TWENTY-THREE

Martin Brewmeister’s funeral was the largest ever held in Prairie Port. Corticun saw to that over the objections of Brew’s widow, Elsie. Eight hundred people crammed into the First Lutheran Church, where Martin had been baptized. The press was officially barred from attending the service, but folding chairs were set up in the parking lot for them and amplifiers provided so the overflow throng of media folk could hear what was being said inside. The governor spoke, as did Brew’s wife’s uncle, who was attorney general for the State of Illinois. Strom made a fine tribute on behalf of the office. A. R. Roland was there to add a few words of his own. Clyde Tolson read a brief message from J. Edgar Hoover. Corticun read telegrams from other dignitaries, most of whom did not know Brew. The president of the local spelunking club provided the most touching moment by reading remarks ten-year-old Brew had written into his journal during his first weekend of formal cave exploration with the group. A U.S. senator from Missouri gave the most muddled speech. Yates and Jez were the only nonrelatives among the pallbearers.

A cortege of cars made its way up to the hilltop cemetery and the Brewmeister family plot. Military color guards were present even though Brew had never been in the service. So were Marine Corps riflemen. Brew’s lifelong minister was the only one to talk at graveside.

Standing beneath a tree limb on a nearby rise and staring down on the rites like some avenging deity was Ed Grafton. Cub was the first to spot him and elbowed Jez. Soon the other resident agents were aware of Graf’s presence. So was Corticun, who nervously kept glancing over at the imposing figure.

Taps were blown and rifle salvos fired and the casket lowered into its pit. Tears were wept. Bodyguards moved in around Yates, who was perturbed by their presence. Grafton was gone from the hill. All in all, it had been a great show for Corticun.

Corticun, from the moment Brewmeister was gunned down in the parking lot, had worked quickly and diplomatically. He kept the press at bay while negotiating with the chief of police, Frank Santi. One of the few circumstances under which the FBI was allowed to investigate a homicide was when the victim was one of its own agents. Even so, Corticun felt it better to work in unison with Santi and the Prairie Port PD. Santi in turn arranged for the inquest to be held after the funeral, agreed to let Strom alone talk to Brew’s fellow agents. In the one press conference Corticun held regarding the death, he acknowledged that Brew had been gunned down by unknown assailants, publicly stated his fears that the execution had more to do with the current trend of antiestablishment acts of terror than with the Mormon State robbery. Off the record he let it be known he didn’t disagree with pervasive rumors of Otto Pinkny’s underworld associates having gunned down Brew as a warning not to proceed with the trial. Corticun had convinced Strom that since Yates was Brew’s partner these last few months, a possibility existed the unknown killer or killers might come after Yates as well. Which was why Yates was given bodyguards. Yates found this reasoning to be ridiculous. He was sure that Brew had been killed by the Silent Men. He also didn’t rule out that the Silent Men had made a mistake … that he, Yates, was their intended target. But he couldn’t tell this to anyone. Not even Tina Beth. Especially not Tina Beth. He tried to get her to go and spend time with her father and mother on the pretext of having to work day and night on Brew’s murder. She would not hear of it, and in fact became overattentive. Overly inquisitive. Much of what Yates had to do now, he had to do alone … and he wasn’t being left alone.

“Billy, this is Captain Frank Santi.” Strom made the introduction in the library of his grand house, where FBI families and friends were gathering after the funeral for their own commemorative dinner. With Santi and Strom and Yates in the room was Corticun. “Captain Santi will be helping us out with the homicide. I just wanted to go over a few points on the report you made out. You said that Brew called you from downstairs just before he was murdered, is that right?”

“Yes, from the phone booth in the lobby.”

“Why didn’t he come upstairs to talk to you?”

“He said he was in a hurry. I had that in the report.”

“I know you did, Billy. And we’re trying to get the whole matter in perspective for ourselves. Was it usual for Brew to use your car?”

“He was lazy about putting gas in his car.” Billy was stating a partial truth. “Sometimes when he didn’t want to bother gassing up his own car he’d use mine … whether he was in a hurry or not.”

“In the phone conversation, did he say where he was going?”

“No, I told you he didn’t.”

“Do you have any idea where he was going?”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Do you have any idea if it was Romor 91 business?”

“Everything we did was Romor 91,” Yates said.

