Seven Silent Men (15 page)

Brownsville, Texas, was as hot and humid as Maine had been cold and snowswept, but at least the local FBI office was awaiting John's arrival. So were the old nickname “Pappy” and whispers he had been shunted off into exile because he was too old to cut the mustard as ASAC in Colorado. Whispers also had it that Strom and his wife were blood relations. Other whispers emphasized the age difference between them. The most audible promoter of the rumor campaign was the SAC, a loutish alcoholic who, drunk or sober, was also contemptuous of nearly everything non-Northern and nonwhite. Strom, the composed southerner, took the slurs in stride. Not so the whispers that his wife had suffered a series of nervous breakdowns. Hearing the Sac loudly repeat this to a fellow special agent, Sunstrom lost control of himself for one of the few times in his life. Grabbed the SAC by the neck and in a display of rage and strength that would surprise even him on reflection, with one hand lifted the man from his feet by the neck and held him dangling on high. Hurled him into the wall. Had he not been restrained by the special agent, a fellow named Jez Jessup, Strom might have gone after the crumpled rumor-monger and struck him and gotten into irreparable trouble. As it was, Jessup kept Strom back and warned the SAC that if he reported the incident to Washington, let alone pressed charges against Sunstrom, Jez would tell Washington he had seen the SAC hit Strom, deny Strom had retaliated. The SAC elected to overlook the matter.

Strom didn't find it so easy to forget … might have quit the Bureau then and there if it weren't for his wife. Knowing how much investigatory work meant to him, she begged him to put the incident behind him, ignore everything. She argued that his exile was nothing more than official hazing at the most, bureaucratic bungling at the least. She went out and rented a house and redecorated it. Shortly after, as in Maine, Strom was ordered to yet another FBI office. This one reputedly the newest and worst Siberia on the banishment circuit. Worst not because of the physical environment, which was supposedly quite pleasant, but because of the quirky and eccentric special agent in charge … a man named Ed Grafton, who held sway in a place called Prairie Port, Missouri.

… They faced one another over black coffee and whiskey at four-thirty in the morning at a Prairie Port railyard diner frequented by trainmen and bloody-smocked packing house workers and weary vagrants allowed in from the chill, this tall quiet southern gentleman known as Strom and the unkempt, fierce-eyed renegade Grafton, who had defied nearly everyone he could find to defy at FBI headquarters. Each man, from the beginning, recognized something in the other that engendered esteem and trust. Grafton did most of the talking, sat staring down at his coffee cup and in hushed and hoarse words explained how this eatery was his favorite spot for business meets and the time his favorite time. How offices were anathema to him, including his own Bureau offices in Prairie Port, which he seldom visited unless forced. How the running of these offices was left to whatever woebegotten subordinates he could saddle with the assignment. Grafton granted he should not be calling other resident agents “subordinates,” since technically they were independent residency operatives with great autonomy, only here at Prairie Port every one of them damn well did what he wanted them to do, when he wanted it and how he wanted. Grafton added that the agents liked, rather than resented, him for this. Grafton said that this was his “gift”: making subordinates like him. Grafton said he had gone through Strom Sunstrom's file and had heard scuttlebutt on Strom's exiles to Maine and Texas. He said that Strom's banishment to Prairie Port might turn out to be more propitious than punitive if he and Strom were of the same mind. Grafton said there was a good chance he could take Strom's latest exile and jam it right down the throats of the Bureau Brass Balls at headquarters who ordered it … force the Brass Balls to choke on the order … make them rue the day they had issued it, and soon. He said to do this would require not only Strom's cooperation but a considerable emotional sacrifice on Strom's part. Then, as if to play for suspense by delaying his proposition, Grafton downed a large tumbler filled with whiskey and washed out his mouth with coffee and poured more whiskey into the glass and a goodly portion into the coffee cup. Stirring the rye into the coffee with a fork, Grafton said that perhaps Strom was the very man he had so urgently been in need of … the man he had been so patiently waiting for.

