Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  “You are trying my patience,” Chandler told Brew.

  “Did you ‘help out’ and make appointments for any other job applicants besides Teddy Anglaterra that day, Mister Chandler?”

  “Good day, Mister Brewmeister.”

  Otto Pinkny finished testifying before the federal grand jury at 4:10 P.M. Twenty minutes later the panel voted to indict him as a co-conspirator in the robbery of the Mormon State National Bank. When Billy Yates arrived at the eleventh-floor resident office shortly after five, he was hardly noticed in the bittersweet atmosphere that prevailed. Most of the agents were elated over the indictment. Strom was not. Cub, of all people, seemed to have reservations. Jez was curiously dour.

  Someone shouted out there was a call for Yates. Billy walked to the desk he shared with Brew, picked up the phone.

  “Yates speaking.”

  “Keep a poker face, Billy.” Brew spoke urgently. “Who’s up there? Cub? Jez? Strom?”

  “All three.”

  “Who else?”

  “The whole office. Pinkny’s been indicted.”

  “It’s got to be one of them! Steer clear of Cub and Jez and Strom. Maybe even de Camp. They’re connected to it. I know they are.”

  “Connected to what?”

  “I’ve found them, Billy.” Brew was exultant. “I found them. Your Silent Men … you were right, they do exist. At least six of them. Probably a seventh. They were sitting right in front of us all the time. Where’s your car?”

  “In the parking lot.”

  “Across from the office?”

  “Yes.”

  “The keys in it?”

  “Under the visor.”

  “I’m calling from downstairs. From the pay phone in the lobby. I may have been followed. I’ll take your car. Try to get hold of another one somewhere without anyone knowing. Get to my friend Jake Hagland over at the phone company. He’ll help you put a tap at Mule’s place. That pay phone Mule uses up the road. That’s got to be the connection between the Silent Men and Cub or Jez or Strom or maybe de Camp. Whoever’s helping Mule is helping the Men. I’ll explain later. And oh yeah, another surprise—Chandler, the bank president, had Teddy Anglaterra at Mormon State the morning of the robbery, or so he says. I’ll fill you in on that too. I’ve got to get a move on.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Emoryville … to put the last nail in the coffin.”

  Yates hung up, strolled to the window. Brew could be seen ten floors below hurrying across the street and into the parking lot. Billy watched him looking for the car. Finally Brew found it. He started to get in and as he did was machine-gunned to death by a passing van.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Martin Brewmeister’s funeral was the largest ever held in Prairie Port. Corticun saw to that over the objections of Brew’s widow, Elsie. Eight hundred people crammed into the First Lutheran Church, where Martin had been baptized. The press was officially barred from attending the service, but folding chairs were set up in the parking lot for them and amplifiers provided so the overflow throng of media folk could hear what was being said inside. The governor spoke, as did Brew’s wife’s uncle, who was attorney general for the State of Illinois. Strom made a fine tribute on behalf of the office. A. R. Roland was there to add a few words of his own. Clyde Tolson read a brief message from J. Edgar Hoover. Corticun read telegrams from other dignitaries, most of whom did not know Brew. The president of the local spelunking club provided the most touching moment by reading remarks ten-year-old Brew had written into his journal during his first weekend of formal cave exploration with the group. A U.S. senator from Missouri gave the most muddled speech. Yates and Jez were the only nonrelatives among the pallbearers.

  A cortege of cars made its way up to the hilltop cemetery and the Brewmeister family plot. Military color guards were present even though Brew had never been in the service. So were Marine Corps riflemen. Brew’s lifelong minister was the only one to talk at graveside.

  Standing beneath a tree limb on a nearby rise and staring down on the rites like some avenging deity was Ed Grafton. Cub was the first to spot him and elbowed Jez. Soon the other resident agents were aware of Graf’s presence. So was Corticun, who nervously kept glancing over at the imposing figure.

