by Behn, Noel;
“Missus Hammond, let me tell you what the TV is saying about that fuse and the other electric devices found. They say it’s the work of a wizard. A genius. Your son, Sam, is that genius. That wizard. Only no one knows it. His genius didn’t show up on his employment record or his school tests. Those methods have been unreliable before, they were again with Sam. We’ve questioned hundreds of electrical engineers and electronics experts trying to find the one who could have built that fuse and the other amazing objects. Men who earn fifty, a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a year. Who teach at universities, write books about electricity. Sam was better than any of them, Missus Hammond. Sam did what they couldn’t have done. Sam was a … a wizard. Only good will come of this, I promise. If you want the world to know how talented your son was, we can do it so we show Sam was forced to do what he did. Or, if you want, we won’t mention it. We’ll do anything you want, Missus Hammond, to get your cooperation … to learn what you know. But believe me, your son Sam was involved with the robbery. He was the one who made much of it possible. Look what I found at his workshop.”
Cub displayed a second handcrafted fuse. “No one but Sam had the skill to build these.” The second fuse was brought next to the first fuse being held up by Jessup. They were identical.
Ida stopped rocking, contemplated the two fuses, turned toward her daughter-in-law. “Why you doin’ this to me, girl?”
“Why you denying your own son?” Natalie shot back. “Whether Sam jumped or got pushed off that cliff, Bicki done it! Why you protecting your brother over your son?”
“’Cause he is my brother! Blood kin! The last I got!”
“What about this here!” Natalie was slapping at her huge, pregnant stomach. “What kinda blood’s this baby in here got if it ain’t your own? Your own and your son’s own? Who killed my baby’s father? Who killed your grandson’s father?”
Ida wilted. Her eyes wettened. Hesitantly she began to identify the eight actual robbers of the vault at Mormon State National Bank … Reverend Wallace Tecumseh “Windy Walt” Sash … Lamar “Wiggles” Loftus … Willy “Cowboy” Carlson … Thomas “The Worm” Ferugli … Elmo “River Rat” Ragotsy … Lionel “Meadow Muffin” Epstein … Marion “Mule Fucker” Corkel … Bicki “Little Haifa” Hale.
Later, giving her deposition at the FBI offices, Ida revealed that Bicki was to be in Baton Rouge the coming weekend, not the previous one, as Natalie believed. That was where Ida was heading with her suitcase when Jessup and Yates intercepted her, to see if she could reach Bicki before he left Baton Rouge.
THIRTEEN
He appeared out of place on the tree-shaded street of Baton Rouge, everything about him did. The short-sleeved shirt was imitation Hawaiian and too large. The pants were wool and old and baggy, and when he hiked them up it could be seen rope was used as a belt. The shoes, at the distance Yates, Brewmeister, Jessup and other FBI men were watching from, seemed not to match. His arms were long and dangling. The torso short. The shoulders round and slumped somewhat forward.
“He looks more like an ape than a mule-fucker,” Jessup commented. He lowered his binoculars and stepped back from the window of the darkened stake-out room established the day before by Baton Rouge’s FBI. “That’s what they call him, you know. Mule Fucker.”
“We know,” Pete Kirkwood, a local Bureauman, answered.
Brew fixed his binoculars tighter on the man loping along the sidewalk three floors below. Mule appeared to have no neck. His hair was reddish and unkempt, his face narrow and long with a potato nose. When Mule stopped at the entrance of the Altmont Hotel, directly across the street, and glanced ferretlike back and around, Brew was able to focus in on an abrupt scar at the corner of the right eye.
Jessup headed for the refreshment table at the rear of the room. “Can you imagine being called Mule Fucker?”
“Apparently that’s what he prefers,” Daughter said.
Vance Daughter was from headquarters’ flying squad and like Jessup, Brew and Yates had just arrived in Baton Rouge. It was the first time in the investigation that Prairie Port agents had met a member of the squad designed to expedite all out-of-town aspects of the investigation. Daughter’s ostensible mission in Baton Rouge, beyond observing, was to provide surveilling agents with background data on suspected gang members residing anywhere other than in Prairie Port … particularly to hasten photographs and descriptions by which the Bureaumen in the area could recognize and identify suspected bank robbers. Photos and data, sketchy as they were, had come in from Prairie Port on the men in its area—Marion “Mule Fucker” Corkel, Elmo “River Rat” Ragotsy and the deceased Willy “Cowboy” Carlson.
