Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  “The Silent Men decided they had to get rid of Mule and his two pals. To do this they reverted to an auxiliary measure prepared for just such an eventuality. First off, they needed witnesses who could provide new alibis for Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy. This could have been done through several safe houses other government organizations ran. But since Wilkie Jarrel was already part of the conspiracy, they prevailed on him to let them use facilities he controlled in Emoryville as fronts. The Silent Men now had ‘Freddie’ send orders to Jez Jessup in the name of J. Edgar Hoover. Jez, thinking he was carrying out Hoover’s wishes, went to Mule and Wiggles and Ragotsy offering them freedom in return for cooperation. They agreed, as anyone in his right mind would have. It doesn’t really matter who brought in criminal lawyer Harry Janks—Jez or the Silent Men. The point is, Janks arrived and did his job, and the FBI’s case against Mule, Rat and Wiggles fell apart.”

  Yates thought he noticed the dark silhouette of a man standing outside one of the lakeside windows. He turned back to Amory and Patricia. “The Silent Men were at their best now, were thinking trigger-fast and with frightening precision. Realizing that the resident agents of Prairie Port were confused and depressed by the turn of events and could become even more demoralized, the Men decided to bring in J. Edgar Hoover to bolster spirits. Scheduled his arrival into Prairie Port’s metropolitan airport. At the last moment a snag occurred in the person of Wilkie Jarrel. Jarrel, directly or indirectly, was now a full partner in the plot. Not only was his bank cooperating and subsidiary operations producing false alibis, but he was responsible for the sheltering of Natalie Hammond and her baby at the maternity clinic of the resort where Ragotsy allegedly had stayed at the time of the robbery. Natalie Hammond was originally interviewed by Cub Hennessy. After deciding that Mule, Ragotsy and Wiggles were to be removed as suspects in the robbery, the Silent Men felt it wise to transport Natalie Hammond out of the range of inquisitive agents who might discredit their plan. Natalie had always told the truth and wouldn’t change her story. The Silent Men didn’t even bring up the matter. They simply enticed her away with promises of free medical and infant care for herself and her unborn baby. The facilities and services were excellent. It was no problem convincing Natalie to stay on after the birth.

  “Wilkie Jarrel learned about J. Edgar Hoover’s impending arrival in Prairie Port at the last moment and demanded an immediate meeting with the Director. Knowing that no liaison between the two could be kept from the press after Hoover’s arrival, the Silent Men diverted the incoming aircraft to a nearby airport, probably Saint Louis, then had him helicoptered to Jarrel’s estate west of the city. It wasn’t enough for Jarrel that he had forced Hoover to replace Grafton as head of the Prairie Port office, he wanted the whole loaf. Once Jarrel had Hoover alone, he pressed for the expulsion of Ed Grafton from the FBI. Hoover said no. Grafton might have been better off if he’d agreed. Grafton’s probably in exile at the North Pole right now. Anyway, after leaving Jarrel, Hoover drove into the city and met with the discouraged resident agents. Even though their case had fallen apart, he praised them for their work.

  “I’m not sure but I doubt that Director Hoover knew about the Silent Men … or that he could have comprehended the whole plan even if he did know. From what I’ve seen, Director Hoover’s mental faculties aren’t what they used to be … maybe this made it easier for the Silent Men to get him to replace Grafton at Prairie Port … get him to do all those other things he did for the conspiracy, some of them pretty ugly things.

  “The Silent Men learned something else about Mule, Ragotsy and Wiggles … that they were going into the irrigation tunnels running under the western section of Prairie Port looking for the stolen money. Jez thought he was reporting this directly to Hoover, but the communication was actually with a Silent Man … with ‘Freddie.’ Jez even let Freddie know the three crooks had offered him a share of the take if he left them alone to look. The Silent Man told Jez he could do whatever he wanted so long as he kept an eye on the three actual robbers. Jez, I’m sorry to say, accepted Mule’s offer of a share, set up a secured system of communications with the thief and on occasion went down into the tunnels and caves to check on progress.

