Seven Silent Men (27 page)

Cub, in his subsequent recruitment of Ned Van Ornum, cautiously followed up on June's dinner-table allusion to “Eyetalians” and the fact that, because of Frank Santi's presence, Ned had gone as far as he could in the police department. Cub, on the golf course or in the locker room or steam bath in the days to come, would good-humoredly exhume for Ned that flaccid rumor of Santi having a relative in the Mafia. A rumor the FBI knew to be true, but which Cub never dealt with as fact, used only as a subliminal barb. One of the many passing irritants to be unleashed. Prods for discontent. Slowly, at Cub's careful instigation, all fell into place. Casual discussion of police and FBI techniques led to more precise subjects … allowed Cub to occasionally slip in a direct question of interest to the FBI. Ned always answered. Cub dropped the pretense of discussion, offhandedly made a specific inquiry from time to time. Ned continued to answer. Cub grew bolder but not surer. Against his better judgment he broached the subject of Wilkie Jarrel.

Cub from the outset of the recruitment was acutely aware that certain bonds existed between Ned Ornum and Frank Santi. One of the strongest was that both men were career police officers with a fierce pride in their work and their organization. Under the best of circumstances urban police were leery of the FBI. Most did not like or trust the Bureau. Many considered the feds to be more of a natural enemy than criminals. Throughout their friendship, Ned had never expressed interest in becoming a member of the FBI, even though Cub continually dropped hints that this might be possible.

There was another link between Van Ornum and Santi which troubled Hennessy as much if not more than the police connection. Ned and Frank shared a common heritage. A uniquely regional heritage, Cub had come to realize, which was capable of superseding blood and economic and social ties. Hennessy himself was a native St. Louisian steeped in the lore and pride of Missouri and the Midwest and the Mississippi River. But never had he witnessed the likes of Prairie Port. Prairie Port, despite almost three decades of spectacular growth and modernization, clung so steadfastly to its pioneer traditions that all but the oldest families were looked upon as unwelcome newcomers. Ned Van Ornum was a fourth-generation resident and therefore an automatic member of this fraternity intent on, if not actually reversing progress, certainly holding it in check. Frank Santi's ancestors arrived in Prairie Port long before those of Ned Van Ornum, had settled in the place when it was little more than a barge stop on the Mississippi River. Unlike the immigrant Italian laborers brought to Prairie Port in the 1930s by Franklin D. Roosevelt's NRA and CCC projects, Frank Santi's great-great-great-great—grandfather had come from Italy in 1848 to be a barge caulker.

The more Cub Hennessy reflected on the Prairie Port of Ned Van Ornum and Frank Santi, the more unsure he became of Ned's reliability as an informer. Cub could almost visualize Frank and Ned growing up in Prairie Port, traveling upstream to the rustic riverfront section of the town called Steamboat Cove, where young boys still go, and like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn building crude rafts and floating on the near bank currents … could see them, when they grew to be teenagers, taking to the longboats and trying to ride downstream on the Treachery.

Cub concluded that children growing up in Prairie Port forged too strong, too close-knit a relationship for his professional liking, that even without the police connection he never could be all that certain of where Ned Van Ornum's loyalties lay in regard to Frank Santi. Reviewing the Van Ornum situation, and he constantly reviewed each of his recruited informants, Cub came across another fact to ponder. Ned had never once voluntarily provided information. Everything had come as a direct request from Cub.

Ultimately, the matter of whether Ned Van Ornum could or could not be relied upon was of secondary importance. His recruitment, after all, had been a Washington headquarters idea, a possible ploy for learning if Wilkie Jarrel had influence over Frank Santi. When asked directly by Cub, Ned said Jarrel had absolutely no input with Santi, that no one did, that Santi was his own man and could be influenced by nobody. Whether or not this was so, or if Ned Van Ornum went on providing information, had no effect on strategy at the FBI's resident office in Prairie Port. Ed Grafton would continue investigating Wilkie Jarrel regardless of the situation with Frank Santi or the Prairie Port Police Department or God Almighty.

