet newspaper archive piecing together forgotten events, a man thought to be Arthur Sandler -who, like De Septio had been a counterfeiter in his day-had been gunned down on a fashionable Manhattan side street.

  On the day thereafter, De Septio had been issued from Washington, D.C. a pardon exonerating him from all crimes past and present, thus ending his problems with the local Assistant U.S. Attorney.

  And even more cryptic, noted Thomas Daniels, was what followed.

  Nothing. A gap which "tended to the present.

  After the thirteenth of November, 1954, Vincent De Septio was never seen or heard from again.

  Without question, the Vincent De Septio affair was the major case before Zenger and Daniels that year, perhaps their most important case in the 1950s. But Thomas would never have drawn the De Septio connection-at all had it not been for one word, one forever-unproven charge which drifted like a phantom through the accounts of the case.

  Counterfeiting.

  Chapter 21

  An eskimo, Thomas thought to himself. She must think I'm a God-damned eskimo.

  He shivered against the railing to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. His back was to the massive brutal skyline of Manhattan and he looked both ways, waiting for her. Waiting for Leslie at eight P.M. that next evening. And the winter wind, sweeping across the unprotected Promenade, was freezing him.

  Each time he breathed, the cold breath he drew in almost hurt his lungs. And the flesh of his face was stinging-actually stinging from the cold. He looked up and down the Promenade again, seeing only one isolated stroller and another man crazy enough to walk his dog in such weather. Thomas envied the dog its fur coat.

  What was wrong? The note he'd received had given this location, the Promenade just off Pineapple Street, at eight P.M. Where was she? What had happened? Yes, he admitted, he was worried about her. Worried about her physical safety. He began to walk up and down the Promenade again, four hundred yards down and back, just to move around and keep warm. Keep warm and think.

  The man with the dog, a German shepherd, passed him, white clouds of frosty breath appearing before the man's face and the dos paws. Holy Christ, it was cold out there!

  He'd like to build a fire, Thomas thought. Yes, that was it. He agreed with himself, a nice big raging log fire in a six-foot fireplace.

  And he'd curl up in front of it with with…

  Well, yes. With Leslie.

  He'd surprised himself. Leslie? It used to be Andrea, the prime candidate for accompaniment at a cozy fireside He couldn't stand the wind in his face anymore. He turned and started walking the other way, up the Promenade now, with the wind at his back and with his gloved hands clenched into fists and shoved uncomfortably into his pockets.

  Leslie? Well, yes, damn it! Of course he cared about her.

  Personally.

  How could he not? Bad, bad, bad, he told himself, shivering and now convinced he would freeze to death out there overlooking the cargo docks and the mouth of the East River.

  Bad, real bad. First thing his father ever taught him: Don't get personally involved with a client. It blinds you, Tom. Might just as well gouge your own eyes out. You stop seeing.

  His head was down against the cold and he continued to walk.

  Then he saw feet. He raised his head quickly and saw a figure fifteen feet in front of him.

  And then all worry about her safety or his own personal involvement with her vanished.

  "Leslie" he said.

  "I'm sorry. I'm late." She was clad in a dirk coat, and the fair and lovely face was masked partially by a wool scarf.

  "it happens" he shrugged. He didn't mind the cold so much for a few moments. His instinct was to go to her and embrace her. But he refrained. She was, after all, a client.

  "You weren't worried, were you?" she asked.

  "I figured you'd turn up. I just put my mind to waiting" He moved the final few steps next to her. They began to walk, following the railing and with Manhattan at their sides. Manhattan's lights glittered.

  "I could have picked a warmer place," she conceded.

  "You couldn't have picked a colder one."

  "You've never been to Quebec in February," she said. They were walking close by each' other side now.

  "You win. I haven't," he said, turning to look at the woman within the shrouding scarf and bulky coat.

  "This is a business meeting," he said.

  "Would a warming arm around your shoulders offend you?"

