Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  “So what shall I do, get him to a hospital?”

  Strom had an idea, had Kebbon hold on nearly five minutes, returned to the line saying, “Can you make it to the Army base near Balmour with him?”

  “Yeah, we can get that far.”

  “Take him to the hospital there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll live. Or luckier yet and nobody will know till he recovers. What the hell did he get beaten up for?”

  “A confession,” Kebbon told him. “The ape sheriff thought he was doing us a favor. Doing J. Edgar Hoover a favor. He beat a signed confession out of Ragotsy, not knowing that it probably won’t hold up in court because he did beat it out of him. He can screw up our whole case against Ragotsy because of this. I’ve got the confession here, with fucking bloodstains on it, if you can believe.”

  “What does it say?”

  The envelope containing the confession letter did bear a bloody thumbprint on the flap. The letter proper had one large and two small blood splotches on the lower right portion of the second page. The text was typewritten and began with an introductory statement attesting that this was the confession of Elmo Vorhees Ragotsy, fifty-eight years old, of 122 Wellons Street, Prairie Port, Missouri. That during the course of the confession to follow, Mr. Ragotsy had in no way been harmed, coerced or tricked. Beneath this statement were imprints of the county seal, the sheriff’s office seal and the seal of the Association of Community Churches. Below these were signatures of the attending witnesses to the confession: two clergymen, the county sheriff, the deputy county sheriff, the high school athletic director, the county supervisor of road repair and the recording public stenographer.

  The confession was single-spaced and read:

  I am a Mormon State robber. I have been arrested before for possessing stolen goods but I was not convicted. My roommate, Willy Carlson, called the Cowboy, is a known criminal and convict who is on parole. I have not seen him in a while.

  The third week of June this year (i.e. 1971) I was in the caves and tunnels south of Warbonnet Ridge. The tunnels was built by the WPA, I think. I often find valuable things down in them. Sometimes I store things in them. The third week of June I was walking in a cave and seen dust and small stones falling out of the roof. I heard echoey noises too, that could have been drilling. I went out through a tunnel and up where I come in. That would be a mile from the cave. Standing there I seen the Riverrise Project was being built on top of where I figure the cave was. A week later I went to Riverrise and seen that everything is built except for the bank. They got this shopping mall there, along the river in front of the other buildings, and everything is complete and done. The only construction what’s going on is with the bank. The bank is incomplete. It don’t even have windows in it yet and no name on it. But you can see it’ll be a bank when it’s done. I realize this could be the noises I heard in the cave. That the cave is right under where the bank is going up.

  I come back over the weekend with my roommate, Cowboy. Cowboy goes and stays in the basement of the bank. I go down into the cave. At a time we both agreed on, Cowboy starts banging on the concrete with a crowbar. I hear the banging real clear, and dust falls outta the rock above me. That’s how we come to know the bank is right over the cave. Later a sign goes up in the window and we see it’s called Mormon State.

  I am not a thieving man myself. If there was temptations to do something about robbing Mormon State from the cave I didn’t give it much of a chance. There was no opening big enough to bring equipment through for six miles. The place I climbed down to get to the tunnel and cave wasn’t big enough to bring equipment in. To get out of there after the clout would mean the same thing, walking six miles with all the money sacks and equipment you chose to take out. I told Cowboy I did not want to rob the bank. I told him if he wanted to rob it, I’d sell it to him for some of the action. Criminals have the right to sell a mark to another criminal if they find it first. I found the cave under the bank first. It was my mark.

  I had gone up north of St. Louis on my boat for a freight hauling job. A two month contract job for the railroad there. Cowboy comes up to see me. This is the second week of August of this year. He tells me people of his acquaintance are going to rob the bank and need my help. Cowboy, he knows I don’t have the stamina for robbing banks. He tells me I’m not going to be part of the robbing. I’m to be part of the escaping after. I’ll be waiting in a tunnel near where the cave and robbing is going on. Waiting in a boat. These people plan to flood the tunnels and get out of there by boat afterwards. No one knows boats and them tunnels better than me. That’s what they want me to help with, picking the right boats and getting them through the tunnels later. They’re willing to pay me a full share of the take and something extra for finding the mark in the first place. I don’t have to show up until the day before they go. They’ll call me the night before. It’s one day’s work.

