Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  Bureaumen and munition experts moved in on the concrete bunkers a mile behind the main building at Kentucky’s remote Boyton Arsenal. The area was restricted and ringed by electrified barbed wire which no longer carried a current. Much of what had been stored here dated back to the Korean War. The last recorded inspection of the compound was a year and three months prior to the date Otto Pinkny claimed to have broken in and stolen munitions.

  The first two bunkers, according to inventory sheets posted inside of each, had nothing missing. The third bunker did … twenty-one boxes of extremely unstable dynamite. Farther back in the same structure, a small wooden crate that had not been listed on the inventory lay open. Inside were five silver-blue metal canisters clearly marked NKX-3. Each container was moored snugly into a round hole in the bottom of the crate. A sixth hole was empty. Stenciling on the discarded crate lid stated that six half-liter canisters were contained within.

  … Even Brewmeister could not fault the Coast Guard and River Patrol being immediately notified. Navigation alerts were out along the Mississippi to warn that highly explosive substances had fallen off an industrial barge and might be either floating or mudded down in the river below Prairie Port. Despite Corticun’s success at getting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to convince a barge company to take responsibility, the media suspected the alert had to do with Mormon State, and said so.

  Billy Yates got into bed beside Tina Beth and turned her to him and kissed her.

  She pushed him away.

  “Whatcha doing that for?” he asked.

  “Your heart’s not in it.”

  “How can you tell? I just started.”

  “You don’t have to hear rattles to know a snake bit.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re so smart, figure it out.” She squinched farther away.

  Billy searched for clues. “Was my heart in it last night?”

  “Passably.”

  “The night before?”

  “That was good.”

  “The night before that?”

  “That was like the heavens that night.” The girlish giggle was heard.

  “But not tonight?”

  “You heard me.”

  “… Can I try again?”

  “Won’t be no help.”

  “Come on, let me try.”

  There was no answer.

  He moved to her, held her, put his lips to hers.

  She sat up. “Billy Yates, stop trying to change what is. I knew before you came home tonight it was gonna be no good. It’s ten-thirty at night, and I knew from the first step you took in the doorway it was no good.”

  “I was out till eleven last night and later the nights before.”

  “It wasn’t the hour, Billy Yates, it’s you. Something’s gone wrong with you.”

  “I’m the same as always.”

  “You’re not and you know it, so hush!”

  “How’m I different?”

  “You swore you’d never lie to me again ever.”

  “You think I’m lying to you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Tina Beth, I haven’t said anything to lie about.”

  “Where were you tonight?”

  “The same place I was last night, the library.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Billy, I know when you go down into tunnels or chase people around zoos in Baton Rouge. There’s no way of shushing you up ’bout that and most everything else. But you haven’t mentioned one word ’bout libraries. Why you suddenly so secretive ’bout libraries? For two days you been secretive and distant.”

  He lay back in the dark, after several moments put his hand over his eyes. “I know I’ve come across Mormon State before. The robbery and manhunt are familiar to me. I feel like I heard of it a long time ago, like it happened before, Tina Beth … anyway, part if not all of this robbery and manhunt happened before … I’ve been at the library trying to find out when and where it happened … which crime it was. I’ve come across some that are similar, some that have aspects of Mormon State, but I can’t find the one. There’s somebody who maybe could help me with this, but I don’t want to go to him. At least not until I have more of it in place. Then again, maybe I’m flat out looney-toon. God only knows they warned us looney-toon was the occupational disease at Prairie Port.”

  She lay down beside him looking up in the darkness. “Thank you, Billy Bee.”

  “For what?”

  “Not cutting me out. Never cut me out of nothing in your life, Billy. No matter how small or big. I’ll die if I’m not part of everything you are.”

  “I won’t ever.”

  “Cross your—”

  “I already did.”

  “… Make love to me, Billy Bee.”

  And he did, like the heavens.

  TWENTY

  Otto Pinkny led Strom and Cub and Jez and Brewmeister and Yates and Madden de Camp and several more resident agents of the Prairie Port office on a tour which retraced various phases involved in the robbery … began at the small tunnel opening in the field off the service road explaining that this was where the deflated rubber boats and sections of scaffolding and explosives and all the other supplies were unloaded late at night … descended the narrow passageway and followed it down into a small cave and on through a slightly larger cave and along a section of irrigation tunnel and up into the very large cave directly under Mormon State National Bank, saying this was the route used for bringing in much of the equipment … took the party up the irrigation tunnel to the control center and power plant in the base of Warbonnet Ridge, where he explained every detail of how the generators were reactivated and electricity brought in from an outside supply line and fuses made and an automatic timing device constructed for opening the water gates which was first connected and later disconnected.

  Otto Pinkny, in describing what had occurred in the control booth and throughout the irrigation system, not only confirmed everything the group of scientists had told Jez and Yates months earlier, he added new information.

