Seven Silent Men

by Behn, Noel;

  Alice ordered the painters out of the top floor of their newly purchased but still undecorated house. She herself brought in new enamel, took up a brush and painted every bedroom on the floor a jarringly bright cobalt blue. Then she cut off all her hair and went into a catatonic depression. Sat in a straight-back wood chair facing a cobalt-blue wall in the barren master bedroom. Sat that way every waking moment. Curled up and slept on the floor when it was time to sleep. Arose and sat and faced the wall again. Curled up and slept. Arose. Sat. Faced. Heard not a word Strom said to her. Was oblivious to his hand in front of her. Their doctor had offered no solution other than to send her to a psychiatric hospital. Strom, who had stayed in the room with Alice day and night, could not bear the thought of committing her to any sort of mental home … balked even at calling in a psychiatrist until the fourth morning. Just before the psychiatrist was to arrive, the catatonia disappeared as suddenly as it had struck. Alice got up from the floor perfectly well, cheerfully announced that she was sorry to have been away so long but she had been visiting with the ghost of Priscilla and there was much to discuss. That Priscilla was indeed upset with Alice having sex with Strom and had put a curse on Strom to keep him from making love to Alice, but that Priscilla didn’t think it was a good idea for Alice to be unfaithful to Strom with another man. Then Alice went happily off to repaint all the cobalt-blue bedrooms an eggshell white, and Strom, for the second time in his adult life, wept. A month later Alice, who now had no memory of having been with the ghost of Priscilla, was declared clinically normal. Strom noted with relief that her nocturnal masturbation had all but ceased … that on the rare occasions she did self-manipulate, at least no crying followed.

  On Tuesday, August 24, 1971, as J. Edgar Hoover was telling a Washington press conference about the robbery at Mormon State National Bank, Alice was twenty-eight and as spectacularly beautiful as ever. She was also in the third month of a lesbian affair with Elaine Picket. John “Strom” Sunstrom, who was forty-six and visibly weary of the administrative functions taken on so reluctantly two and a half years earlier, longed for a command position and action … saw atop a hillock the white horse rear up riderless.

  That same afternoon the white horse was his. J. Edgar Hoover dismissed Ed Grafton and put Strom in charge of the office and Romor 91. That night he made love to Alice. And every night thereafter. It was like the very old days for both of them. The recent past was ignored. Alice had been as happy as Strom had ever seen her. Which was why he had such difficulty accepting her suicide, nearly fell apart. Which was why the other men of the office refused to let him see the actual autopsy report … why Cub and Jez and Corticun and Yates had conspired with the medical examiner to present Strom a highly edited report in which nothing was revealed other than the cause of death: suffocation due to strangulation.

  What the unabridged forensic findings revealed was that she had been sexually abused in the most horrendous fashion in the days prior to her demise, abused by a male, since sperm was found in anal and vaginal tracts as well as her stomach.

  The burial, like the preceding funeral service, was free of the media. Strom stood stoically at the graveside between Cub and Madden de Camp. Only once did his eyes leave the casket, and that was to glance up and look bitterly at an attractive redheaded woman on the fringes of the crowd. Yates noticed this, kept his eye on the woman and Strom throughout the rites. When the casket was being lowered, he saw the woman exchange a troubled look with Jez Jessup … after the ceremony watched from a distance as Jez fell in step beside the departing woman. Heated words were obviously exchanged. The woman veered off in a different direction. Jez stopped in his tracks, then continued on.

  Yates followed the woman home. Came up to her as she was putting her key in the lock. Stood there saying nothing.

  Elaine Picket stared back at him, remained as poker-faced as he was. “Which one are you?” She spoke with contempt.

  “Which one?”

  “FBI agent!”

  “Yates, William B.”

  “The bright boy?” Her scoff was half approving.

  “Bright boy?”

  “Alice liked you. She said Strom did too, because you’re so smart. Come in.”

  He followed her upstairs to the bedroom atelier of the town-house.

  “Coffee, booze, sex?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even sex? It’s all the same to me. I’m somewhat on the jaded side. Why did you follow me?”

  “To find out why Strom doesn’t like you. Why you had gotten mad at Jez. Why you showed up at the funeral.”

  She sat down in a director’s chair. “I went to the funeral because I loved Alice. Not in a physical way, although we did sleep together for a while. I cared for her. Strom knows I did. Anyway, she was a friend, and believe it or not, I am grieved. If I knew how, I’d fucking well cry.”

  “What about Jez?”

  “You mean, why did we have words?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think he hurt Alice. I don’t know how, but I think he did.”

  “In what way?”

  “Is he a good friend of yours? A close chum? A member of the fraternity, as it were?” She lit a cigarette. “Of course you’re members, who am I kidding. Only he’s no fan of yours, I can tell you that. Watch out for him.”

  “What did you and Jez argue about?” Billy asked.

