Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  EARLY BIRD BOOKS

  FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

  BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

  NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

  Seven Silent Men

  A Crime Novel

  Noel Behn

  FOR DOT

  Author’s Note

  Prairie Port, Missouri, lies some one hundred and thirty miles downstream from St. Louis at a point in the Mississippi River known as the Treachery. Settled in 1737 as a barge-caulking outpost, it is the second oldest city in the region. Prairie Port proper covers seventy-two square miles, as compared to St. Louis’s sixty-one square miles, and is topographically diverse. Sheer riverfront rock palisades rise from the Mississippi along its northeastern border. The inland northern and western perimeters are engirded by a curving ridge of lush wooded highlands. The western end of town opens onto the flat and arid prairie.

  Censuswise, Prairie Port is the third fastest-growing metropolis in the nation. Whereas the population of St. Louis decreased from 857,000 to 622,000 between 1950 and 1970, the habitancy of Prairie Port during this period rose from 78,000 to 507,000. Much of the escalation was directly attributable to the electronics, ultrasonics and missile industries which moved to the area in the early 1950s. Part has to do with the opening of a state university annex and two major medical centers. Some has to do with the simple fact that Prairie Port is a lovely place to live. Despite its astounding growth, a riverfront quaintness, not unlike that immortalized by Mark Twain, lingers. A movement has been afoot to rename the city New Hannibal.

  Prairie Port has one of the highest literacy and lowest crime rates in the nation. Though there are several “poor” or “trash” sections of town, the inhabitants there are mainly Caucasian and the neighborhoods far from being ghettos or slums. The Prairie Port Police Department is ranked among the finest in the nation. The area’s county and state judges are harsh. A majority of arrests and convictions deal with petty offenses perpetrated by the young. But a tradition of smuggling persists, both along the river and inland over the legendary outlaw trails. The practitioners of this ancient art are an elderly and vanishing breed, a colorful group Prairie Port residents often treat as an endangered species rather than a threat.

  The area’s federal law-enforcement agency, at the time of this story, ran into unexpected complications.

  PROLOGUE

  Friday, August 20, 1971

  Head bowed and black skin aglisten under the evening glare of outdoor arc lights, John Leslie Krueger toed the pitching rubber with cleated foot and regripped the softball in his hand and bent forward his upper torso and raised his right arm as high behind him as it would go. Held the arm there immobile. Gazed up at Rodney Willis standing at home plate with an unsteady bat poised and rivulets of perspiration running down his face and neck and hairy bare arms. Glanced overhead at the cloudless night, stared down into the dirt again. Breathed deeply. Shook his head sharply to shed accumulating sweat from his eyes. Looked up at Rodney once more. Strained to lift his right arm ever higher. Suddenly whipped the arm down and around in a complete windmill circle and whipped it even faster on the second full windmill … at the bottom of the third windmill let loose the softball with such speed and force that Rodney Willis never saw it coming … had no idea where it was … shut his eyes and swung. The bat shattered clean in half making contact. The softball blooped out over first base, cleared by half a foot the up-stretched glove of back-peddling first baseman Sam Wilson … fell fair onto the grassy playing field of Delta Island Recreational Park.

  It was the first hit the Golden Bricks, a team composed of local FBI agents, had gotten off Juggernaut pitcher John Leslie Krueger in six and a half innings of play. The only time, in fact, any Brick had managed to move the softball, foul or fair, beyond home plate. Even so, the score was close. Thanks to their own batting ineptitude, rather than Golden Brick pitching, the Southern Missouri Bar Association’s blue-jerseyed Juggernauts led the game two to nothing.

  Sue Willis was the first Brickette on her feet in the rickety, four-tiered wooden grandstand. She jumped up and down and clapped her hands and exhorted her husband to run, run, run … not stand around in stunned disbelief. And Rodney, in his golden trousers and gold T-shirt inscribed with the maroon initials “GB,” took off and ran like there was no tomorrow … amid the shouts and cheers and applause of Golden Bricks and the wives of Golden Bricks … pantingly reached first base. Ponytailed Sissy Hennessy bounded off the grandstand and onto the field and, in her short, flared gold skirt, cartwheeled up the third-base sideline and then back down again before leaping high in the air, and with the best form of a Crimson Tide cheerleader, which she had been nine years before, let loose with a kick and thrust and a bellicose “Go, Bricks, go!”

