Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  “They all think they’re not guilty?” Tina Beth asked.

  Yates nodded. “All but me and Brew. Could be Strom Sunstrom feels like us, but if he does he’s not letting on.”

  “What about Jez Jessup?” she asked. “He usually thinks the way you do.”

  “He’s the big surprise, Jez is. I would have expected Jez to say they did it too. That maybe Sam Hammond and Bicki Hale had something to do with it. But he’s written them off totally. Jez thinks the Prairie Port Police Department set us up. That Captain Frank Santi and Lieutenant Ned Van Ornum nailed us good. Santi and Van Ornum were the ones that led us to Ida and Natalie Hammond. It was Ida and Natalie who named the gang for us. Mainly Ida. Jez points out that as far as we personally know, Ida has always denied her brother Bicki Hale had anything to do with Mormon State.… that she admitted some of the other gang members were around her place with Bicki but she denied they were involved too. Jez thinks they were at Ida’s farm planning a series of hijackings … including some in Baton Rouge, where Mule, Wiggles, Ragotsy and maybe Hale went.”

  “I don’t understand, Billy,” Tina Beth said. “Did Ida say the gang did Mormon State or didn’t she?”

  “She did and she didn’t. She broke down and named all of them. I think she was telling the truth. Jez is saying we unwittingly fooled or scared Ida into saying the gang robbed Mormon State by showing her the fuse. It was only when Cub showed her the fuse he found in Sam’s workbox that Ida let down and said okay, here’re the names of the men who hung around when Bicki was at my farm. Actually it was Natalie, the daughter-in-law, who insisted they all hit Mormon State … Jez even has the fuse business worked out. Has it worked out two ways. The first is that Sam actually built that fuse for a different group of criminals. A group Bicki Hale might have introduced him to, but which Bicki and the rest of his own gang were no part of. Jez’s second explanation, which he’s kept pretty quiet, is that the police planted the fuse in Sam Hammond’s garage. I agree with Jez it wouldn’t have been hard for the police to find out about Warbonnet Ridge before the FBI did. The geologists and God knows who else discovered the control room way before Jez and I got there. Frank Santi and Ned Van Ornum could have been down there before we were and found extra fuses, taken the fuses without anyone knowing. Then, if you want to follow Jez’s scenario, they could have sat back and waited for the right situation. Or gone looking for the right situation. One way or another they might have run across Natalie Hammond, whose husband was missing. Who knows, maybe Sam Hammond was originally intended to be a member of the hijacking gang. Maybe his uncle, Bicki Hale, put him on it so he could earn some extra money. Money to buy that repair shop in Nags Head. Jez sure as hell thinks that’s possible.

  “Jez also thinks Bicki most likely arranged for Sam to go along with Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy on the Illinois cigarette hijacking. And that maybe Sam did go to Illinois or maybe he committed suicide before he could go. As for Natalie Hammond, Sam’s wife, insisting her husband was in on Mormon State, knowing a few things that weren’t in the paper about it, Jez has a simple explanation: that Natalie herself was simple, sweet and trusting but on the dim side. Jez feels it wouldn’t have been too hard for a couple of old pros like Frank Santi and Ned Van Ornum to convince Natalie her husband was actually going to Mormon State … to twist around everything Sam told to suit their own purposes. Jez thinks that’s what happened … that Natalie repeated to Cub what Santi and Van Ornum had whispered in her ear, convinced her was so. That way they used her to set us up for this fall.”

  “But you don’t think what Jez Jessup said, happened?” asked Tina Beth.

  “… I just have to believe what Ida and Natalie told the FBI was true.”

  “Aren’t you sure, Billy?” There was no answer. “Why don’t you and Jez go back and talk to Natalie again?”

  “We would if we could find her. Natalie Hammond has disappeared. Left home three days ago and hasn’t been seen or heard from. How about some hot chocolate?”

  Tina Beth undid the thermos, poured a cup of chocolate. “Do you think Natalie’s in trouble?”

  Billy shrugged, took the cup and sipped as he drove.

  “If Natalie is in some sort of trouble, then maybe Jez was right about her?” Tina Beth speculated. “Maybe the police took her away or did something to her so you wouldn’t find out she was telling you lies.”

