by Behn, Noel;
“Then you don’t recall your answer?”
“I just told you that.”
“When asked that question, you said you didn’t know his whereabouts.”
“If that’s what I said, that’s what I said.”
“How could it be?”
“How could what be?”
“How could you answer that, say that you didn’t know where he was, when your uncle Teddy was buried here in Sparta a few days earlier?”
“You saying I’m lying?”
“I’d just like to know why you gave that answer.”
“I gave it ’cause I didn’t know where the hell he was. If I’da known, I woulda said.”
“You didn’t know he was dead?”
“That’s right.”
“You didn’t know he was buried right here in Sparta?”
“I told you, no! I didn’t find out till a week later. Get it through your head, I don’t give a shit for my uncle. He’s been a disgrace to us all his life. I make a practice of not knowing about him. Living or dead, he’s no difference to me.”
“If he’s no difference, why did you go to Prairie Port and claim his body on August twenty-seventh?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Did you or did you not go to Prairie Port on August twenty-seventh?”
“Prairie Port, Missouri?”
“On August twenty-seventh.”
“Hell, no, not then or ever! I’ve not been over Prairie Port way in ten years. Mister, I think you got me confused with someone else.”
“… Tell me about your first two meetings with the FBI. With … who did you say the agents were?”
“Alex Troxel, that’s what I wrote down,” Fred said. “I never got the other one’s name. Don’t even remember if it was given. They came knocking on my door like you did. They told me that my uncle Teddy’s got himself in some kind of trouble. I tell them Teddy is a no-nothing rummy drunk who’s only brung disgrace to the family and whatever he’s done ain’t no business of me or mine. They say if that’s the case, would I mind giving them approval to help Teddy out as best they can. I tell them, sure. They go away and when they come back a few days later they say they’ve taken care of Teddy’s trouble and would I mind signing one or two forms for them, just to clear the legal loophole of what they did. They being the FBI, I didn’t look at the papers too close. One said somethin’ about Teddy’s possessions, the other was giving permission to let Teddy travel somewhere. When I found out later Teddy died and had been brought back to Sparta and buried late at night with nobody knowing, I was satisfied. Only I kinda wished they could have buried him somewhere else.”
“You think the FBI buried him?”
“Who the hell else knew where he was?”
“Did you learn how he had died?” Brew asked.
“Guess he was killed somehow.”
“That doesn’t surprise you?”
“That it didn’t happen sooner is what’s surprising. Teddy was always getting in terrible fights. Always supposedly going off to find jobs someplace or other but really using it for an excuse to get drunk and knocked down a lot. He had a real nasty mouth when he got drunk, my uncle Teddy.”
“Do you think it possible he went to look for work in Prairie Port and got into a fight and got killed?”
“Anything’s possible, only Teddy never went downriver all that much. Never went into Missouri, neither, that much. East Saint Louis in Illinois is where he went mostly. Where he got into most of his trouble.”
“Troxel and the other agent who came here never told you Teddy was dead, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“And the two times they came to see you, Troxel did all the talking?”
“Like I said, I didn’t even get the other guy’s name. He stayed in the back just listening. And sweating. I remember it was hot as hell and this guy was wearing a heavy dark suit with stripes.”
“On September fourth Troxel comes again, only this time he was with a special agent Daughter.” Brew, of course, knew neither Troxel nor Daughter operated from Prairie Port … even so, Daughter’s name was familiar to him. And he did know who the man in the dark suit with pinstripes was.
“That’s right, Troxel came with Daughter,” Fred said.
“And where Troxel did the talking the first two times you met with him, this third time only Daughter did the talking.”
“That’s right.”
“What did he talk about?”
“He asked questions about Teddy.”
“What sort of questions?”
“Where Teddy was. When I’d seen him last.”
“Didn’t this seem odd to you … I mean Troxel had said they were helping Teddy out. He and another agent had you sign certain documents?”
“What I really thought was that Teddy got arrested somewhere and this was all part of what had to be done.”
“Then Daughter’s questions did or did not seem odd to you?”
“Didn’t seem.”
“Did you tell Daughter that Teddy had gone to Prairie Port looking for a job?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Daughter seems to remember you saying that.”
“He remembered wrong. Like I said, the only places I ever knew of Teddy looking for work was up near East Saint Louis so he could get drunk.”
Alice Maywell Sunstrom examined her new coiffeur one last time in the salon’s triptych mirror, carefully brought a silk Hermès scarf on up under it and around her shoulders. She couldn’t decide whether to protect the hairdo with the picturesque scarf or not. She decided not and went out into the main arcade of the River Rise Shopping Mall. Alice eyed the recently opened chocolate shop next to Mormon State National Bank and thought of going in and buying Strom the champagne truffles he so liked. Once again she was undecided. The truffles would of course be bad for Strom’s diet, but what with the dinner she was preparing, the canard à l’orange, Riesling wine and a dessert of rich Russian crème, what difference would it make? She opted to buy instead of the truffles a best-selling novel about demons called The Exorcist. Strom truly loved ghost and horror stories, if they were well written.
