Mayhem, Mystery and Murder

by John A. Broussard

  “Since the material is radioactive, don’t we have devices for detecting it?”

  “Eventually we should be able to come up with a device to detect the daughter products of that decay, but we currently have no instruments with that kind of sensitivity. We’re…”

  The Director broke in. “That’s why we will have to prevent the manufacture of the explosive in the first place. Since some of the materials are so rare, they should be easily traceable to their source. We can then prevent any further distribution of them.”

  “From what I understand,” the President said, veering off in another direction, “the discovery of these bomb makers was almost accidental. Is that correct?”

  The Director had prepared himself—and me—for that question. In answer, he immediately turned to me. “Our agent, Joseph Udafi, can give you a full account of what happened.”

  I was nervous—a good deal more nervous than when I met Fisher—but, as I told my story, I began to relax. “We were expecting an offer of a small amount of common bomb material. But Fisher surprised me when he seemed uninterested in the amount of money we were offering and then started in on a long explanation about how the material he showed me was no ordinary explosive. I was of course skeptical of his claims when he described the nature of it. Then, when he said I could have several kilograms of it and quoted a price of fourteen million dollars, I began to take him seriously.

  “The nature of his offer, along with the fact that he told me he had brought the explosive material to San Francisco by train—he showed me an Amtrak ticket stub for proof—convinced me this was more than just a transaction for an ordinary bomb. That was when I had him taken into custody and detained.”

  “Remarkable!” the President said. “I congratulate you on your presence of mind and on not just writing him off as being psychotic.”

  I wasn’t about to tell her how close I’d come to doing just that.

  “But how did you manage to get so much information from him? And I’m sure he must have had to report back to his group about the outcome of the meeting with you. How did you prevent him from alerting them?”

  I looked over at Lockhardt, who had a pained look on his face. He gave me an almost imperceptible nod. Just as I began to answer her questions, the President stopped me. “Never mind. It’s probably best if I don’t know how that was accomplished. What’s important at this point is to apprehend the group, to gather as much information as possible about the sources of their material and then to make those sources unavailable to any other potential bomb makers.”

  Lockhardt stood up. “I’m leaving immediately for Baltimore, Ms. President. As soon as Jamieson shows, or as soon as we can find out where he’s at, we’ll move in.”

  The rest of us stood also, and the President walked over and shook my hand again. She smiled, the kind of smile she flashed on victory night at election headquarters. “We need more agents like you, Mr. Udafi.”

  That was when I decided to go all out. “Ms. President,” I said, “would it be possible for me to be in on the finish at Baltimore?”

  Before she could answer, Lockhart broke in. “Of course. I fully intended to take you along.”

  My feeling at that moment was that he was stretching it. But it didn’t really matter since, within five minutes, we were airborne in a helicopter that had been parked on the White House lawn, and we were headed toward the operation in Baltimore County.

  It was a dead calm when we landed on a pad about a mile-and-a-half from our objective. A Baltimore County Sheriff Department car was waiting for us, and we raced down the freeway to the stake-out, one of the buildings facing the large warehouse door. A quick consultation with the agents present indicated they were certain three members of the group were in the warehouse—playing cards at the moment. Jamieson and the fifth member were on their way from Philadelphia, and were expected to arrive within the hour. Now came the waiting.

  The equipment the Bureau had set up in the building was impressive. It was hard to believe it had all been put in place in something less than six hours. Monitors were capturing the entire perimeter of the warehouse through hidden cameras. Communications were established with dozens of agents and local deputies who were strategically located around, but out of sight of the warehouse. A half-dozen agents were manning earphones and keeping in contact with those outside. One wall looked like an arsenal, banked up as it was with tear gas and shock grenades, rifles, flak vests and other assault paraphernalia.

  Soon after we arrived, one of the agents spoke to Lockhart. “There’s bad news, Director. Hurricane Cass—the one that’s been sitting off the Carolinas and moving eastward—has switched around and is picking up speed. It’s now heading in this direction. We may have to move in before Jamieson arrives.”

  The Director shook his head. “We can take that place in any kind of weather. But keep me posted on Cass. See if you can get an estimate from the Weather Bureau on when she’ll hit.”

  Having been through a major hurricane in South Florida, I now began to recognize the same signs. The unnatural calm that had been present at our arrival was now being replaced by southeasterly winds, mild at first but steadily picking up speed.

  Another agent came over to where Lockhardt and I were watching the monitors. Handing a phone to the Director, he said, “Dr. Lee wants to talk to you.”

  “Damn!” Lockhardt said, shaking the instrument. “It’s gone dead.” Turning to another agent he said, “Get in radio contact with Dr. Stanley Lee. I’m not sure where he’s calling from. Try the Bureau first.”

  “Cell phone tower’s down.” That from yet another agent. “Cass must be moving in a lot faster than expected.”

  Lockhardt jammed the phone into his pocket and walked over to one of the agents monitoring conversations in the warehouse. “Any sign of Jamieson?”

  “Minutes away. He just called. They’re opening the door so he can drive in.” Agents were putting on gear. Warning commands were going out to the various outposts.