  “Go, Bricks, go!” chanted the Brickette rooting section of Helen Perch and Nell Travis and Bonnie Lou Womper and Flo de Camp and Elsie Brewmeister: wives of Bureaumen on the softball roster.

  “Lucky swing, J. L.,” Juggernaut Jules Shapiro yelled to the pitcher from his position in center field. “He was swinging with his eyes closed!”

  “Just like you do at home, Julie,” Flo de Camp catcalled back.

  “Touché, Florence, touché,” Jules conceded with a wave.

  John Leslie Krueger looked admiringly away from shapely Sissy Hennessy and tipped his blue cap at Rodney Willis, who was standing on first base breathing heavily and brushing himself off even though he hadn’t slid in. Rodney nodded back his appreciation of the Krueger compliment much as Babe Ruth might have nodded to Big Train Johnson.

  The Brickettes cheered in renewed enthusiasm, and for good reason. Balding, bull-necked, barrel-chested Cub Hennessy, captain of the Golden Bricks and cleanup batter, stepped to the plate wearing gold satin shorts and the sleeveless training sweatshirt he had been issued a dozen years earlier when he was a reserve linebacker for the St. Louis football Cardinals.

  Brickette hurrahs were answered by a chorus of boos and assorted raspberries from an abutting assemblage of Juggernaut wives, the most audible of whom were pert, kinetic Pam Shapiro and overabundant, perpetually tipsy Dori Wilson, who possessed a two-finger whistle of terrifying penetration. Dori’s husband, Sam, besides playing first base, was public defender for the City of Prairie Port.

  “Cubby, give you six to one you don’t lay a bat on the ball,” challenged Pam, wife of Juggernaut team captain and assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Missouri, Jules Shapiro.

  “You’re on, Pam.” Cub, who had struck out his two previous times at the plate, ground his heel cleats into the batter’s box dirt, assumed his stance … called out to the waiting pitcher, “What about you, J. L.? Wanna bet another court order I don’t lay my bat on it?”

  John Leslie Krueger smiled a polite smile and without benefit of his windmill windup stepped forward on the mound and unleashed a blazing side-arm pitch that not only whizzed by Cub Hennessy undetected but knocked the mitt clean off the catcher’s hand and went careening into the wire backstop.

  Rodney Willis, alerted by grandstand whoops and hollers, belatedly dashed to steal second base, dove for the bag head first as the throw from the catcher hit the infielder’s glove. The baseline umpire signaled that Rodney was out. The home-plate umpire called him safe. Benches emptied.

  Sam Wilson rushed toward Krueger saying, “Calm down, big boy, stay calm.”

  “Forget it’s Cub at bat.” The catcher hurried to the mound alluding to a recent altercation between Krueger and Hennessy. “Forget it’s the feds we’re playing, altogether.”

  “Don’t get riled, Johnny,” Jules Shapiro urged J. L. from the periphery of the second-base brouhaha over whether Rodney Willis was out or safe.

  “Fellas, I’m not riled or angered or other
wise out of control,” assured Krueger, who was the assistant U.S. magistrate for the Southern District of Missouri. “I know as well as anyone we only have this half inning to go. That’s why I changed windups and bore down more. That last pitch was the best one I’ve thrown all evening.”

  Jules and Sam and the catcher exchanged unsure looks.

  Krueger raised the first three fingers of his right hand. “Scout’s honor, fellas, I’m fine.”

  “… J. L., go back to the windmill, will you?” the catcher suggested as he started for the ongoing screaming match around second base. “I can’t see the friggin’ ball when you whip it sidearm like that.”

  The decision of the home-plate umpire prevailed. Rodney Willis was deemed safe at second base. Only one man was out in the bottom of the seventh and final inning of the game. Cub Hennessy took to the batter’s box once more … heeled his cleated shoes in place, assumed his batting stance, glowered vengefully at the pitcher, whose head was bowed.