“And after the call you went to the window to watch Brew?”

“Yes.”

“For any particular reason?”

“To see if he found my car.”

“But you said he had used your car before.”

“He had, but there’s five hundred cars in that parking lot and most of ours look the same.”

“Can you describe for us what happened in the lot?”

“I didn’t tell Brew where my car was parked, but he knows I usually leave it in the same place, over near the west exit. He walked in that direction and found it. He opened the door, and the van came by and opened fire.”

“… You saw him walking into the lot.”

“And right on across it to my car. My car was parked on the opposite side from where he entered the lot.”

“While he was walking across the lot, were you able to see much of him? See his entire body or only part of him?”

“Most of the time I could see all of him.”

“Was he carrying anything, Billy?”

Yates reflected. “Not that I noticed.”

“No briefcase? No papers?”

“No.”

“Is it possible, when part of his body was obscured from your view, that he could have been carrying something and that he put it in another car before getting to your car?”

“I saw him cross the street before he went into the parking lot. He didn’t have anything with him.”

“I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, Billy, but files are missing from the office. We think maybe there’s a connection with that and Brew’s murder.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

Strom looked at Frank Santi. “Chief, do you have any questions?”

“Mister Yates, first I want to tell you the police will do everything we can on this. I understand you were particularly close to Mister Brewmeister, and we won’t let you down.”

Yates thanked him.

“You said in your report that you saw a door panel slide open in the truck and a submachine gun stick out and fire, is that right?”

“That’s reverse order,” Billy replied. “I saw Brew open the door of my car. He was slightly bent over from leaning down for the handle. The next thing I know he’d spun around and was standing straight up with his back against the car and his hands semi-outstretched. It took me a moment to realize he was being hit by bullets. That’s when I looked over and saw the panel truck … saw that a machine gun was poking out through a missing panel in the truck and firing.”

“You said the gun looked like a De Lisle silent carbine?”

“I don’t know foreign-made weapons all that well. But from the illustrations we have in the office, the gun being fired at Brew looked like a De Lisle silent carbine.”

“That’s a pretty esoteric kind of weapon to make a hit with, wouldn’t you think? Sort of a collector’s item? Last time I heard of the British Army using the De Lisle was in 1960.”

“I don’t know much about the British Army.”

“They told me you’re the man around here who knows everything.”

“Up to a point,” Billy said.

“Mister Yates, after the panel truck quit firing at Brewmeister, what happened?”

“Brew slid down the side of my car. Slid from view. The panel truck drove out the exit and on up the ramp to the superhighway.”

“How close was your car parked to that exit?”

“Four or five cars away.”

“Do you think the panel truck was waiting for you instead of Brewmeister?”

Yates shrugged.

“I mean, if Mister Brewmeister called and asked to use your car on the spur of the moment, how could the panel truck know where he was going? If the panel truck had been following him for some time and, let’s say, followed him to the office building and waited for him to come out and saw him walk across the street into the parking lot, the truck could have entered the lot right there opposite the building. The truck could have shot him down anywhere along the way, instead of waiting until he was on the opposite side of the area and only five cars away from an exit. It seems more plausible that the truck was already parked inside the lot and was staking out your car … was waiting for someone to go to your car so they could shoot them down. Mister Yates, is there any reason you know of why someone would want to kill you?”

“No.”

Frank Santi told Strom and Corticun, “I have no more questions.”

“Could we have a few minutes alone with Yates?” asked Strom.

Santi complied, left the room to join the other guests.

“Billy, where were you just before Brew was killed?”

“Visiting a friend.”

“A sick friend?”

“Not feeling too well,” Yates said.

Corticun spoke for the first time. “What friend? Where?”

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to, Billy,” Strom said.

“Of course he has to tell us,” Corticun insisted. “He was away without permission, he said so in his report. He’ll tell us—”

“Only if he wants to.” Strom was firm. “Well, Billy, what about it?”

“I drove east to see what sort of shape a friend of mine was in. He was okay, but I’d rather not say who it was.”

“So be it,” Strom said. “Billy, were you and Brew up to anything that needed files?”

“I didn’t need files. I can’t speak for Brew.”

“But Brew and you still believed Mule and his crowd, not Otto Pinkny, were responsible for Mormon State?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible, without your knowing it, Brew might have taken some files to check on something?”