  “He showed up here one night, like you did. Unannounced. I believe in fucking first and talking later. We fucked.” She paused, grinned briefly. “I liked him. Anyway, he explained he was checking about a robbery in the neighborhood. That’s what brought him to my door. He was vague about it. Only asked if I’d seen anything in the neighborhood. He didn’t press me and left. I remembered that Alice had seen something one night when she was here. I called him and told him. I didn’t use Alice’s name. He came back in a few hours and we made love.” She paused. “Isn’t that funny, I usually say fuck. I like the sound, the shock value it has. And I just said ‘made love.’ But that’s what we did, at least I thought it was. And he got Alice’s name out of me. And what had gone on. I never saw Jez again after that. Then Alice was killed, and standing at the grave, I felt sure telling him that had had something to do with her dying.”

  “What did Alice see that night?”

  Elaine motioned to the far window. “She was standing over there. It was night. She looked across the street into the office there and saw someone get killed.”

  “Get killed how?”

  “All she said was she saw one man pick up a gun and shoot another man … a small man shoot a tall man.”

  “Did you look?”

  “Of course. But the lights were out across the street when I did. The lights were on when Alice looked.”

  “Did you believe Alice?”

  “At the time, no. We’d had a fight. I thought she might be making it up. Looking for attention. In thinking it over, I realized it was true. Alice doesn’t lie. Didn’t.”

  “And you told this to Jez?”

  “And never saw him again.”

  “Do you have any idea when this killing took place?”

  “Right after Mormon State was robbed.”

  “How long after? A night, a week?”

  “The Tuesday after.”

  Jake Hagland had been able to determine only the first five of seven digits Mule had dialed from the phone booth in the bus station, the call to the raspy unidentified voice that told Mule to stay out of the tunnels, who had said when it was time to go back underground he would ring Mule at home and ask for “Howard.” Yates had a more urgent task for Hagland, checking the phone calls made from Strom Sunstrom’s home since the Tuesday after the robbery … since the evening Alice witnessed a murder in the building across from Elaine Picket’s apartment. Strom was an early riser who routinely reached the office by 7:30 A.M. Any calls after that had to have been made by Alice. It was a slow task, but Yates began to get a picture of Alice’s dependency on her husband. Strom’s p
rivate number at the FBI resident office was listed on an average of three times a day in the data supplied by Hagland. Calls to the FBI’s general office number averaged out at five a day. Yates presumed Alice’s use of the general office number was for leaving messages for Strom. What roused his curiosity was the call made less than three weeks before, a call made late at night to FBI-2000, the Bureau’s emergency hot line number for information on the Mormon State robbery.

  Yates went to the eleventh-floor log in which all incoming FBI-2000 calls were recorded. Nothing was listed for the hours between 9 and 11 P.M. The call from Strom’s house to FBI-2000, Hagland’s data showed, had been placed at 10:48 P.M.

  The office’s duty roster was the next thing checked by Yates. He talked with the agent assigned to taking FBI-2000 calls that evening. As Billy expected, the man had been relieved intermittently during the evening by whoever was around the office.

  At night Yates went into the empty premises opposite Elaine Picket’s townhouse, searched through, found the stain on the floor. He sat down, hugged his raised knees, stared at the stain … began to figure things out.

  Jake Hagland told Yates he had detected what went wrong with the bug he had placed on the bus station phone booth and that he had corrected the trouble and they would now be able to home in on what number Mule was dialing. Yates said this was no longer necessary, that he knew all he needed to know. He did, though, prevail on Hagland for one last favor.

  At sundown Yates rang up Strom Sunstrom and then Jez Jessup and told each of them he had finally found what it was Brewmeister had discovered. He asked them to meet with him at the railroad-yard diner Ed Grafton so favored. He waited in a phone booth across the way until both men arrived, then called Mule at home and, disguising his voice, said, “Don’t bother with Howard. I found it. Meet me down there as fast as you can.”

  Mule, as he always did when receiving such a call, hung up and called back the prearranged number for verification. Yates had anticipated this. Instead of reaching the number he dialed, Mule was shunted to Hagland’s communications truck, where Yates’s prerecorded voice repeated, “I found it. Get a move on.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A searchlight beam cut through the tunnel darkness ahead. The lamp itself was attached to the snub-nose prow of a rubber boat. Strom sat just behind the instrument, directing the light from time to time. Behind Strom was Jez. Yates perched on the rear gunnel steering the outboard motor.

  They had embarked from the shunting terminal under the old city waterworks, with Yates saying that Brewmeister had discovered this spot by tailing Mule, that he had seen Mule and Wiggles and Rat Ragotsy get into their own boat not far from here, then travel westward through the tunnels and caves, travel into the section of Prairie Port where mud slides and mud rivers and an underground mud volcano had been arrested.

  Earlier, leading the way down into the underground terminal, Yates had said Brewmeister never doubted Bicki “Little Haifa” Hale’s gang were the actual perpetrators of Mormon State, and this was why, after Mule and Wiggles and Ragotsy had been cleared of implication with the crime, Brew had begun following them. When he tailed the three men into this terminal and saw them get into a boat and head west, Brew realized what Mule, Rat and Wiggles had eventually deduced: that the $31,000,000 had been swept inland the night of the robbery. It was this knowledge that kept the three felons traveling the western tunnels and caves. Brew, Yates told Strom and Jez, followed Mule, Rat and Wiggles through these tunnels many times.

