Seven Silent Men (32 page)

Yates and Brew, too far away to have either stopped the brutal fracas or chased after the fleeing suspects, ran back to the panel truck and radioed Jez at the command post what had happened. Jez phoned Strom in Prairie Port. Strom, hearing his suspects were in flight and might not bother to return to their hotels, made an immediate decision: pick up Mule, Rat and Wiggles as quickly as possible, pick them up on whatever charges possible until Prairie Port obtained federal warrants for bank robbery.

State and city police reinforced the Bureaumen and rangers in sweeping across the zoo. Desperate shouting, just before sundown, brought searchers to the base of a tree surrounded by snapping hyenas … a tree in which Wiggles roosted on an upper limb screaming for his life. He was taken to the city jail and incarcerated for assaulting a zoo officer. Mule and Rat Ragotsy could not be found. A three-state alarm went out for them for “assault-with-intent-to-kill.”

With Mule and Rat still not in custody when federal warrants were granted at 8
P.M.,
Strom wasted no time in ordering an all-points federal fugitives alert for the two missing felons, citing their offense as bank robbery.

Rangers and Bureaumen, continuing their search of the Baton Rouge zoo at dawn, located the moped abandoned by Mule, followed footprints believed to be Mule's across the zoo's black bear compound and down to the edge of a moat. The towering chainlink fence beyond the moat revealed traces of ascending mud on its wire. Footprints on the other side led to a road. A police report received less than an hour later stated that at 10
P
.
M
. the previous evening, at that very spot in the road, a car had been stopped and the driver pulled from his seat and beaten and the car stolen by a man fitting Mule's description.

Shortly before noon the assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of Missouri petitioned the assistant U.S. magistrate of that district for the extradition of Lamar Jonathan Loftus to Prairie Port to face questioning by a special federal grand jury convened to look into the robbery of the Mormon State National Bank.

At 2:35
P
.
M
. the Prairie Port FBI residency office accepted a collect telephone call from O. D. Don Pensler, chief sheriff of Meridan County.

“Good sirs, we jes ketched ya something fine,” Pensler told Cub, who took the call for Strom. “Ketched it right outta Wallaooska Creek, trying to steal a boat … that Mr. Ray-goatsy y'all beena wanting. Mr. Ray-goatsy, he's a good ole fella, and we're takin' real special care of him for ya. Come fetch him when you're so obliged. Meridan County Jail House is the address. Second red light after Dunsberg on Interstate Twenty-one. And tell Mister Hoover a nice hello, hear? Tell him down here in Meridan, where men is men and the flag's a flag, he has our hearts.”

Another five hours had elapsed and the sun was setting when Yates, freshly arrived at Prairie Port, crept up the ridge to where Rodney Willis and Butch Cody lay.

“That's Mule's spread down there, all of it.” Butch indicated a vast tract of dusty, rolling bottom land, ringed intermittently by runs of rotting fence. The far acreage, where several thin cows stood, was what was left of grazing pastures. Closer in were corrals and stables in ugly disrepair. An ancient horse stood in one corral, four mules in another, a goat in a third. An automobile graveyard was in the immediate foreground, at the base of the rise from which the three Bureaumen watched. Between the corral and the car dump was a partially collapsed wooden house. Except for a kerosene lantern burning beyond one downstairs window, the house was dark. Ten yards from the rear porch of the house was a blazing bonfire. A few feet from the fire stood a tall, authentic Indian teepee.

“Mule's in the house right now,” Butch Cody continued. “And he knows we're out here okay. He's preparing. Wait till you see him, you won't believe it. He's got his squaw in the teepee, or at least a very young girl who's dressed as an Indian squaw. Whatever happens, we have to keep away from the teepee.”

“Seems Mule snuck in sometime this morning,” Rodney Willis said. “We thought we had this place covered pretty well, but he got in without our seeing. Could be there's a trapdoor and tunnel down there and that's how he got in.”

“More than one tunnel,” Butch Cody suggested. “Mule keeps showing up all the hell over the place. Popping up in the middle of a field and disappearing.”

“As soon as he comes out of the house this time,” Rodney told Yates, “Cub wants us to be ready to go get him. All our guys, the residency guys, will go in first. Corticun's twelfth-floor crowd follows after us.”

Rodney Willis passed a shotgun and box of shells over to Yates. “Look for a flare. We go on a green flare.”