“If he did, I didn’t know about it.”

“All right, is it possible Brew took files for another reason?”

“Such as?”

“Possibly to give to someone?”

“Why?”

“For money?”

“Brew sell out? Come on.”

“Maybe to leak to the press,” Corticun suggested. “To try to discredit Otto Pinkny.”

“I’ve thought of doing that, but I doubt if Brew would,” Yates told them.

“Billy,” Strom began, “we haven’t told you this before, but someone raided the twelfth-floor files. Hundreds of pages are missing. Brew was seen at those files not long before you received that call from him. I ask you again, do you have any idea what he was up to? Where he was going?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Is there anything you have to say?”

“There is something, but it’s not what you want to hear.”

“Speak up.”

“I feel foolish having bodyguards. I don’t need them.”

Strom looked at Corticun, who frowned. “As you wish, Billy, no bodyguards. Thank you for your time.”

Yates left. Chief Frank Santi came back in. Corticun went to the door and ushered in Jessup.

“I think you know Chief Santi, Jez,” Strom said. “The chief is helping us with Brew’s murder. We’d like to go over your statement, informally of course.”

Jake Hagland was the senior supervising engineer at the telephone company. A native Prairie Portian, he had gone to high school with Brewmeister and remained a close friend. In the past Hagland had usually resisted Brew’s rare requests for illegal telephone taps. On the one or two occasions he had complied, it was with the greatest reluctance. After listening to Billy Yates tell him Brew’s final words, Hagland wasted little time in driving to the outdoor phone booth near Mule’s ranch in a company truck. The eavesdropping system he installed was ingenious. Not only would tape recorders pick up everything said and heard in the booth, and a slowdown counter indicate just what numbers were being dialed by Mule, but Hagland also rigged it so the tap could be monitored at both his home and Yates’s.

Yates’s prime concern was the whereabouts of the missing files. Determining this meant tracing Brew’s movements the last day of his life. Some things pointed to what these were … Yates knew from his long-distance phone call to Brew immediately after leaving Barrett Amory’s home in Virginia that Brew was planning to check the files the next morning, when most of the agents would be away at the grand jury hearing. He was aware from the same call that after that Brew planned to go to Sparta, Illinois, and check on the interview Teddy Anglaterra’s nephew Fred had given an FBI agent in September.

Yates, as a result of the phone call Brew made to him just before he was shot to death, knew that Brew believed he’d discovered the existence of the Silent Men, had stated, “You were right, they do exist. At least six of them. Probably a seventh. They were sitting right in front of us all the time …” The very last thing Brew had said in that conversation, the very last words Brew ever spoke, for that matter, was that he was going to “Emoryville … to put the last nail in the coffin.” Clearly, Yates decided, Brew had discovered something regarding the Silent Men in the files.

Brew, of course, never did make it to Emoryville, but Yates knew Emoryville was where eleven people had provided alibis for Mule, Rat Ragotsy and Wiggles Loftus. Billy had no doubt that Brew was certain he could discredit those witnesses. Billy was equally sure Brew had raided the files to some degree the morning of his death and then gone to see Fred Anglaterra. This was confirmed by Yates’s phone call to Sparta, Illinois. A surly Fred Anglaterra said that yes, Brew had been to see him that day. That yes, he seemed to have some sort of file folder with him, or at least he knew pretty well everything Fred had told another FBI agent. Fred Anglaterra recalled that Brew had arrived at his home at about ten forty-five and had left within half an hour. Since the drive from Prairie Port to Sparta took just under forty minutes, Yates concluded that Brew had left Prairie Port to talk to Anglaterra at approximately 10 A.M. and was back in the city at least by noon. But Brew hadn’t called him until shortly after 5 P.M.

Where Brew had been between noon and five gnawed at Billy, generated an endless series of scenarios. He doubted that Brew had yet discovered the existence and number of the Silent Men immediately on his return from Sparta. If he had he wouldn’t have waited until five o’clock to drive to Emoryville “to put the last nail in the coffin.” Other steps must have occurred … possibly another interview or recheck. Maybe several. And something must have been discovered at these that made Brew hurry back to the office and loot the file … loot it just before he phoned Billy from the lobby … just before he was gunned down. Strom had said that immediately before his death Brew had been seen at the twelfth-floor files. Most probably, Yates decided, Brew had visited the files twice … early in the morning to take out the few pages relating to the interview with Teddy Anglaterra’s nephew … then later, after a discovery he made in rechecks or interviews.