  Several miles westward Yates shut off the outboard motor. They were now in a series of caverns and grottos connected to one another by tunnel segments. He locked a plastic tiller to the stern, steered as Jessup and Strom paddled with plastic oars. Again, Strom, as he had earlier, wanted to know their destination. Yates again counseled waiting until they could see for themselves, then began to relate a scenario he had come to believe.

  “Long before Otto Pinkny was arrested for running a red light in South Carolina and identified as America’s most wanted fugitive, Mule, Rat Ragotsy and Wiggles Loftus were propositioned by a special agent of the FBI,” Yates said. “This solicitation was undertaken on express orders from someone at Washington headquarters and, needless to say, was done in the utmost secrecy. The three suspects were in custody at the time, Mule and Wiggles in federal detention in Prairie Port, Rat Ragotsy convalescing at an Army hospital as a result of the beating he took from the county sheriff.

  “What they were offered by this emissary was their freedom, to be let off the robbery charges and set free, in exchange for certain considerations. The deal, obviously, stipulated that Mule, Rat and Wiggles never mention a word of the arrangement and that they follow every last detail of an alibi scheme. There were other conditions. One was that they confess in full. Provide the secret operative as detailed an accounting of the evolution, planning, perpetration of the crime as possible. And the getaway after. That had to be the hardest part, getting them to agree to this confession. But the emissary got it. Got them to record it on tape. The next step was simpler. Harry Janks, the great Chicago mouthpiece, was had for a price. Harry probably didn’t know a thing about the arrangement, but he was provided with a bit of a windfall, eleven witnesses in Illinois who said Mule, Rat and Wiggles were there at the time of the robbery … and remained there for a week. I don’t know exactly how that was worked out, but it doesn’t matter. They were supplied, and Harry Janks appeared in Prairie Port with his new evidence, and then before we knew it, charges were dropped and the three actual robbers of Mormon State were let go. Of course they had to answer to Washington’s secret emissary in Prairie Port. The special agent who was Washington’s spy.”

  Yates, in the darkness, talked at Jessup. “Jez, remember how you used to joke about being Mata Hari? How all the resident agents talked about Ed Grafton suspecting Washington had sent someone to spy on him? Well, it was true. There was a spy. Not up on the twelfth floor with Corticun, but down on the eleventh. One of us, one of the resident agents, was Washington’s man. It had to be. Who else had access to Mule, Rat and Wiggles? Who else knew about Wilkie Jarrel’s phone setup that well? That setup was what was copied in keeping in touch with Mule, Rat and Wiggles—Jarrel’s use of pay phones to avoid being overheard. Part of the original deal with Mule, Rat and Wiggles was to continually stay in touch with Washington’s spy. There was a very specific reason for them staying in touch, but before this became a reality, a second use for the communication setup was found … a use that had to do with the tunnels we’re in.

  “Once they were cleared of charges and Ragotsy returned from the hospital, the three robbers were able to talk for the first time since blowing open the vault. Mule and Rat had thought the rest of the gang and all the money was swept through the tunnel and dumped out into the Mississippi River like they themselves had been immediately following the theft. Talking to Wiggles they learned he had been carried inland through the drainage tunnels, carried west. They realized this might be where some of the other gang members were taken. More important to them, that this was where the money might be. The three crooks had been pretty honest with Washington’s spy, but they were still crooks. They told the spy they were planning to go into the tunnels and look for the money and said if he kept his mouth shut about it and helped them, they would cut him in. The spy dutifully reported this to Washington. Washington said it didn’t care what the crooks did or he did, just so nobody got in trouble. The spy went along with the gang, used the intricate system of communications to be kept apprised of their progress in finding the treasure. The spy was down here himself several times to look over the situation. I saw him once myself …”

  There was stirring in the boat. “Saw his face?” asked Strom.

  “No, just his outline. He joined Mule and Rat and Wiggles in his own boat. It seems they were getting closer to the money all the time, or at least finding clues that the money was nearby, such as locating a moneybag. But that was only recently. Early on when they
were searching these tunnels and caves, there was an interruption … Otto Pinkny. Otto Pinkny gets picked up for running a red light in South Carolina, is ID’d and asks to see the FBI, or so the story goes. Most likely it was the FBI who came to see him … who’d been on the lookout for someone like him for quite a while. I shouldn’t say the FBI was on the lookout, just a few people in Washington headquarters, including our spy’s bosses. As a deal had been offered Mule and Ragotsy and Wiggles to clear them of implications with Mormon State, now a deal was made with Otto Pinkny … to implicate him. What had Pinkny got to lose pleading to Mormon State? Twenty years in jail? If he doesn’t plead, he’s going to death row. Problem is, Otto Pinkny doesn’t know a damn thing about Mormon State. So they give him the taped confessions made by Mule, Rat and Wiggles. This helps, but not enough. Luckily for all, Pinkny was picked up days before the records show, maybe a week or two before, so there was plenty of time for the next step … bringing in someone to coach him who knew all about the robbery.