… Marion “Mule Fucker” Corkel peeked out of the rear door of the house. A beaded Indian band engirded his brow, holding in place a solitary looming turkey feather at the back of the head. His nose was painted white. Two short, slanting white lines adorned each of his cheeks. Mule looked about, ran from the house lugging a large, tarp-covered object, zigzagged past the bonfire and ducked into the teepee. He emerged wearing a loin cloth and bullet-filled bandoleros. Stepped to the bonfire. Arched his back. Raised his chin. Crossed his arms and held them high and stared out past the fire at the setting sun. Stood motionless until final darkness arrived. When it did, Mule, with one hand fanning his war-whooping mouth and the other flapping behind him, circled the fire in a foot-stomping ritual Indian dance of some sort.

A flare gun popped, sent a tiny fireball curving up into the night sky. The ball burst into a blaze of glowing green.

Why exactly the FBI agents, charging down from the rise and in from two sides on the flat below, also let out Indian war whoops as they ran would never be fully understood. The loudest whooper of all was Les Kebbon, riding a bounding jeep driven by Happy de Camp.

Mule spun about, took stock of the assault, dove inside the teepee, moments later backed out, loin-clothed bottom first, rolling a tripod-mounted World War II light machine gun after him.

“Machine gun! Machine gun!” Bureau voices echoed in the darkness.

Mule slid in behind the gun, threw the breech, swung the muzzle around toward three nearing silhouettes. A tear-gas grenade exploded off to the side. Another detonated directly before him. Mule scurried back into the teepee, darted out of it through a rear flap carrying rifles and clusters of small round objects.

“The fields! The fields!” came shouts. “He's heading into the fields.”

Mule, as he ran through darkness, also shouted, shouted the words “Vonda Lizzie!”

Hap de Camp, following the cries of “Vonda Lizzie,” wheeled the jeep over the bumpy terrain, neared the zigzagging Mule, tried keeping him in his headbeams as Les Kebbon, standing on the vehicle's front seat, began to twirl a lariat over his head.

Mule, glancing back as he ran from side to side avoiding the headlights, saw the spinning rope. He grasped a small round object firmly in his hand, stopped and spun around and hurled the object at Les … hurled round object after round object at him and the jeep.

“Mule dung?” Sue Ann Willis questioned as her husband, Rodney, slid into bed beside her. “He threw gourds filled with mule dung at Les?”

“Les and Hap,” Rodney Willis said. “Hit both of them with damn near every one he threw, which was a lot. He knocked Les right back into the jeep with a mouth full of the stuff. And Hap, I don't know if you know but Hap fought against the Japanese in World War II, made five amphibious landings and never got driven back once. But Mule Fucker sure as hell drove him back.”

“That's what they call him, Susie, Mule Fucker. It's right on his sheet. He hits Happy full in the face with dung, and Happy gets momentarily blinded and the jeep goes bumping off in one direction damn near hitting some of our guys, and Mule Fucker is running in the other direction like something wild. A real scene. Mule Fucker's dressed like an Indian with these gun belts crossing his chest and shouting out ‘Vonda Lizzie,' whatever that means. He stops and knocks the jeep right out of action with mule dung and takes off again with damn near the whole office chasing him. He keeps throwing mule dung at us, and when he runs out of that he starts throwing old rifles at us. He's been carrying an armful of old rifles and he throws those too. And bullets from the bullet belts over his shoulder. Bandoleros like you see Mexican bandits in the movies wear. And he doesn't stop running, Susie. The man was amazing. Our guys are getting winded and dropping out, but this looney-toon seems to be gaining strength. He goes running across one field after another until nobody's left chasing him except Cub. Cub's chugging away right behind him like an old steam engine chugging up a steep hill. Mule can't shake Cub, so he runs right out onto the highway. This looney-toon is running in and out between highway traffic dressed like an Indian and with his nose painted white and letting out war whoops and shouting ‘Vonda Lizzie' and doing everything to shake Cub. Cub finally brings him down with a flying tackle. Tackles the guy right before a tollbooth. That crazy Mule Fucker was heading right for a tollbooth.

“I can't keep a straight face when I think about that guy. I know I shouldn't be telling you this, Susie, but I've been collecting all the background stuff coming in on him, and some of what's come in today is unbelievable. You'd think I'd have been laughed out with all the laughing I already did. I haven't even gotten some of the material on him typed up yet. I just kept reading it over and over and saying, ‘This just can't be, this just can't be.'”