Still, Cub Hennessy was fond of Ned Van Ornum and saw no pressing reason for breaking off relationships with him … particularly on the golf course. Cub merely stopped asking Ned questions. Then, on August 7, Ned called to say there was someone Hennessy might be interested in … a man in the employ of Wilkie Jarrel who would possibly consider informing on his boss if the price was right. A man named Willy Carlson.

Ned claimed never to have seen or met Carlson, only to have learned of him through a reliable underworld middleman. Ned, via the middleman, arranged for, but did not attend, a clandestine chat between Hennessy and Willy Carlson. Willy explained he had just done time at Statesville Penitentiary in Illinois on armed robbery, needed money and was currently employed as a fill-in, weekend security guard/chauffeur at Wilkie Jarrel's estate, and that Jarrel was, among other things, a crusty old geezer obsessed with the notion he was being followed by the FBI. Jarrel, according to Carlson, routinely had his home and offices searched for eavesdropping bugs and wasn't above using a public booth for more important calls. He had scrambler telephones in the private study and bedroom of his home and in his limousine. On one occasion, with Carlson driving, Jarrel had tried to reach J. Edgar Hoover from his car but couldn't get through.

Cub Hennessy liked what he saw and heard and recruited Willy Carlson as a paid informant for the FBI. Willy, thirty-six hours later, delivered a list of phone booth locations frequented by Jarrel, was paid in cash by Cub, given a new assignment and handed more money on the spot. This took place Thursday, August 19, three days prior to the alarm going off at Mormon State National Bank … one day before the actual theft was perpetrated.

Shortly after discovering the bank's vault had been looted, on Sunday, August 22, Ned and Cub met and concurred that Willy Carlson, recently out of prison and familiar with the crime community of Prairie Port, as well as southern Missouri and southern Illinois, might be a valuable source of information concerning Mormon State. The policeman and the FBI agent agreed to join forces, expand Willy's informant chores and share the information he would, they hoped, provide. Willy couldn't be found. Cub and Ned looked high and low. Willy Carlson had dropped out of sight. Not, of course, uncommon behavior for an ex-convict when a massive manhunt is under way … when the con has reason to suspect a law-enforcement agency he's been making money from might want him for riskier assignments.

Earlier this evening, when the emergency phone call from a police dispatcher to FBI night-duty officer Butch Cody had requested that Cub go immediately to the morgue for a meeting, Cub had assumed it was Ned Van Ornum who wanted to see him … who had intentionally made contact in this official and clumsy way rather than ring up directly. Ned, on learning that only $6,500 had been stolen from Mormon State and that the FBI was deliriously giddy over the Prairie Port Police Department being stuck with the case, had been none too cordial toward Cub. Later, after it was established $31,000,000 was missing and the FBI stormed ashore with full media pomp to claim the investigation for its own, Ned Van Ornum made his resentment of Bureau behavior known to Cub in a brief, two-word phone call: Hoover sucks.

Driving now through University Hospital's private underground parking lot toward the morgue's loading platform in the distance, Cub Hennessy still thought it was Ned who would be waiting for him. Pulling to a stop, he saw that the man sitting in civilian clothes with legs dangling over the edge of the dock wasn't Ned Van Ornum. It was Frank Santi.

Cub had seen Santi in newspaper photos and on the television newscasts but for some reason never in person, except at the Mormon State bank the Sunday after it was robbed. Cub's impression had been of a very tall man with a small head. Climbing the cement steps up to the loading pier and watching Santi stand, he saw that the recently ensconced chief of Prairie Port police was shorter and stockier than previously supposed. His shoulders were extremely broad and powerful-appearing. Santi's head was indeed small, his features almost delicate.

“Special agent Hennessy?” He ambled toward Cub with an amazingly long arm extended. “Harold Hennessy?”

“I'm Hennessy,” Cub said, shaking hands.

“Frank Santi.” The chief spoke in an unrushed, somewhat high-pitched voice. “Thank you for coming out so late. If you'll follow me, there's something you might be able to help us with.”

Santi led the way down the morgue's corridor in those long, loping, slightly pigeon-toed strides of a former high school basketball player whose team made it to the state finals.

