by Behn, Noel;
“Sounds like we should hire Chet Chomsky,” Happy de Camp said.
“Promise him a uniform and six-shooter and a-running he’ll come,” Les Kebbon said. “Chomsky is a trooper freak. He’s a member of every auxiliary state police organization that lets him buy a fancy uniform and carry pearl-handled pistols. He loves riding in prowl cars. Maybe that’s why his county crime information is usually accurate. He’s buddy-buddy with one helluva lot of state troopers and sheriff’s deputies. But the city cops hate him.”
Strom surveyed the conferees. “Is there anything else we know about the perpetration? Any first-, second- or third-hand data?”
No one at the table said anything.
Strom laid aside his pencil. “Like it or not, lads, I’d say we are smack-dab back at the basics. Back to the WhoWhatWhyWhereWhenHows, and in no particular order.” He was on his feet pacing and thinking aloud. “Why did the perpetrators select Mormon State in the first place? And When? When exactly, and How did they enter the caves to perpetrate the actual theft? What, precisely, was the modus operandi? What specific equipment did the MO dictate be brought along? Who are they? How many are they? Where have they gone? And When? When! We’ll look a fine lot of fools if we can’t even establish When the haul came down.”
John Lars Sunstrom’s abilities as an organizer and administrator were generally unrecognized beyond the confines of the residency. Now freshly invested with what he considered to be temporary but near irrevocable authority by J. Edgar Hoover, he found himself in top form.
Prairie Port’s complement of seventeen resident agents, Strom told the men seated at the table, would be split into two groups, a three-man Caretaker Force and a Strike Force of the remaining operatives. The Caretakers would immediately evaluate the status of all five hundred and seventy-one investigations currently being conducted by the resident office. High-priority cases would stay within the residency’s purview and be worked on by the Caretakers. Everything else, the bulk of the investigations, would be shunted on to Denis Corticun and the thirty backup agents expected at Prairie Port in the coming hours. The Caretakers would assist the backups with these cases as best they could. Strom suggested the building’s landlord be called at once by Happy de Camp and space on the empty floor above the residency be rented short term to provide offices for the new arrivals. Hap was further instructed to arrange billeting and whatever else might be needed to accommodate Corticun and the thirty other out-of-towners.
The three-man Caretaker team would, in short, relieve the fourteen-man Strike Force of all responsibilities other than pursuing Romor 91. This pursuit would follow soon-to-be-detailed Channels of Investigation, and whatever assistance might be required could be provided by the support personnel headed by Denis Corticun. Should the Caretakers have any availability, they too would assist on Romor 91.
Pacing and pointing, Strom then began to list what the individual Channels of Investigation would be and exactly which ones each of the fourteen resident agents would be assigned to.
Heck Bevins, hurrying into the conference room with Ralph Dafney, sensed a difference in Strom. A confidence he had not seen before. Ralph Dafney felt it was more a sort of puckishness. What Billy Yates and most agents already at the table took note of was Strom’s insistence, while rattling off the channels and channel assignments, on answers to three questions: When did thirty-one million dollars arrive at Mormon State National Bank? How, precisely, did it get there? When exactly, between the time the assistant manager locked up on Friday afternoon and the police arrived early Sunday morning, was Mormon State National Bank robbed?
Early afternoon papers in Prairie Port and across the country headlined what radio newscasters had been bulletining since J. Edgar Hoover made his speech hours before, the largest cash robbery in history. The most immediate response from the local populace was to rubberneck in front of the Mormon State Bank, thereby creating a minor traffic jam in the area. The national response was reflected in a run on Prairie Port hotel and motel rooms by out-of-town media people.
At 11:45 A.M. Strom noticed a headline in one of the papers an agent had brought him. “My God,” he said to Jez, “I forgot the reporters outside.”
“Don’t worry, Washington will make up for it,” Jez assured him. Strom did not listen, hurried out into the anteroom … was swallowed up by the crunch of press people.
