Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  Cub raised a hand. “Let’s slow down and make this clear. Was the original date for the robbery Tuesday, August twenty-fourth, which was the first day the bank would be open and operating … or the night before, Monday, August twenty-third?”

  “The night before,” Otto Pinkny specified. “They was to start the clout the night before so nothing would be inside in the morning except the cake.”

  “And preparations to go on that date were under way,” Cub continued. “Equipment was being gathered, plans being—”

  “Everything was done and ready. Everything was set to go, which was what caused the hard feelings.”

  “Ready and set to go when?”

  “Ten days before the clout.”

  “Which clout? The one planned for the opening of the bank, or the clout that actually occurred on Friday, August twentieth?”

  “The one planned for the opening.”

  “But that’s not the one you’re calling the second robbery? The one Cowboy Carlson was not supposed to be part of?”

  Otto Pinkny lowered a cocked thumb at Cub. “Let me explain it to you. We got four dates to remember. The first one is August twenty-fourth, a Tuesday, when the bank is gonna open and start doing business. Otto Pinkny plans to clout the bank the night before that, Monday. Them’s the first two dates, Monday and Tuesday. Go in on Monday night so there’s nothing left inside on Tuesday. Only Otto Pinkny then wants to hold off a month until the grand opening party in September. That’s the third date, September. Then something comes up and makes them go on Friday, August twentieth. That’s the fourth date. Cowboy Carlson wasn’t no part of what happened on August twentieth. Now you got it.”

  “… What made you decide to perpetrate on the day you did, Friday, August twentieth?” Cub asked.

  “I didn’t decide nothing.”

  “… What made Otto Pinkny decide to perpetrate on that Friday?”

  “Thirty-one million dollars!”

  “He knew it would be in the bank over that weekend?”

  “He stole it, didn’t he?”

  “Was that luck or did he know?”

  “He was hooked into all the telephones in the bank, hooked into all the alarm systems and television cameras too. He knew everything that was going on. Saw everything and heard everything. He heard the telephone call between the federal reserve people in New Orleans and the president of the bank when they set the time for the load to reach Prairie Port. That was part of the argument between J. L. Squires and the Latinos over clouting in September. J. L. Squires wanted to get it over with on the first night like was planned. That Monday night before the bank officially opened. The Latinos was unhappy about this ’cause of all the work they had done and how little they was gonna make off it.”

  “What Latinos?” Cub interjected.

  “The ones Otto Pinkny and Eddie Argulla brought up from Miami and Colombia. They was good at working in mines and with water. Not bad at thieving, either.”

  “How many Latinos were there?”

  “Six.”

  “What were their names?”

  “I couldn’t tell you if I was a mind to. They all got them chop suey names Latinos got. Lotsa Juans and Jesuses, but hard workers.”

  “And they got into a disagreement with J. L. Squires?” asked Cub.

  “Wouldn’t you? Look at it from where they sit. The Latinos was getting a cut of the action, and they thought J. L. Squires and Otto Pinkny was gonna wait until there’s lotsa money in the vault before doing the clout. When they find out the clout’s a go for opening day, they know there ain’t gonna be that much money to grab. Being a bank is like being pregnant, you get fat slow. They started feeling better when Otto Pinkny finds out the bank’s grand opening party ain’t for a month later and he wants to wait till then. J. L. Squires is bellyaching that he ain’t gonna wait around that long, and he starts in arguing for the first date or at least an early date. The Latinos wanna go as late as possible, and a tug of war happens. J. L. Squires is the only one who got paid cash in advance plus being given the second biggest percentage of the take, which is probably why he says the hell with it and walks out. Squires don’t like nothing about Prairie Port and living underground and he takes a walk back to Mexico.”

  “When was this?”

  “Three days before the real clout.”

  “Three days before Friday, August twentieth?”

  Pinkny thought for a moment. “Yeah.”

  “Who is the gang made up of at this time?”

  “Otto Pinkny, Eddie Argulla and the six Latinos.”