There were two questions for Yates. First, what sort of Linkage had Brew established that would make him go back to the files and remove, as Strom had said, “hundreds of pages”? Second, what became of those hundreds of pages? Where could Brew have put them in the short period between being seen leaving the twelfth-floor file room and appearing on the street in front of the parking lot carrying nothing?

He was certain Strom and Corticun had searched the twelfth-and eleventh-floor offices and found nothing. Searched the lobby and whole building and Brew’s car as well. Yates tried to think it out but couldn’t.

Alice drove through the wide metal gate and up the dirt road. It was the third time in as many days she had returned to the site of her rape and degradation. She had no real choice. Obligation and terror had overcome her reason and pain. She had sworn to Edgar to do as he ordered. Edgar had sworn he’d protect Strom. She forgot from what.

Alice parked and entered the lodge without knocking. “You must let me go home earlier today.” She was already weeping. “My husband may start asking why I’m getting home so late. He’ll find out if—”

Mule slapped her.

She stifled a cry and began undressing.

Chiming persisted. Tina Beth Yates, with choice southern epithets, wrapped her wet hair in a towel, threw on a terry-cloth robe and bounded downstairs, shouting out to hold on, she was coming. Still shouting, she pulled open the door.

J. Edgar Hoover, standing in the bright morning sunshine, removed his hat and introduced himself and asked if he might come in for tea. No car could be seen in the driveway or street beyond. No aides or other persons visible.

“Tea?” Tina Beth numbly repeated.

“If not tea, good woman, then coffee or beer or nothing at all except fine company and crisp conversation. I am told you are crisply conversational?”

“Me?”

“Might I come in?”

Tina Beth led him into the living room, excused herself, dashed upstairs and changed into a pair of shorts and a halter, rushed down into the kitchen, searched for tea or coffee or beer, darted back to J. Edgar holding up a bottle and asking, “Apricot juice?”

“Of course,” he told her.

Back in the kitchen, she found a glass. Back in the living room, she handed it to him. He sipped, smacked his lips, sipped more, sat back contentedly and folded his hands over his stomach. “The best book of the Good Book is the old book,” he told her, then with his eyes flickering he began reciting passages from the Old Testament. He seemed particularly partial to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and Joshua at the Wall. From there he went into infertility and parenthood. He stood, requesting she repeat not a word of their tête-à-tête to a soul, including Billy. At the door he took her hand and said he would cherish having had a daughter as well as a son, and if she could only convince her husband to renounce his Judaic faith, how happy all three of them could be.

“He said what?” Billy Yates asked her.

“That if you gave up being Jewish, how happy the three of us could be,” Tina Beth told him with a straight face.

“By ‘the three,’ you think he meant you, me and him?”

“No doubt about it.”

“Holy shit.”

“Don’t swear, Billy Bee.”

“After he said that what did he do?”

“He tossed a hand to the wind and walked over our front yard and down the sidewalk, jauntylike.”

“No car was waiting?”

“No.”

“That’s all of it, everything that happened?”

Tina Beth crossed her heart.

“You must have been scared to death, hon!”

She shook her head. “I sort of liked him.”

“He’s mad as a screaming banshee.”

She smiled. “But with a twinkle.”

A week and two days after the phone-booth tap was installed, Mule’s voice was heard for the first time. It was preceded by the sound of coins being deposited and a number being dialed. The answering voice said, “Ya?” Mule said, “It’s on,” and hung up. More coins clinked and another number was dialed. “Hi,” a second voice said. “It’s on,” Mule repeated. Another number was dialed, but no one picked up at the other end. The phone, a moment later, rang and was answered by Mule, who said, “It’s on.” Whoever was on the other end hung up.

Yates was at home and listening when this exchange of calls came in. It was just after sunset. He got into his car and drove to the old waterworks complex at Lookout Bluff, descended into the underground shunting terminal Brew had introduced him to, walked along a catwalk in the dark and curving irrigation tunnel to the vantage point he had occupied with Brew. Mule appeared where he had been seen before, then Wiggles and Ragotsy. They lowered a rubber motor boat into the water and got in and sped off.

