Seven Silent Men (43 page)

Louise and Nadine returned to Prairie Port in early June and took an apartment. Their phone number was listed. A week later Martha called. She was in Prairie Port and needed a place to stay for a few days. The sisters let her bunk with them. Once ensconced, Martha explained she had come to Prairie Port because of her new boyfriend. He was teaching at the university over the summer and was in the process of getting a divorce, which was why they couldn't stay together. Louise and Nadine met the boyfriend. His name was David Dellafield. David Dellafield was a mathematician and nuclear physicist. Louise and Nadine had no doubt he was the wizard. The more Yates learned from the sisters and subsequent sources, the more he realized David Dellafield would make a perfect wizard.

“You won't believe this Dellafield guy,” Yates told Brew at the Terrace Bar. It was late Sunday afternoon. Brew, recently returned from a trip to Western Missouri Penitentiary, was talking to Billy for the first time in almost three weeks or, more correctly, was being talked to. “Dellafield is so looney-toon extreme he thinks Lenin is a closet capitalist,” Yates explained. “He despises all left and radical groups. Thinks they've sold out. When you look at him, you figure he's the friendly neighborhood soda jerk. Sandy hair and baby face. Soft-spoken. Nothing in his background to show radicalization. Upper-middle-class kid, in fact. Never worked a day in his life. Smart as hell. Graduated college at sixteen. Breezed through M.I.T. Doctored in about every science there is. Never showed any political preference until he met Libby Tidwell. She rang his nihilistic chimes, okay. It was total destruction at first sight … David Dellafield comes over and has dinner at Louise and Nadine Elison's apartment. Sits holding Libby's hand and talking about the holocaust to come. Talks calmly and precisely. He's a revolutionary Marxist of the old school. A dialectic pragmatist preaching the 1920s and '30s gospel. The revolution must come first. Blood must flow for the sake of blood-flowing. Flowing blood is good. Subsequent to destruction comes totalitarianism. Two hundred years of mind control and subjugation. After that, true democracy will grace us all. David Dellafield scares the living shit out of the Elison sisters because he knows how he's going to finance this bloodbath of his. Robbery. And what he starts telling them is a blueprint for Mormon State … or any other bank, for that matter. This guy has learned banks and alarm systems and timing devices like only a scientist with a 202 I.Q. could. When we check up on him, we find he's got the fingers of a brain surgeon. He can build anything. Build it out of spit if he has to. Electronically, forget it, he's unbelievable. It's easier for him to build a TV set than walk around the corner to buy one. He knows about maps too. He's been down to the city hall going through the Building Department blueprints for damn near any building in town he wants.

“The creepiest thing about him is he outlined a procedure for the Elison sisters. Dellafield wants to recruit criminals to do his work for him, only he's going about it in a reverse way. He'll let them recruit him. He's going to meet crooks and drop hints and let them try to con him into setting up a job for them. His plan is to rob them before they rob him.

“Brew, you know what this guy does on weekends and Thursday nights? He's a volunteer teacher at the county jail. We went right past him on our list because who the hell's going to think about some triple-Ph.D. professor who's a do-gooder? Know what he teaches at the county jail? Electrical repair and
lock
repair. Electrical repair was his idea. Lock repair was the idea of the Correction Department. Corrections figures the best way to rehabilitate a lock-picker is to teach him how to do his stealing better. This guy David Dellafield has access to every minor crook in Prairie Port.”

“What became of Libby Tidwell?” asked Brew.

“Dellafield dumped her. Went back to his wife. That was only a few days after he had dinner with Libby over at the Elison sisters' apartment. Libby split, and the Elisons have no idea where to. Dellafieid called the Elisons twice after that, suggested they come meet a small cadre of friends he was putting together. They emphasized he used the word cadre. The Elisons wanted no part of him. When the Mormon State robbery came down, they didn't immediately associate it with Dellafield. The more they heard about the wizard and what he did in the cave, the more they were sure it was Dellafield. They didn't want to contact the FBI because they don't trust us. They didn't want to contact the police on general principles. They did tell a couple of friends about it. Apparently one of those friends sold them out and called the hot line. The girls have no idea why someone would say they knew the Armstrong kid other than to try to make them look as bad as possible.”