  She looked at him and laughed, one of those rare times when he'd seen her smile.

  "My God" she said.

  "Don't be silly. No arm offered at all is what would of fen me." Her British intonation disappeared into a faint, short laugh and his arm around her shoulders held her tightly.

  "I discovered something important, I think he said. He could still feel her shivering. She said nothing so he continued.

  "Vincent De Septio:' he offered.

  "Who?"

  "Vinnie the Parrot?" he persisted.

  "The name means nothing?"

  She shook her head and looked at him. She reached to her scarf and rearranged it slightly.

  "Who is he?" she asked.

  "I wish I knew." He paused for a moment, then began.

  "I've found a lot on your father. Yes, he was a spy, just as you say.

  But everything he did also seemed to advance his own position monetarily.

  You know about the currency speculations. Chances are he was into counterfeiting, also."

  "I wouldn't doubt it'" she said calmly.

  "De Septio was a much younger man. Chances are he could still be alive. He was in the same rackets as your father."

  "You're sure?"

  "Yes," he said firmly.

  "But that's about all I know. That and the fact that my father successfully defended him several times."

  "Your father and my father," she noted wryly.

  "Strange how the two of them continue to crop up together. What's the French phrase,

  "For a good cat, a good rat'?" She paused for a moment.

  "Thomas," she asked, 'tell me honestly. How well did you know your father?"

  "How well did I know my own father?" he asked with incredulity.

  "Yes "I knew him well," he said with a tone of exasperation, as if the answer were so self-evident that it hadn't deserved being asked.

  "Very well? His beliefs? Do you think you knew his innermost thoughts?"

  His face twisted into a scowl. She knew she'd have to retreat slightly.

  "What kind of grilling is this?" he asked.

  "It's important" she said.

  "Everything is your father this, my father that. First it was the link between us and the will. Now it's the link between De Septio and us.

  Doesn't that strike you as curious?"

  "Suspicious as hell," he allowed.

  "Does it trigger anything in your memory? Anything at all that you haven't told me yet
?"

  He searched his brain, desperately trying to think of one time, however many years ago, when his father might have mentioned De Septio. But no, there hadn't been a time. Not once. He shook his head no. She seemed disappointed.

  She glanced to her left. Then quickly to her right.

  "Did you come alone?" she asked, looking back to him.

  "Of course."

  "We're not alone now."

  And they weren't. Naturally it was Leslie who'd been the one to notice.

  "Walk with me," she said.

  "How did you get here?"

  "By car."

  "I'll get us out of here" she said.

  "Then you lead us to your car."

  There were two men again, but different men this time. Different from at the Anspacher Gallery, one in each direction. One seemed like an older man; he walked as a man in his seventies might. Lean, intent, shadowed by the overhead lights. The other was thick, wrapped in a bulky parka and hood, but wore a beard which for a fleeting second Thomas thought he'd recognized.

  But no, it would be impossible.

  She pulled at his arm and steered the two of them toward the lean older man. The wind was whipping into their faces, lessening Thomas's chances of seeing either man clearly. He only knew he wanted to be out of there. Whom had they followed, he wondered, him or her?

  Nearing the lean man, Thomas kept his head down. The man's hat remained a cover for his face. Then, as Thomas was about to look up at the man, she yanked his arm and pulled him.

  "Come on! Run!" she yelled.

  She sprinted ahead of him and he followed. He was aware only of the fact that the tall man didn't run and the shorter, thicker one with the beard did.

  Thomas could hear the footsteps becoming more distant. She led them up an exit from the Promenade and onto Columbia Heights.

  There he yanked her hand and pulled her to the left toward his car two blocks away.

  They sprinted the two blocks, turning down the block at Pineapple. They heard the running footsteps behind them. The windy street was otherwise quiet. As they ran and as they panted from the sprint, the cold air seared their lungs. – "Hurry, hurry," she said quietly. He motioned toward his car.