by Behn, Noel;
Backing into the rumpus room with the tray, she called out a hello. Cub wasn’t there. Nor could Sissy find him in the dining room or living room. She glanced out the patio doors … saw him at the far end of the patio with one foot up on the low stone wall.
She moved outside, set the tray on a wrought-iron table and went to her husband. “Hi,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.
“Hi.” He hugged her with one arm, went on staring out at the moonlit prairie beyond their braeside home.
“Problems with Yates?”
“He’s going to cause trouble, Sissy, lots of trouble. Trouble for himself, for me, for everybody.” Cub spoke softly, sadly. “Billy says Jez betrayed the office. Gave me a report on it. Says Jez was directly responsible for Alice’s death. Says J. Edgar Hoover was directly responsible too. That’s for openers. Billy says our office was set up from the beginning, was thrown to the wolves …” He looked at his wife. “He wants me to help him prove it.”
“You’re not, are you?”
Cub turned back to the night prairie.
“… What does he want you to do?”
“There’s a garage in Carbondale where a truck was repaired. The truck that brought the money to Mormon State just before the robbery. Billy needs the records there. He’ll steal them if I don’t help him.”
“He’s crazy, I always told you he was crazy—”
“What if he isn’t?”
Sissy moved back a step. “Cub Hennessy, you’re in charge of the office. This is what I’ve always wanted for you. It’s what you’ve always deserved. Strom had no right being named to replace Ed Grafton, it should have been you. Now it is, and you have to behave like it. You have to behave like you’re in charge. You’ve protected Billy Yates far too long. If he insists on doing something criminal in Carbondale, you have to stop him.”
Cub looked curiously at his wife. “Sissy, can’t you understand, he may be right?”
“Right isn’t the issue. Being in charge is. You are what you behave like. And don’t stand there looking down at me like I’m some creature to be pitied and understood. I cared about Strom and Alice and Jez as much as anybody. I grieved at their loss and still do, probably a damn sight more than most of the others. But they’re not of consequence here. You are. We are. Our future in the Bureau is. You can’t protect one man against the whole organization, particularly when the one man may be … well, crazy.”
“… What is it you want me to do, or not do?” He spoke without looking at her.
“Protect the organization. Act responsibly through channels in letting the FBI know about Yates’s intentions—”
“Tell Corticun, is that what you mean?”
“Yes.”
Cub shook his head. “Maybe I lack the guts to help Billy out, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to shoot him down.” He walked off down the hillside.
Sissy went indoors and called Denis Corticun at home and, on behalf of her husband, informed him of Billy Yates’s plans.
Carloads of FBI agents deployed around the Majestic Garage. Corticun himself, forever motioning with one hand and holding up a walkie-talkie with the other, stood on a street corner directing the operation.
Yates watched it all from his vantage point on the hill, then ambled off in the opposite direction, got into his car and drove. A hundred miles east of Carbondale he phoned Tina Beth at home to say they could no longer count on Cub, but not to fret because things might still work out for the best. He told her he would call her again at nine in the morning.
Precisely at nine he stepped up to the pay phone in Washington’s Mayflower Hotel and dialed Prairie Port. Tina Beth answered.
“There’s nothing much to report,” he told her, “except for saying I love you. How you doing?”
“Worrying.”
“Don’t. This all sounds worse than it is.”
“Where are you?”
“Safe. Probably be home driving you crazy before you can say Jack Robinson.”
“Who’s Jack Robinson? Why you always talking about people I don’t know?”
“Don’t get mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Sure you are.”
“I’m not mad. I just had something to say, and you didn’t listen, that’s all.”
“… What was it you had to say?”
“Never you mind.”
“Please, Tina Beth, what is it?”
“… Well, it struck me a little while back, of all the people we didn’t mention as being a Silent Man, we didn’t mention the one with the most to gain if the investigation didn’t do good.”
“Who’s that?”
“Ed Grafton. It would prove they couldn’t do good without him.”
Billy, indeed, had never thought of Grafton. Now, as he drove across Washington, D.C., considering the idea, a certain plausibility did emerge. Only it was too late. Billy Yates had committed himself to one path of action. And the detonator was ticking away.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Yates had become aware the black Chevrolet with the high rear antenna was following him just outside of Columbus, Ohio. He knew Columbus well, had served undercover there. Even on foreign terrain, Yates was unrivaled at losing a mobile tail. He had tried, in Columbus proper, shaking the black Chevrolet. Raced up and down obscure avenues, turned and reversed course half a dozen times. Each time he seemed to be in the clear, to have succeeded in losing the surveiller, the Chevrolet reappeared.
Yates had encountered only one man who had been able to stick so closely to him under these conditions, Vance Daughter during their training days. Since Daughter already loomed large in Billy’s thinking, he had relaxed, proceeded on down into Washington, D.C., at a leisurely pace, one which would make tailing him all the easier.
