Seven Silent Men (63 page)

“What are you going to say to Cub you need a suitcase for, Billy?”

“I don't know what I'm going to say, Tina Beth.”

“Try to trust him, Billy Bee. Cub's a good man. Give him a chance.”

Billy Yates very much wanted to trust Cub Hennessy. Doing so might insure Tina Beth's further isolation from the danger involved with his immediate plans. Cub, if he chose to cooperate, could allow Yates much needed assistance. If Cub didn't prove out, or refused to help, Billy would be sitting on a time bomb, would have to implement his plan in a matter of hours instead of days … implement it alone. “I want to trust him, hon, believe me. But I have to be sure of him first … have to test him out.”

Tina Beth moved the receiver closer. “When are we going to be alone?”

“Soon.”

“Can't you come out to the house just for half an hour? Come after dark?”

“You know they're watching the house, Tina Beth. Do like I ask, please. I'll talk to you later. Nine tonight, I'll call you at the next number on your list, the pay phone in the laundromat.”

Tina Beth glanced over to see him walk away, then hung up.

Cub came slowly up the diner aisle carrying the suitcase of clothes and sat opposite Yates in the last booth.

“I need some help,” Billy said. “I said in my report that Jez was with us in the tunnel, with Strom and me. That was wrong. He was with Mule, Ragotsy and Wiggles. The bullet wound in Jez's shoulder came from Strom's gun. Here it all is, Jez's part. This is a report I made out but never turned in.”

Cub took the pages handed him by Yates.

“Read it when I leave. Jez was Hoover's spy all along. And someone else's. Whether he knew it or not, Jez was taking orders from a group of people calling themselves the Silent Men. That was the reason Brewmeister was killed. Brew found out about the Silent Men, found out that they were manipulating the investigation. Brew was going to blow the whistle on them. Those reports he supposedly stole from the twelfth floor had something to do with that. I know all this might sound looney-toon”—Yates was leaning forward—“but it plays. I found Natalie Hammond. I traced Ed Grafton's removal from his post right into the living room of Wilkie Jarrel. J. Edgar Hoover and Wilkie Jarrel are in bed together. I believe I even know how it hooks into the Silent Men, but I need help corroborating that. Your help.”

“… These Silent Men,” Cub asked, “do you know who they are?”

“Not all of them, not yet. But I'll have it tied up soon.”

“What do you want of me?”

“Authorization to go in and confiscate records at a garage in Carbondale, Illinois. The garage where the armored truck was repaired, the truck that brought the money to Mormon State.”

Cub shook his head. “Billy, you know I can't do that. Carbondale's out of my jurisdiction, to begin with. And I'm not in charge of Romor 91, Corticun is.”

Yates got up. “Coffee's on you. Thanks for coming by.”

“Hold on, Billy, we've got things to talk about.”

“Later. I've got to get those records.”

He was gone.

Yates drove across the Mississippi River and on toward Carbondale. He stopped at nine o'clock and called Tina Beth at the laundromat. He told her that he would be on the move now … that he could no longer arrange any pre-set times and places for their conversations … that in spite of the risk of a phone tap he would have to call her at home from here on in.

Sissy Hennessy heard the familiar sound of automobile tires rolling to a stop in the gravel driveway. She set the book she was reading on the rumpus room coffee table and, straightening her wool bathrobe, went to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator as nearby a car door slammed. Sissy paused. It wasn't like Cub to make noise this time of night … to be unthoughtful and risk waking the children. She listened. Footsteps crunched forward outside, Cub's footsteps. Sissy smiled and continued taking a tray off the middle shelf. Never in all their years of marriage had she not waited up for Cub. Never had she not prepared a late snack. Tonight the fare was a cold platter of sliced roast beef, smoked breast of turkey and Polish ham with ample side dishes of cole slaw, apple sauce and potato salad. The diet soda was for her. The pitcher of beer she poured was for Cub.

Backing into the rumpus room with the tray, she called out a hello. Cub wasn't there. Nor could Sissy find him in the dining room or living room. She glanced out the patio doors … saw him at the far end of the patio with one foot up on the low stone wall.