The first interview to be conducted by any member of the Prairie Port residency since the creation of Romor 91 was unofficial and occurred at 12:05 P.M., when a curious Billy Yates, waiting for assignment, decided to call the Prairie Port Sewerage Department. Since repairmen had temporarily shut down the FBI office switchboard, Yates took the back elevator down to a lobby paybooth. The only person not out to lunch was a cheery secretary. Yates identified himself, explained this was an unofficial call and asked if the electrical power shortages over the last week or so had in any way affected the electrical equipment used by the department. Had it ever, he was told. It had knocked all the central control room’s measuring gauges for a loop. No one had the vaguest idea what had gone through the sewerage system since Friday afternoon. Whole sections of tunnel had been nearly demolished, but there was no way of knowing when or by how much water. What was true for the sewerage monitoring system was true for the Water Department. If he didn’t believe her, Yates was told, call the Water Department. He did call. The secretary there refused to give out any information.
The first official communication Washington headquarters received from the originating office of Romor 91 occurred at 2:07 P.M., when acting ASRA Cub Hennessy placed a call over the newly repaired switchboard and requested detailed information on the shipment of $31,000,000 to Mormon State National Bank.
The first official communication the Romor 91 office received from headquarters was logged into the Prairie Port communications book at 2:55 P.M.
“What’s the idea of calling headquarters and not calling us?” Harlon Quinton, Corticun’s aide-de-camp, demanded.
“I didn’t know we were supposed to,” Cub replied.
“Like hell you didn’t. We’ve been calling you all day.”
“Then you’ll know our phones went out.”
“That’s no excuse. When we call we expect an immediate answer. That’s how it’s going to be.”
“How what’s going to be?”
“Chain of command. You answer to us, mister. When we call we expect an immediate response.”
“Then I’ll give you one.” Cub, without further ado, hung up.
The first official report from Prairie Port to Washington began at 3:10 P.M., after Denis Corticun called Strom Sunstrom and politely apologized for the behavior of Harlon Quinton. Corticun said there was no doubt Strom was in total charge of Romor 91. Again Corticun apologized for Harlon Quinton … casually asked what progress was being made. Strom, without hesitation and calmly, began rattling off the Channels of Investigation to be followed by the Prairie Port residency: Mormon State National Bank Premises and Personnel; Shipment of $31,000,000 to Mormon State Bank; U.S. Treasury Department Procedures for Transport and Destruction of Currency; Inspection of Tunnels, Caves and Underground Systems Running Under or Near Bank; Inspection of Tunnels, Caves and Underground Systems Running North and South of Bank Including Sewerage and Water Department Systems of City of Prairie Port; Background of All Persons Having Access Physically and/or Informationally to Such Tunnels, Caves and Systems; Inspection of Dams, Locks and Flood-Control Systems Twenty Miles North of Bank; Inspection of Mud Explosions West of City to Determine Relationship with Crime, If Any; Reconstruction of Crime; Projection of Potential Equipment Utilized in Crime; Check of All Retail and Wholesale Stores Stocking Such Equipment; Projected Profile on Perpetrators; Local and State Check on All Known Criminals with “Capacity to Perpetrate” Mormon State-Type Crime; Nationwide and Interpol Check for Known Criminals with “Capacity to Perpetrate”; Local Check on Airports, Bus and Rail Terminals and Hotels, Motels and Rooming Houses for Strangers i
n Prairie Port at Time of Perpetration; Neighborhood Checks to Find Eyewitnesses at or Near Bank Premises; Area Checks for Eyewitnesses at Location Downstream from Bank Where Agent Brewmeister Was Found; Nationwide Alert for “Big Spenders” of Unmarked Money; Interpol Alert for Large Shipments or Deposits of U.S. Currency; Crime Lab Examination of Robbery Premises, Rubber Raft, Rope, Money Bag; List of the Unknown Perpetrators on Ten Most Wanted List; Alerts to City, State and Out-of-State Law-Enforcement Agencies on Rented or Stolen Vehicles Possibly Used by Perpetrators; Media Monitoring for Additional Leads; Establishment of Emergency Lines of Communication with Public Regarding Additional Leads; Assignment of Special Liaisons to City, County, State Law-Enforcement Agencies; Contacting of Informants; Development of Additional Informants.