  “When Otto Pinkny was arrested in South Carolina and identified, he didn’t demand to see the FBI any more than he was held in jail only three or four days. He was probably in jail some two weeks negotiating with the Silent. Men. It figures he was first identified by FBI handprints and talked to by local Bureau agents. But when the Silent Men in Washington found out, they sent down their own people to make a deal with Pinkny. Terms were finally worked out, and Pinkny listened to confession tapes Mule, Ragotsy and Wiggles had made as part of their freedom deal. When more details were needed, ‘Freddie’ called Jez and Jez arranged for Mule to go to South Carolina and brief Pinkny directly. Then Pinkny arrived in Prairie Port and stood up under the toughest interrogation our office could manage. Everyone but Brewmeister and Strom and myself was convinced Pinkny and his gang had done Mormon State. What’s more, the world had taken to Pinkny as it would to a matinee idol. Took to him exactly as planned. It was the Silent Men’s supreme moment. Pinkny fit their image as a supercrook. The final ploy, the masterstroke, was as good as assured. The price to pay had been a pittance, not more than a fib or two. But the price was about to go up.”

  Yates spotted two men standing outside the window, paid them no attention. “As brilliant as the plan had been,” he said, “as well as it had worked, now the opposite began to happen. Alice Sunstrom called the FBI hot line and told them, anonymously, that she saw Mule kill a man in Prairie Port at a time he was supposed to be in Illinois. Jez Jessup was the person who took her call and soon verified what she said. The Silent Men suddenly realized that they were conspiring with a known murderer. Like it or not, there wasn’t much they could do about it. They were tied to Mule. If Mule’s alibi was disproved, as Alice could make happen, their whole conspiracy could come tumbling down. But there was another threat to the conspiracy—Brewmeister and me. What we’d discovered was the biggest blunder the Men had made to date … dumping the corpse of Teddy Anglaterra into the Mississippi River. Anglaterra was a drunk who had nothing to do with the Mormon State robbery. He’d been killed in a drunken brawl a hundred miles away, and the Men found him there and brought his corpse down to Prairie Port and dumped it into the river. Then, with the connivance of the bank president, they added Teddy’s name to the list of people who had been at the bank the day of the robbery. What they intended to do, at the right time, was prove that Teddy was actually employed at the bank at the time of the robbery and was killed in the line of duty defending the premises. This was to fulfill Orin Trask’s fifth requirement … that the crime must appear to be nonviolent at the outset. Outset was the operative word here. Trask and the Silent Men knew that once violence was established, the public would turn against the perpetrators. Teddy Anglaterra was to be used in this fashion. The announcement that he was killed by the robbers, the Silent Men were certain, would make any suspect into a public ogre … and thereby elevate the image of the FBI.

  “As things turned out, there was no need to use Anglaterra. The reason was two unexpected deaths. If the Men needed to trump up a dead victim of the crime they could always say Cowboy Carlson or Sam Hammond had been killed by the robbers. So the Silent Men tried to ignore Anglaterra, but Brew and I discovered him, or at least his records. And Brew tripped up the bank president on whether Teddy had been at Mormon State the day of the robbery. It was Teddy Anglaterra who made me remember hearing about the model crime that the Mormon State conspiracy was based on. You, Barrett, tried to warn me off by telling me about the Silent Men. Brew verified the Men’s existence and figured out how they operated. And figured out how many there were. Seven was the outside number he came up with, seven Silent Men.

  “Either my visit here or Brewmeister’s discovery forced the Silent Men to make their worst blunder … a blunder that instantly transformed them from ill-advi
sed crusaders into assassins … the murder of my friend Martin Brewmeister.”

  Three men were now standing outside the window, revealed in silhouette. Yates sensed a fourth might be behind him, but he didn’t turn to confirm this. “Right after Brew’s death came the suicide of Alice Sunstrom, which was really another murder. The Silent Men had two scalps to their credit. Homicide had become a modus operandi for them.

  “I was left to figure out the riddle Brew had already solved, who the seven Men were and how they operated. The prime clue had come from Brew, who said in his final phone call to me that the evidence had been sitting in front of us all the time. When I learned Brew had stolen Romor 91 files from the twelfth floor, the answer should have been evident, but I was a little bit dense. After all, the twelfth-floor files contained only out-of-town case reports. That’s what slowly dawned on me. The Silent Men had controlled Romor 91 by controlling the out-of-town investigations and reports. The plan was so brilliantly conceived that it really took only four men, all of them special agents of the FBI, to complete the operation, to control and alter the critical aspects of it.