She moved outside, set the tray on a wrought-iron table and went to her husband. “Hi,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

“Hi.” He hugged her with one arm, went on staring out at the moonlit prairie beyond their braeside home.

“Problems with Yates?”

“He's going to cause trouble, Sissy, lots of trouble. Trouble for himself, for me, for everybody.” Cub spoke softly, sadly. “Billy says Jez betrayed the office. Gave me a report on it. Says Jez was directly responsible for Alice's death. Says J. Edgar Hoover was directly responsible too. That's for openers. Billy says our office was set up from the beginning, was thrown to the wolves …” He looked at his wife. “He wants me to help him prove it.”

“You're not, are you?”

Cub turned back to the night prairie.

“… What does he want you to do?”

“There's a garage in Carbondale where a truck was repaired. The truck that brought the money to Mormon State just before the robbery. Billy needs the records there. He'll steal them if I don't help him.”

“He's crazy, I always told you he was crazy—”

“What if he isn't?”

Sissy moved back a step. “Cub Hennessy, you're in charge of the office. This is what I've always wanted for you. It's what you've always deserved. Strom had no right being named to replace Ed Grafton, it should have been you. Now it is, and you have to behave like it. You have to behave like you're in charge. You've protected Billy Yates far too long. If he insists on doing something criminal in Carbondale, you have to stop him.”

Cub looked curiously at his wife. “Sissy, can't you understand, he may be right?”

“Right isn't the issue. Being in charge is. You are what you behave like. And don't stand there looking down at me like I'm some creature to be pitied and understood. I cared about Strom and Alice and Jez as much as anybody. I grieved at their loss and still do, probably a damn sight more than most of the others. But they're not of consequence here. You are. We are. Our future in the Bureau is. You can't protect one man against the whole organization, particularly when the one man may be … well, crazy.”

“… What is it you want me to do, or not do?” He spoke without looking at her.

“Protect the organization. Act responsibly through channels in letting the FBI know about Yates's intentions—”

“Tell Corticun, is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

Cub shook his head. “Maybe I lack the guts to help Billy out, but I'll be damned if I'm going to shoot him down.” He walked off down the hillside.

Sissy went indoors and called Denis Corticun at home and, on behalf of her husband, informed him of Billy Yates's plans.

Carloads of FBI agents deployed around the Majestic Garage. Corticun himself, forever motioning with one hand and holding up a walkie-talkie with the other, stood on a street corner directing the operation.

Yates watched it all from his vantage point on the hill, then ambled off in the opposite direction, got into his car and drove. A hundred miles east of Carbondale he phoned Tina Beth at home to say they could no longer count on Cub, but not to fret because things might still work out for the best. He told her he would call her again at nine in the morning.

Precisely at nine he stepped up to the pay phone in Washington's Mayflower Hotel and dialed Prairie Port. Tina Beth answered.

“There's nothing much to report,” he told her, “except for saying I love you. How you doing?”

“Worrying.”

“Don't. This all sounds worse than it is.”

“Where are you?”

“Safe. Probably be home driving you crazy before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“Who's Jack Robinson? Why you always talking about people I don't know?”

“Don't get mad.”

“I'm not mad.”

“Sure you are.”

“I'm not mad. I just had something to say, and you didn't listen, that's all.”

“… What was it you had to say?”

“Never you mind.”

“Please, Tina Beth, what is it?”

“… Well, it struck me a little while back, of all the people we didn't mention as being a Silent Man, we didn't mention the one with the most to gain if the investigation didn't do good.”

“Who's that?”

“Ed Grafton. It would prove they couldn't do good without him.”

Billy, indeed, had never thought of Grafton. Now, as he drove across Washington, D.C., considering the idea, a certain plausibility did emerge. Only it was too late. Billy Yates had committed himself to one path of action. And the detonator was ticking away.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Yates had become aware the black Chevrolet with the high rear antenna was following him just outside of Columbus, Ohio. He knew Columbus well, had served undercover there. Even on foreign terrain, Yates was unrivaled at losing a mobile tail. He had tried, in Columbus proper, shaking the black Chevrolet. Raced up and down obscure avenues, turned and reversed course half a dozen times. Each time he seemed to be in the clear, to have succeeded in losing the surveiller, the Chevrolet reappeared.