Corticun was also told by Sunstrom that assignments of specific agents to these channels were currently being made.
Corticun told Sunstrom that the special “flying squad” would expedite the needed data for him. He informed Strom he would be arriving in Prairie Port early that evening …
Wet-suited divers, one by one in the stillness of the late-afternoon heat, rolled off the pontoon raft and into the dark waters of Tomahawk Hill reservoir west of Prairie Port, sank forty-seven feet, touched bottom, deployed and scanned the basin floor with powerful portable searchlights. The team was from the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and had been trying, for many hours, to locate leaks or cracks or other unsuspected openings which might account for millions of gallons of missing Tomahawk water. And the shortaging hadn’t ended. Startling amounts of water, intermittently, continued to disappear.
Diving team leader Sergeant Mel Wallinor spotted dense undergrowth looming up ahead. Suspecting they had reached the original bed from which the reservoir had been expanded three decades before, he signaled the other swimmers into the area. Muck mushroomed as they flippered through the vegetation. Wallinor heard metal creaking, turned in time to see a flailing diver to his right shoot backward out of sight. Wallinor made for his comrade, was spun around and sucked through the undergrowth with amazing force. He banged into the moss-crusted latticework of a huge iron gate against which the diver was pinioned … through which reservoir water was escaping.
Watching the evening television news on the rented set as well as on one brought in by Heck Bevins’s wife, the agents of Prairie Port took a dinner break and saw the anchormen of local NBC and CBS channels simultaneously announce the largest cash robbery in modern history, then cut to J. Edgar Hoover making his press conference statement earlier in Washington, D.C. After commercials reporters for both networks recapitulated the crime from in front of the Mormon State National Bank. CBS went to another reporter standing before the residency’s office building. Pointing up to the lighted line of windows, the reporter stated these were the Bureau’s current offices and that the enormity of the manhunt to come could best be judged by the additional space just taken by the FBI: the entire floor above. NBC went directly into the jam-packed anteroom of the Prairie Port residency office, where senior crime reporter Theodore Howel revealed the media expected an announcement of major significance at any moment.
CBS cut to Prairie Port’s Municipal Airport, where a cargo plane was being unloaded. An off-camera reporter announced this was the FBI office equipment flown in from Washington for what was expected to be the greatest manhunt in U.S. history.
The reporter appeared on screen with Denis Corticun, who was introduced as “J. Edgar Hoover’s man-at-the spot.” Corticun graciously explained he was here merely to assist the senior resident agent in charge, John L. Sunstrom, and the men of the Prairie Port office, who had already made significant progress in their investigation of the crime, details of which would be described more fully at a ten-o’clock press conference in Prairie Port the next morning.
The progress was news to Strom and his viewing agents.
NBC went remote to “special guest crime-analyst Chet Chomsky,” a pudgy fellow in an Anzac hat who was standing in the control center of Prairie Port’s Sewerage Department holding a metal gauge. Chomsky, after declaring history was in the making and Mormon State would go down as the greatest criminal masterwork of all time, announced the FBI had just discovered another ploy invoked by the brilliant perpetrators. Wandering along a wall of glass-enclosed dials and gauges, Chomsky revealed the FBI had determined that by dimming and raising electrical power levels in the Prairie Port area,’ the criminals had caused most electrical-sensitive mechanisms, such as the Sewerage Department gauge he was holding, or those on the wall behind him, to be knocked out of commission much as an electric clock is knocked out of whack when power is shut off and later restored. Chomsky said the gauges at the Sewerage Department as well as the Water Department had definitely been put out of commission by the power fluctuations and as a result it could not yet be determined when the actual flooding of the tunnels took place. Chomsky then added that the mere discovery of the technique used to neutralize the gauges was the major break in the case FBI men had been hoping for … that it boiled the list of suspects down to a very specialized few. Chomsky leaned into the camera and confidentially advised his viewers to expect a big announcement soon.