Grafton told Strom that of all the battles he had fought with Bureau Brass Balls in Washington, the bloodiest was under way. That he had begun to investigate a local Missouri man named Wilkie Jarrel and that the cries of anguish and outrage rising in the hallowed hallways of FBI headquarters were not unsimilar to those of a pack of pained hyenas giving communal breechbirths at midnight. That Wilkie Jarrel was wealthy and powerful and politically well-connected on Capitol Hill in D.C. That many of these Capitol Hill connections, fearing Grafton would expose the corrupt control Jarrel wielded over them, which was precisely Grafton's intention, were exerting enormous pressure on FBI headquarters to drop the investigation. That the Brass Balls were responding to the pressure and doing everything possible to deter Grafton from continuing with the Jarrel matter, short of ordering him to stop. The reason the Brass Balls didn't issue such an order, Grafton explained to Strom, was because they knew Grafton would not obey it even if it came from J. Edgar Hoover himself and that the Brass Balls didn't dare go to Hoover with the problem out of fear that Hoover might side with Grafton, even though Hoover knew Jarrel and rather liked the louse.

Grafton sat back and rested his hands in his lap. “J. Edgar Hoover is the greatest man who ever lived,” he told Strom in sermon-certain tones. “The FBI is the greatest crime-fighting organization ever conceived. But time has betrayed both of them. Edgar seems to have lost control of himself and the FBI. He should have quit when he was invincible. Before he was gotten to. The Brass Ball Monkeys have gotten to Edgar. The Brass Ball Monkeys have taken over at Washington headquarters. They are petty and venal and incompetent men. Not all of them. But most. Edgar is falling slave to them. A prisoner locked in the tower of his own past … his own bygone glory. Edgar has never countermanded an investigation I've chosen to begin. I doubt if he would do so with the Wilkie Jarrel matter. But if Edgar did, I would still go after Jarrel and hang him from the highest tree. That is what the Brass Ball Monkeys have come to realize. They see
me
as someone out of control. They figure if they can stop me with the Wilkie Jarrel case, they can stop me for good. Topple me from command in Prairie Port; maybe from the FBI itself, without ever having to go to Edgar. They are second-rate, these Brass Balls, but they have a chance to win out this time. Not because of themselves. Because of Wilkie Jarrel. I underestimated Jarrel.”

Grafton returned to stirring the coffee and rye. “I am not a bending man, Mister Sunstrom. I've rarely acknowledged needing help or assistance. Now I do. I need your assistance if I am to win out over Wilkie Jarrel. I know these headquarters monkeys, Mister Sunstrom. Their grand strategy is to bring the Jarrel matter … and myself … to a close, to include assaults on the administration end of our operations here in Prairie Port. Cutting back on expenditures, such as those for maintenance and repair. Delaying remittance of what has already been paid out by myself and the other agents. Along with this, they will up their demands for paper work and protocol, require three times the number of reports and requisition forms and gripe to high heaven if a word is misspelled or a comma missing. Minor things, I grant you. Pesky things. But on the aggregate, debilitating. This I need from you, Mister Sunstrom … to fight the battle of the filing cabinet so I and my men are free to fight the battle of Wilkie Jarrel.”

Grafton slowed the stirring. “You're displeased with my proposal, aren't you?”

“I was hoping for an investigatory rather than administrative assignment,” Strom had admitted.

“What's your passion?”

“Passion?”

“Each of us has an overriding passion,” Grafton had expounded. “Mine is the misuse of privilege. Not privilege in and of itself. Not power and wealth because they are power and wealth, but the misapplication of that power and wealth, the distortion of it at any level. I suppose you could just as easily replace the word privilege with the word advantage. The police officer who extorts from a shopkeeper, the jail matron who abuses an inmate, these rankle me. A scoutmaster embezzling funds from his troop's treasury, and we had a case like that, is as offensive to me as Wilkie Jarrel. The Brass Balls' defense of Jarrel is loathsome. All of them are misusing their privilege, and advantage. That's my passion, such misuses. It allows me to crusade. Without a crusade, an old fart like myself is best committed to dust. And you, Mister Sunstrom, what is your passion? What makes you pick up lance and sword and ride the great white horse into battle?”

“All crime …”

“Nothing more specific than that?”

“No …”

“And each and every one of these crimes thrill you beyond redemption?”

“I'm not exactly the thrill-seeking type.”