  John Leslie Krueger gripped the softball along the seams and bent forward and raised his pitching arm high and held it on high, immobile, and gazed up at Cub at the plate and higher up at the sky above, and stared down at the ground and raised his arm even more and took a second, colder look at Cub … and noticed something in the distance … peered into the night beyond Hennessy … squinted across the thin expanse of Mississippi River separating the delta island ball field from the sprawling bankside city of Prairie Port … homed in on the huge illuminated time-temperature sign atop the tallest structure of the downtown business district, the Prairie Farmer Building. “8:12 PM” was dimming and rising on the thousand-bulb display screen. “89°” replaced “8:12 PM,” immediately dimmed to near blackness, then rose in power until the numbers were blazing white.

  Cub Hennessy, along with most everyone else at the game, turned in the direction Krueger was staring, couldn’t help seeing that “89°” had begun to flash on and off … saw a dimming and rising “8:12 PM” superimpose itself over the flashing “89°.” “You gonna blame that on the FBI too?” Cub called out to J. L.

  “If I find out you’re responsible again, you’re goddam right,” Krueger answered.

  “You really think we’re screwing up Jarrel’s sign?” Rodney Willis said in disbelief.

  “That last time you tried to tap his phones, you blew fuses in a four-block area,” Krueger reminded.

  It was curious, on many counts, that John Leslie Krueger noticed the trouble before anyone else on the field. First off, not only was Krueger the only black player on either softball team, he was but one of twenty-two hundred black people in a city of five hundred thousand whites … Prairie Port, Missouri. And the Prairie Farmer Association, on whose office building the giant sign stood, was as vehemently pro-segregationist an organization as existed in the Midwest. Secondly, the local FBI, whose office team Krueger was pitching against, had conducted a long and much disputed investigation of the Prairie Farmer Association and its board chairman, Wilkie Jarrel, but for financial rather than racial malfeasance. Thirdly, Jarrel’s battery of expensive lawyers had petitioned Krueger complaining of unauthorized activities by the FBI against their client. Lastly, it had been Krueger who had ordered the FBI to discontinue its investigation of Jarrel and who, on two occasions, had hauled Cub Hennessy, among other Bureau agents, into his courtroom and reprimanded them for violating that order.

  “89°” stopped flashing on and off, grew constantly brighter. “8:12 PM” remained superimposed over the “89°” but suddenly began blinking. Just as suddenly the entire electric display screen went to black. A moment later it was on again with “8:12 PM” blinking at half strength. The huge sign went black. Stayed black many seconds. Came on again with all one thousand bulbs burning hotter than ever. Blue-white hot. So hot several bulbs popped into smoke. The board faded to black. Came on with every bulb a faint and shimmering red. Went to black. Stayed black.

  “Yes, sir, J. L., I sure t’hell wish that was us short-circuiting Jarrel.” Cub shook his head in envy, turned and waited for the other players to reassume their positions … stepped up to home plate and raised his bat and adjusted his stance and watched Krueger’s windmill windup begin … anticipated the release and swung away before actually seeing the ball leave Krueger’s hand. The bat missed the hurtling white target by a full foot.

  Cub Hennessy walked toward the bench, knelt to rub dirt on the grip of the bat, glanced at the grandstand long enough to notice Sissy grimacing at him with that you-can-do-it grimace he had come to know all too well.

  He returned to home plate thinking that maybe he should bunt. Problem was, he was a rotten bunter. And even if he got lucky and the bunted ball allowed Rodney Willis to score from second, the Golden Bricks would still be one run behind. No, if you’re going to count on luck, he told himself, then go for broke. Try to hit the little bugger right out of the park like you’ve been trying to do all night.

  Cub took a stance slightly higher than before, choking up on the bat. He saw the windmill windup finish its first and second cycle, then as the arm rocketed down for a third time, clenched his teeth and swung the bat forward with all the strength in him. Swung as before, without really having seen the ball released. The sound and feel of his impacting bat told him he had made perfect and mighty contact.

  All eyes turned skyward as the soaring softball disappeared into the blackness above the towering poles of arc lights, remained lost for moments, came back into view far, far out and high in center field.

