Seven Silent Men (39 page)

Quinton read, glanced up with a bland expression of ennui, said nothing.

“Look familiar?”

“Not offhand.”

“It was given to you upstairs,” Strom told him as Corticun examined the page.

“Many things get sent to us.”

“Not us,
you
.”

“Many things get sent to me. I am, after all, in charge of the central files.”

“That's what bothers me,” Strom said. “Part of your responsibility is to notify us of everything that comes in. And to send copies of all data down to us. I don't remember being sent that list!”

“My God, man, we can't go traipsing after every little detail,” Quinton replied. “We have nearly four hundred volumes of data up there now. Minutiae occasionally gets overlooked.”

“Even when it's hand-delivered?”

“Even then.”

“Hand-delivered by the assistant manager of Mormon State bank and addressed specifically to Denis Corticun and intercepted by you? You still don't remember?”

Quinton turned to Corticun. “He just doesn't understand anything …”

“I understand one thing.” Strom talked evenly. “I'm kicking your ass off the central files. You're finished with them.”

“My friend,” Quinton said, “I'm headquarters. Field doesn't tell headquarters what to do.”

Corticun interceded. “We can work this out, I'm sure. I remember this page quite well. I was expecting it. Chandler, the bank president, called me on it. Said he was sending it over. I may have forgotten to tell Harlon here.”

“Was it investigated?” Strom asked.

“Investigated?” Quinton repeated.

“We got the master list the bank gave the police,” Strom said. “A list of everyone who was on the bank premises prior to the robbery. We were following up on those names. The page you were given says we shouldn't bother with seven of them and that three new names should be added. Were those three new names investigated by you?”

Corticun and Quinton exchanged looks. Quinton spoke. “As a matter of fact, they were. I remember now. There were three names. We of course followed up on them. How did you know?”

“Just guessing.” Strom indicated the page. “Followed up on those three names, right?”

“Yes, those three.”

“What did you find out?”

“They all had alibis.”

“Your memory seems to have returned,” Strom said.

Quinton ignored that. “All three men, the three names, were being interviewed for night watchman positions at Mormon State, or so we thought. The first two names were men who already were watchmen for other companies. The bank had run short of applicants for the watchman jobs and turned to an employment agency which specializes in security people. An agency with offices in downtown Prairie Port that advertises in the neighboring states. All three men on that list went to the agency, where they were given a time to appear at the Mormon State bank for an interview. Two of the men went to Mormon State and had their interviews. At the time of the robbery one of them was at another job and the other was at home.

“The third man shouldn't have been on the list, that last name, Teddy Anglaterra. He showed up at the employment agency's office in Prairie Port between nine and eleven Friday morning, August twentieth. They made an appointment for him to be interviewed later that afternoon at Mormon State. He never showed up at Mormon State for that interview, wasn't on the Mormon State premises. We found out he lived in Illinois and is a drunk. He liked making appointments for job interviews but seldom kept them. That's all there was to it.”

“And that's what you
forgot
,” Cub couldn't help saying, “… that's what slipped your mind, all of that?”

Strom resumed pacing. “Why weren't we told about Anglaterra and the other two men?”

“Oversight,” Quinton said. “Don't blow it up.”

“You have no authority to investigate anything occurring in Prairie Port. That is strictly an eleventh-floor matter, particularly when the subjects may have been at the bank premises the day of the robbery. Your only obligation was to send their names downstairs to us.”

“My God, we were pressed. I
believe
I mentioned that.”

“You won't be pressed any more.” Strom turned to Corticun. “I don't give a damn who technically has the say here, me or headquarters. Until I hear from Mister Hoover directly, I'm dumb enough to think I'm boss.” His finger dropped at Quinton. “Him, I want out of here on the double, or,
my God
, I will kick his ass all the way out myself. The central files I want brought down from the twelfth floor. We operate them from here on.”

After several moments, Corticun nodded his assent.