Yates had encountered only one man who had been able to stick so closely to him under these conditions, Vance Daughter during their training days. Since Daughter already loomed large in Billy's thinking, he had relaxed, proceeded on down into Washington, D.C., at a leisurely pace, one which would make tailing him all the easier.

After talking to Tina Beth at nine in the morning, Billy went for a drive around Washington. The Chevrolet managed in capital traffic as well as it had on the open highway, was forever present in Yates's rear-view mirror. Remained present all through the drive to Quantico, Virginia. Veered off and away only when Yates drove onto the U.S. Marine Corps base.

Classes were in session, and the casual hubbub Billy counted on prevailed at the FBI's two-story training academy. He walked down the main hallway and into the basement without being stopped or questioned. The storage area for the registration office was right beside the empty bin designated for the papers of Orin G. Trask. Billy had noticed it when Barrett Amory had brought him down here months before.

Back attendance records for the time Yates had trained at the academy were easily found. So were those for most every class from 1963 through 1969, the years during which Orin Trask conducted his experimental seminars.

… And in these records, for those years, Yates was to find everything he expected he would.

“Call Frank Santi,” Billy told Tina Beth. He was in an outdoor phone booth watching the Chevrolet, which was parked down the block. “Santi's the chief of police. Tell him everything you know. Everything I've told you about the investigation and everything else.” Billy checked his watch. “Tell him I'll be going to Three Oaks … he'll have to act fast and get hold of the local authorities. I'll be there at eight o'clock. Have the police outside by then. Do you have all of that?”

“Yes—”

“And don't worry, hon, there's nothing to worry about.”

“You're walking into the lion's den, aren't you, Billy Bee?”

“I think so.”

“Can't you wait until I talk to Frank Santi?”

“Nope, they're right on me.” He was still watching the Chevrolet. “Better I bring the fight to them.”

“What about Cub, shouldn't I call Cub?”

“Cub sold me out, Tina Beth. He set up a trap for me in Carbondale. I love you, Tina Beth … love you like crazy.”

He drove through the afternoon, drove around greater Washington, D.C. The Chevrolet was prominent in his rear-view mirror throughout. At dusk it cut away. Nor did Yates spot it when, several hours later, he reached Three Oaks, the Virginia estate belonging to Barrett and Patricia Amory.

Barrett received him alone in the great hall beyond the dining room, didn't seem surprised by the impromptu visit, offered him whiskey and water. Billy, who didn't drink that often, accepted.

“Have you learned anything else about the Gents or Silent Men?” Yates asked.

“That's what brings you popping over, young Yates, that nonsense?” Branch water was debottled.

“Yes.”

“I haven't had time to look into it. Haven't had time to do most anything since we spoke last.” Raising the tumbler to eye level, he added bourbon to the branch.

“I've had a good deal of time to look in.” Yates walked over and took the ready drink from the old man. “It's all I've done.

“Sounds a worthless endeavor.” Whiskey poured into Amory's own tumbler.

“If you call seven lives worthless, then I guess it is.”

“Seven lives?” Amory set the decanter on the sideboard.

“Seven people have died because of the Silent Men.”

“Tchin-tchin.” They clinked glasses and drank.

“Now for your saga, young Yates, what do you wish to impart?”

“It will be of as much interest to Missus Amory as to you.”

“Lady Pat is indisposed.”

“I know what went on, Barrett. All of it. About the Silent Men. Patricia should hear.”

“She is indisposed.” Amory was curt, which was not his style.

“Allow Mister Yates his say, Barrett.” Patricia, statuesque and stunning, dominated the doorway. “He has gone to great bother, no doubt.”

She flowed forth into the chamber, swirled and dipped into a chaise that was form-fitted to receive her elegance. A wall of leaded windows stretched behind her. Through the windows was a shimmering waterscape of lake and cloudy spring night. “Do begin, Mister Yates.”