  Taps were blown and rifle salvos fired and the casket lowered into its pit. Tears were wept. Bodyguards moved in around Yates, who was perturbed by their presence. Grafton was gone from the hill. All in all, it had been a great show for Corticun.

  Corticun, from the moment Brewmeister was gunned down in the parking lot, had worked quickly and diplomatically. He kept the press at bay while negotiating with the chief of police, Frank Santi. One of the few circumstances under which the FBI was allowed to investigate a homicide was when the victim was one of its own agents. Even so, Corticun felt it better to work in unison with Santi and the Prairie Port PD. Santi in turn arranged for the inquest to be held after the funeral, agreed to let Strom alone talk to Brew’s fellow agents. In the one press conference Corticun held regarding the death, he acknowledged that Brew had been gunned down by unknown assailants, publicly stated his fears that the execution had more to do with the current trend of antiestablishment acts of terror than with the Mormon State robbery. Off the record he let it be known he didn’t disagree with pervasive rumors of Otto Pinkny’s underworld associates having gunned down Brew as a warning not to proceed with the trial. Corticun had convinced Strom that since Yates was Brew’s partner these last few months, a possibility existed the unknown killer or killers might come after Yates as well. Which was why Yates was given bodyguards. Yates found this reasoning to be ridiculous. He was sure that Brew had been killed by the Silent Men. He also didn’t rule out that the Silent Men had made a mistake … that he, Yates, was their intended target. But he couldn’t tell this to anyone. Not even Tina Beth. Especially not Tina Beth. He tried to get her to go and spend time with her father and mother on the pretext of having to work day and night on Brew’s murder. She would not hear of it, and in fact became overattentive. Overly inquisitive. Much of what Yates had to do now, he had to do alone … and he wasn’t being left alone.

  “Billy, this is Captain Frank Santi.” Strom made the introduction in the library of his grand house, where FBI families and friends were gathering after the funeral for their own commemorative dinner. With Santi and Strom and Yates in the room was Corticun. “Captain Santi will be helping us out with the homicide. I just wanted to go over a few points on the report you made out. You said that Brew called you from downstairs just before he was murdered, is that right?”

  “Yes, from the phone booth in the lobby.”

  “Why didn’t he come upstairs to talk to you?”

  “He said he was in a hurry. I had that in the report.”

  “I know you did, Billy. And we’re trying to get the whole matter in perspective for ourselves. Was it usual for Brew to use your car?”

  “He was lazy about putting gas in his car.” Billy was stating a partial truth. “Sometimes when he didn’t want to bother gassing up his own car he’d use mine … whether he was in a hurry or not.”

  “In the phone conversation, did he say where he was going?”

  “No, I told you he didn’t.”

  “Do you have any idea where he was going?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Do you have any idea if it was Romor 91 business?”

  “Everything we did was Romor 91,” Yates said.

  “And after the call you went to the window to watch Brew?”

  “Yes.”

  “For any particular reason?”

  “To see if he found my car.”

  “But you said he had used your car before.”

  “He had, but there’s five hundred cars in that parking lot and most of ours look the same.”

  “Can you describe for us what happened in the lot?”

  “I didn’t tell Brew where my car was parked, but he knows I usually leave it in the same place,
over near the west exit. He walked in that direction and found it. He opened the door, and the van came by and opened fire.”

  “… You saw him walking into the lot.”

  “And right on across it to my car. My car was parked on the opposite side from where he entered the lot.”

  “While he was walking across the lot, were you able to see much of him? See his entire body or only part of him?”

  “Most of the time I could see all of him.”

  “Was he carrying anything, Billy?”

  Yates reflected. “Not that I noticed.”

  “No briefcase? No papers?”

  “No.”

  “Is it possible, when part of his body was obscured from your view, that he could have been carrying something and that he put it in another car before getting to your car?”

  “I saw him cross the street before he went into the parking lot. He didn’t have anything with him.”