  Billy shook his head. “The police aren’t going to go in for kidnapping to prevent it being known they made fools of the FBI. If anything, they’d take out a paid advertisement to brag about how dumb we were.”

  “If it doesn’t matter whether Natalie is lying, why would anyone take her away?”

  “To keep her from repeating the truth … maybe that’s it. Maybe something else scared her off. Maybe she isn’t missing. We don’t know what conditions she left under. But we know she’s pregnant. Possibly she just took a trip, but I doubt it …”

  “What does Jez think?”

  “For all we know, Jez is in on it.”

  “On what?”

  “The conspiracy.”

  “… I don’t understand.”

  “That’s why we’re driving and talking, Tina Beth. I don’t understand either. At times I think I do. I think I see it. See it clearly. I have this feeling our investigation, all of Romor 91, is being systematically sabotaged. Sabotaged from the inside. Sabotaged maybe by Jez. Then I start seeing Corticun as the saboteur. Or even that faceless spy that Ed Grafton was always certain had infiltrated the office. Washington’s spy. I see the spy a lot … I stare harder, and suddenly everything falls apart. Shatters into pieces and rearranges as if I were squinting into a kaleidoscope. The conspiracy is gone, and one by one, all those inconsistencies and contradictions in the investigation start forming and collapsing. Reshaping into something else. Nothing makes sense, and everything makes sense. The more incomprehensible it becomes the more I have this feeling of déjà vu. I’ve been here before, Tina Beth. Whatever’s going on, I’ve been through it before. I’ve got to find out what it is. What the hell is happening. Maybe if we go over it like we used to go over the tests, talk it out, hear it, I’ll get some focus. Maybe just saying it and hearing it might give me some perspective. Hearing all those questions I had. Just rattling on at random. Tina Beth, you up to me rattling on?”

  “Rattle away, Billy Bee.”

  There were immediate questions for which he had no answers, such as how exactly Harry Janks had been able to get into Prairie Port and in touch with Mule and Wiggles without the FBI knowing. How Janks was able to get to Ragotsy, who was technically incommunicado at the Army hospital. How and when he convinced each prisoner to let him represent them. How and when Janks was able to procure the eleven affidavits in Emoryville, Illinois, saying the three suspects were in that town. Had Mule, Wiggles and Rat told Janks where they were and who had seen them? Had Janks then arranged for these eyewitnesses to be interviewed at Emoryville? Or had Janks somehow managed to learn about the eyewitnesses first and gotten their affidavits and then gone to see Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy? Janks was a very well-connected criminal lawyer, and sources in the underworld could have tipped him off about Emoryville. About who to see there. Whose affidavits to take. Was it because of these affidavits that Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy agreed to see Janks and let him represent them? Were there intermediaries between Janks and his three new clients and if so, who were they?

  Questions regarding Sam Hammond nagged. Was it conceivable Sam hadn’t done the electrical work for the gang? Didn’t get the generators working and the water gates open? Did not build the time delay mechanism? Sam’s work area, after all, did not contain the sort of sophisticated tools Cub thought were needed to build the mechanism. Build the fuses. If Sam hadn’t built them, hadn’t done the other things as well, who had? Were Corticun and Cub and most of the other agents correct in originally presuming an electronic engineer at the very least had been the wizard? Was it possible a different and far more sophisticated gang had pe
rpetrated Mormon State?

  No, that couldn’t be, he told Tina Beth as they drove. It wasn’t a different gang. It was Mule and Bicki and Wiggles and River Rat and Meadow Muffin and Windy Walt and Cowboy and Worm who scored Mormon State. If anyone had brought in a wizard other than Sam Hammond, they had. If an electronic engineer or his likes had been used, they would have had to use him. But how probable was it for Bicki and company to have access to anyone so educated and skilled? No, they had access only to someone uneducated … and skilled.

