Seven Silent Men (28 page)

Cub experienced the same uneasiness he felt when Santi had asked him to take a second look at Willy's corpse. Something about the chief had momentarily changed when he just said: “Have any ideas what it could be?” Not a change of intonation or of voice or of phrasing. Nor was there a difference in Santi's generally placid expression. “No,” Hennessy answered, trying to figure out what the difference was. “Why do you think he was killed?”

“Maybe it was sex,” the chief said. “Willy was sick that way. An exhibitionist. Maybe he flashed the wrong person and instead of getting blown got blown away.”

It was Santi's eyes that changed, Cub told himself. Santi had a way of making his eyes go dead, of looking at you as if he was blind, as if he was saying, “I'm listening, go ahead and lie.”

“I suppose you could be killed for flashing,” Cub said.

Santi looked down at the corpse.

“Sorry I couldn't be of more help,” Cub told him.

“Good night, Mister Hennessy.”

“Good night, chief.”

Cub knew before he started walking that he would have the feeling Frank Santi was staring at him every step of the way out … would have bet that before he reached the door Santi would tell him what he really had on his mind.

“Mister Hennessy,” Frank Santi called when Cub was passing the last of the dissection tables. “There is one detail.”

Cub stopped, turned around, stood beside the naked corpse of a wizened old woman, only one of whose eyes were open. He waited for the chief of police's next words.

“About Willy Carlson,” Santi said. “He had a sideline I forgot to mention. One he picked up in prison and continued on after his parole. Willy had become a rat. A professional informer. An informer-for-hire when he got back here to Prairie Port. And he had several takers. He ratted for the county liquor commission against a go-go bar operation. That was from June seventh to June thirtieth of this year, and he got paid one hundred and seventy-five dollars for his trouble. From June nineteenth through July twenty-sixth he ratted across the river for the Kentucky State Crime Commission against the whorehouses over near Paducah. His fee was four hundred dollars. The Paducah houses paid him three thousand during the same period to rat for them about the state crime commission. Between July and early August he had three more gigs, and then he picked up some very fancy clients indeed. It's all in here.” Santi held up a ledger. “We found this in Willy's room. He recorded each job as neat as can be. Date and price all set down like he was planning to have his books audited and pay taxes. Willy ‘Cowboy' Carlson, if you hadn't figured it out, was a crackpot. Mad as a hatter. Luckily for the police department, we knew it. What we didn't know was he kept a ledger on the madness.”

The eyes with which Santi watched Hennessy were not at all blind or impassive. They stalked Cub. But the voice droned on as matter-of-factly as ever. “Willy managed to show some discretion in his account-keeping. He didn't enter names as such. He put down initials or phone numbers. In some instances, both initials and numbers.” Santi peered into the open ledger. “It's the last page that might be of interest to you. Only three entries appear. The second entry from the top has both initials and a phone number and shows that some weeks ago Willy received five hundred dollars for a snitch job. The number is the same one as on the slip of paper we found in Willy's room … your unlisted phone number, Mister Harold Hennessy. But the initials before the number aren't HH. They are CH. CH as in Cub Hennessy?”

Cub waited for Santi to look up from the ledger, trying to think of something to say. But the chief of police continued gazing down. “The last entry in the ledger, after you, is Friday, August twentieth. No phone number is given. No amount of payment received. Only the initial: M. If you feel foolish learning you've popped up on a tinhorn hustler's books, Mister Hennessy, you're going to feel even worse. The entry directly under your initials and payment … is for the Mormon State bank robbery.”

Frank Santi ripped the page from the ledger, came forward and handed it to Cub. Cub studied the three neatly printed listings:

“Who is M?” Cub asked.

“A man named Marion Corkel. Heard of him?”

Cub shook his head and gave the page back to Santi.

“Aren't you going to comment on the first entry, Mister Hennessy?” the chief asked. “On the one hundred and fifty dollars VO paid Cowboy on August seventh?”

“What about it?”

“VO is Ned Van Ornum.”

“Is it?”

“We set you up, Mister Hennessy. Ned and I set you up.”

Cub said nothing.