Jessup, the following afternoon, replaced one of the U.S. marshals escorting Mule from the hospital. He sat alone with Mule in the back seat talking quietly for the fifteen-minute drive to the federal building. He went upstairs and watched Mule being rearraigned before Assistant U.S. Magistrate Krueger. He witnessed Mule calmly learn his bail was set at half at million dollars … and meekly respond that he couldn't raise so much money, and passively allow himself to be led away to the county jail, while his Legal Aid lawyer shouted to heaven on high that the arraignment was an outrage and his client's civil rights had been denied and justice aborted. In the evening, at the county jail, Jessup again managed to be with Mule alone, to talk to him another forty minutes. The results Jez reported back to Strom were unhappy ones. Mule wanted no part of the FBI or their plan.

Jessup and Yates then returned to the Army hospital. Only Jessup went in to see Ragotsy, stayed for three hours and came away empty-handed. He went back two days later, remained inside with Ragotsy less than twenty minutes. After that, Ragotsy refused to see him again. So did Wiggles and Mule.

He was as unexpected as a summer blizzard. Harry Janks, Chicago's rumpled and Wellesian and bulge-bellied “defender of the damned.” Lawyer Harry, heir apparent to the red braces and stentorian spell-mongering of wondrous Clarence Darrow himself. Greedy Harry, who long ago swapped principle for profit, laid down his sword to sup at the table of the very dragons he once set out to slay. Sword or no, he cut a wide swath, Harry did. How, in his flamboyance, he managed to reach Prairie Port unnoticed, remain there unnoticed another day and a half, was nothing less than stunning. What he was doing in Prairie Port proved even more stunning … to the FBI.

The men had been summoned at 10:30 at night, entered the office building through the back or side entrances. All resident agents, except for Strom, were seated in the press auditorium by 11:15. So was Denis Corticun and twelfth-floor agents who had worked directly on Romor 91.

Strom, pale and shaken, entered at 11:20. The surprise, for all, was who followed him into the room. First came assistant to the FBI Director, A. R. Roland. Behind Roland strode Harry Janks.

Roland took the podium, in slow, hesitant words said that a mistake had been made which was not the fault of anyone present … that mistakes simply happen, occasionally, in investigations. He then thanked Harry Janks for being so considerate and going directly to Director Hoover rather than the press. Ruefully, Roland introduced Janks.

Thumbs hooked into his trouser top, he walked to the podium, confronted the audience, shook the shock of silver hair away from his eye. “I have been here before,” he told his listeners. “I tried a case here in Prairie Port before most of you were born. Your Mister Grafton was the law here then. I am regretful he is not present today. He taught me a lesson with that case. My client was a young extortionist whom Mister Grafton had arrested. A lad from a somewhat well-to-do family. The family had put me on retainer, one of the few times I ever did receive remuneration in those years of so long ago.”

The hands moved up, strummed the red suspenders. “My client, the young and wealthy ne'er-do-well, afforded me a piece of evidence I felt would have won the case for me. And I would have won most assuredly … had my client been telling the truth. He wasn't. He was flimflamming. I lost. Mister Grafton saw I was of despair and took me to his favorite saloon. A speakeasy. Liquor was illegal in those years. We had whiskey and coffee, and Mister Grafton suggested a rule I might follow in the future. Never trust a client, even if he's telling you the truth.

“We all, of course, forget that. Yourself and myself. My clients are your adversaries, your suspects. Persons whose relationship with the truth is tenuous at best. I believe, had you invoked Mister Grafton's rule and mistrusted what several of them said, we all would have had a happier day.

“I am here in Prairie Port to represent three new clients, Mister Marion Corkel, Mister Elmo Ragotsy and Mister Lamar Loftus. I can understand your zeal and frustration concerning them, but I cannot allow, without recourse, the abuse of their constitutional liberties. My options at recourse were many, but I accepted the one at hand. A chance to talk to you directly … and to scold you a little.

“Sirs, you have perpetrated more heinous criminal acts in attempting to apprehend and convict my clients than they have in their misguided careers. I contend that the very warrants on which they were arrested were improper. I contend that Mister Corkel, following his illegal apprehension, was denied immediacy in contacting a lawyer, which is guaranteed by the Constitution … that you, the FBI, most assuredly delayed contacting the public defender until the latest possible moment. I contend that one of my clients, Mister Ragotsy, was technically placed incommunicado in a hospital after his return from the South. I know of no attempt by either you or the military authorities in charge of the hospital to contact any of Mister Ragotsy's kin.