  There was much about Denis Corticun that Billy Yates pondered, aloud and silently, while he drove with Tina Beth. Corticun had originally come to Prairie Port to interview Martin Brewmeister after the robbery was discovered … the “first” or “small” robbery, as Yates was referring to it, of $6,500. Corticun had run afoul of Ed Grafton by going directly to the hospital room and interviewing Brew there, after being denied permission to do so … had been humiliated first by Grafton and later by the drunken parody of him in the resident office. Through it all, Corticun had remained aloof and haughty. On the FBI’s reentry into the Mormon State investigation … after discovering an additional $31,000,000 had been stolen … Corticun seemed to have shed his skin, came back to Prairie Port an ostensibly changed man. A cooperative and caring chap who never interfered with Strom’s dictates even though Corticun, technically, could overrule Strom … was in fact the ultimate authority for Romor 91. Corticun had allowed Strom to get rid of Harlon Quinton and have the central files moved to the eleventh floor. Corticun’s overriding concern was public relations and press conferences. He hyped the crime and unknown criminals with the joie of a carnival barker. Corticun, more than anyone, created the illusion of the supercrime-of-the-century, extolled the unknown gang as the crème de la crème of thievery. Yet Corticun was only fleetingly perturbed on learning a stumblebum street crook like Mule had pulled off the job. Cub became, and remained, despondent over this. Other of the agents did as well. But Corticun took it in stride. Went on holding his two press conferences a day and tending to other public relations chores. When Harry Janks provided documentation of Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy not having been in Prairie Port at the time of the robbery, Corticun was as unflappable as ever. Didn’t bat an eyelash. Went back to his office and rewrote the press release he had intended for morning dissemination.

  “He doesn’t ring true,” Billy Yates said to Tina Beth. “Nothing about Corticun rings true. He’s playing games. Only I don’t know what kind of games.” More hot chocolate was sipped. “Jez, he could be playing games too.”

  “You’re sounding like real paranoid, Billy Bee,” Tina Beth said.

  “It’s how I feel.”

  They rode on many more miles in silence. Rode with Billy squinting straight ahead through the rain-splattered windshield, biting at the corners of his mouth, swallowing dry swallows from time to time. Drove with Tina Beth watching him from the corner of her eye, sensing the turmoil.

  Billy’s thoughts, as they so often had, drifted back to a pair of old and troubling questions, pivotal questions that had emerged at the very onset of the investigation and lingered. Why had it taken so long to discover an additional $31,000,000 had been stolen from Mormon State National Bank? Why had J. Edgar Hoover dismissed Ed Grafton when he did?

  Yates had read the flying squad’s summary explanation of how the $31,000,000 came to be at Mormon State, found the reports to be, as he told Jessup at the time, as full of holes as Swiss cheese. The rush of subsequent events hadn’t allowed Billy to dwell on this or Director Hoover’s removal of Grafton. While he drove with Tina Beth, both questions reemerged, hovered. Billy homed in on the one for which he had tentative answers.

  “If J. Edgar Hoover and Ed Grafton were such old and good pals, had fought and made up and fought again and made up again as legend held,” he said aloud but not necessarily to Tina Beth, “then why would Director Hoover remove him at all? What had Ed Grafton done that was so wrong, that would call for removal? Ed Grafton had gone on vacation. The first vacation he’d taken in five years. While he was gone, Mormon State gets robbed. Or we learn on Sunday it was robbed. Ed Grafton can’t be reached, and no one knows how much money was stolen. There’s no doubt the perpetration was spectacular in concept. The press starts calling it the crime of the century. Denis Corticun comes in from headquarters like a military historian rushing onto a fresh battlefield to memorialize the fight for all time. Grafton is back by then and is told by the bank and Brink’s that only sixty-five hundred dollars was delivered to Mormon State just before the theft. That becomes the official loss estimate. Grafton wipes Corticun’s nose in it. Corticun, of course, is Washington’s man. The Brass-Balled Monkeys’ man. He’s a Brass Ball himself. The agents in our office get drunk and steal Corticun’s pinstriped jacket and do a take-off on him … and he walks in on the take-off. All the agents drop their pants in front of him. Then we find out another thirty-one million was in the vault, that it’s the biggest robbery in history. The press goes wild … but why remove Grafton? Because he believed what the bank and Brink’s told him about only sixty-five hundred being in the vault? Because he rubbed Corticun’s nose in it? Because the agents ridiculed Corticun? Because of the press … because Washington felt it needed a fall guy? Or because Washington was afraid what Grafton would say to the press when he got back from vacation?