  On one of the monitors we could see the warehouse door swinging up. Another monitor caught an automobile with heavily tinted windows turning the corner and heading toward the opening. Within moments the door had closed behind the vehicle.

  Lockhardt insisted on one more check to make sure all of the group was accounted for. At that moment the operator handed the director a radiophone. I could hear Lee’s distinctive voice screaming at the other end. “For God’s sake, don’t go near the warehouse. The barometer is dropping fast. It could go up at any…”

  One of the monitors showed the roof erupting. For a few seconds the walls stood unsupported, then collapsed inward. Smoke, dust, debris filled the air just as Cass’s torrential rains began to fall.

  BREACH OF CONTRACT

  Attorney Samuel Thom pushed the packet of paper aside, having already made up his mind to take the case. Victor Selwick’s long diatribe about how Karl Kurtland had broken their contract was disjointed, erratic, confused and just generally a pain to read, but it did seem like a winnable case. Even if it wasn’t, business was slow, Selwick had plenty of money, and this was a grudge he would pursue regardless of whether or not Thom took the case. The attorney was also aware that Selwick had chosen him because he was a no-holds-barred lawyer. “Win, no matter what,” was his spoken motto. He’d been tempted to have it engraved on his business card, but decided the Ethics Committee might take umbrage at that display of unvarnished truth.

  Working with Selwick was no tea party. Thom padded his charged time even more than usual to make his client’s continual second guessing somewhat more tolerable. Selwick’s criticisms and complaints carried on into and beyond jury selection. During the brief recess following the impaneling, Selwick was fully engaged in bending his attorney’s ear.

  “Why in hell did you let that dizzy blonde on the jury? You said yourself we didn’t want any women. She’ll take one look at Kurtland in his wheelchair and fall all over herself to find in his favor, even though the o
ld fool is faking it—like he has been for the past seven years.”

  Thom pushed back his anger and, in a patient voice, tried to explain. “We’re down to one woman. Just keep in mind that Ms. Erickson is a dumb bimbo and won’t have any effect on the eleven men we have on there. And, remember, we used up all of our perempts, and there was no basis for challenging her. Besides, this isn’t a criminal trial. We only need ten on our side, and that should be duck soup.” As a matter of fact, Thom had become increasingly convinced the case was already lost. Asking for five-hundred-thousand dollars for a breach of contract, where Selwick had made only token payments for services, wasn’t going to look good. Added to that fact were the lies that his client had told him—lies that could hurt if the opposing attorney had any inkling of their existence.

  “You could have kept that one guy, instead—the one who looked like a moron,” Selwick persisted.

  “That moron-looking guy happens to be a CPA. That’s all we needed on the jury—someone who could see through that maze of crazy payments you made and can read between the lines of the “don’t knows” in your deposition.”

  Five minutes into the trial, Thom’s pessimism began to fade. Kurtland’s attorney was extraordinarily inept, had the charm of a sick lizard and an insight into Selwick’s weird accounting that rivaled the abilities of a slightly retarded ten-year old. Kurtland, on the stand, acquitted himself fairly well, but Thom, who relished the opportunity to beat the old man down, enlarged upon his confusion in trying to describe the problems in Selwick’s unique records.

  And Selwick, himself, proved to be an extraordinarily slick and slippery witness. He easily parried the opposing attorney’s feeble attempts at penetrating the maze and, at the end, got down triumphantly from the witness stand. Since no other witnesses were called, the judge recessed, told the jury to have a good lunch, set the afternoon session for one-thirty and stated that jury deliberation would start shortly afterwards.

  A half-hour into that deliberation, both Thom and Selwick—who were already optimistic about the outcome of the trial—became even more so. Thom insisted that the longer the jury was out, the better. “If they’d decided against us, it would have been over long ago. Dollars to donuts they’re in their arguing about the size of the award.”

  Forty-five minutes later, the jury filed back in for further instructions. The judge, who obviously had assumed the case should have been decided by that time so he could move on to more pressing matters, impatiently asked the foreman, “What’s the question?”

  “Your Honor, we would like to know if it would be possible to award the plaintiff more than he’s asking for.”

  Seemingly with the same breath, Thom and Selwick gasped in astonishment and pleasure.

  Annoyed at the question, the judge simply said, “Yes.” The tone of his voice and the expression on his face clearly implied, “Decide and get it over with!”

  “We’ve already decided, your Honor.” As the foreman spoke, he handed a note to the court clerk. Thom and Selwick were ecstatic as the piece of paper passed to the judge and back to the clerk, who then read the six word statement.

  “We unanimously find for the defendant.”

  The Judge immediately rapped his gavel, closed the case, but held the jury for one last question.

  “Why did you ask whether you could award the plaintiff more than he was asking for if you didn’t intend to find for the plaintiff?”

  The foreman stood and replied, “We reached our decision in the first ten minutes, your Honor. But Ms. Erickson brought up that question, and we just kept arguing it back and forth. It was her suggestion that we ask you for the answer when we came in with the verdict—just to settle the argument.”