The next afternoon Yates brought his own rubber boat down to the shunting terminal and began exploring the tunnel Mule, Rat and Wiggles had gone into … soon found himself in a series of flooded caves and grottos.

Two evenings later Billy overheard the same exchange of calls between Mule in the outdoor phone booth and the three other persons. This time when Mule, Rat and Ragotsy started off through the flooded underground passageway, Yates was waiting for them uptunnel, watching from a shadowy alcove to see which cave they motored into. A moment later he heard another motor approaching, saw the silhouette of a second boat with only one passenger head into the same cave.

That same night Yates rendezvoused with Hagland, who said the first two numbers Mule dialed from the outside booth near his ranch were the home phones for Ragotsy and Wiggles, respectively. The third number called, the one on which no one answered, was a pay station in the bar around the corner from the FBI’s Prairie Port office. By the following afternoon Hagland had the bar phone tapped as well.

At the office Yates was assigned to the small team of special agents aiding Assistant U.S. Attorney Jules Shapiro in preparing his prosecution of Otto Pinkny. This sharply reduced the time he could spend covering Mule and the taps as well as exploring the tunnels and caves under the western side of Prairie Port. He turned to the only ally he could trust, Tina Beth.

The outdoor pay phone near Mule’s ranch rang. Mule picked up and said, “We got something hot.”

“How hot?” asked a raspy voice.

“It’s maybe a money sack.”

“Maybe or is?”

“It maybe could be.”

“Not hot enough to come out for,” the raspy voice said, and hung up.

… Wiretap apparatus do not always make allowances for the passage of time. When they do not, one voice-activated recording follows another one on the tape even though the two calls might have been placed hours apart. Hagland’s rig established the time at which each call was received or made. Because of this, Yates and Hagland and Tina Beth, who was monitoring the machinery at their home, knew that Mule had not dialed out from the phone booth near his ranch immediately prior to receiving the incoming call. No outgoing call had been recorded at that booth in over ninety minutes. The only deduction to be made from this was that the call was prearranged … that previous contact had been made between Mule and the unknown speaker in which it was agreed for Mule to go to the outdoor booth at a specific time and wait for the phone to ring. This further reinforced Yates’s belief that the fourth man seen in the tunnel and cave, the one who motored in to rendezvous with Mule, Wiggles and Rat, had his own lines of communication with the gang.

Hagland tapped into the phone lines leading to Mule’s ranch, hoping this was the originating point for the prior communication. No positive results were garnered. Yates, knowing that early evening was the preferred contact time for sojourns into the tunnel, began sneaking an hour or so off from his office assignments so he could tail Mule in the late afternoons. By week’s end he spotted Mule entering a pay phone near the bus terminal. Hagland wasted no time in putting on a bug. It was a busy phone. Fifty separate dialings and conversations were recorded in the next four hours alone. The hour after that began with a number being dialed and someone picking up.

“You gotta come and take another look,” Mule’s voice told the silent listener.

“Not now.” The voice was raspy and muffled. “You take a vacation too.”

“Huh?”

“Lay off. Stop going down there.”

“You fuckin’ crazy? We’re goddam close. Any time could be the time.”

“You’ve been saying that from the beginning.”

“Now it’s true. We’re almost there. I can smell it.”

“People are catching on. Stay away.”

“No one tells me what the fuck to do—”

“I am. It’s your ass if you don’t listen. You stay away from there. I’ll tell you when it’s right to go back.”

“Tell me how?”

“Call you at home and ask for Howard. You say to me I got the wrong number.” The phone hung up.

The driver of a semi-truck saw her first, slowed in midhighway, waved for the vehicles behind him to stop, got out and pointed. Soon traffic had stopped in all ten lanes, the five southbound as well as the northbound lanes. All eyes looked skyward to the solitary steel trestle spanning the expressway twenty-five feet overhead. Alice Sunstrom, her dress in tatters and a coil of bright yellow nylon rope over one shoulder, crawled along the beam on all fours. Crawled shakily. Finally reached the center. Lay prone. Tied one end of the rope to the beam. Noosed the other around her neck. Rolled off the trestle and hanged herself.