  Jules Shapiro gave chase, running with amazing fleetness for an awkward man, overtook the lazily arching ball … positioned himself at a spot he presumed would be in the drop path … held up his glove … as the white ball seemed to hover in space, restationed himself once, then twice, then a third time.

  The ball began to plummet. When it was roughly fifteen feet above Shapiro’s waiting glove, the lights went off. The ball park was plunged into darkness.

  Then, along the nearby riverfront of Prairie Port, from the looming rock-faced palisades in the north to the flatlands downstream, lights began to lower and dim, and many, many of them, whole stretches of them, blacked out.

  The time was 8:16 P.M.

  BOOK

  ONE

  ONE

  8:17 P.M.

  Little Haifa adjusted the battery-powered light attached to his blue metal miner’s hat, hiked up his hip-high yellow vinyl fisherman’s boots and splashed forward through the tunnel north of the main cavern; entered and crossed a small grotto; ducked along a low passageway; came out in the improvised command bunker fashioned from a decaying underground control booth of a long-abandoned irrigation and flood-control system. Little Haifa removed his hardhat and checked the first of four television monitoring screens. The bank premises some forty feet above, as expected, were empty … were, as expected, illuminated by soft, low-wattage night lights. The second TV monitor screen offered another view of the ground-level office, a moving view which revealed the two glowing red dots of an operative burglary alarm system. He glanced over at the third screen, saw that the street outside the bank was dark and empty. The fourth screen displayed the front of a massive, burnished-metal, walk-in vault.

  Little Haifa clamped on a radio headset … asked into the tiny microphone if the wires in the main cavern were ready to be connected.

  Wiggles’s voice told him everything was ready for connection.

  Little Haifa asked if the scaffold had been rolled away.

  The voice of Windy Walt said the scaffold was away.

  Little Haifa called for Worm, inquired of Worm if the supply cave had been sealed off with sandbags.

  Worm, via walkie-talkie, confirmed that the cave had just been sealed off … that all the supplies were secure within.

  Little Haifa asked Rat the condition of the passage leading from the south wall of the main cavern.

  Rat said the sandbags were in place just inside the passage mouth, that he was already behind them waiting to be j
oined by Windy Walt and Worm.

  Little Haifa raised Cowboy, wanted to know from Cowboy the state of the tunnel leading into the northern side of the cavern, the tunnel through which Little Haifa had traveled to reach the command bunker.

  Cowboy said the tunnel was sandbagged shut except for a narrow opening by which Wiggles could enter.

  Little Haifa asked Meadow Muffin to return to the command bunker.

  Thirty seconds later, Meadow Muffin, his walkie-talkie in hand, emerged through a steel hatch in the floor of the bunker … announced that the water level of the irrigation tunnel beneath them was three and a half feet lower than it should be, that the water current must be speeded up.

  Little Haifa called into the mircophone for Mule. When there was no reply, he called louder.

  Mule’s voice responded from far off, asked what was so important.

  Little Haifa half shouted that the water level and water flow in the irrigation tunnel should be increased substantially.

  Mule answered, Gotcha.

  The naked light bulb dangling beside Little Haifa’s head dimmed. A faint echo of creaking wood and metal rose as the distant water-control machinery activated.

  Little Haifa again spoke loudly, ordered everyone but Mule to leave the main cavern and take refuge in their designated shelters with their hardhats on and the hat’s miner’s light on and hat’s plastic visor down.

  Cowboy, then Rat, soon were heard saying the order had been obeyed.

  Little Haifa told Wiggles to make the final connection and go to his assigned shelter and report in.

  Seconds later Wiggles said he was secure behind sandbags and that the connection had been made.

  Little Haifa checked the television monitor screens, saw that everything within the bank premises and on the street beyond was normal, announced into the microphone that the countdown was beginning … put his hand on the control switch of the console detonator … began to count backward from 20 to 19 to 18 to 17 … kept his eyes on the monitoring screen showing the front of the walk-in vault … at the count of 6 slowed the cadence slightly … 5 .… 4 ..… 3 …… 2 …….