Hammond had been willing to expand slightly.
'It's a counterfeiting ring' he'd said.
'Run by foreigners. Their assassins tried to kill you and sliced up some other poor bastard instead. They tried again in an art gallery-'
'And again on the steamship from Nantucket' Leslie reminded him.
'How's your throat feel?'
'A little dry,' Thomas conceded.
'Then.. ' Expansively and with a midwestern smile, Hammond motioned toward the jar of instant coffee. Thomas winced.
Hammond lost his smile.
'Lucky you have a throat left at all,' Hammond mumbled. If it weren't for us, you wouldn't' ' 'You're using me for your own reasons,' retorted Thomas.
'We all know that.'
A telephone rang and Hammond conducted a brief conversation which culminated in his smiling. Something about the trash having been picked up completely. Couldn't be the city sanitation men, Thomas thought. And then Hammond repeated something further about dropping the last bag of it under the Williamsburg Bridge.
And letting it float. The call ended.
Hammond turned back to Thomas.
'You want to know why?' he asked.
'Yes 'Good. I'm ready to educate you And with Leslie's help, he did.
It had begun as many things do with money, Hammond intoned. Not his money, not the Treasury's money, not anybody's money. Counterfeit money.
'Printed in Germany during the war.
Nazi counterfeits'' he elucidated, pronouncing it Nat-Z, 'of British pounds.'
So far, so familiar, thought Thomas. But as Daniels listened intently, the story swerved resolutely into darker regions.
'It was our man who was helping with the printing' said Hammond.
'A man who was an agent for us. You know the name.
Sandler.'
'Of course' said Thomas.
'Recruited by-' 'My father.'
Hammond glanced to Leslie, whose eyes told him to skip ahead, far ahead. Thomas knew the basics.
'After the war, in the late forties,' Hammond said, 'the counterfeits of the pounds picked up again. It was a crackerjack effort. The counterfeiter was bleaching one-pound notes, turning the paper back into pulp, re-cutting it and then re engraving higher denominations on the same Goddamned paper. Soon it had increased from a brief flurry to an avalanche. The British were pretty sore about it 'Can you blame them?' asked Thomas, trying to weigh the story at its face value.
'No,' said Hammond. He raised his head, sipped the bitter coffee, and shook his head.
'Don't forget, I wasn't in this case till recently. Don't blame me for past history.'
'I wouldn't think of it.'
Leslie settled into an armchair, folded her arms, leaned back, and listened. She was thinking of her girlhood, and how the circumstances of her life had led her to this room with these men.
'The English were tactful about it at first. Course, they had to be'
Hammond smirked.
'We won their Goddamned war for them.'
Leslie shot him a withering glare and Hammond continued quickly before he could be interrupted.
'They asked us for Sandler. We wouldn't give him to them.' -Why?'
'The United States does not turn over its agents'' said Hammond, pride and jingoism in his voice.
'Not to enemies, not to allies. We just don't do it. No matter what the agent has done' He let the point hang in the air, then disclaimed,
'And besides, we didn't know that it was Sandler. Sandler left this country as agood engraver, not a great one. What's there to prove to us that he's flawless upon his return?'
'What was there to prove that he wasn't?'
'Lawyers ' muttered Hammond, looking at the younger man with distaste.
'We assume innocence in this country, don't we?'
'Some of us do. Continue' said Thomas. He looked at the Treasury agent and felt a surge of dislike welling within him. Not so much for the man, but rather for imperious attitudes, his representation of his department as flawless. It didn't become a man who was showing his years, slowing down, tiring, and frankly, slipping.
Hammond went on.
'For the next few years the British grew noisier and noisier about the Sandler matter. They claimed there were far too many pounds in circulation, so many that it endangered the exchange ability of their money. They attributed it to Sandler. In 1954 they got tired of complaining. They went out and killed him' 'Or tried to,' said Thomas.
Hammond studied Thomas.
'Someone was killed' uttered Hammond.
'And Sandler disappeared. The bogus pounds stopped. You could draw any of several conclusions. We chose to believe that Sandler had been murdered, some sort of vendetta from the war.'
'Still believe that?' asked Thomas, glancing at Sandler's self-proclaimed daughter. She was eyeing both men carefully, as if serving as a judge in a debate.
'No.' admitted Hammond.
'A few years ago the assault began on the dollars Same assault, same technique. We investigated. The British had claimed all along that Sandler was still alive. He'd been trying-he motioned to Leslie-'to kill his daughter, they said. So we started looking for him, too' '
Leslie chimed in.
'Convenient timing,' she said.
'Whiteside was forced into retirement. I lost my protection from the British government. I needed-' Her voice tailed off.
'A new protector?' suggested Thomas.
She replied with a nod.
'I wanted to study. I wanted to live a normal life, either in an academic career or as an artist. I couldn't do it looking over my shoulder.'
'So you agreed to help the Americans find Sandler,' Thomas said, his best cross-examining voice, of course.
'Better than that' she said, her eyes blazing with hatred.
'I wanted that man dead Her voice hit the final word heavily.
'I know how that sounds… Call it a crime of passion. Or call it self defense a preemptive strike against the man trying to murder me'
Somehow, Thomas understood. When the man who'd tried to kill him had gone over the stern of the steamship, Thomas had been sickened. He'd thrown up from the sight; but he'd shed no tears.
Simple physics: for an action, a reaction; for brutality, vengeance.
'A woman artist who packs a gun and a knife ' reflected Thomas aloud.
'Fabulous. Wait till the New York Women's Collective hears about ' 'That brings us back to your father,' Hammond interrupted.
Thomas initially thought the Treasury agent was addressing Leslie. He wasn't. That left Thomas.
'My father?'
'Yes' Hammond said.
'The great patriot. Our favorite flag waver in the legal community. A member of Intelligence during World War Two' 'What about him?' Thomas's voice was defensive. -well, quite a bit about him. He'd been a recruiter for our side, you see. He regularly lured some of his criminal clients, such as Sandler, into compromising legal positions,
