Seven Silent Men (36 page)

E. G. Womper rushed forward. Harlon Quinton beat a fast retreat out the nearest door. What attracted Yates's attention was not the antic Mule but the reactions of his fellow FBI men. All, like Yates, were on their feet. Ralph Dafney, who was running to assist Womper, looked delighted with the challenge. Cub seemed ashamed and depressed. Strom appeared skeptical. Corticun calmly nodded to himself. Jez Jessup had no interest in anything but Yates … was watching Billy watch the others.

Waiting at the FBI's twelfth-floor cafeteria-lounge forty minutes later, in anticipation of a promised official statement, Chet Chomsky related for his lolling press brethren what had followed at the arraignment. “These two FBI men grab him. They're big men. Muscles. Corkel is trying to salute while he's singing. While he's being lifted up. The handcuffs make this difficult. Corkel had to bring both hands up to his face. But he does, and the FBI men, four of them by now, carry him out. Run him out. He's laying sideways and saluting and singing ‘God bless Missouri' at the top of his lungs. They go on running with him along the corridor and down the steps and out on the street that way. We're running after them. They jump into a car and lose all of us except Nancy. Nancy had a cab waiting and she followed them right to University Hospital. They run Corkel in, standing up this time but still singing. Nancy, oh, our lovely Nancy, she gets right into the hospital and past the security guards in the mental wing. Borrows a nurse's outfit and tray. What does she see? The FBI is handing Corkel over to a doctor, signing a release form for him. Corkel is singing and watching. Once that form's signed, Corkel's the property of the county for twenty days. When it's signed, guess what Corkel does? He stops singing and thanks the FBI for riding him over. He's calm as can be. It was an act. The arraignment thing was an act. Corkel hustled the assistant U.S. magistrate into a twenty-day vacation on the county. Into delaying everything by twenty days. By the bye, he's one pretty funny man, this Marion Corkel. His nickname is Mule Fucker. You should hear the stories about him …”

Denis Corticun, at a 3
A
.
M
. briefing, brought the press up to date on Marion Corkel, stated that Corkel was indeed a prime suspect in the Mormon State robbery and, at the suggestion of the assistant U.S. magistrate's office, had been placed under observation. Corticun said two other men believed to be members of the robbery gang would soon be in federal custody but refused to give any further information. He left the room brusquely.

Moans, arduous and painful, rose from the back seat as the car sped off the highway and into a cyprus-lined roadside rest area. Les Kebbon hurried from the driver's door, went to a pay phone, called the eleventh-floor residency office in Prairie Port collect and when the charges were accepted demanded to speak with Strom.

“You pick up Ragotsy?” Strom asked once he got on the other end.

“What's left of him,” Les Kebbon answered. “That sheriff or whoever he is, that O. D. Don Pensler, is straight out of Auschwitz. He butchered Ragotsy like you don't want to see. Spent the works. Held him underwater. Hung him by the heels and used electric cattle prods on him. Everything and more. Strom, we can't let anyone see Ragotsy. He's chopped meat, and the Bureau will get blamed, I know it. We gotta get this guy to the first hospital and out of sight and hope he lives. Has that fucking Corticun told the world we've picked him up?”

Strom answered, “Not by name, I don't believe. He had a press meeting a half hour ago and only said there were two more suspects besides Mule.”

“So what shall I do, get him to a hospital?”

Strom had an idea, had Kebbon hold on nearly five minutes, returned to the line saying, “Can you make it to the Army base near Balmour with him?”

“Yeah, we can get that far.”

“Take him to the hospital there. Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll live. Or luckier yet and nobody will know till he recovers. What the hell did he get beaten up for?”

“A confession,” Kebbon told him. “The ape sheriff thought he was doing us a favor. Doing J. Edgar Hoover a favor. He beat a signed confession out of Ragotsy, not knowing that it probably won't hold up in court because he did beat it out of him. He can screw up our whole case against Ragotsy because of this. I've got the confession here, with fucking bloodstains on it, if you can believe.”

“What does it say?”