“That's a pity. I heard of you early on, Mister Sunstrom … when the Brass Balls tried to turn you into one of their own and you refused them. Odd as it may seem, I have a friend or two left in Washington. They told me about you in passing, and I said to myself, There's a brash fellow who deserves watching. I have watched you from a distance. Learned about you. Southern gentry, Confederate cavalrymen and preachers, isn't that your stock?”

“Volunteer, not professional, cavalrymen … and one Anglican minister, my paternal grandfather.”

“Could be your bent is with the cloth?” Grafton had spoken evenly. “Do you wish to be a competent investigator, or the best investigator?”

“The best.”

“I doubt that you will make it. To be the best, in my mind, requires two God-given talents: instinct and passion. The instincts of a criminal and the passion, if you like, of the charging cavalryman. You seem to possess neither. You will be a
competent
investigator, Mister Sunstrom. In this day and age, with the Bureau, competence suffices. Do I depress you?”

“It's hardly the most optimistic assessment of my capabilities I've heard,” Strom replied.

“But you will pursue the investigatorial end nonetheless, won't you?”

“Yes.”

“… Let me propose an arrangement, Mister Sunstrom. A covenant whereby you do what I ask and in return I will make you into a better than competent investigator. Not a great one, but a damn sight abler than competent. And who knows, perhaps I can goad you even further than that. Perhaps I can ignite a spark, get some passion flowing. Have you lusting for the thrill of the charge. For riding the great white horse into battle.”

Strom Sunstrom took over the administrative operations of the FBI's Prairie Port office January 20, 1969. Within weeks the paper-work end of things was running with computerlike efficiency. Ingenious rebudgeting and tight fiscal management deftly handled the predicted financial squeeze begun in March by antagonistic personnel at headquarters. It was in the selection and processing of transfer agents that Strom's talents exceeded Grafton's maximal expectations, and his own. His gentlemanly manner caught the Brass Balls off guard, allowed Strom to turn away transferee after transferee until he found what he wanted, without any undue ruffling of feathers or fur … without really being noticed all that much at headquarters. As hotheaded and recalcitrant as many of these newly selected deportees were on arrival, Sunstrom could somehow win them over. Prepare them. Indoctrinate them with the legend of Grafton. The very first transferee Strom had arranged to be sent to Prairie Port was the special agent who had acted on his behalf during the fracas with the SAC of the Texas office, Jez Jessup. Jez resisted the adoration of Grafton, directed his loyalty and respect to Strom.

Over the years that followed, Grafton more than fulfilled his pledge to Strom. Brought Strom in on virtually every ongoing case. Worked with him shoulder to shoulder. Taught him by example, as was his method with most of the men. Imbued him with a sense of pride and a new respect for the role of leadership. Strom began to hear the far-off clap of hoofbeats … saw the great white horse rear up riderless on a nearby hill … wanted very much to join the charge.

… Now, standing with the receiver to his ear amid six scurrying agents trying to keep up with the seventeen telephones in other parts of the office, Strom Sunstrom listened to J. Edgar Hoover hand him the reins to the Mormon State robbery and temporary control of the Prairie Port residency and then hang up. Strom cautiously returned the receiver to its cradle. Stood motionless with his hand still on the phone. A trembling hand. Such trembling was unusual, but he didn't have time to dwell on this.

“Graf got the boot,” Strom told Ted Keon, who had fetched him back from the anteroom of reporters minutes before … who knew it was J. Edgar Hoover on the phone. His fingers left the receiver and clenched into a fist. “
Grafton got sacked
…”

Cub Hennessy glanced over. So did Jez Jessup and Butch Cody and Happy de Camp and Billy Yates. Telephones continued to ring.

Strom had never been known to shout or swear or bark out commands before, but now he did all three. “KILL THOSE FUCKING PHONES! PUT THEM IN A DESK DRAWER OR RIP THEIR CORDS OUT OR DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO TO KILL THEM! DON'T STAND THERE GAWKING, DO AS I SAY! CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND, GRAF GOT THE SHABBY BOOT …”

Strom Sunstrom, who in memory had not displayed anger in front of his fellow resident agents, stormed off quivering with rage. “THE SHABBY BOOT HE GETS, AND THEY EXPECT ME TO REPLACE HIM. I'LL NOT HAVE IT! NOT FOR A MOMENT!”

The door to his office slammed resoundingly.