The out-of-town suspects the flying squad was responsible for were Bicki “Little Haifa” Hale, Reverend Wallace Tecumseh “Windy Walt” Sash, Thomas “The Worm” Ferugli, Lamar “Wiggles” Loftus and Lionel “Meadow Muffin” Epstein. The squad had revealed that none of these alleged bank thieves could be located at their last known addresses. The only dossier and photograph to have reached Baton Rouge were for Lamar “Wiggles” Loftus. The Baton Rouge Police Department had found a sixteen-year-old photograph of Bicki “Little Haifa” Hale in their files, but the picture was in poor condition.
The fear of the Baton Rouge and Prairie Port Bureaumen was that lack of identifying photos or descriptions had already enabled some gang members to enter and leave town under the surveillers’ eyes without being recognized. Daughter seemed to have no such worry, seemed politely unrushed by pleas for expedition.
“According to the Kansas state police,” Daughter said, stepping up beside Jessup at the refreshment table, “Corkel has a long teen arrest record for sodomizing mules, goats and ponies. I noticed that wasn’t in your report on him.”
“At least we sent in a report,” Jessup said.
“Who complained about the sodomizing,” Yates asked from the window, “a mule, goat or pony?”
“I would have expected a question like that from you,” Daughter replied.
“I would have expected you to be up on bestiality,” Yates countered.
Vance Daughter and Billy Yates sized each other up through the dim light of the long room. The pair of young agents had gone through the FBI training academy at Quantico, Virginia, together. Scholastically they had ranked number one and number two in their graduating class, with Vance finishing second to Billy. Yates, however, had been overlooked for the most exalted academic honor of that period, admittance to the small, private seminars conducted by Orin G. Trask, professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University and the nation’s, if not the world’s, foremost authority on theoretic criminology. Vance Daughter was selected by Trask. Daughter also bested Yates in the hundred-yard dash and high jump. Yates beat hell out of Daughter boxing and at judo. They finished dead even on the gun ranges.
“He’s going into the hotel,” Brew said, watching Marion “Mule Fucker” Corkel disappear across the lobby of the Altmont Hotel.
Kirkwood moved to the window, looked down at the Altmont. “If Corkel does what he did yesterday, does what the Altmont desk clerk says he’d done the last four days, he’ll sit in the back of the lobby half an hour and leave. Yesterday Corkel went from the Altmont over to the playground beyond the corner. You can see the playground from the room next door. Yesterday Elmo Ragotsy was waiting for him in the park. Corkel and Ragotsy sat talking to one another about five minutes in the playground, then each went back to their own hotels. Ragotsy got into Baton Rouge the day before yesterday from what we can tell. Checked into the Packard Arms Apartment Hotel under the name of Eric Kenekee from Kansas. The Packard says the reservation was made under Kenekee’s name four weeks ago; that would be before Mormon State came off. Corkel is staying at the Firestone Motel two blocks away. He showed up at the Firestone without a reservation and registered as Ted Hotchkiss from Cleveland. We’ve got the Packard and Firestone covered. We’re keeping an eye on every hotel as best we can. We’re shorthanded. New Orleans and the residencies have sent
in men, but we could use more.”
“Personnel is en route,” Daughter assured him.
A young Baton Rouge agent, wearing a radio headset, stepped in from the command post in the adjoining room, “Sounds like another one is registering at the Clemments House right now, the one with the limp, Loftus.”
… Lamar Jonathan Loftus, aka Thomas Wile, John Lamar and Wiggles, according to the flying squad’s summary report, was born 11 September 1924 in Dayton, Ohio, and received the equivalent of a ninth-grade education. His juvenile-arrest record began 22 October 1930 for the theft of candy. The case was “set aside.” Twenty-seven more juvenile offenses, all petty thefts, occurred before Loftus, at the age of fourteen, was sentenced to a state correctional facility for incorrigible children from which he escaped five times. On his eighteenth birthday he enlisted in the United States Army, where he was court-martialed twice for petty larceny and critically injured in combat at the Battle of the Bulge when a German Tiger tank rolled over his right leg. There were two different accounts of the incident. At first it was believed that Loftus had displayed cowardice and was running from the tank and slipped. It was later confirmed that Loftus had attacked the tank with a Molotov cocktail and was ground under the vehicle’s treads. Loftus’s right leg was mutilated but saved from amputation by a series of nineteen operations. He was denied the Silver Cross, for which he was recommended, due to his criminal record. In 1946 he was honorably separated from the military and left the Army hospital where he had been since his injury. From 1950 to 1967 he resided in the Paducah, Kentucky, home of his brother, had no known arrests, no known employment and seems to have subsisted solely on his Veterans Administration disability benefits. During April of 1967 he was employed as a deckhand on the Mary G, a Mississippi River tug owned and operated by Elmo Ragotsy, age fifty-eight. Ragotsy, known as “River Rat,” a convicted smuggler and fence of minor contraband, was reputed to have been a member of the Prohibition era’s bootlegging Treachery Gang. While working on the Mary G, which was berthed at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Loftus maintained a rural residence across the river in western Kentucky. Ragotsy during this same period resided in Prairie Port, Missouri, where he shared an apartment with Willy “Cowboy” Carlson, an alleged pickpocket and petty burglar. On 12 March 1968, Loftus, with Carlson, was arrested for the attempted armed robbery of a liquor store outside of Cairo, Illinois. It was the first known felony arrest for either man. Carlson was convicted and incarcerated at Statesville Penitentiary. Loftus, the accused driver of the getaway car, could not be positively identified, and charges against him were dropped. Loftus was believed to have given up his job on the Mary G and returned to Kentucky.