After talking to Tina Beth at nine in the morning, Billy went for a drive around Washington. The Chevrolet managed in capital traffic as well as it had on the open highway, was forever present in Yates’s rear-view mirror. Remained present all through the drive to Quantico, Virginia. Veered off and away only when Yates drove onto the U.S. Marine Corps base.
Classes were in session, and the casual hubbub Billy counted on prevailed at the FBI’s two-story training academy. He walked down the main hallway and into the basement without being stopped or questioned. The storage area for the registration office was right beside the empty bin designated for the papers of Orin G. Trask. Billy had noticed it when Barrett Amory had brought him down here months before.
Back attendance records for the time Yates had trained at the academy were easily found. So were those for most every class from 1963 through 1969, the years during which Orin Trask conducted his experimental seminars.
… And in these records, for those years, Yates was to find everything he expected he would.
“Call Frank Santi,” Billy told Tina Beth. He was in an outdoor phone booth watching the Chevrolet, which was parked down the block. “Santi’s the chief of police. Tell him everything you know. Everything I’ve told you about the investigation and everything else.” Billy checked his watch. “Tell him I’ll be going to Three Oaks … he’ll have to act fast and get hold of the local authorities. I’ll be there at eight o’clock. Have the police outside by then. Do you have all of that?”
“Yes—”
“And don’t worry, hon, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“You’re walking into the lion’s den, aren’t you, Billy Bee?”
“I think so.”
“Can’t you wait until I talk to Frank Santi?”
“Nope, they’re right on me.” He was still watching the Chevrolet. “Better I bring the fight to them.”
“What about Cub, shouldn’t I call Cub?”
“Cub sold me out, Tina Beth. He set up a trap for me in Carbondale. I love you, Tina Beth … love you like crazy.”
He drove through the afternoon, drove around greater Washington, D.C. The Chevrolet was prominent in his rear-view mirror throughout. At dusk it cut aw
ay. Nor did Yates spot it when, several hours later, he reached Three Oaks, the Virginia estate belonging to Barrett and Patricia Amory.
Barrett received him alone in the great hall beyond the dining room, didn’t seem surprised by the impromptu visit, offered him whiskey and water. Billy, who didn’t drink that often, accepted.
“Have you learned anything else about the Gents or Silent Men?” Yates asked.
“That’s what brings you popping over, young Yates, that nonsense?” Branch water was debottled.
“Yes.”
“I haven’t had time to look into it. Haven’t had time to do most anything since we spoke last.” Raising the tumbler to eye level, he added bourbon to the branch.
“I’ve had a good deal of time to look in.” Yates walked over and took the ready drink from the old man. “It’s all I’ve done.
“Sounds a worthless endeavor.” Whiskey poured into Amory’s own tumbler.
“If you call seven lives worthless, then I guess it is.”
“Seven lives?” Amory set the decanter on the sideboard.
“Seven people have died because of the Silent Men.”
“Tchin-tchin.” They clinked glasses and drank.
“Now for your saga, young Yates, what do you wish to impart?”
“It will be of as much interest to Missus Amory as to you.”
“Lady Pat is indisposed.”
“I know what went on, Barrett. All of it. About the Silent Men. Patricia should hear.”
“She is indisposed.” Amory was curt, which was not his style.
“Allow Mister Yates his say, Barrett.” Patricia, statuesque and stunning, dominated the doorway. “He has gone to great bother, no doubt.”
She flowed forth into the chamber, swirled and dipped into a chaise that was form-fitted to receive her elegance. A wall of leaded windows stretched behind her. Through the windows was a shimmering waterscape of lake and cloudy spring night. “Do begin, Mister Yates.”
“Thank you, Missus Amory.” Billy had begun to pace much as Strom used to pace. “What I’m about to provide is a reconstruction of the events leading to, and ending with, the corruption of Romor 91. In the worst sense of the word it is a conspiracy. A conspiracy of spirit as well as intent. If some of my early assumptions are slightly off, it makes no difference. The essence exists. A germination of deceit.
“We’ll have to go back a bit to get a clearer perspective, go back a year or two before the Mormon State robbery. The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover himself were in deep trouble with the public and on Capitol Hill. Time and the media were catching up to Mister Hoover. Catching on, as well. Deglossing the Bureau’s rose. Besmirching the Director’s person. Bright young prospects were shunning the FBI and hurrying instead to get into the CIA or State Department or other ‘hot’ organizations. The very bedrock of the Bureau, its funding support in the Senate and the House of Representatives, was eroding. The media, correctly or not, perpetuated the notion that the President would at any moment be curtailing FBI authority and jurisdiction. J. Edgar Hoover, who in the past could have handled each and every one of these problems with ease, seemed to be at a loss, seemed not even to be aware the peril existed, didn’t seem to realize that he and his beloved FBI had become, to many, an embarrassment.