  I say okay, sure. I tell Cowboy a list of what I want. Rubber pontoon boats with outboard motors on them. And power beams in front. I don’t know how many people is taking part in this thing and I don’t ask. I tell Cowboy there can’t be more than two people in a boat.

  I gets the call from Cowboy on Thursday night that we’re going a day earlier, Friday. Right about lunch the next day I tell the crew on my own boat, my river boat, I’m going over to Emoryville and I’ll be back the next morning. I drive to Prairie Port and meet the Cowboy.

  We were down in the tunnel about six (i.e. 6:00 p.m., August 20). I could hear the robbery already getting started through the passageway leading up from the tunnel to the cave. I stayed on a dock in the tunnel.

  There were four rubber boats. I got them ready. Put on their outboard motors and power lights. There was trouble flooding the tunnel. The water level was too low for a while. Then it was too high and fast. When the other people came running out it was almost a tidal wave in the tunnel. The people were rushing and the light was bad so I didn’t recognize anybody except Cowboy and a man who was naked. I don’t know the naked man’s name. I think he’s from near Prairie Port. Cowboy was naked too. The other people were all wearing rubber sea diving suits, so you couldn’t see their face if there was good light.

  The people jumped into the boats in the nick of time. Jumped in just before the tidal wave hit us. I was in the last boat. The tidal wave pushed us all the way under Prairie Port and out into the Treachery. The Treachery is a seasonal current in our part of the river. The Mississippi River.

  The confession ended here. The signature and the date in the lower right-hand corner of the page were partially obscured by the three splotches of blood, which had resulted from Ragotsy passing out and falling full-face onto the letter.

  Franklin Ulick, assistant manager of Mormon State National Bank, sat at his desk studying the nine pictures Cub Hennessy and Butch Cody had presented. The photos of Mule, Wiggles, Ragotsy, Cowboy Carlson, Windy Walt Sash, Worm Ferugli, Meadow Muffin Epstein and Sam Hammond were relatively recent. The identifying shot for Bicki Hale was still the fuzzy, sixteen-year-old photograph the Baton Rouge Police Department had on file.

  “No, they don’t look familiar, any of them,” Ulick finally said. “Only I can’t see this one too well.” He indicated Bicki “Little Haifa”.

  “Let’s think back,” Cub asked. “You were around the premises when it was under construction. Do those men look like any of the construction workers? Painters, builders, electricians, carpenters?”

  “I wasn’t around all that much during the construction,” Ulick replied.

  “My mistake, I thought you said you were.”

  “I said I was around more than Mister Julien.”

  “Giles Julien, the manager?”

  “Yes. I came here more often than he did during that time.”

  “Did you see any of those nine men when you did?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  Cub produced pages of typewritten names and addresses. “This is the list you gave the Prairie Port police when they were ru
nning the show. A hundred and eighteen people who were in the premises after it was built and prior to it being robbed. Staff people and ones you were interviewing for jobs as well as others. Do any of the names bring to mind any of these photographs?”

  Ulick took his time in going down the names and reevaluating the pictures. “No. I can’t make any connections.”

  “Who might be familiar with the names you don’t know?”

  “No one. I know all the names. I met all the people listed. Mister Julien knows some of them because he also did job interviewing. Mister Chandler, our president, would know a few. But I know everyone on that list. With the second list it’s a different story. I don’t know a soul. You’d have to speak to either Mister Julien or Mister Chandler on that.”

  “What second list?”

  “The amendments to the first list. We sent you a copy.”

  “No one sent us anything.”

  “I brought it to you myself.”

  “… Tell me about this second list,” Cub said.

  “It was the amendment to the first list,” Ulick repeated. “The changes. That first list, the master list, was compiled quickly. Within hours of our learning of the robbery. Errors were made. And omissions. I, for example, had mistakenly included two electricians on the master list who had never entered the premises, who simply had installed our outdoor sign a half mile from the bank. Mister Julien and myself, on rechecking, found several things like this, particularly with the interviews. We had listed certain interviews with job applicants who never kept their appointments. A few people who had been to the premises we overlooked mentioning. All this information was on the second list. It wasn’t all that large a list of changes, I’d like to point out. We were quite accurate with our first list.”