There was no particular occasion being celebrated that night by the Sunstroms. The meal was meant solely to be a diversion. Alice was concerned with Strom’s disaffection over the Otto Pinkny grand jury inquiry. If indictments were handed up, as Strom was certain they would be, she knew he would be despondent. Alice hoped to surprise him with the meal. Force his mind off of this Otto Pinkny. Strom always said she was such a bad cook, and she was. But he was always delighted when she undertook what he called her “culinary adventures.”
The Mall Book Shoppe had sold out The Exorcist. Alice bought Strom a copy of Gay Talese’s Honor Thy Father, and for herself she got Tracy and Hepburn by Garson Kanin. She walked around to the parking lot, got into her car and drove carefully to the lot exit. Once on the service road beyond, she felt something cold press at the base of her neck.
“That’s a gun you feel, cunt sucker,” a voice from the back seat told her. “Keep driving right onto the highway or I’ll end it for you now.”
Alice, in her horror, drove up the ramp and onto the elevated superhighway.
The gun nozzle moved around to the side of her neck and up across her jaw. “Open your mouth.”
She did, and the nozzle was pushed in.
“Suck on it.”
Again she obeyed, sucked on the cold metal. The person in back clambered over the seat and dropped in beside her. Glancing out the side of her eye, she saw it was Mule … the man she’d been terrified might find her … the man she’d seen kill Tall Groucho.
“Suck so you make noise,” he ordered.
She did.
He ripped open her skirt, ripped away the panties beneath. “Don’t stop driving. Don’t slow down.” He plunged his hand between her legs, spread them … pulled the gun from her mout
h and jammed the nozzle up her vagina.
She cried out.
“We get off at Exit Twelve,” he told her. He pulled a second gun from his jacket, prodded open her lips, made her take the nozzle in her mouth again. “I’m letting go of both, and if either one falls out of its hole, you’re dead.” He tore open her blouse and brassiere and began fondling her breasts … told her how he was going to rape and sodomize her. Mutilate and kill her if she put up any resistance. Mutilate and kill her just for the fun of it if it struck his fancy.
Tears streaming from her eyes, her teeth and vagina muscles straining to hold metal where it was, she drove off the ramp at Exit 12 and on along an ascending road and up the solitary lane of a vast estate … on up to a large, eave-roofed lodge by the side of a lake.
Mule took out the guns, dragged her from the car by the hair. Dragged her up several steps before hoisting her over his shoulder and carrying her on up through the front door and down a hallway and through a door and dumping her on the carpet and leaving.
Alice lay on the floor heaving hysterically. She realized, slowly, that she wasn’t alone. Someone had been there all along. There behind her. She swiveled around. Stared up. J. Edgar Hoover sat in a straight-back chair near the window.
Edgar apologized for Mule’s roughness with her but explained the matter at hand was urgent. Alice started to get off the floor. He told her to stay where she was. He chatted on idly for a bit, then wondered aloud what it would have been like if he had chosen to marry, concluded that perhaps his wife would have made him a greater man than he already was. “Just as you, Missus Sunstrom, shall have the chance of making your husband a greater man,” he told Alice. “John Sunstrom is blessed, do you realize that? He carries with him the glory of the FBI. He is fated for great achievement, dear woman. The successful determination of Romor 91 will be his. Will be ours. His name shall be repeated wherever they speak of noble deeds and justice. Nothing must deny him this destiny. You above all must not deter him.”
“I won’t, dear God, I swear I won’t.”
Edgar closed his eyes. Leaned back in the straight-back chair. Interlaced his fingers over his slight paunch. “Tell me about your lesbians.”
“… My what?”
“Explain to me the sensation of embracing someone of your own sex.”
“Director Hoover, I …”
“Come, wanton child, tell me. I know all, but I wish to hear it from you. How many times have you sodomized with someone of your own sex?”
“Only once …” She was hardly audible.
“Speak up.”
“Once. Only once.”
“Describe it.”
“Please …” She broke into tears.
“Describe.”
Slowly, miserably, Alice told about her times with Elaine Picket, at Hoover’s quiet prodding related it in explicit detail. At his insistence, repeated certain interludes, time and time again. Once or twice, at his insistence, even attempted to demonstrate what had occurred. She became increasingly hysterical … nearer the breaking point … collapsed into uncontrollable sobbing.
When her crying had finally subsided, he asked if she felt closer to God.
She quickly assured him she did. He held out and lowered his hand, told her to take it. Asked her to swear that she would mend her ways.
She vowed that she would never again have sex with a woman.
“Sex? I speak not of sex. I speak of your subverting Romor 91. You must desist from ever again interfering with the investigation.”
She told him she had never interfered.
“Good woman, did not you call the FBI office and disguise your voice and offer anonymous information regarding the perpetration of Mormon State?”
She explained that she only meant to help.
“You can most help by speaking nary a word of the evening you spent with Elaine Picket. I can assure, good woman, if you do not mention it to your husband, I never shall. Do I have your word on this?”
She nodded vigorously.