“We meant to embarrass you and Mister Grafton severely, Mister Hennessy. When the time came. Meant to slap the FBI's wrist as hard as we could for reaching in and trying to recruit a police officer. Meant to teach you a lesson you'd never forget. All of you and your kind.”

“You've succeeded.”

Frank Santi lit a match, held it to the page torn from the ledger … let the page go up in flames.

“You're destroying physical evidence.” Cub, even before the sentence was complete, felt foolish for saying it.

Santi watched the ashes float to the floor.

“I'm saving your ass is what I'm doing, Mister Hennessy. Your ass and the police department's ass. Or would you prefer the media let the world know how the FBI and the Prairie Port Police Department had a Mormon State bank robber in their employ at the exact time Mormon State was looted? That neither the FBI nor the police had an inkling Willy Carlson had anything to do with Mormon State … and probably never would have an inkling?”

Cub, again, had nothing to say.

“I'm afraid, Mister Hennessy, that you and your Mister Hoovers and Mister Graftons have won out again. I have no choice but to hand you the case … hand you, most likely, all of the robbers and an outside co-conspirator. I damn your luck. It should have been my luck. Thank the river. Talk about coincidence, the key to it all floated in right after Willy. He's up there waiting for you.”

Chief of Police Frank Santi pointed to the staircase.

Two women sat on a wood bench in the small, gray-green room at the top of the stairway leading down to the main room of the morgue. The younger, seventeen at the most, was pregnant and in widow's weeds and weeping. The older woman was as tearless as the prairie itself. Her gingham dress was faded. Her white bonnet, frayed. The casket opposite them lay open. The corpse inside was water-bloated to the point of being unrecognizable. Standing against the far wall with his arms folded as Cub entered was Ned Van Ornum.

“This is Mister Hennessy of the FBI,” Ned told the women. “He's the one who will help you now. Cub, this is Natalie Hammond. That's her husband, Samuel J., in the box. And that's Sam's mom, Ida.”

Natalie glanced at Cub through crying eyes and said nothing. Ida managed a lost and weary nod.

“Sam was twenty-six and a native-born Prairie Portian,” Ned explained to Cub. “He worked for Missouri Power and Electric since dropping out of high school. Worked as an assistant lineman. Missouri Power and Electric says he's a reliable employee and good electrician but lacking in formal education … had trouble filling out the written reports they require of the linemen. We show Sam clean as a whistle. Not as much as a parking ticket. They found him in the river at Cape Girardeau three weeks ago but didn't ID him until now. Girardeau's medical examiner attributes death to a concussion and drowning. He says Sam hit the water from a very high altitude, was probably knocked unconscious and drowned. Says there's no indication if he slipped, jumped or was pushed.”

“He was pushed,” Natalie said. “T'was Bicki what pushed him.”

“We don't know that, girl,” Sam's mother said.

“I know, ma, I know! Sam wouldn't go along with what Bicki wanted!” She turned to Cub. “Bicki's responsible! Find Bicki!”

“Sam, my son, he got the sulks right often,” Ida told Cub. “Since he was a boy, he got them. Bad ones.”

“It weren't no sulks, ma. It were your brother Bicki!”

“Meanness don't help no one, girl,” Ida answered.

“He killed your son!” Natalie insisted. “Whether Sam was pushed or jumped, your brother Bicki done it!”

Ida turned away.

“Missouri Power and Electric says Sam got moody now and then, went into depression, but it never affected his work,” Ned informed Cub. “Sam's superintendent describes him as a shy, nervous guy who's slow to make up his mind, but once it's made up, watch out, he'll plow through walls doing what he's decided. Company records show that on Monday, August ninth, Sam took a four-week leave of absence.”

“He was going to Florida for some fishing,” Ida explained.

“You didn't say that earlier, Missus Hammond,” Ned Van Ornum told her.

“… I just remember. He was going for fishing.”

“Ma, he was going to rob! You said so yourself, right here.”

“I got confused. He was going for fishing.”

“He was not! He was going with Bicki and them men.”