No one was in the autopsy room. No one alive, that is. Four of the six dissection tables held cadavers. Uncovered cadavers. Naked and waxy-looking corpses lying on their backs with an identification tag tied to a toe. Cub didn't relish seeing dead bodies. He followed Frank Santi across the autopsy room. The chief of police walked directly between the two lines of operating tables, stopped beside three of the corpses.

“This seem familiar?” Santi handed Cub a slip of paper with the numbers 476-3312 on it.

“That's my phone number,” Cub told him. “An unlisted number.”

“I know, we had it traced. Is that your printing on the paper?”

“No.”

Santi walked to one of the mobile tables in the corner, spun it around, ripped off the covering. “Know him?”

Cub glanced down at a bald-headed man, half of whose face had been exploded away … a badly decomposed corpse who, nonetheless, was still recognizable to him as being Willy Carlson.

Cub realized Ned Van Ornum might have disclosed their intended sharing of Willy to Frank Santi, that Ned could also have told his boss about Carlson being an FBI informant. It was equally possible Santi knew nothing of either arrangement. Hoping the latter was true, Cub chose to lie. “No, I don't know him,” he told the police chief as he turned away from the corpse. “Maybe if there was more of him left …”

“Take another look, would you?”

Cub did. “… No, I don't know who he is.” Sensing Santi was watching him rather than Willy Carlson, he waited several moments before looking up.

Frank Santi shifted his gaze to the dead man. “Not too pretty, huh? The river never helps. They found him in the river. He was probably killed a few days after the Mormon State robbery, on Tuesday or Wednesday, August twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth. Then he was weighted down and dumped into the river. Whatever was holding him under gave way, and he floated to the surface. Mister Hennessy, do you have any idea how he came to have your private phone number?”

“No.”

“I don't mean to pry into official FBI operations, but could you tell me whether you use that phone for Bureau business?”

“Sometimes. It's more a private line my wife can reach me on at the office.”

“… Or at home, if she happens to be out?” Santi suggested. “The phone company said you had an extension at home as well as at the office.”

“At home it's so my boss can get me,” Cub explained good-naturedly. “Chief, am I being interrogated?”

Santi showed a stiff, prudish grin. “I guess so.”

“Anything I can help you with I will. Don't be afraid to ask.”

“Thank you, Mister Hennessy.” Sand's large hand reached up and scratched at a small ear. “Mister Hennessy, is it conceivable that, in some way, you could have had dealings with this man?”

“I come across a lot of people, chief, as you do. He may have been one of them. But it wouldn't have been anything important. Anything I remembered.”

“No one you knew well, is that right? No one
bald
you remember?”

“That's right.”

“I suppose it's not all that easy to forget a bald man, is it? Sorry to have bothered you, Mister Hennessy.”

“Sorry I couldn't help out.”

“May I have that phone number back?”

Cub returned the slip of paper to Santi, watched the chief stare down at the number, then up at him, then back to the paper. And Cub realized something he knew he should have seen from the beginning … the slip of paper was dry … showed no sign of ever-having been wet … Willy Carlson's corpse, according to Chief Santi, had been in the river for some time.

“Where did you find that paper?” asked Cub.

“In his apartment.”

“You know who he is?”

The grin flickered. “His fingerprints came down a few hours ago,” Santi said. “He's a pal. An old pal of lots of people. Willy Carlson is what he goes by mostly. Ever heard of him?”

“No.”

“He was a character, Mister Hennessy. A local character. Great horseman. Loved the beasts and rode them in a fair number of rodeos. His nickname was Cowboy. All in all, Willy was a pretty good egg. Only problem was, he stole. He tried legitimate work from time to time, particularly work around horses, but he was addicted to thieving. Nothing big. Penny-ante B&E's and small-time hustles. He did some light time for a questionable smuggling scam. Then three years back he reached for the stars and got collared on an armed job. He was paroled from Statesville Penitentiary five months ago and went to one of those new rehabilitation programs run by the university. Counseling, confession and lots of pretty young criminology coeds to lay. It looked for a while as if some of it was working, that Willy had settled down, sociopathically speaking. Had rejected thievery. But obviously he was up to something he shouldn't have been … or he wouldn't be lying over there with half his head missing, would he? Have any ideas what it could be, Mister Hennessy?”