The envelope containing the confession letter did bear a bloody thumbprint on the flap. The letter proper had one large and two small blood splotches on the lower right portion of the second page. The text was typewritten and began with an introductory statement attesting that this was the confession of Elmo Vorhees Ragotsy, fifty-eight years old, of 122 Wellons Street, Prairie Port, Missouri. That during the course of the confession to follow, Mr. Ragotsy had in no way been harmed, coerced or tricked. Beneath this statement were imprints of the county seal, the sheriff's office seal and the seal of the Association of Community Churches. Below these were signatures of the attending witnesses to the confession: two clergymen, the county sheriff, the deputy county sheriff, the high school athletic director, the county supervisor of road repair and the recording public stenographer.

The confession was single-spaced and read:

I am a Mormon State robber. I have been arrested before for possessing stolen goods but I was not convicted. My roommate, Willy Carlson, called the Cowboy, is a known criminal and convict who is on parole. I have not seen him in a while.

The third week of June this year (i.e. 1971) I was in the caves and tunnels south of Warbonnet Ridge. The tunnels was built by the WPA, I think. I often find valuable things down in them. Sometimes I store things in them. The third week of June I was walking in a cave and seen dust and small stones falling out of the roof. I heard echoey noises too, that could have been drilling. I went out through a tunnel and up where I come in. That would be a mile from the cave. Standing there I seen the Riverrise Project was being built on top of where I figure the cave was. A week later I went to Riverrise and seen that everything is built except for the bank. They got this shopping mall there, along the river in front of the other buildings, and everything is complete and done. The only construction what's going on is with the bank. The bank is incomplete. It don't even have windows in it yet and no name on it. But you can see it'll be a bank when it's done. I realize this could be the noises I heard in the cave. That the cave is right under where the bank is going up.

I come back over the weekend with my roommate, Cowboy. Cowboy goes and stays in the basement of the bank. I go down into the cave. At a time we both agreed on, Cowboy starts banging on the concrete with a crowbar. I hear the banging real clear, and dust falls outta the rock above me. That's how we come to know the bank is right over the cave. Later a sign goes up in the window and we see it's called Mormon State.

I am not a thieving man myself. If there was temptations to do something about robbing Mormon State from the cave I didn't give it much of a chance. There was no opening big enough to bring equipment through for six miles. The place I climbed down to get to the tunnel and cave wasn't big enough to bring equipment in. To get out of there after the clout would mean the same thing, walking six miles with all the money sacks and equipment you chose to take out. I told Cowboy I did not want to rob the bank. I told him if he wanted to rob it, I'd sell it to him for some of the action. Criminals have the right to sell a mark to another criminal if they find it first. I found the cave under the bank first. It was my mark.

I had gone up north of St. Louis on my boat for a freight hauling job. A two month contract job for the railroad there. Cowboy comes up to see me. This is the second week of August of this year. He tells me people of his acquaintance are going to rob the bank and need my help. Cowboy, he knows I don't have the stamina for robbing banks. He tells me I'm not going to be part of the robbing. I'm to be part of the escaping after. I'll be waiting in a tunnel near where the cave and robbing is going on. Waiting in a boat. These people plan to flood the tunnels and get out of there by boat afterwards. No one knows boats and them tunnels better than me. That's what they want me to help with, picking the right boats and getting them through the tunnels later. They're willing to pay me a full share of the take and something extra for finding the mark in the first place. I don't have to show up until the day before they go. They'll call me the night before. It's one day's work.

I say okay, sure. I tell Cowboy a list of what I want. Rubber pontoon boats with outboard motors on them. And power beams in front. I don't know how many people is taking part in this thing and I don't ask. I tell Cowboy there can't be more than two people in a boat.

I gets the call from Cowboy on Thursday night that we're going a day earlier, Friday. Right about lunch the next day I tell the crew on my own boat, my river boat, I'm going over to Emoryville and I'll be back the next morning. I drive to Prairie Port and meet the Cowboy.