Ned Van Ornum opened the door. “They know who did it and told us,” he said to Cub, “but I'll be damned if I'll help you out any more. Not even you and your strutting peacock pals will be able to blow this one. Then again, who knows?” he said, exiting the room. “You've surprised us before.”

“There was seven men who came with Bicki,” Natalie told Cub as the door banged shut. “I only seen three of 'em myself. That Mister Corkel and the one with the limp and Reverend Walt. Sam told me about the rest. The whole seven of 'em and Bicki. There was seven men and Bicki. Most was from Illinois, where Bicki is from, and I just wouldn't let 'em in the house no more. Specially Mister Corkel. He's from around Prairie Port, Mister Corkel is. I seen him in town lots. The limpy one with the game leg, I think he's from Kentucky. The one they call the cowboy, he's from here too, but I never met him or none of the others. They all come 'cause of Bicki, though. Don't go thinking Bicki don't have nice points,” Sam Hammond's pregnant widow allowed. “Bicki never once was unpolite towards me, and he dressed good. When Sam's daddy died, Sam was small when that happened, Bicki was like a second father for him till he got put back in jail. Bicki was always talking big and getting put back in jail. He didn't talk nowhere's big as Reverend Walt did. Reverend Walt, he was promising all kind of things to Sam. I never heard so personally, but Sam told me everything Reverend Walt promised. Reverend Walt and Mister Corkel was the ones I couldn't stand. I put my foot down and said, ‘Sam, I don't want them or none of 'em coming back to our house no more.' And they didn't. They stopped coming.”

“What was it Bicki and Reverend Walt wanted Sam to do?” Cub asked.

“Take off weeks from the electric company and get some old gen'rators working,” Natalie answered. “They had some big, old-fashioned gen'rators in a cave and knew Sam couldn't resist fixing them. That's what Sam liked best, fixing up old machines. That's what Sam wanted most too, us moving to Nags Head and him opening up his own shop for fixing old electric machines and collecting them too. Nags Head is where my people is from. Nags Head, North Carolina. That's the thing they promised Sam the most, his own shop.”

“Did Sam tell you where these generators were?” Cub asked.

Natalie exchanged bitter stares with Ida. “Yes, he told.”

“Where?”

She was looking at Cub now. “Down inside Warbonnet Ridge.”

“Did you know, Missus Hammond,” Cub said gently to Natalie, “those generators have been linked to the Mormon State bank robbery?”

“Can't you see, that's why Sam couldn't go along with them,” she stated. “They got Sam to take off from work and fix them gen'rators 'cause he likes doing it and because of the shop in Nags Head. Next thing he knows, them gen'rators is fixed and they got him doing other things. Got him putting underground water gates in working order. Sam still don't know what for. Bicki asks him to build a clock machine to open and close them water gates when nobody's around. That got to Sam 'cause he likes inventing machines. When he finished building the clock machine, he finds out what it's for and he got depressed like I never seen.”

“What was it for?” Cub asked.

“… To rob a bank.”

“Mormon State bank?”

“Sam didn't know which bank, only that it was a bank. They was going to dig up underneath it and get away by boats, by flooding the water sewers and going through 'em in boats. Sam came home when he found out and lay down on the sofa and started crying like a baby. Crying and shaking. He told me Bicki and the other men meant to rob the bank the next night, only plans had changed and they was gonna do it later that night. And they wanted Sam to come along and be part of it. Sam said they would kill him if he didn't go along, but that he couldn't go along … couldn't do it. He cried and shaked, and I held him for hours and hours. When he wasn't crying, we talked about other things maybe we could do. We didn't have no money to run away with, and we didn't have no place to go if we had money. We talked about seeing the police, but Sam was too afraid of Bicki for that.

“… Then he said he was gonna commit suicide. I said, ‘No, don't you do that, Sam.'” Her voice cracked. “I said, ‘It's better you go along and do what Bicki wants than kill yourself.' I said, ‘What about me and Christopher'… that's what we're calling the baby in me, Christopher … ‘if you go and kill yourself? Do what they want, Sam. Do it!'” Sobbing resumed. “Only he didn't go along with them.”