  “I said before, I was a little slow in realizing all this. And I did it in reverse order. What I figured out first was what Brewmeister had done with the missing files, where all the Romor 91 case reports he had stolen were. The answer, when it came, was as simple as pie … and it more clearly indicated who the Men were.”

  “What was that answer?” the voice behind him asked.

  Yates knew it was Denis Corticun before turning and seeing Corticun standing with a gun in his hand … a gun pointed at no one in particular.

  “The answer, Denis, was that the files had not been stolen, at least not by Brew. They’d been removed by the Silent Men working on the twelfth floor and then returned. The files right now are where they’ve always been, with certain deletions.” Glancing off, Yates saw that the three silhouettes beyond the window were gone.

  “What deletions?” Corticun said.

  “Four names.”

  “What four?”

  “The four Silent Men who controlled four critical aspects in altering the investigation. When it was learned Brewmeister had been at the twelfth-floor files just before his death, the Silent Men had a pretty good idea what he had found, When he was killed, by them, they pulled reports they wanted and claimed Brew had stolen them. Once they’d altered the four names, changed them to those of friendly agents who would cover for them, they put the reports back into the files. I’d say this was among their worst moves. By now the Silent Men were falling apart—”

  “Do you know what four names were deleted?” Corticun asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Headquarters agents. And former students of Orin G. Trask. That was the common bond among the conspirators. All of them had been in Trask’s seminars. Were Trask disciples. Acolytes. Worshippers.”

  “Name them.”

  “Most are gentlemen I’ve never met—”

  “Name them.”

  “… Let’s begin with Matthew Ames, a Trask seminar student, circa 1968. Would you like to know what part he played in the conspiracy?”

  “If you know,” Corticun said.

  “Ames was the headquarters agent who went to talk to Otto Pinkny in South Carolina, the one who offered Pinkny the deal.”

  “Who else?”

  “There was my old classmate from the academy, Vance Daughter. That was Daughter standing outside the window a moment ago. I recognize his bowlegs. Vance was probably tailing me.”

  “And what part did Daughter have?”

  “He was jack-of-all-trades. He helped with Anglaterra, arranged for false receipts to be in the Carbondale garage files about the truck repairs, and most likely talked Natalie Hammond into having her baby in Emoryville. Next comes Alexander Troxel, Trask student, class of ’68. Troxel not only worked the Anglaterra ploy with Daughter, he controlled the reports dealing with the arrival of thirty-one million dollars at Mormon State. Troxel may also have assisted some with the alibis, but that was mostly the work of William Esper. Esper secured and wrote up the eleven alibi reports out of Emoryville for Mule, Ragotsy and Wiggles. Esper was in Trask’s final seminar in 1969. Those were the four field men, the workhorses of the conspiracy—”

  “You said seven Silent Men,” Corticun pressed.

  “There were seven.”

  “What of the last three?”

  “One was at your elbow all the way through,” Yates told Corticun. “Harlon Quinton. Quinton was in the very first seminar Trask gave in 1963. His job was to keep the investigation under review, which was no trouble when control of the files was on the twelfth floor. After Strom Sunstrom demanded the main files go down to the eleventh floor, it made Quinton’s job a little more difficult but not all that much. When the main files were directly under Quinton’s scrutiny on the twelfth floor, no one could get to them long enough to detect that certain agents’ names, Silent Men names, reappeared consistently on critical out-of-town reports. When the files were moved downstairs, it was decided by the Men that there was now so much material amassed, so many report pages to go through, that no one would be able to pinpoint their actions. Then the Men learned Brewmeister may indeed have gone through the files. That’s not what prompted Brewmeister’s death. I think Brewmeister was killed by mistake. Not that they wouldn’t have killed him later. I was the intended victim that day, not Brew.”

  Yates turned to Barrett Amory. “At the time of my visit here to you the Silent Men had no way of knowing what Brew had discovered. It was me they were after. You may have warned me about the Silent Men, but at the same time you signed my death warrant. The Silent Men panicked when they learned I’d been told of their existence and tried to kill me for no other reason than that. The only way they could have found out you told me, Barrett, was from you. And you’re still alive and well. You’re one of them, Barrett. You may damn well be their leader.”