  “I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, Billy, but files are missing from the office. We think maybe there’s a connection with that and Brew’s murder.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  Strom looked at Frank Santi. “Chief, do you have any questions?”

  “Mister Yates, first I want to tell you the police will do everything we can on this. I understand you were particularly close to Mister Brewmeister, and we won’t let you down.”

  Yates thanked him.

  “You said in your report that you saw a door panel slide open in the truck and a submachine gun stick out and fire, is that right?”

  “That’s reverse order,” Billy replied. “I saw Brew open the door of my car. He was slightly bent over from leaning down for the handle. The next thing I know he’d spun around and was standing straight up with his back against the car and his hands semi-outstretched. It took me a moment to realize he was being hit by bullets. That’s when I looked over and saw the panel truck … saw that a machine gun was poking out through a missing panel in the truck and firing.”

  “You said the gun looked like a De Lisle silent carbine?”

  “I don’t know foreign-made weapons all that well. But from the illustrations we have in the office, the gun being fired at Brew looked like a De Lisle silent carbine.”

  “That’s a pretty esoteric kind of weapon to make a hit with, wouldn’t you think? Sort of a collector’s item? Last time I heard of the British Army using the De Lisle was in 1960.”

  “I don’t know much about the British Army.”

  “They told me you’re the man around here who knows everything.”

  “Up to a point,” Billy said.

  “Mister Yates, after the panel truck quit firing at Brewmeister, what happened?”

  “Brew slid down the side of my car. Slid from view. The panel truck drove out the exit and on up the ramp to the superhighway.”

  “How close was your car parked to that exit?”

  “Four or five cars away.”

  “Do you think the panel truck was waiting for you instead of Brewmeister?”

  Yates shrugged.

  “I mean, if Mister Brewmeister called and asked to use your car on the spur of the moment, how could the panel truck know where he was going? If the panel truck had been following him for some time and, let’s say, followed him to the office building and waited for him to come out and saw him walk across the street into the parking lot, the truck could have entered the lot right there opposite the building. The truck could have shot him down anywhere along the way, instead of waiting until he was on the opposite side of the area and only five cars away from an exit. It seems more plausible that the truck was already parked inside the lot and was staking out your car … was waiting for someone to go to your car so they could shoot them down. Mister Yates, is there any reason you know of why someone would want to kill you?”

  “No.”

  Frank Santi told Strom and Corticun, “I have no more questions.”

  “Could we have a few minutes alone with Yates?” asked Strom.

  Santi complied, left the room to join the other guests.

  “Billy, where were you just before Brew was killed?”

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “A sick friend?”

  “Not feeling too well,” Yates said.

  Corticun spoke for the first time. “What friend? Where?”

  “You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to, Billy,” Strom said.

  “Of course he has to tell us,” Corticun insisted. “He was away without permission, he said so in his report. He’ll tell us—”

  “Only if he wants to.” Strom was firm. “Well, Billy, what about it?”

  “I drove east to see what sort of shape a friend of mine was in. He was okay, but I’d rather not say who it was.”

  “So be it,” Strom said. “Billy, were you and Brew up to anything that needed files?”

  “I didn’t need files. I can’t speak for Brew.”

  “But Brew and you still believed Mule and his crowd, not Otto Pinkny, were responsible for Mormon State?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it possible, without your knowing it, Brew might have taken some files to check on something?”

  “If he did, I didn’t know about it.”

  “All right, is it possible Brew took files for another reason?”

  “Such as?”

  “Possibly to give to someone?”

  “Why?”

  “For money?”

  “Brew sell out? Come on.”

  “Maybe to leak to the press,” Corticun suggested. “To try to discredit Otto Pinkny.”

  “I’ve thought of doing that, but I doubt if Brew would,” Yates told them.

  “Billy,” Strom began, “we haven’t told you this before, but someone raided the twelfth-floor files. Hundreds of pages are missing. Brew was seen at those files not long before you received that call from him. I ask you again, do you have any idea what he was up to? Where he was going?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “Is there anything you have to say?”