  “Otto Pinkny had to act awful fast when they found out thirty-one million dollars was heading this way.” Pinkny was at the water gate beyond the control booth inside Warbonnet Ridge. “J. L. Squires had run out on him a couple of days before, and J.L. still had an automatic control set for the gates in that tunnel down there.” Pinkny turned and pointed into the large irrigation tunnel leading from the reservoir to the bank. “Them controls was set for a Monday. Now they was going three whole days before that, on a Friday, and lucky for everybody Eddie Argulla and a Latino named Jesus knows about electricity enough to come and pull out them wires from the automatic control and stick them onto the reservoir directly. Eddie Argulla’s gotta be back under the bank to help with the clout and so he leaves Jesus up here and strings a telephone line from Jesus down to the cave in case the walkie-talkie radios they were using don’t work for the distance. Jesus don’t understand the English so good and thinks somebody said there weren’t no rubber boat for him to get away in, and what everybody finds out later he done was go and savage two big spools of nitroglycerin fusing and brings lotsa fusing back up here and uses it to help build himself a raft when all he had to do was ask and they woulda gone and got him a rubber boat. This means there ain’t enough fusing in the cave when Otto Pinkny needs it later, and that’s okay ’cause they do something else, and lucky for everybody Jesus knows enough to get the reservoir open at the right time, only he gets it open too wide and causes this flood which almost drowns everybody.”

  Standing five miles downtunnel on the concrete pier leading up into the cave directly under the bank, Otto Pinkny told his listeners, “A tidal wave like you never seen comes rushing at them. From the top of the tunnel to the bottom of the tunnel it’s all water. A wall of solid water, and sticking out of it and singing his fool head off is Jesus.”

  Pinkny indicated the pier th
ey were standing on and the water directly below. “All four rubber boats was in the water there. Two Latinos was in the first, and one of the two of ’em specializes in boats ’cause he was a sailor back home in Colombia. Otto Pinkny was in the second boat with the money. Eddie Argulla and another Latino is in the third boat, and they got lotsa money too because thirty-one million is bigger than you think and there wasn’t room for all of it in Otto Pinkny’s boat. The last has got two more Latinos, and one of them is good at boats too. Then it was over. The wave hit and took everybody on down the pipe and out into the river. There’s a fast tide in the middle, and they got on that and sailed on down for a while before getting off and ’cause it was dark nobody saw nothing of them.”

  Brewmeister, who had done most of the questioning about the tunnels, asked, “They all made it onto the Mississippi? The five Colombians and Jesus? Eddie Argulla? Otto Pinkny?”

  “They made it. There was some trouble when the raft Jesus was on cut into one of the rubber boats when they first got dumped into the river and that boat sank and the two Latinos on it got saved and no money was lost ’cause it was either the first boat or last what sank and you really couldn’t tell which it was later, the first or last what sank, ’cause both of ’em had two Latinos in them apiece and all them Latinos look alike in the dark.”

  Brew asked, “What was the raft made of?”

  “Made of?”

  “What material? You told us Jesus used the fusing to help build the raft. Help build it out of what material? What did the fusing hold, together?”

  “Wood.”

  “Where did he find wood?”

  “It was right there in the tunnel. There was this tunnel going up to the reservoir. Somebody musta tried boarding it shut with telephone poles, then gave up. There was this half a barricade of telephone poles there. Old dry poles. That’s what Jesus used for his raft, them poles. He cut ’em up and tied ’em together with the fusing.”

  “Cut them up with what?”

  “One of the electric saws. Them Latinos swiped four electric saws from four different hardware stores.”

  “You said no money was lost when the rubber boats went onto the river, is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When was the money divvied up?”

  “A little while after.”

  “Where was it divided up?”

  “Baton Rouge.”

  “How did you get from the river to Baton Rouge?”

  “I didn’t get off it nowhere ’cause I was never on it.”

  “Where did Pinkny and the others get off?”

  “They got off just before Cape Girardeau.”

  “Then?”

  “It was still dark out and just before the sun was coming up, and they had two of them campers parked there. Them house trucks you can live in and drive in, and they got in them and put the money in them and drove near Baton Rouge and parked in a motor park there and got sleep and then distributed the money, which took almost a day and a half ’cause there was so much of it. They already had cars parked at that motor court, and when the money was counted they each took their share and went their own way.”

  “Where was their own way?”

  “You asking where each of them people went?”

  “Yes.”

  “I only know where Otto Pinkny went.”

  “Where was that?”

  “South Carolina, near Charleston.”

  “Did Otto know where the other men were supposed to go?”

  “Nah.”

  “Did he have any idea where they could be reached at a later time?”

  “That was it, it was over.”

  “He never heard about any of the others?”

  “Somebody told him not so long ago that maybe Eddie Argulla got himself shot.”

  “Shot where?”

  “South Carolina, he was told.”

  “The same South Carolina where Otto Pinkny happened to have gone?”

  “Same one.”

  “How much money did Otto Pinkny receive?”

  “I said I wasn’t going to answer that.”

  “Thought you said you wouldn’t say where the money was.”

  “I said I wasn’t going to say nothing about the money at all, but since you’re interested, just divide up the thirty-one among eight people.”

  “Otto Pinkny only got one share of the take?”

  “No. It was divided into twelve shares, and he got four.”

  “His take was ten million dollars?”

  “He earned it, didn’t he?”