He leaned forward and shook her hand to seal the bargain, rose and announced he was placing her under the protective supervision of one of his assistants until the trial of Otto Pinkny was over. He called out. Mule entered the room and was introduced by Hoover as the man who would be supervising her.
Alice, in terror, insisted that Mule was one of the actual bank robbers … that she saw him kill a man.
Edgar’s finger wagged, scolding at her. She was sadly mistaken. Mule, he proclaimed, was a trusted friend of the FBI and a man who had helped bring the true felon, Otto Pinkny, to justice. He warned Alice not to heed those powerful and venal friends of Pinkny, within and without the FBI, who had conspired to bear false witness against Mule Corkel and other good souls … revealed that these selfsame cohorts of Pinkny’s were accusing Mule of other fiendish deeds such as murder … that, in any case, the FBI had no jurisdiction to investigate homicides.
“Heed Mister Corkel,” he called out while departing the room. “For the sake of your soul, and your good husband’s career.”
Mule wasted no time in stripping Alice naked and hanging her upside down in a closet. He then took off his own clothes and got into the closet with her.
“Late Sunday afternoon, August twenty-second, you provided the Prairie Port Police Department with a list of names and addresses for one hundred and eighteen people who had visited these premises prior to the robbery, is that correct?” Brew had driven back from Sparta in less than an hour, was now seated in the conference room of the Mormon State National Bank.
“Yes, I provided such a list,” the bank manager, Giles Julien, confirmed.
“Three days later, on Wednesday, August twenty-fifth, you presented a corrected list of names and addresses to the FBI. Is that correct?”
“It contained names, yes. Precisely how many, I can’t recall.”
“Ten, wasn’t it? Seven names to be deleted from the master list you had compiled for the police, three names to be added?”
“That sounds right.”
“And you sent this second list to the FBI?”
“Yes.”
“But instead of sending the list to the Bureau’s resident office on the eleventh floor, you had your assistant manager deliver it to the twelfth floor, ostensibly to Mister Corticun.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why bypass the eleventh floor and send it to the twelfth?”
“Mister Chandler told me to do it that way.”
“Mister Emile Chandler, president of Mormon State bank?”
“Yes.”
“You helped put together this second list, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recall the name Teddy Anglaterra?”
“Yes.”
“Who was he?”
“A man who was supposed to be at the bank at four o’clock and be interviewed for a job. A night watchman’s job.”
“Be at the bank four o’clock the afternoon of the robbery, August twentieth?”
“Yes.”
“Did he show up?”
“Not for the appointment, no.”
“So as far as you know he was never at the premises?”
“He was at the premises.”
“… When?”
“Sometime in the morning.”
“How do you know?”
“Mister Chandler told me.”
“How does Mister Chandler know?”
“He made the appointment for Teddy Anglaterra to see me at four.”
“I thought an employment agency made Anglaterra’s appointment.”
“No. Anglaterra came from Mister Chandler.”
“Did any member of the FBI ever ask you about Teddy Anglaterra before?”
“Yes, on August twenty-fifth, I believe. The day we sent the list to you. The list of changes.”
Brewmeister had a copy of a Wednesday, August 25, interview with the bank manager. The name of the interviewing special agent was missing, which thoug
h a violation of procedure wasn’t all that unusual with file-room duplications of reports. “A special agent asked you about Anglaterra?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That Anglaterra had come to the bank and seen Mister Chandler and that Mister Chandler made the appointment.”
“You specifically told this agent that Anglaterra was on the bank premises?”
“Between nine and eleven A.M., yes.”
“Was it usual for Mister Chandler to make interview appointments for job applicants?”
“No, but that last day was hectic,” Julien said. “We expected to open after the weekend. What with the rush, with workmen and others around, we all tried to help out one another. We did tasks we ordinarily wouldn’t have done, such as Mister Chandler making that appointment.”
“Did anyone else on the premises, other than Mister Chandler, see Teddy Anglaterra?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you recall the name of the agent who interviewed you on all of this, August twenty-fifth?”
“Troxel, Alexander Troxel.”
“Could I speak to Mister Chandler?”
Julien flicked down the lever on the intercom, raised Chandler. “I’m in the conference room with Mister Brewmeister of the FBI, sir. He would like to talk to you about a Teddy Anglaterra. Can he—”
Emile Chandler, all six foot seven inches of him, strode in demanding of Brewmeister, “Who sent you here?”
“My office,” Brew lied.
“Who at your office?”
“John Sunstrom.”
“Everything I have to say on the Anglaterra matter I’ve said. If that doesn’t satisfy Mister Sunstrom, he can speak with Mister Corticun.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Brew assured him. “I can just check our file on what you said. Do you recall the name of the agent you said it to?”
“I do not.”
“It was Alexander Troxel, sir,” the manager said. “The same man who spoke to me.”
Brew asked, “Is that correct, Mister Chandler, was it Alexander Troxel?”
“I told you, I’ve nothing more to say.”
“Mister Chandler, are you aware that agent Troxel is not a member of the Prairie Port FBI office, neither the regular office nor the auxiliary office?” Brew asked.