  “Not Cowboy Carlson?”

  “I already told you nah!”

  “What about Sam, the boy who made the fuses?”

  “He’s too scared to be any good even if they wanted to use him. One of the last things J. L. Squires done was eat that kid out for not making the fuses right.”

  “I thought you said all the preparations were done and ready on August fourteenth, which would have been before Squires chewed out Sam for making a defective fuse?”

  “They were, and that was part of the problem. They were sitting around with nothing to do, them people. So they started redoing things and getting in extra supplies they didn’t need and making spare parts like that fuse. They already had two fuses in the box and two spares, and they ordered another one and the kid couldn’t get it right. J. L. Squires was chewing the kid out over a fuse they didn’t need.”

  “When did you say Sam, the kid, committed suicide?”

  “The day Squires left.”

  “August seventeenth … three days before the actual robbery on August twentieth?”

  “Yeah, if you say so.”

  “Back in June, J. L. Squires and Otto Pinkny decided to go ahead with the robbery and then what?”

  “They started deciding on people and making plans. The beginning of July they start going out and getting the equipment and bringing it down into the cave.”

  “What equipment?”

  “All the equipment to do the clout with.”

  “Can you say what the equipment was?” Cub asked.

  “Want me to tell you where it comes from too?”

  “If you can.”

  That smile showed. “What’s important working in a dark cave like under the bank is for there to be electric light to see by, and Otto Pinkny puts Eddie Argulla in charge of getting that and the other gear. Otto Pinkny’s running an army down there, and all the men are his soldiers and have to obey that way or the enemy could win and you’d have to hoist your white surrender flag. The unknowing is your enemy, and the ladder of life is full of splinters, which means you don’t wanna go sliding down that ladder if you can help. Otto Pinkny knows the only way up the ladder is by being organized and original, and like the man said, initiative is originality in motion, that’s why Otto Pinkny’s gotta run everything like an army so his people will have motion and be original and stay organized, if you get my drift.”

  “… What about the electric lights?” asked Cub.

  “That’s why Eddie Argulla got sent to get them lights ’cause Eddie Argulla was the lieutenant in charge of that proposition from the beginning, and Eddie even hired a couple of the Latinos to be with him on this. There were six of them Latinos got hired and brung to Prairie Port, and two of them was miners who was good at working in tunnels and under the ground, and two more was sailors who could help with the boats when it got time to leave, and the last two was the sneak thieves who was always intended to help Eddie Argulla steal what goods they needed when the time come. The time had come and they needed lights, and Eddie Argulla and the Latinos who was sneak thieves take a truck and drive to Saint Louis and go to the S. and J. factory there and break in at night and take all the light bulbs and wire they need, and nobody knows ’cause S. and J. is this big manufacturer of lamps and fixtures so they ain’t gonna miss the stuff.”

  Cub asked, “Who told them S. and J. had the equipment?”

  “Any street thief knows
things like that, and in this case people in Saint Louis must have told Cowboy Carlson.”

  “Cowboy Carlson told you about S. and J.?”

  “Told Otto Pinkny and Otto Pinkny told me.”

  “Did Cowboy go along to Saint Louis?”

  “Cowboy didn’t go nowhere and didn’t know nothing ’cause all we let him do was tell what three places had what, but only in the Midwest, and he never knew if we went to any or all of them three places he named.”

  “Then Cowboy had nothing at all to do with obtaining equipment other than suggesting sources of supply?”

  “Cowboy got the sandbags,” amended Otto Pinkny. “He was working on some barge that did construction hauling, and they bought three hundred sandbags from him for fifteen cents each, undelivered. The Latinos had to carry them from a truck down the bluff and into the hole.”

  “What hole?”

  “The hole that was cut in the cave to bring supplies in through.”

  “There was a hole cut in the cave for supplies?” Cub said. “A hole from the cave under the bank leading to the outside?”