Sue Ann snuggled into her husband, saying, “Tell me.”

The following night a shocked Billy Yates, lying in bed and staring at his shorty-clad wife sitting cross-legged beside him, could barely say, “Up where?”

“You heard me plain as day, Billy Bee.”

“Who told you that?”

“I'm not saying.”

“Sue Ann Willis told you, didn't she?”

“Billy Bee, do you or do you not wanna know what happened to Mister Mule Fucker and—”

“Don't use that word!”

“It's his name, honey. His Christian name.”

“It is not. It's an alias. An underworld nickname.”

“Well, all I know is, they're deleting the whole story from the record.”

“Who's deleting?”

“Mister Corticun and that snooty assistant of his who still wears pinstripes and sounds like Bobby Kennedy.”

“Harlon Quinton?”

“Selfsame.”

“They were deleting what? And how?”

“Sue Ann told me that Rodney had got this report in about Mister Mule Fucker and—”

“Call him Mule, can't you, Tina Beth?” he said. “Call him Marion or Corkel … or anything but that.”

Tina Beth patted her husband's knee. “Rodney Willis had received this report about Mister Mule and the rodeo and was having it typed up when Harlon Quinton comes down and reads it over the secretary's shoulder. Harlon Quinton gets very mad and says this report doesn't belong here on the eleventh floor but upstairs on the twelfth floor, where Mister Corticun and all the men working on the out-of-town end of the investigation are. Rodney says no it doesn't. Harlon Quinton says he's in charge of the central files on the twelfth floor and therefore he says what goes where. Rodney says everything about Prairie Port people is investigated by the eleventh floor and that Mister Mule is from Prairie Port and that anything about him is staying on the eleventh floor until someone from the eleventh floor decides differently. Jez Jessup comes over and asks what the trouble is. Rodney explains. Jez Jessup sides with Rodney, and Harlon Quinton gets madder and says that a lot of what's in the report happened away from Prairie Port and therefore it belongs on the twelfth floor because it can't be verified until the flying squad checks it out. He says if he doesn't get that report here and now, he's going to take it. Jez Jessup tells him he better not try.

“Harlon Quinton goes upstairs and comes back down with Mister Corticun. Mister Corticun reads the report and turns green and tries not to show it. Mister Corticun tells Jez Jessup the report definitely belongs on the twelfth floor. Jez Jessup says no it doesn't. Mister Corticun starts to take the report with him, and Jez Jessup pulls it out of his hand. Mister Sunstrom comes over and keeps Jez Jessup and Mister Corticun from hitting one another and makes a compromise. He says until everyone gets unangry and can settle things peaceable, the report stays on the eleventh floor in his office. And that's where it is, locked in his desk in the office … which is the same as having it deleted.”

“Do you know what was in the report?”

“That's what I've been trying to tell you all along, Billy, only you got mad and started fussin' at me.”

“I'm sorry, Tina Beth, for fussing.”

“Are you?”

Billy Yates crossed his heart.

Tina Beth laughed her little-girl laugh, popped the pillow onto her lap, leaned forward on it. “Mister Mule is a smuggler, everyone already knows that. What they don't know is what's in Rodney's report … exactly how he smuggled things. And that was like I just told you, he put things up the rear end of horses and mules. Mister Mule has this horrid-looking ranch west of town where you can rent horses to ride if you want. Or you can board your animal if you're so inclined. One day a friend of Mister Mule's comes and leaves his horse there. Only this is no ordinary horse. It's a rodeo horse that has to get itself shipped on over to eastern Texas for an important rodeo. Now at this very same time Mister Mule has this business associate in Texas who is always wanting things smuggled to him. Mister Mule sees a way of killing two jaybirds with one stone, getting paid to ship the rodeo horse to Texas and smuggle something to his business associate as well. So Mister Mule puts whatever's to be smuggled in a small bag and walks up to the rodeo horse … and up inside the horse's rear end it goes. Well, sir, the horse arrives in Texas no worse for the experience, only the business associate doesn't come by and take the bag out like he's supposed to. Instead, the man who owns the horse, a Mister Cowboy Carlson, rides the horse in the rodeo. Well, once that horse comes out into the rodeo arena with that bag up its behind and has to run, it don't act like no cowboy horse, it turns into a bucking bronco. A bucker like no one's ever seen.”