Brew asked, “What are you doing about Dellafield?”

“Have him under surveillance. He's popular as hell at the university: Students love him. He's nonpolitical there. Won't even comment on the Republican Party.”

Brew asked, “Are you thinking Sam Hammond wasn't the wizard? Didn't go on the job? That this guy replaced him?”

“Who knows?” Yates was up and pacing the way Strom always paced. Thrust his hands into his pockets as Strom did when he couldn't figure things out. “Maybe I'm all wet. Maybe Bicki and Mule and Sam Hammond had nothing to do with it. Maybe David Dellafield did the whole bloody thing on his own.”

Brew shook his head. “Mule had everything to do with it. Come on, see for yourself.”

They waited until dark. Drove out to Mule Corkel's ranch west of town. Climbed the same hill from which Yates had surveilled the house and teepee on the night of Mule's apprehension three months earlier.

“I've been tailing him on and off for a while,” Brew told Billy as they lay on the crest. “A week back he disappeared for four days. That gave me a chance to do some exploring, let me find out exactly where he was heading, and something else. Here's hoping he shows up tonight so you can see for yourself. It's better you see for yourself instead of me telling you.”

At ten to eight Mule emerged onto the rickety back porch of the old house. Glanced about. Darted out past the darkened teepee to the standing pickup truck. Jumped in. Drove boundingly off across the fields.

Brew and Yates went down to their own car, kept a safe distance while following the pickup along a rural road. The truck's braking lights went on as it pulled over to an illuminated telephone booth at the first intersection.

“He makes three calls,” Brew explained as they drove past Mule, who was walking toward the phone. “Puts in a coin, dials the number, says a word or so to whoever answers, and hangs up. On two of the nights I watched, he waited around after the last call was made. At those times someone must have rung back because he picked up the phone and started talking without depositing a coin. On the two other nights he didn't wait around after the third call. Just hung up and got in his truck and started driving.” Brew pulled onto the ramp leading to the superhighway. “Mule will be taking the side roads when he's finished phoning. We can get there quicker on the highway and then cut back across town.”

“Cut across to where?” asked Yates.

“Like I said earlier, it's better if you see for yourself.”

The superhighway skirted the city's northeastern periphery. Coming off the exit ramp, Brew drove toward the river. Pulled to a stop inside the old railyard.

Yates followed Brew past a boarded-up roundhouse and onto the grounds of Prairie Port's first waterworks, which was now a landmark building and city park at Lookout Bluff. They went to the rear of one of the granite-block buildings, pushed through a door, descended a circular metal staircase down into a large, domelike brick structure. High arched openings rose along its curving walls. Water flowed through the arches and on into the tunnels beyond the openings. Two of the passageways seemed to be under repair … one on the northern side of the area, one on the west.

Brew pointed to a recently plastered and rebricked area beside the northern arch. “That's the wall I burst through when I rode the flood crest after the robbery. The wall I sprained my shoulder on. The tunnel on the other side of that wall leads due north to the Mormon State bank. Into the flood-control tunnel running between here and Mormon State. This is the shunting terminal, the one built in the 1930s to connect the flood-control network with the city sewage system. See that passageway there?”

Yates looked over to the double-width arched doorway on the western side of the structure. It had been totally reconstructed, as had much of the wall around it.

“That's what this terminal is really all about,” Brew explained. “The tunnels beyond that opening lead out to the caves and underground mud deposits farther west. The idea, when all this got built, was to drain away the subterranean water farther west and dry up the mud fields and salses … the mud volcanoes.

“The robbery made it work in reverse. Every last drop of water let loose from the reservoir and hills came raging through here. Smashed open the tunnel leading west. This room was probably a shambles by the time I came barreling in on Sunday morning. The crest of water I was on didn't bother with the archway, it just knocked down the wall. Knocked it down in part with me. Shot me through the wall headfirst. Lucky I lived through the impact. Lucky I was swept across this room and out a southern exit to the river, instead of going inland toward the mud. Going west. Half the flood waters—how many millions of gallons was it?—went there, inland to the mud.”