  “There is something, but it’s not what you want to hear.”

  “Speak up.”

  “I feel foolish having bodyguards. I don’t need them.”

  Strom looked at Corticun, who frowned. “As you wish, Billy, no bodyguards. Thank you for your time.”

  Yates left. Chief Frank Santi came back in. Corticun went to the door and ushered in Jessup.

  “I think you know Chief Santi, Jez,” Strom said. “The chief is helping us with Brew’s murder. We’d like to go over your statement, informally of course.”

  Jake Hagland was the senior supervising engineer at the telephone company. A native Prairie Portian, he had gone to high school with Brewmeister and remained a close friend. In the past Hagland had usually resisted Brew’s rare requests for illegal telephone taps. On the one or two occasions he had complied, it was with the greatest reluctance. After listening to Billy Yates tell him Brew’s final words, Hagland wasted little time in driving to the outdoor phone booth near Mule’s ranch in a company truck. The eavesdropping system he installed was ingenious. Not only would tape recorders pick up everything said and heard in the booth, and a slowdown counter indicate just what numbers were being dialed by Mule, but Hagland also rigged it so the tap could be monitored at both his home and Yates’s.

  Yates’s prime concern was the whereabouts of the missing files. Determining this meant tracing Brew’s movements the last day of his life. Some things pointed to what these were … Yates knew from his long-distance phone call to Brew immediately after leaving Barrett Amory’s home in Virginia that Brew was planning to check the files the next morning, when most of the agents would be away at the grand jury hearing. He was aware from the same call that after that Brew planned to go to Sparta, Illinois, and check on the interview Teddy Anglaterra’s nephew Fred had given an FBI agent in September.

  Yates, as a result of the phone call Brew made to him just before h
e was shot to death, knew that Brew believed he’d discovered the existence of the Silent Men, had stated, “You were right, they do exist. At least six of them. Probably a seventh. They were sitting right in front of us all the time …” The very last thing Brew had said in that conversation, the very last words Brew ever spoke, for that matter, was that he was going to “Emoryville … to put the last nail in the coffin.” Clearly, Yates decided, Brew had discovered something regarding the Silent Men in the files.

  Brew, of course, never did make it to Emoryville, but Yates knew Emoryville was where eleven people had provided alibis for Mule, Rat Ragotsy and Wiggles Loftus. Billy had no doubt that Brew was certain he could discredit those witnesses. Billy was equally sure Brew had raided the files to some degree the morning of his death and then gone to see Fred Anglaterra. This was confirmed by Yates’s phone call to Sparta, Illinois. A surly Fred Anglaterra said that yes, Brew had been to see him that day. That yes, he seemed to have some sort of file folder with him, or at least he knew pretty well everything Fred had told another FBI agent. Fred Anglaterra recalled that Brew had arrived at his home at about ten forty-five and had left within half an hour. Since the drive from Prairie Port to Sparta took just under forty minutes, Yates concluded that Brew had left Prairie Port to talk to Anglaterra at approximately 10 A.M. and was back in the city at least by noon. But Brew hadn’t called him until shortly after 5 P.M.

  Where Brew had been between noon and five gnawed at Billy, generated an endless series of scenarios. He doubted that Brew had yet discovered the existence and number of the Silent Men immediately on his return from Sparta. If he had he wouldn’t have waited until five o’clock to drive to Emoryville “to put the last nail in the coffin.” Other steps must have occurred … possibly another interview or recheck. Maybe several. And something must have been discovered at these that made Brew hurry back to the office and loot the file … loot it just before he phoned Billy from the lobby … just before he was gunned down. Strom had said that immediately before his death Brew had been seen at the twelfth-floor files. Most probably, Yates decided, Brew had visited the files twice … early in the morning to take out the few pages relating to the interview with Teddy Anglaterra’s nephew … then later, after a discovery he made in rechecks or interviews.