We were down in the tunnel about six (i.e. 6:00 p.m., August 20). I could hear the robbery already getting started through the passageway leading up from the tunnel to the cave. I stayed on a dock in the tunnel.

There were four rubber boats. I got them ready. Put on their outboard motors and power lights. There was trouble flooding the tunnel. The water level was too low for a while. Then it was too high and fast. When the other people came running out it was almost a tidal wave in the tunnel. The people were rushing and the light was bad so I didn't recognize anybody except Cowboy and a man who was naked. I don't know the naked man's name. I think he's from near Prairie Port. Cowboy was naked too. The other people were all wearing rubber sea diving suits, so you couldn't see their face if there was good light.

The people jumped into the boats in the nick of time. Jumped in just before the tidal wave hit us. I was in the last boat. The tidal wave pushed us all the way under Prairie Port and out into the Treachery. The Treachery is a seasonal current in our part of the river. The Mississippi River.

The confession ended here. The signature and the date in the lower right-hand corner of the page were partially obscured by the three splotches of blood, which had resulted from Ragotsy passing out and falling full-face onto the letter.

Franklin Ulick, assistant manager of Mormon State National Bank, sat at his desk studying the nine pictures Cub Hennessy and Butch Cody had presented. The photos of Mule, Wiggles, Ragotsy, Cowboy Carlson, Windy Walt Sash, Worm Ferugli, Meadow Muffin Epstein and Sam Hammond were relatively recent. The identifying shot for Bicki Hale was still the fuzzy, sixteen-year-old photograph the Baton Rouge Police Department had on file.

“No, they don't look familiar, any of them,” Ulick finally said. “Only I can't see this one too well.” He indicated Bicki “Little Haifa”.

“Let's think back,” Cub asked. “You were around the premises when it was under construction. Do those men look like any of the construction workers? Painters, builders, electricians, carpenters?”

“I wasn't around all that much during the construction,” Ulick replied.

“My mistake, I thought you said you were.”

“I said I was around more than Mister Julien.”

“Giles Julien, the manager?”

“Yes. I came here more often than he did during that time.”

“Did you see any of those nine men when you did?”

“Not that I recall.”

Cub produced pages of typewritten names and addresses. “This is the list you gave the Prairie Port police when they were running the show. A hundred and eighteen people who were in the premises after it was built and prior to it being robbed. Staff people and ones you were interviewing for jobs as well as others. Do any of the names bring to mind any of these photographs?”

Ulick took his time in going down the names and reevaluating the pictures. “No. I can't make any connections.”

“Who might be familiar with the names you don't know?”

“No one. I know all the names. I met all the people listed. Mister Julien knows some of them because he also did job interviewing. Mister Chandler, our president, would know a few. But I know everyone on that list. With the second list it's a different story. I don't know a soul. You'd have to speak to either Mister Julien or Mister Chandler on that.”

“What second list?”

“The amendments to the first list. We sent you a copy.”

“No one sent us anything.”

“I brought it to you myself.”

“… Tell me about this second list,” Cub said.

“It was the amendment to the first list,” Ulick repeated. “The changes. That first list, the master list, was compiled quickly. Within hours of our learning of the robbery. Errors were made. And omissions. I, for example, had mistakenly included two electricians on the master list who had never entered the premises, who simply had installed our outdoor sign a half mile from the bank. Mister Julien and myself, on rechecking, found several things like this, particularly with the interviews. We had listed certain interviews with job applicants who never kept their appointments. A few people who had been to the premises we overlooked mentioning. All this information was on the second list. It wasn't all that large a list of changes, I'd like to point out. We were quite accurate with our first list.”

“You say you brought this second list, the list of changes, to the FBI yourself?” Cub asked.

“Wednesday morning, August twenty-fifth,” Ulick answered. “It's noted here.” He raised his red appointment book.

“Do you recall who you gave it to?”

“I was instructed to deliver it to Mister Denis Corticun. He was indisposed so I gave it to his aide, a Mister Harlon Quinton.”

“You were told specifically to give it to Mister Corticun, not to Mister John Sunstrom or someone else at the local FBI office?”