  Cub cut in to say, “Is that all he got? Or did he grab himself a few extra shares when nobody was looking?”

  “You calling Otto Pinkny a thief?”

  “I’m suggesting that maybe Eddie Argulla came to South Carolina looking for something he thought was rightfully his, like a couple of million dollars of robbery loot.”

  “I’ll tell you how dumb that is right now. Eddie Argulla and the Latinos knew Otto Pinkny didn’t have no money in the United States. He let his money go down to Mexico with Jesus, so why would anyone come looking for him in South Carolina?”

  Cub replied, “Okay, let’s try it your way. Is the reason Otto Pinkny turned himself over to the FBI because Jesus and the other Latinos took the money and ran out on him and Eddie Argulla … that when Otto Pinkny found out, he blamed Argulla, who had gone to Carolina with him after the divvy … blamed him and killed him?”

  “You one of them emotional disturbed people?”

  “If anyone’s disturbed, it’s Otto Pinkny,” Cub said. “Disturbed enough not only to kill Eddie Argulla but chop off his hands as a warning to future thieves. Did I mention, when we found poor Eddie his hands were missing?”

  “It’s like I told you, Otto Pinkny and the others went to Baton Rouge and stayed a day and a half. I’ll give you the motor court they stayed in. People saw them. Go down and ask, you’ll find out.”

  The fact that Mule, Rat and Wiggles had gone to New Orleans three weeks after the robbery wasn’t lost on the Bureaumen any more than the fact that Sam Hammond’s widow had claimed that city was to be the payoff point for the robbery.

  “Could anyone else have known you were going to Baton Rouge to divide the money?” Cub asked.

  “Yeah, J. L. Squires, and that nervoused some of the people but not Otto Pinkny, and like you heard, J. L. never did show up and try to take what wasn’t his.”

  “What would have happened if he did show up?”

  “He woulda gone home without a head on.”

  “And nobody else knew about Baton Rouge?”

  “Nah.”

  “Not even Cowboy Carlson?”

  “Cowboy Carlson was hanging around and asking questions when he shouldn’t be and maybe Otto Pinkny did mention Baton Rouge, but it didn’t matter. Otto Pinkny always mentioned a different date for going to Baton Rouge when Cowboy Carlson was around. A date two weeks later than they really went to Baton Rouge.”

  “What if I told you Cowboy Carlson was found with most of his head shot off not long after the robbery?”

  That smile glistened. “Them’s the risks.”

  The following morning and afternoon and early evening and morning after that, in the cave beneath the bank as well as in the eleventh-floor residency office, Otto Pinkny provided a detailed account of the perpetration, including information the FBI had never deduced or projected, such as the shortage of fusing causing detonation to take place in the passageway to the south of the cave rather than in a command bunker to the north, or the nitroglycerin not detonating and the men going out into the cave and looking up at the unexploded charges in the vault bottom and someone getting mad and stamping his foot, which in turn set off the nitroglycerin and knocked all the men flat on their backs … or that even before this the locks uptunnel had been opened prematurely and the men had to scurry like Hell to get all the money out of the vault and into the boats before the flood hit. Most every Bureauman listening believed w
hat was said was so, had not a doubt Otto had participated as stated.

  The events Pinkny had recited were, indeed, absolutely true and accurate, with one exception … he had replaced the real robbers with himself and his gang. Yates and Brewmeister stood nearly alone in believing this … were sure that the facts were real and Pinkny’s alleged involvement fiction. Their frustration came in trying to prove this, or at least disprove or discredit Otto Pinkny.

  Yates, in his final afternoon of cross-interrogating Pinkny on the robbery, blurted out, “I don’t believe a word of this. Nothing. It’s a great trick. Someone told you all about the robbery, and you’re telling us. Telling us things that can’t be corroborated. Cowboy Carlson, who you claim found the score, is dead. Eddie Argulla, who you say showed you the score and helped in the perpetration, is dead. The Latinos, if they ever existed, are gone to parts unknown. J. L. Squires, the legendary fugitive, is still an unlocated fugitive. There is no one to say, nothing to say, you were within a thousand miles the night of the robbery. It is all circumstantial. Everything is circumstantial.”

  “… You want me to prove Otto Pinkny was there, that’s what you’re saying.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Otto Pinkny bit on his finger as he thought … finally raised a thumb. “The coppers could tell you.”

  “What coppers?”

  “The ones getting their pee-pees licked.”

  “Pee-pees?”

  “Dingles.” Otto Pinkny pointed at his genitals.

  “Cocks? They were getting their cocks sucked?”

  Otto Pinkny stiffened, looked away, nodded.

  “Where?”

  “On the street in front of the bank.”

  “When?”

  “In the middle of the robbery.”

  “How the hell could you know that if you were thirty feet below getting ready to blow the vault?”

  “The television monitors in the command post showed it. One of the screens showed what was on the street outside. Two police cars pulled up just when the countdown to explode the vault was starting and everything in the cave had to stop. Coppers got out of each car, and one of them ain’t a copper but a girl which could be seen when she lit her cigarette. One of the coppers dropped his pants, and the girl got down and licked his dingle.”