  “You say you brought this second list, the list of changes, to the FBI yourself?” Cub asked.

  “Wednesday morning, August twenty-fifth,” Ulick answered. “It’s noted here.” He raised his red appointment book.

  “Do you recall who you gave it to?”

  “I was instructed to deliver it to Mister Denis Corticun. He was indisposed so I gave it to his aide, a Mister Harlon Quinton.”

  “You were told specifically to give it to Mister Corticun, not to Mister John Sunstrom or someone else at the local FBI office?”

  “I was told to go to the twelfth floor and give it to Mister Corticun.”

  “Told by whom?”

  “Mister Julien.”

  “Who gave you this list of amendments?”

  “Mister Julien.”

  “Do you have a copy of it?”

  “No.”

  “Who does?”

  “I assume, Mister Julien.”

  … Giles Julien’s suit was decades out of style. His shirt collar was starched and high. The fabric of his red bow tie was devoid of sheen. He set the folder on his desk and pushed the wirerimmed glasses higher up on his nose. “Why did I instruct Mister Ulick to go directly to Mister Corticun with the changes?”

  “That’s what I asked,” Cub said.

  “Because those were my instructions.” Julien peeked under his glasses to search the folder.

  “Instructions from whom?”

  “Mister Chandler.”

  “Emile Chandler, the bank’s president?”

  “That is correct.” Julien held a page out to Cub. “This is what you’re looking for. A list of deletions and additions for the original submission.”

  Looking at it together, Cub and Butch Cody saw that Ulick had been generally accurate in his description. Ten names appeared. Seven were in the column to the left, which designated deletions from the original list.

  The three names in the column to the right were of people who had shown up for job interviews the afternoon of August 20, the same Friday that Mormon State was robbed. All three had sought positions as night watchmen. The last man of the three was scheduled to be seen at 4:30 P.M. His name was Teddy Anglaterra.

  FIFTEEN

  “MORMON ROBBER SEIZED!” headlined the Prairie Port Tribune. “LOCAL MAN ROBBER!” was the banner of the competing Daily Portion. Both papers reached the stands at 6 A.M. Both had completely sold out by 7:30. Second editions went just as quickly. So did a third. Elsewhere across the nation and beyond that morning, front pages carried word of Mule’s arrest. Toward midafternoon more personal material began to emerge. “CROOK PLEADS POVERTY!” the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner declared. “21C” took up the top half of the New York Post’s tabloid cover. The bottom half bore a cartoon of Mule, his pockets turned inside out, begging with a tin cup. “ROBBER SINGS … A SONG!” declared the Chicago Daily News. St. Louis’s Clarion displayed front-page photos of Mule and Kate Smith, above which was emblazoned: PATRIOTIC ROBBER TO BOOBY HATCH! “SUSPECT ROPED, CHAINED!” protested the University of California’s Berkeley Barb.

  Rural southern newspapers, by and large, reported the incident evenhandedly. Most other publications tended, if not to favor Mule over the Bureau, then to negate FBI participation. Of two hundred and twenty-one headlines on the arrest that day and the next, only one, in the Natchez Statesman, mentioned the Bureau per se: FBI NABS MORMON SUSPECT.

  Mule receiving media attention equivalent to what had been afforded the original robbery announcement and, later, news of the wizard, might have been anticipated. But Mule received treble this amount of press coverage and public interest. He became, overnight, America’s newest pop celebrity. Had the newspapers been a trumpet obligato to Mule’s apotheosis, as they certainly appeared to be, then Nancy Applebridge’s article was the opening movement. Somehow she was able to find a grammar school graduation photograph of Mule in a tasseled cap and suspenders, an expression of clear stupefaction on his face. Applebridge, in her press association story that appeared in nearly a thousand subscribing publications, made no mention that Mule, a chronic test-flunking truant, was five years older than his fellow eighth-graders and had racked up an even dozen juvenile arrests by the time the class of fourteen posed for the photograph before a wooden schoolhouse that had long since gone to dust—the old Samuel Clemens Elementary School not far from where Mule’s horse farm was.