  “… Are any of these, all of these why J. Edgar Hoover would get rid of Grafton? Or are they reasons the Brass Balls in Washington would get rid of him? But I don’t think the Brass Balls would dare bring one of these points up to Hoover … wouldn’t risk his wrath if he defended Grafton against these complaints like he’s defended him against everything else. Hoover, only Director Hoover, could have removed Ed Grafton. Then why did he? What would cause him to dismiss his oldest and closest friend among agents? The man he had protected and championed for so long. Could that be one explanation? That Director Hoover was protecting Grafton by removing him? Does that make any sense, Tina Beth?”

  “Protecting him from what, Billy Bee?”

  “This investigation. Being any part of Romor 91.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe J. Edgar Hoover felt the investigation would fail and didn’t want Grafton to suffer from that?”

  Tina Beth knew from Billy’s tone he did not seek any comment from her, that he was merely speculating aloud, listening to how the answers sounded, how they struck him. She knew that more would be forthcoming.

  “… There are two more possibilities,” Billy said after a long pause. “What if J. Edgar Hoover had come to agree with the Brass Balls who felt Prairie Port was too big a pain in the butt to deal with any more? Let’s say Hoover had decided the entire resident office should be replaced. Along comes Romor 91. Hoover sees the perfect opportunity to clean house without arousing the media. Even J. Edgar Hoover might have pause at what the press would do if they found out he replaced an entire office for no good reason. We certainly have seen how Washington cottons to the media, haven’t we, Tina Beth? They probably learned that from Mister Hoover himself. Yessiree, if I were J. Edgar Hoover and wanted to flush out the Prairie Port office from top to bottom, the Mormon State robbery would be manna from heaven. With Mormon State I could stand back and let Prairie Port do its own self in. Walk the plank unaided and with its eyes wide open. All that would be required was to remove the man who was the Prairie Port residency … Ed Grafton. As far as Edgar Hoover was concerned, and most of the Brass Balls for that matter, Grafton was the mind, the soul, the very blood in the veins of our office. Lop off the monster’s head and the beast will die. Pluck the captain from the helm and the ship will crash onto the rocks. Let all hands perish. Then send in a brand-new crew. Answer me this, Tina Beth.” He was looking intently at her now. “Why give Romor 91 to Strom Sunstrom?”

  “Mind the road, Billy Bee,” she told him.

  He looked ahead at the highway. “Romor 91, the largest and most important Bureau investigation ever mounted … and the
y give it to Strom? Dozens of SACs and supervisors with ten times the experience Strom has are bypassed for replacing Grafton. There’s no precedent here. Not with a resident office. No rule saying who should take over for Grafton. It could be anyone. But Edgar picks Strom. Everything goes to Strom. Corticun, who outranks Strom, comes in and doesn’t lift a finger. He lets Strom do it all. Agrees with everything Strom does, investigationwise.

  “Tina Beth, you think Denis Corticun knows something we don’t? You think maybe he’s waiting for something to come down … like Strom and the rest of us? Without realizing it, you think maybe Strom’s aiding and abetting Corticun? Strom’s already turned over most of the residency’s routine case load to Corticun and his auxiliary agents on the twelfth floor. Do you think maybe those auxiliary agents, those temporary support personnel, as they’ve been designated, are not so auxiliary or temporary or supportive? Do you think they’re our replacements? And always have been? How much effort would it be for those thirty agents on the twelfth floor to relieve the eleventh floor of Romor 91 and have the whole kit and kaboodle to themselves? Have Romor 91 as well as Prairie Port? Think Denis Corticun was just waiting for us to stumble so he would have the excuse to take over, or … so J. Edgar Hoover would have the excuse to order him to take over?”

  Billy’s laugh was pained. “Tina Beth, looks like your old man has gone looney-toon on you. Wacko as Mata Hari Jessup claims to be about spies coming to Praire Port to peek on Grafton. Next thing you know I’ll be seeing little green Edgars under every bed … or on the highway in front of us. Keep your eye on the highway, Tina Beth. If you see the sign for a crazy house, let me know ’cause I haven’t told you the craziest idea yet. If you see a phone booth while you’re looking for a nut house sign, I can use that too.”