  “You said that, not me. There wasn’t no hole in the cave under the bank ’cause none ever got cut there. The hole got cut in a small cave to the north. There’s two more caves going north from the one under the bank, and the farthest of them two was cut through. Go look and you’ll see.”

  “After the electric wire and light bulbs were stolen from S. and J. in Saint Louis, what other equipment was gotten?” asked Cub.

  “Dontcha wanna know when the bulbs got sneaked?”

  “When?”

  “The night of August fourth.”

  “What happened after that, equipmentwise?”

  “Eddie Argulla and the two Latinos drove to the DPDS warehouse in Charleston, South Carolina.”

  “What is DPDS?”

  “Navy surplus. They got this big warehouse full of all kinds of stuff. That’s where Eddie Argulla and the Latinos got the rubber boats and the wet suits the people wore during the clout and the oars and the static lines and the power lights and waterproof bags and all kinds of other stuff.”

  “Did Cowboy Carlson tell them about this warehouse in South Carolina?”

  “Cowboy Carlson couldn’t find his way across the river without getting lost. The Latinos knew about the navy surplus at Charleston ’cause they used to steal from the naval surplus in Jacksonville and Orlando. In Florida. Why do you think Eddie Argulla hired them particular two Latinos? ’Cause they knew where certain merchandise was and they went to get it with Eddie.”

  “Had the Latinos stolen from Charleston before?”

  “No.”

  “Then why didn’t they go to Jacksonville or Orlando?”

  “Because it was farther away and because people there coulda recognized them and ’cause if you’ve stepped foot in one of them big surplus warehouses, you know there ain’t no trick at all to taking what you want from all the mess without nobody knowing.”

  “Let’s get to the other items stolen.”

  “In Charleston or later?”

  “Both.”

  … Otto Pinkny, over the next four hours, listed nearly every piece of equipment used in the actual perpetration of the robbery, and in most instances specified where it was gotten, how it was gotten and when. During his recitation, FBI men near and far rushed to cited locations. The mud coating on the walls of the second cave north of the bank was cracked away by a team of Bureau agents, who discovered the passageway Otto Pinkny had described … a narrow tunnel filled with hardened mud and which, once the mud was chopped through, would lead up into a field near a service road on an isolated section of riverfront palisade. Agents in St. Louis were taken through the huge S. & J. warehouse and told by company executives that yes, wire and light bulbs were found to be missing at about the time Otto Pinkny had said they were stolen, but that it was such an inconsequentially trivial shortage the company wrote it off as breakage or misplacement and never suspected theft.

  Bureaumen walking into the Defense Property Disposal Service warehouse in Charleston, South Carolina, were benumbed by the array of surplus naval materiél confronting them. Literally mountains of equipment including most every item on Otto Pinkny’s lists except for rubber boats, which DPDS officials assured them there were plenty of on a given day. The officials matter-of-factly let it be known there was no humanly possible way to keep track of the equipment that came in and out its warehouse other than in job-lot form … admitted they would have no way of knowing, and probably wouldn’t have noticed, if four rubber boats and a few wet suits were missing.

  Everywhere else an FBI man checked that day, he found what Otto Pinkny said was substantially so, that items were at a given location when he said. The patterns pretty much followed those established in St. Louis and Charleston. Often the equipment he cited was discovered to have been missing but never reported, as in the case of the S. & J. factory. In other instances no one at the premises was aware merchandise was gone, as with the DPDS warehouse. Some proprietors, visited by the FBI in the past regarding the Bureau’s assumptions about what equipment may have been used in the perpetration, had overlooked telling inquiring special agents what had disappeared. A few proprietors had let their losses be known to Bureaumen who could never link the missing items to Mormon State.

  One thing was certain as the afternoon progressed: Otto Pinkny’s recitation of what material was used closely approximated the FBI’s previous projections. So did Pinkny’s revelations that almost every item had been stolen. Most resident Prairie Port agents, listening in on the interview from the adjoining room, were convinced that Otto was their man. Not so Brewmeister, who with Cub was now doing the questioning.