  Applebridge’s story dealt with childhood. That she managed to exhume the facts as quickly as she did was startling. The writing, admirably Dickensian, told of poverty and abandonment on the prairie … of Mule’s drunken father and the two Indian squaws he kept, either of which, or neither of which, may have been Mule’s mother. The father was a drayman of no particular aspirations who maintained a small stable. Here in the stable Mule dwelt and was thrashed. He ran away. Kept running away. Was thrashed more soundly each time he was returned by the authorities. The notion that the beatings may have caused brain damage was alluded to in Applebridge’s piece. As Mule grew older, rage accompanied his recalcitrance. He beat an infant with a stick and was arrested for the first time, was officially cited as a “violent child.” He became a whiskey drunk at the age of nine, complete with delirium tremens. When he was eleven he was hit full in the face by a baseball bat his father wielded. Two years later it was Mule swinging the bat full into his father’s face. Mule ran and hid with an uncle, an unemployed handyman who worked as a part-time janitor at the Samuel Clemens grammar school. Arrangements were made for Mule to live in the basement of the school and attend classes. He lived there but seldom went upstairs.

  Mule came of age by himself, a scavenger on the prairie. He could not relate to people. Loved animals. Spent as much time with animals as possible. There was a possibility that Mule’s father had sired a daughter by one of the squaws … that this daughter may have been the woman seen in the teepee the night Mule was arrested by the FBI. Perhaps this sister’s name was Vonda Lizzie, the name Mule shouted out as he ran for safety. Perhaps Vonda Lizzie was the name of one of the Indian squaws, the one who was Mule’s mother. Applebridge posed the questions without offering answers. The final line of the article ended on Mule’s eighteenth birthday … the day he was graduated from g
rammar school.

  Bumper stickers reading “FREE THE MORMON STATE ONE” began appearing on cars around Prairie Port. Then across the country. When Lamar “Wiggles” Loftus was returned to the city five days after Mule’s arrest and publicly cited as a Mormon State bank robber, bumper stickers were amended to: FREE THE TWO!

  Unable to post the $250,000 bail imposed by Assistant United States Magistrate John Leslie Krueger, Wiggles was remanded to the county jail pending trial. His court-appointed Legal Aid attorney argued that such a high bail, with no proof of the charges yet offered, was both unheard of and unconstitutional.

  Wiggles Loftus was fated not to be the darling of the media and the public that Mule was. He didn’t have that certain spark, lacked star quality. Journalists, sifting through his background, chose to ignore his genuine war exploits, reported on what was routine and bland. Wiggles in jail was cooperative and bland. Particularly bland in comparison with Mule, who somehow managed, from his guarded room in the mental ward, to hold a live radio telephone interview with Chet Chomsky. Mule denied knowledge of, or complicity in, the Mormon State robbery. He did answer, when asked, that he saw nothing wrong with bestiality. Mule, in the media, was faithfully referred to as Corkel or Mr. Corkel. Everyone in Prairie Port, and probably farther, knew he was called Mule. Knew what the second part of the nickname was. Knew why.

  Mule’s views on bestiality spawned as lively a controversy as had his calling the black assistant U.S. magistrate “white.” Some saw the “white” remark as a racial slur, others agreed with Mule. Krueger was criticized by some civil libertarians for allowing Mule to appear in chains, cited the case of black activist Bobby Seale and compared Krueger to Judge Hoffman.

  When Mule refused to give further interviews, the networks competed with offers of money. An agent from the William Morris theatrical talent organization sent Mule a letter suggesting they represent him. One offer Mule responded to was from a tour-bus company that bid $500 monthly for exclusive rights on bringing visitors to the ranch, as the horse farm was now being called. Mule demanded $500 a week. A settlement was reached, $1,100 per month. The girl dressed like an Indian squaw at the ranch manned a roadblock, charged all nontour bus sightseers $1.50 admission. The concessionaire within the ranch proper paid a guaranteed $100 per week against fifteen percent of gross receipts on all sales of food, beverages and souvenirs. The biggest-selling souvenir was an Indian doll of Mule. The biggest seller in Prairie Port proper was a postcard of the Mormon State National Bank with a portrait of Mule superimposed in the upper left-hand corner and one of Wiggles in the upper right-hand corner. A local rock group renamed itself “The Mule” and tried to give a concert at the ranch.