Seated in the family station wagon parked in the open-air lot across the street from the office, Cub Hennessy and his wife, Sissy, ate a home-cooked picnic supper while listening to radio station KTY, over which Chet Chomsky’s prerecorded voice relayed substantially the same electrical gauge information he was currently presenting live on NBC.
“Sounds like you’re making progress,” Sissy said.
“The gauge thing was Yates, the new boy,” Cub told her.
“He has a lovely wife. Young and smart.”
Cub switched off the radio, popped an olive into his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” asked Sissy.
“Nothing.”
“When you eat an olive after your custard, something’s wrong.”
“… What Strom said up there could be true.”
“Which was what?”
“He warned that Washington might be setting him up, might want us to fail with this case.”
“That’s foolishness. It sounds like everything is going fine.”
“We’ve got to get out into the field. Strom is up there organizing, for D-Day. There’s nothing he hasn’t thought of … on paper. But so far we’re still upstairs planning.”
Sissy kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll be out on the bricks soon enough.”
“… Grafton? Why remove Graf at this particular moment?”
Sissy peered at her husband. “You don’t think Strom can handle the case?”
“Maybe the case by itself,” Cub told her. “Any investigation is luck, you know that. Ten percent hard work, ninety percent luck. If we get the breaks fast, fine and good. But I …” Cub turned’ and faced Sissy. “I have a feeling something else is going on. Something I just don’t understand …”
Alice Maywell moved naked through the darkness to the open window. She folded her arms, stared absently out across the narrow street at the lighted but empty third-floor office. The large clock on the office’s far wall showed the time to be 10:18 P.M.
“Don’t stand there with nothing on,” Elaine Picket said from the bed.
“Don’t tell me what to do. No more!” Alice warned.
“People can see in.”
“Let them!” Alice tore aside the sheer curtains, raised her beautiful face, threw back her arms. “Look at me,” she shouted into the night. “All of you out there, look at me …” She clasped her high and firm breasts and dug her fingernails into the smooth flesh.
“Idiot.” Elaine felt about in the bedclothes.
“You’re damn right I’m an idiot.” Alice spun around. “That and a lot more for ever loving you!”
“Love? You’re a grown woman. You wanted a fling, I gave you a fling. Flings end.”
“I believed in you, I needed you—”
“And I need a smoke. Get a
way from the window so I can turn on the light and find my cigarettes.”
Alice remained motionless.
The nightstand lamp illuminated. Auburn-haired, frecklefaced, bone-naked Elaine Picket was on all fours on top of the mussed satin sheet searching. “Go home,” she said, belly-flopping on the mattress and reaching down for a pack of Virginia Slims on the shag rug. “You belong at home. Work it out with that husband of yours. You don’t cut it as a dyke.”
Alice glowered at the long, lithe woman draped over bed’s end lighting a cigarette. She turned abruptly away, again gazed outside.
A man who looked like Groucho Marx was standing at the closed third-floor office window across the street staring at her … a tall man in red fright wig and long black frock coat and white gloves. On seeing Alice had noticed him, he doffed the wig politely, revealing a totally bald head. Then he danced several highstepping steps of a jig and leapt into the air clicking his heels. He was wearing cowboy boots.
Alice retreated several paces. As she did, the bedside lamp behind her snapped off.
A second, far shorter man moved quickly up beside the first at the closed window. He too looked like Groucho Marx. The shorter man wore gray gloves and an unzipped black windbreaker over a dark green T-shirt and was huskier than the taller man. He also had on a fright wig, only his was blue. Powder blue. The short Groucho was visibly agitated. He carried an open cash box, held it upside down in front of his partner to show it was empty, shook it a time or two, tossed it aside, stalked off out of view. Tall Groucho went on staring in Alice’s direction.