  “Preposterous—”

  “That accounts for six,” Corticun said. “What about the seventh?”

  “You, Denis. Trask seminar student, class of 1966. Prime architect of the scheme along with Amory. Chief operating officer of the plot. You called the shots all along. And you had a ringside seat to do it from.”

  “And what did you say our motivation for this so-called conspiracy was?” Corticun asked.

  “I gave you my assessment, Corticun … why don’t you tell me yours?”

  Patricia Amory began applauding. “Bravo, Mister Yates. Bravo indeed. You have bagged the scruffy lot at last.” Her handkerchief fluttered. “Mister Corticun, do make the introductions.”

  Yates turned to see Vance Daughter, Harlon Quinton and two neatly dressed young men he didn’t know standing in a row along the wall to his rear. Corticun introduced the shorter one as Alexander Troxel, the taller as William Esper.

  Patricia resettled herself on the chaise and posed in quarterprofile, her chin high. “There is, Mister Yates, one particular blemish in your otherwise brilliant and accurate reconstruction of the event and characters. Shall we say a fifty-percent error? There was indeed an Amory involved, but not dearest Barrett. Like most male-oriented associations, the Silent Men have also succumbed to the emerging feminist reality of our day. There are not, in fact, seven Silent Men … there are six, and one rather garrulous woman. Myself. You were quite astute in believing an Amory was the boss. I am. But of course you suspected that too, didn’t you, Mister Yates? Otherwise you wouldn’t have insisted I be present tonight.”

  “I suspected you could be Freddie, yes.”

  “The maker of phone calls to your Mister Jessup? I was indeed. He received his orders from me. All the gentlemen did.

  “Where do we go from here, Mister Yates? You know about us, we know about you. We must assume you are intent on destroying us … we know your wife was instructed to contact police Chief Frank Santi. The reason you don’t see Matthew Ames here now is that he is in Prair
ie Port attending to our security needs. We have your wife, Mister Yates, but I assure you no harm will come to her if reasonable heads prevail.”

  Billy winced and said nothing.

  “Reason is your only salvation … and ours,” she told him. “Should reason fail you in this instance, should you in a fit of sublime duty decide to sacrifice your dearest Tina Beth, there is still nowhere for you to go. The only place you are safe is here with us. Or didn’t you know … as of late this afternoon you are being sought as a suspect in the murder of Martin Brewmeister. New evidence has been found at your home by none other than Frank Santi, the murder weapon and ammunition. It seems that Mister Brewmeister had discovered you were in league with Mister Marion Corkel in seeking missing robbery funds and was about to report you. You steered him to your car, set him up, as it were. More evidence will come to light as needed. Your wife has been advised of this, which is why she did not contact Captain Santi as you had asked. We told Tina Beth we would help you if she cooperated … told her we doubted if you would ever be convicted of Mister Brewmeister’s murder, but then again, who can know for certain?” Patricia lowered a regal finger. “Come sit down, Billy Yates. Let us chat as we used to.”

  Yates stood where he was. “We never talked much.”

  “That was because I disliked you. I still do. But we must try to get on together. There has been too much killing. Matters have gone amok. I wish no harm to you. Whatever our differences, we must reach an accord. Even the bitterest of enemies negotiate, the most barbaric. That is the only civilized way. If we become deadlocked, only barbarity gains. Hear me out, Billy Yates. Do hear me out.”

  Yates came forward, sat down opposite her.

  “Edgar Hoover is a great man gone atrophied, Billy,” she said, still keeping her profile to him. “You must have seen that atrophy for yourself when you were driving him. You know about it from your wife, whom he visited. Nonetheless, I love him very much. Had I no personal stake in him, decency alone would have told me he must not be abased, belittled. He has a right to the glory which was his. It is not so much a matter of saving the FBI as it is of restoring the honor of the man who is the FBI. This prompted our actions, Billy, as you suspected. Bestowing upon him, in the relative dimness of his sensibilities, a little bygone glory. If doing this meant helping the Bureau as well, so much the better. And we have helped, Billy, you see that. Mormon State will go down as one of the FBI’s crowning achievements.”