Seven Silent Men (40 page)

They had driven again so Billy could tell Tina Beth how much he loved her and that he wished to marry her … that because of this he must reveal what he was really doing at the university and that if she didn't ever want to speak to him again, he understood. Billy told her he was an FBI agent. First she laughed at him. Then she got mad and got out of the car saying she never wanted to see him again, not because he was a Bureauman but because he had lied to her. Two weeks after that they were married. Never again did they use auto drives for personal matters. Affairs of soul or heart. These were discussed at home or on long walks. Autos were for professional issues such as test-taking or investigations, career decisions such as Billy considering quitting the FBI if he wasn't transferred out of undercover work.

There hadn't been, during their year-and-a-half-long marriage, all that many problems that warranted a drive and discussion. When there was, Billy's keen intelligence and deductive prowess had risen to the challenge. That was one of the things Tina Beth admired about her husband, his ability to figure out nearly everything, and to give off confidence while doing so. Now, watching Billy hurry from the Prairie Port resident office building and replace her behind the wheel of the station wagon, Tina Beth saw he was agitated and puzzled … sensed, for the first time, he wasn't at all confident.

Billy Yates, as he began to drive into the storming night, told Tina Beth that Mule Corkel and Wiggles Loftus and River Rat Ragotsy had been cleared of complicity in the Mormon State robbery and just set free. He said the resident office was in a state of shock and “Edgarphobia.” Shock at being so wrong about the three suspects. Terrorized, or Edgarphobic, over what Director Hoover would do when he found out. Billy told her frantic efforts were under way to find new and different suspects, that to this end, everything done in the investigation to date was being reviewed.

What Billy Yates found odd was how most everyone in the office seemed to believe Harry Janks.

“Not that Harry Janks wasn't a spellbinder, because he surely was,” Yates said. “He walked right into the enemy camp, into the FBI office, and did his number. I'm sorry you couldn't have been there, Tina Beth. He was something to behold. Something right out of that old movie starring Spencer Tracy. Eloquent as hell. And full of hot air. Mule and Wiggles and River Rat are guilty, Tina Beth. Mark my words, they are! They have to be! Why the other agents don't see it I don't know. Maybe they don't want to see.”

“They
all
think they're not guilty?” Tina Beth asked.

Yates nodded. “All but me and Brew. Could be Strom Sunstrom feels like us, but if he does he's not letting on.”

“What about Jez Jessup?” she asked. “He usually thinks the way you do.”

“He's the big surprise, Jez is. I would have expected Jez to say they did it too. That maybe Sam Hammond and Bicki Hale had something to do with it. But he's written them off totally. Jez thinks the Prairie Port Police Department set us up. That Captain Frank Santi and Lieutenant Ned Van Ornum nailed us good. Santi and Van Ornum were the ones that led us to Ida and Natalie Hammond. It was Ida and Natalie who named the gang for us. Mainly Ida. Jez points out that as far as we personally know, Ida has always denied her brother Bicki Hale had anything to do with Mormon State.… that she admitted some of the other gang members were around her place with Bicki but she denied they were involved too. Jez thinks they were at Ida's farm planning a series of hijackings … including some in Baton Rouge, where Mule, Wiggles, Ragotsy and maybe Hale went.”

“I don't understand, Billy,” Tina Beth said. “Did Ida say the gang did Mormon State or didn't she?”

“She did and she didn't. She broke down and named all of them. I think she was telling the truth. Jez is saying we unwittingly fooled or scared Ida into saying the gang robbed Mormon State by showing her the fuse. It was only when Cub showed her the fuse he found in Sam's workbox that Ida let down and said okay, here're the names of the men who hung around when Bicki was at my farm. Actually it was Natalie, the daughter-in-law, who insisted they all hit Mormon State … Jez even has the fuse business worked out. Has it worked out two ways. The first is that Sam actually built that fuse for a different group of criminals. A group Bicki Hale might have introduced him to, but which Bicki and the rest of his own gang were no part of. Jez's second explanation, which he's kept pretty quiet, is that the police planted the fuse in Sam Hammond's garage. I agree with Jez it wouldn't have been hard for the police to find out about Warbonnet Ridge before the FBI did. The geologists and God knows who else discovered the control room way before Jez and I got there. Frank Santi and Ned Van Ornum could have been down there before we were and found extra fuses, taken the fuses without anyone knowing. Then, if you want to follow Jez's scenario, they could have sat back and waited for the right situation. Or gone looking for the right situation. One way or another they might have run across Natalie Hammond, whose husband was missing. Who knows, maybe Sam Hammond was originally intended to be a member of the hijacking gang. Maybe his uncle, Bicki Hale, put him on it so he could earn some extra money. Money to buy that repair shop in Nags Head. Jez sure as hell thinks that's possible.