  BRIGHTON BANK

  “Let’s go over it again. The Brighton Bank is a special Federal Bank depository, like about a dozen other small rural banks all around the country. They were set up during the Cold War to hold enough gold so if the value of paper money went to pieces following a nuclear attack, the country would be able to stabilize its currency with the stashed away gold reserve.”

  Ignoring the blank expressions, Hadley continued. “The policy hasn’t changed, maybe because Washington thinks the North Koreans or someone like them will drop a few nukes on us some day. Whatever the reason, the gold is there in a special vault, separate from the bank’s regular vault.”

  A lesson in history and economics was definitely not something his audience could absorb, and the first question convinced him he’d been casting pearls to swine.

  “Where’s Brighton?”

  Hadley managed to conceal his exasperation as he answered. “It’s in Indiana.” To himself, he muttered, I suppose I’d better consider myself ahead of the game if he doesn’t ask where Indiana is.

  Right from the outset the meeting had gone badly. Hadley had had to choose the three men for their brawn and not for their brains. He now realized explanations would have to be kept as simple as possible and confined to what was expected of them.

  “I cased the Brighton Bank for a couple of months last winter. The routine is simple. On the last Friday of every month a Federal inspector comes out to physically check the bank’s gold holdings. He comes in at exactly ten minutes to five. The bank has been cleared of customers, and the bank manager, the bank security guard and the inspector are the only ones there. The timing mechanism allows the gold vault to be opened right at five. The inspector ticks off the holdings, makes a sample check to be sure no one’s been doing any substituting, closes the vault and resets the clock. Then the bank manager closes the regular vault and the three of them are out by ten after five. The locks go on automatically, and the bank’s another Fort Knox until Monday at nine.

  “Timing is going to be everything. At eleven minutes before five, exactly, we go up to the bank entrance. That’s when we put on our ski masks. The guard, who’s in our pocket, will let us in. Then we hold him and the manager. When the inspector shows up, we two,” Hadley nodded toward one of the brighter-faced members of his audience, “will grab him and lock all three of them in the main vault. Meantime the two of you will be packing the gold into four satchels, fifty bars in each. They’re twelve-ounce bars, so that’s six hundred ounces apiece—about all we can handle.” By now, Hadley was hoping fifty wasn’t beyond their counting ability.

  “Is all that clear?”

  Three heads nodded in unison.

  “OK. The date will be the last Friday in August. The temperature should be up around a hundred by that time of day, so the streets will be about deserted. We meet in Chicago on Thursday. Once I’ve made the arrangements, I’ll let you know the exact time and place. We’ll rent a car and drive to Brighton in time to park near the bank by four-forty-five.”

  The bright-faced one asked, “Don’t those banks have all sorts of hidden alarms they can set off by just pressing a button or stepping on a pedal or something?” Hadley was surprised and pleased to find even one of the trio thinking beyond lunchtime.

  “We’ve located the switching center for the bank. I’ve got a technician, a local guy, who’ll cut off everything—alarms, phones, the works—right at eleven of five.”

  “How much ammo do we pack?”

  Hadley, noting this came from the one he had already recognized as being most in need of a brain transplant, drew in a breath. “Look. I told you. No ammo! The guns will be empty, and I don’t want you carrying even slingshot rocks in your pockets.” Though he had no special aversion to loaded guns, Hadley had long ago become aware there was a high correlation between the intelligence of the gun wielder and the appropriate use of the weapon. After seeing the trio he had to work with, he had decided to give his own safety in their company high priority. Besides, he had also long ago discovered that the muzzle end of an unloaded automatic was just as persuasive as the muzzle of a loaded one.

  A quick call to his technician after the briefing was a relief. It was pleasant to be talking to someone other than a Neanderthal. Right from t
he moment of his first contact with the man, Hadley had felt respect for someone who could master and defeat the intricacies of a telephone and alarm system.

  “Yup. No problem. I’ll pull the switch at exactly eleven minutes to five, right on the dot. Be sure to pat them down for cell phones. Then they’ll need carrier pigeons to communicate with the outside.”

  The preliminaries went so smoothly, Hadley found himself relaxing for the first time since he’d made the final plans for the robbery. The trio found their way successfully to Chicago, well ahead of time. The car rental resulted in a vehicle which gave every sign of being thoroughly reliable. The trip across the Indiana border to Brighton proved uneventful.

  Best of all, the weather was hot. Incredibly hot. The Chicago country-music station, they stayed tuned to, interrupted its usual programming to report temperatures as high as a hundred and fifteen through much of the area. The police scanner was quiet, reflecting a peaceful countryside. As they were leaving the city everyone synchronized their watches to the beep of the official time announced on the radio.

  In spite of the sizzling heat, downtown Brighton wasn’t as deserted as Hadley had anticipated it would be at that time of day, but a parking place was still readily available, and the crew settled down to waiting out the next few minutes.

  Timing it to perfection, they pushed into the bank. From then on, nothing went right!

  A half-dozen customers were in the establishment, along with the regular supply of clerks, tellers and other personnel. Nothing distinguished the bank’s activities from an ordinary day during ordinary business hours. Surprised and frightened faces turned toward the four masked, gun-wielding men. Only Hadley’s quick decision to abort the mission prevented the debacle from becoming a complete disaster.