“Some desperado,” Yates commented as he finished reading the summary report on Wiggles Loftus. “Only one felony arrest out of almost three dozen collars and that one bungled. Hardly the crook of the century, this clown. Hardly ‘the cream of the crime world,’ as NBC put it.”
“Corticun put it that way too. I saw it in three different press releases Corticun sent out this week.” Brew, seated at the desk of the hotel room being shared with Yates, was going through the balance of available data on the gang. “Get a load of what’s here on Mule Fucker if you want to see how sour that cream is getting.”
“Mule’s worse than Wiggles?”
“Worse and funnier. I mean this guy’s outrageous, he’s so penny-ante. He actually stole flowers off a grave. Got caught and fined for stealing flowers off a grave.”
Yates was pleased. “Picture the expression on Corticun’s face when he finds that out.”
“He already found out,” Brew said. “Jez talked to Strom at Prairie Port. Strom said Corticun came down off the twelfth floor and looked over the stuff they were sending us and damn near died of heart failure when he read about Mule Fucker and Cowboy Carlson. I mean, they are really looney-toon. Billy, you think maybe Mule and Cowboy weren’t involved with Mormon State?”
“It would be a neat bit of magic if they weren’t. Nope, everything fits too snug.” Yates handed Wiggles Loftus’s dossier to Brewmeister. “This ties Cowboy Carlson, Loftus and Ragotsy together tight as can be. Add that to what Sam Hammond’s mother and widow said, and it’s a lock. Loftus and Cowboy even got arrested together on a screw-up armed job. That’s what sent Cowboy over to Statesville Penitentiary, that job.”
Brew said, “And that’s where Cowboy met Bicki Hale. They were cellmates at Statesville.”
“Who told you that?”
“Jez,” Brew answered. “Jez said Strom said so. Strom found out yesterday with a lot of other information, but Corticun’s holding everything up. Corticun’s being a pain in the butt about jurisdiction. Strom thinks Corticun’s nose is out of joint, that he’s white-hot jealous we’re breaking things so fast. Anyway, Corticun’s pulling rank and playing by the book, insisting that information coming from beyond the city limits of Prairie Port go directly to the flying squad for dissemination. That’s the worst idea yet, that flying squad,” Brew said. “Who the hell are they anyway? Who the hell is that guy Daughter you don’t like?”
“Exactly what he appears to be,” Yates said. “A tight-butt junior Brass Ball who salutes the flag five times a day. He’s so far right he thinks the Nazi party is a communist front organization.”
The phone rang. Brew picked up.
“It’s Wiggles Loftus, all right,” Kirkwood’s voice said. “He’s left his hotel and is heading for the playground. If you want, I’ll pick you up in our surveillance truck. A Good Humor truck.”
His right leg kicking out to the side and slapping rigidly onto the pavement at every other step, Lamar “Wiggles” Loftus crossed the street under the red light at the corner, crossed as Yates and Brew and Kirkwood watched from inside the Good Humor truck. Wiggles was five foot eight or nine. His large chest and head, in comparison with a frail lower torso, seemed enormous. Blond curly hair billowed out from around a Nordic good-looking face, a far handsomer face than had appeared on the file photograph.
“He checked into the Clemments House under his own name,” Kirkwood said as they surveilled. “He hadn’t made a reservation. The Clemments House has you pay in advance. Guess how he paid? With an American Express credit card. I haven’t had a debt in my life, have never been arrested and I get turned down three times for an American Express card. But they give a card to Wiggles Loftus, who has a mile-long pinch ticket …”
Wiggles paused at the playground, limped on across the next street and down the sidewalk, gazed into the empty lobby of the Altmont Hotel, hailed a waiting cab.