“But there were Bureau partisans. And many of them searched for a solution to the dilemma. Most agreed that what was needed was affirmation of the FBI. A return to the glory days of old. One particular group decided it knew exactly how to do this … and possibly take over control of the FBI in the bargain. This group worked from the logical and simple premise that the easiest way to recapture the glory of the old days was by having the Bureau do what it had always done best in the past: solve and exploit a great crime … another crime of the century. Which came first, the exploiting or the solving, was immaterial … as it so often had been in the past.
“So this group started looking for just such a perpetration. Since some of them were strategically placed within the Bureau itself, they could monitor most anything that came into Washington headquarters and act on it. And they had another advantage … the specifications of exactly what was desired had been spelled out by Orin G. Trask in his so-called model crimes. In retrospect, it isn’t all that hard to figure out what those specifications were.” Yates held up six fingers. “There were a half dozen of them. Number one, the crime they were looking for must be spectacular in its perpetration. Number two, it should be a crime against property rather than persons, preferably a robbery of cash or gems or other valuables from a large institution. No one sympathizes with a large institution … with impersonal wealth. Number three, the perpetrators must make a clean getaway and for a time not be found. Number four, the public and the media must show an immediate interest in the perpetration and escaping felons. The public perceiving the unknown criminals are heroes and rooting for them not to be caught would be advantageous. Number five, the crime must appear to be nonviolent at the outset. Information that innocent bystanders or company employees were harmed by the criminals must be temporarily suppressed. This fifth requisite, the nonviolent aspect, is pivotal to the whole plan. It alone must provide the desired response at the most propitious time. It’s the ultimate opinion-shaper. And this fifth aspect is what went haywire in the Mormon State conspiracy. What brought everything tumbling down … Teddy Anglaterra.
“The sixth requirement is that the perpetration be record-setting in the worth of the valuables stolen. America is addicted to old records being shattered.”
Yates went to the sideboard, indicated his empty glass. “May I?” he asked Amory.
Amory did not reply.
Billy poured himself another whiskey. “So there they were, these do-gooder supporters of J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau, waiting for the right crime to come down the pike. A Trask-like model crime. They did Trask one better. They devised their own contingency measures in case a perpetration came along that was somewhat under specifications, one that might possess many but not all of the desired requisites. Don’t get me wrong. Trask was in no way denigrated by our schemers. The opposite was true. Trask, or the memory of Trask, was held in near-messianic esteem. They even named themselves after one of his favorite secret societies, the Silent Men.”
Yates was back to pacing. “How long the Silent Men watched and waited for a Trask-like crime to take place, I can’t say. Anyway, on Sunday, August twenty-second, the Prairie Port police responded to an alarm and found the vault had been looted at Mormon State National Bank. We, the resident office, sent our first reports back to Washington. The Silent Men read them and, sensing what they were looking for was at hand, dispatched one of their own members to Prairie Port for a closer look. Now they saw first-hand that Mormon State filled their bill, or at least met most of Orin Trask’s specifications.
“Then a seventh requirement, one which Trask had never anticipated, was encountered … bank cooperation. Wilkie Jarrel controlled Mormon State. The time had finally arrived when Bureau needs were more important than J. Edgar Hoover’s loyalty to Ed Grafton. J. Edgar himself probably made the first phone call to Jarrel. Whether the dumping of Grafton came up then or later doesn’t matter. Grafton was to go. J. Edgar left the details for this and other matters to his private spy in Prairie Port, the same agent he had recruited to watch and protect Ed Grafton, Jez Jessup. Jessup wasn’t a Silent Man. He never knew they existed. But the Silent Men knew all about him. Knew he was Hoover’s spy. The Men figured out a way to transmit direct orders to Jessup … orders which Jessup, to the last, believed had come from Edgar.
“There was a forty-eight hour delay between the discovery of the robbery on Sunday, August twenty-second, and J. Edgar Hoover’s announcement the FBI had entered the case on Tuesday, August twenty-fourth. Part of this time, these two days, was spent in negotiating with Wilkie Jarrel … getting him to go along with their plan. Other issues had to be tended to as well during this period, some of which included Jarrel, some of which didn’t.
“Then something happened that wasn’t in the script … Mule and the gang. I believe the Silent Men would have preferred that no major suspect be found this early.” Yates turned to Amory. “After all, wasn’t the name of the game maximum exposure?”
Barrett Amory again did not respond.
“Whatever the Men’s preference,” Yates continued, “the body of Sam Hammond and the statements of his wife and mother forced the issue. We swooped down on Baton Rouge, followed three of the gang members hoping they would lead us to more, then when they got into a fight and took off, we began picking them up. If it had been Bicki Hale or some of the other thieves the media focused on, that might have been all right. But the problem was compounded. Unfortunately for the Silent Men, the press and public fell in love with Mule Corkel … Mule, the deviant sideshow attraction. No modern criminal had been given the kind of attention he was getting. And this was serious business for the conspirators. Beyond not being the image they preferred for a supercrook, Mule was a dark, unwitting clown. The public laughed with Mule but laughed at the FBI.