“As to your efforts to convince Mister Ragotsy, Mister Corkel and Mister Loftus to become witnesses for the government, I must regretfully say I find them reprehensible. You were deceptive in getting to them. You were deceptive when with them. Replacing a U.S. marshal duly entrusted to guard and protect Mister Corkel so you could offer him a so-called deal is downright felonious. You may disagree, but I know the law it transgresses. And poor Mister Ragotsy, in one sentence you spew sympathy for the beating he has taken in jail, while in the next sentence you mentally abuse him even worse … scare and befuddle him into thinking that should he consult a lawyer you would arrange to have him accused of homicide rather than bank theft. I can assure all of you he will be accused of neither.

“Sirs, you have falsely arrested my three clients. You have trusted the worst truth of all, facts. Or should I say the misinterpretation of facts.” Janks raised a sheaf of papers straight up into the air, held it there. “These here are the other facts. The true facts. They show what you either misread or did not bother to confirm … sirs, my three clients were not in Prairie Port at the time Mormon State National Bank was burglarized. They were in Illinois. Emoryville, Illinois. These papers contain the sworn statements of eyewitnesses who saw them in Emoryville that night and for six days thereafter … I will tell you something else that is not in these papers. Messrs. Corkel, Ragotsy and Loftus had gone there for the same reason they were in Baton Rouge three weeks later … to steal cigarettes. My clients, sirs, are truck hijackers, not bank thieves. Inept hijackers at that. They had the wrong information about what to rob in Baton Rouge and got into a fight over it. In Emoryville the shipment they were waiting for never arrived.

“Sirs, if you wish to investigate my clients for conspiracy to hijack, I suggest you alert your offices in Illinois and Louisiana. As for the homicide charges with which you threatened Mister Ragotsy repeatedly, as well as Mister Loftus and Mister Corkel, do go ahead and alert the Baton Rouge officials. Homicide is not federal purview, as we all well know. Perhaps the Baton Rouge police might wish to know why two FBI agents, who witnessed the assault, have still not told local authorities who the assailants are. Don't you think it better for all concerned if most of this is forgotten?… if all charges are quietly dropped and my clients agree not to sue for false arrest? I do. You and I, dear friends, will live to fight again another day at a different place, I assure you. Let us have this hour pass.”

The documents were held higher. “My clients did not rob Mormon State National Bank.
They could not have
.”

Corticun's phone call ordered the flying squad into action. By the morning they confirmed that every affidavit presented by Harry Janks was true … that eleven unimpeachable citizens of Emoryville, Illinois, had seen Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy in their town at the time of the robbery and for a week thereafter. Seven of the eleven were either operators or employees of the hotels where Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy had stayed. Three different hotels … as had been their pattern in Baton Rouge.

SIXTEEN

Edgarphobia was the word he used, said the men were in a horrid state of Edgarphobia. But that wasn't why he asked her to come fetch him.

It was raining and past 1
A
.
M
. when Tina Beth Yates packed a thermos of hot chocolate and several sandwiches and ran out to the family station wagon and sped downtown to the FBI office and picked up Billy. Let Billy drive. Rode with him as they went nowhere in particular. Answered when he spoke to her. Listened when he thought aloud. Waited patiently while he thought in silence, which was most of the time.

They had done this before. At Ohio State University right after they had met was the first time. Tina Beth had not known Billy Yates was an undercover FBI man posing as a graduate student, only that he was vying for top academic honors in the many university courses he was taking. School had always been easy for Billy. He could achieve, without effort, grades which would rank him among the upper five percentile at any institution of learning. This was not good enough. Billy, in matters scholastic, could settle for nothing less than being unequivocally the best. He treated tests and examinations as mortal combat. Prepared for them as a general might prepare for battle. The first time Tina Beth had driven with Billy was to help him prepare for a midterm examination in sociopathic psychology … a test in which he had made up his mind not to get one answer wrong. Billy had recited whole passages from lectures and textbooks as they rode, rattled off every question and answer he could conceive. They drove until it was time for Billy to go in to take the test at eight o'clock the next morning. In twenty-three pages of multiple-choice questions, only two incorrect answers were made by him.