“Jez also thinks Bicki most likely arranged for Sam to go along with Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy on the Illinois cigarette hijacking. And that maybe Sam did go to Illinois or maybe he committed suicide before he could go. As for Natalie Hammond, Sam's wife, insisting her husband was in on Mormon State, knowing a few things that weren't in the paper about it, Jez has a simple explanation: that Natalie herself was simple, sweet and trusting but on the dim side. Jez feels it wouldn't have been too hard for a couple of old pros like Frank Santi and Ned Van Ornum to convince Natalie her husband was actually going to Mormon State … to twist around everything Sam told to suit their own purposes. Jez thinks that's what happened … that Natalie repeated to Cub what Santi and Van Ornum had whispered in her ear, convinced her was so. That way they used her to set us up for this fall.”

“But you don't think what Jez Jessup said, happened?” asked Tina Beth.

“… I just have to believe what Ida and Natalie told the FBI was true.”

“Aren't you
sure
, Billy?” There was no answer. “Why don't you and Jez go back and talk to Natalie again?”

“We would if we could find her. Natalie Hammond has disappeared. Left home three days ago and hasn't been seen or heard from. How about some hot chocolate?”

Tina Beth undid the thermos, poured a cup of chocolate. “Do you think Natalie's in trouble?”

Billy shrugged, took the cup and sipped as he drove.

“If Natalie is in some sort of trouble, then maybe Jez was right about her?” Tina Beth speculated. “Maybe the police took her away or did something to her so you wouldn't find out she was telling you lies.”

Billy shook his head. “The police aren't going to go in for kidnapping to prevent it being known they made fools of the FBI. If anything, they'd take out a paid advertisement to brag about how dumb we were.”

“If it doesn't matter whether Natalie is lying, why would anyone take her away?”

“To keep her from repeating the truth … maybe that's it. Maybe something else scared her off. Maybe she isn't missing. We don't know what conditions she left under. But we know she's pregnant. Possibly she just took a trip, but I doubt it …”

“What does Jez think?”

“For all we know, Jez is in on it.”

“On what?”

“The conspiracy.”

“… I don't understand.”

“That's why we're driving and talking, Tina Beth. I don't understand either. At times I think I do. I think I see it. See it clearly. I have this feeling our investigation, all of Romor 91, is being systematically sabotaged. Sabotaged from the inside. Sabotaged maybe by Jez. Then I start seeing Corticun as the saboteur. Or even that faceless spy that Ed Grafton was always certain had infiltrated the office. Washington's spy. I see the spy a lot … I stare harder, and suddenly everything falls apart. Shatters into pieces and rearranges as if I were squinting into a kaleidoscope. The conspiracy is gone, and one by one, all those inconsistencies and contradictions in the investigation start forming and collapsing. Reshaping into something else. Nothing makes sense, and everything makes sense. The more incomprehensible it becomes the more I have this feeling of déjà vu. I've been here before, Tina Beth. Whatever's going on, I've been through it before. I've got to find out what it is. What the hell is happening. Maybe if we go over it like we used to go over the tests, talk it out, hear it, I'll get some focus. Maybe just saying it and hearing it might give me some perspective. Hearing all those questions I had. Just rattling on at random. Tina Beth, you up to me rattling on?”

“Rattle away, Billy Bee.”