They entered the western tunnel Brew had indicated. Got onto the catwalk. Brew's penlight led the way through the darkness. Ten minutes later they reached a flooded cave, remained on the catwalk inside the tunnel, watching … waiting in the darkness. Two small red light bulbs glowed in a wall socket at the far northern side of the cave, illuminating a concrete pier. To the left on the southern wall of the cave were three tunnel mouths.

A slight, slapping echo was heard. Then one of scraping. Limping onto the pier from the darkness to the right came Wiggles Loftus. In his hand was a large portable searchbeam. He was followed by Mule Corkel, who dragged an inflated rubber boat along the concrete floor. River Rat Ragotsy emerged from the shadows carrying an outboard motor.

Not a word was spoken as the boat was dropped into the water, held tight by a tether and fitted with the motor and light. Wiggles stayed forward at the light. Mule sat amidships, shoved them off with a plastic oar. River Rat pull-roped the motor on, roared the rubber craft into the middle tunnel and out of sight. Above the roar someone could be heard shouting “Tallyho!”

Brewmeister waited until all was silent, motioned Yates to follow. He moved back along the catwalk. Stopped at a line of metal rungs leading up the wall and on into the air shaft. Climbed them. Came out in the middle of an orchard. Led Yates through the trees to an unpaved road. Indicated an emergency utility shack on the other side.

“The shack is the entranceway Mule, Wiggles and Rat just used. Their cars and the truck are probably parked in the woods beyond it.”

Brew pointed at a large spread of buildings along a distant hilltop. “All this land belongs to the Benedictine Sisters. Do you remember an item in one of the papers about a nude man scaring them?”

“No,” Yates said.

“Neither did I, but it was in the master file. I've been going through the files ever since we took them back from the twelfth floor. Someone on the twelfth must have clipped the article at the time, but nobody up there did any follow-up about it. I found quite a few things nobody did anything about when Quinton and the twelfth floor had the files. Such as that a few nights after the robbery was discovered a naked man pops up in the convent garage and scares the devil out of the nuns. Or at least that's the way the writer of the item put it. According to the story, the police wrote it off as a nutty prank. But I went up there earlier today and talked to the sisters. It wasn't a garage, it was the sheep-dipping shed where all this happened. The man was naked okay but covered with mud. The nuns had heard knocking from under the heavy iron sewer top in the shed. They pried it open and mud erupted. A geyser of mud shot up. In the middle of the geyser was this naked man covered in mud. He climbed out and kissed the floor and crossed himself and handed the nuns something muddy and ran off:

“The sisters did think it was a prank. There's a prep school not far from here, and the boys make life unbearable for the nuns. When the naked man came out of the sewer, they called the police and reported it as more harassment by the students. They didn't say anything about the mud, or what the man handed them. It was money. Paper money. Sixteen one-dollar bills, as they remember. They cleaned the money and donated it to charity.”

Yates said, “And you think the mud-covered man was either Mule, Wiggles or Rat?”

“Rat?”

Yates considered. “No,” he finally realized. “It couldn't have been Rat.”

Brew laughed, which was unusual for him. “You have it figured' then, do you?”

“Not me, you. You made it all clear.”

“Let's hear.”

“I don't have every last thing put together. Just the general idea,” Yates said.

“Take your time. Tell me as we walk. Maybe it's me who's got it wrong.”

The two men started across the field toward the eastern end of the vast convent farm.

“It begins with Ragotsy's confession, isn't that right?” Yates asked.

“How so?”

“Ragotsy, in the letter that cracker sheriff beat out of him, said the gang made their escape from Mormon State bank in four boats. They had four boats down in the tunnels and were running like hell to get in them because of the deluge of water.” Yates thought for another moment. “Ragotsy said he was in the last boat. So the thing you've figured out is that Mule was in the first boat.”