The ice-cream truck followed the cab to the Clemments House. Wiggles got out and went inside. Tailing agents, several minutes later, radioed that Wiggles had gone to his room. Agents at the Packard Arms Apartment Hotel and the Firestone Motel reported that River Rat Ragotsy and Mule Corkel could each be seen in their respective rooms … that neither had made any phone calls all day.
Twenty minutes later Jessup and Daughter were hurried through a back entrance at the Lafayette Inn and on into the manager’s office, where they were met by a Baton Rouge Bureauman named Bass, who introduced them to A. L. Sonny Cole, a sixty-three-year-old, white-bearded, strappingly muscular man in an “Elvis Presley” cap.
“Mr. Cole is the night clerk here,” Bass explained. “Has been the night clerk here since moving down from Indiana a few years back. His aunt bought this place a few years ago.”
“August eleventh, 1967, is when I arrived,” Cole said firmly. “Haven’t missed a day’s work since.”
Bass displayed a reproduction of the faded sixteen-year-old photograph of Bicki Hale and explained, “Mister Cole may have seen Hale here last week.”
Jessup took the picture, sat opposite the slightly stern white-beard. “That so, Mister Cole? You think you saw this man?”
“Mighta been. Might notta been.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Cain’t hardly tell dark from light on that camera pict’re thar. But the ’scri
ptions fit.”
“’Scriptions?”
“The description sheet we gave him,” Bass said.
“Seen lots of ’em come and go,” Sonny Cole volunteered. “Been clerking desks since my majority and all kinds come and go, and some, like him, make an etch. He had grips with him. Comes in the middle of the night with no reservation and five heavy grips. Leather and strapped grips with locks on the straps. I carry them up two flights to three-oh-two and don’t get so much as a thank-you-boy from him. Not one thin dime from him. Says he don’t want no disturbing. No telephone calls and no maid coming in in the morning or any time he’s in there. Only time he isn’t in there is late afternoon. From four to five. Larry Doyle, the day clerk, don’t ever see him ’cept from four to five. Goes out at four. Goes up the street to the right. Comes back the same way at five, sometimes with a grocery bag. One day I come to work early … I start at six, ’cept Saturdays, like today, when I work the early shift too … but last Tuesday I come at four-thirty, and when I pass the Altmont Hotel I look in and there he is, Mister Jahad, sitting in the lobby.”
Cole turned to Bass. “Your friends here know about the Altmont?”
Bass told Jessup and Daughter, “The Altmont lobby reputedly is a meeting place for homosexuals.”
“No maybe ’bout it,” Cole said. “Been clerking all my life, and I know queer sissy boys when I see ’em. Know all about ’em. The Altmont lobby’s queer sissy boy. I seen young boys go up to his room too, I didn’t tell you that afore,” Cole told Bass. “Three times, late at night, young boys went up to his room. I stopped the first one and asked him where he thought he was going. We’re licit here. The young boy said he was picking up a delivery. I can’t call Mister Jahad ’cause he don’t want phones ringing. I send the boy up and sure enough he comes down soon with a package. A big package wrapped in brown paper and tied with rope. Mister Jahad comes down right after mad as mean hell. He says he don’t want me interfering with his messenger boy or he’ll check out. A night or two later another young boy comes in and goes up to his room. I know ’cause I snuck behind him seeing where he went. It was three-oh-two, Mister Jahad’s room. He come down quick too, that boy, and carrying the same kind of big package as the first boy. The third boy, he didn’t come down that fast. The third boy went up to Mister Jahad’s room a couple of nights later. Went up real late and stayed long. That’s the only night Mister Jahad ever made a phone call. Called the Firestone Motel and asked if somebody or other had registered. I missed the name ’cause another call came in on the board and I had to switch off a minute to take it. When I got back to listening, Mister Jahad was saying, ‘You must have a reservation for him.’ Somebody at the Firestone said back they absolutely didn’t have a reservation or anyone registered. But no name I heard was mentioned. Later the boy comes down. He didn’t have no package with him. Maybe an hour after that, just before daybreak, Mr. Jahad says he’s going to check out. I bring the five bags down to his car, a station wagon. The bags are lighter now. He pays his bill in cash. He’s got a fistful of twenties and fifties thick as ever I saw that he’s paying with. I don’t get no tip again either. Not one thin dime.”