  “There are no specifics!” Brew spoke sharply to Pinkny. The session was in its fifth hour. Dozens upon dozens of follow-up reports had already been phoned in on Otto’s previous revelations. More were being received. “What you are giving us is too general. We need exact corroboration. There’s a hundred ways you could have learned what you told us—”

  “I learned only one way, Otto Pinkny told me.”

  “Otto Pinkny is too vague. Because equipment is missing from a given location doesn’t mean Otto Pinkny or his people took it or that it was ever used at Mormon State. I want to hear about something that directly ties into Mormon State. Something stolen or bought that unmistakably links Otto Pinkny to the robbery.”

  “You mean something only he would know?”

  “And something we can verify.”

  Concentration was followed by a thumb wag. “How’s about the soup and sticks?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nitroglycerin and dynamite.”

  “What about them?”

  “They was got at the Boyton Arsenal in Clarksville. There’s these concrete bunkers way out in the back of the arsenal that’s all fenced off. Don’t seems anyone’s used them very much. About the start of August, the first couple of days in August, Otto Pinkny and the Latinos slipped the lock in one of the bunkers and walked out with a pint of nitroglycerin and twenty-one cases of dynamite.”

  “Twenty-one cases of dynamite?” Cub could not help from calling out. Cub, like the other resident agents in Prairie Port, knew that the FBI’s laboratory analysis of the crime scene had shown that nitroglycerin was the only explosive used in the cave. A very special brand of nitroglycerin. “You planned to use twenty-one cases of dynamite?”

  “I didn’t plan nothing. Otto Pinkny did, and he only planned to use nitroglycerin.”

  “Then why take the dynamite?” pressed Cub.

  “It was there and free, wasn’t it?”

  “You stole all of this the first few days of August?” Brew said.

  “Otto Pinkny stole it, and it was at night. August second at night.”

  “Then what?”

  “He drove home real slow. Nitroglycerin is spooking stuff.”

  “He drove home to where?” Brew asked. “Where was home?”
>
  “Prairie Port and the cave. They was all living in the cave. They brought it down into the cave.”

  Cub was on his feet and coming forward to take over the interrogation again. Having received a special briefing from the FBI lab, he was one of the few Bureaumen to know the exact nature of the explosive used in the ceiling of the cave and the bottom of the vault … an industrial-type nitroglycerin known as NKX-3 and manufactured exclusively by Yellow Moon Industries of Wilmington, Delaware. Due to a faulty glycerin additive, which rendered some batches of the explosive highly unstable and which left a grainy ash after detonation, all production of NKX-3 had ceased in early 1960. FBI efforts to locate existing stores of the chemical eleven years later, after Mormon State, had been unsuccessful, since NKX-3 had originally been sold in bulk and under no trade name. The most distinguishing feature was a half-liter metal canister that Yellow Moon Industries had used for shipment of the dangerous liquid. According to the FBI lab no more than two or three ounces of the NKX-3 had been used in the Mormon State vault theft … “Twenty-one cases of dynamite and a pint of nitroglycerin all went into the cave?”

  “A little more than a pint,” Otto Pinkny said.

  Cub sat beside Brew. “What was used in the actual perpetration?”

  “I told you, nitroglycerin.”

  “How much was used?”

  “Maybe an ounce or two.”

  “Was there anything special about that nitroglycerin?”

  “You mean like it coming packed in a silver drum?”

  “Silver drum?”

  “Small kinda silver can. Like you drink whiskey from in Prohibition.”

  “That how it came?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anything else about it?”

  “It was called NKX-3.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It was stenciled right on the silver can. Right on the packing case too.”

  “What happened to the nitroglycerin that wasn’t used?”

  Pinkny shrugged. “Probably got washed away with the dynamite and everything else. A box or two of dynamite floated out into the river with the men later. There was so much noise that maybe something exploded sooner without nobody hearing. Maybe the nitroglycerin exploded. Maybe it was washed out into the river too.”