There were immediate questions for which he had no answers, such as how exactly Harry Janks had been able to get into Prairie Port and in touch with Mule and Wiggles without the FBI knowing. How Janks was able to get to Ragotsy, who was technically incommunicado at the Army hospital. How and when he convinced each prisoner to let him represent them. How and when Janks was able to procure the eleven affidavits in Emoryville, Illinois, saying the three suspects were in that town. Had Mule, Wiggles and Rat told Janks where they were and who had seen them? Had Janks then arranged for these eyewitnesses to be interviewed at Emoryville? Or had Janks somehow managed to learn about the eyewitnesses first and gotten their affidavits and then gone to see Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy? Janks was a very well-connected criminal lawyer, and sources in the underworld could have tipped him off about Emoryville. About who to see there. Whose affidavits to take. Was it because of these affidavits that Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy agreed to see Janks and let him represent them? Were there intermediaries between Janks and his three new clients and if so, who were they?

Questions regarding Sam Hammond nagged. Was it conceivable Sam hadn't done the electrical work for the gang? Didn't get the generators working and the water gates open? Did not build the time delay mechanism? Sam's work area, after all, did not contain the sort of sophisticated tools Cub thought were needed to build the mechanism. Build the fuses. If Sam hadn't built them, hadn't done the other things as well, who had? Were Corticun and Cub and most of the other agents correct in originally presuming an electronic engineer at the very least had been the wizard? Was it possible a different and far more sophisticated gang had perpetrated Mormon State?

No, that couldn't be, he told Tina Beth as they drove. It wasn't a different gang. It was Mule and Bicki and Wiggles and River Rat and Meadow Muffin and Windy Walt and Cowboy and Worm who scored Mormon State. If anyone had brought in a wizard other than Sam Hammond, they had. If an electronic engineer or his likes had been used, they would have had to use him. But how probable was it for Bicki and company to have access to anyone so educated and skilled? No, they had access only to someone uneducated …
and
skilled.

There was much about Denis Corticun that Billy Yates pondered, aloud and silently, while he drove with Tina Beth. Corticun had originally come to Prairie Port to interview Martin Brewmeister after the robbery was discovered … the “first” or “small” robbery, as Yates was referring to it, of $6,500. Corticun had run afoul of Ed Grafton by going directly to the hospital room and interviewing Brew there, after being denied permission to do so … had been humiliated first by Grafton and later by the drunken parody of him in the resident office. Through it all, Corticun had remained aloof and haughty. On the FBI's reentry into the Mormon State investigation … after discovering an additional $31,000,000 had been stolen … Corticun seemed to have shed his skin, came back to Prairie Port an ostensibly changed man. A cooperative and caring chap who never interfered with Strom's dictates even though Corticun, technically, could overrule Strom … was in fact the ultimate authority for Romor 91. Corticun had allowed Strom to get rid of Harlon Quinton and have the central files moved to the eleventh floor. Corticun's overriding concern was public relations and press conferences. He hyped the crime and unknown criminals with the
joie
of a carnival barker. Corticun, more than anyone, created the illusion of the supercrime-of-the-century, extolled the unknown gang as the crème de la crème of thievery. Yet Corticun was only fleetingly perturbed on learning a stumblebum street crook like Mule had pulled off the job. Cub became, and remained, despondent over this. Other of the agents did as well. But Corticun took it in stride. Went on holding his two press conferences a day and tending to other public relations chores. When Harry Janks provided documentation of Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy not having been in Prairie Port at the time of the robbery, Corticun was as unflappable as ever. Didn't bat an eyelash. Went back to his office and rewrote the press release he had intended for morning dissemination.

“He doesn't ring true,” Billy Yates said to Tina Beth. “Nothing about Corticun rings true. He's playing games. Only I don't know what kind of games.” More hot chocolate was sipped. “Jez, he could be playing games too.”

“You're sounding like real paranoid, Billy Bee,” Tina Beth said.

“It's how I feel.”

They rode on many more miles in silence. Rode with Billy squinting straight ahead through the rain-splattered windshield, biting at the corners of his mouth, swallowing dry swallows from time to time. Drove with Tina Beth watching him from the corner of her eye, sensing the turmoil.

Billy's thoughts, as they so often had, drifted back to a pair of old and troubling questions, pivotal questions that had emerged at the very onset of the investigation and lingered. Why had it taken so long to discover an additional $31,000,000 had been stolen from Mormon State National Bank? Why had J. Edgar Hoover dismissed Ed Grafton when he did?