Seven Silent Men (50 page)

Brew sat on the corner of the desk. “As long as I was down here I decided to search the mess and take a look at Cowboy Carlson's autopsy report too. The top folder you have is Cowboy's. It shows he was killed like we have it at our office. Shot to death four or five days after the robbery, weighted down and dumped into the Mississippi. He floated to the surface about two weeks later right off of Prairie Port's municipal pier. It's the name on the second folder I gave you that started ringing far-off bells … Teddy Anglaterra. I thumbed past his file a couple of times looking for the ones on Sam and Cowboy before remembering who he was. Anglaterra's autopsy report shows the Mississippi River was a pretty crowded place about the time of the robbery. Not only did Sam Hammond jump to his death from Warbonnet Ridge and float down to Cape Girardeau, not only did Cowboy Carlson get weighted and sunk, but Teddy Anglaterra's corpse drifted onto South Beach at Prairie Port on Tuesday morning, August twenty-fourth … was found just about the time J. Edgar Hoover was on television announcing that thirty-one million dollars was taken from Mormon State.

“The M.E.'s report says Teddy Anglaterra was the victim of a pretty brutal beating and stabbing. The actual cause of death was a stab wound in the heart. He was dumped into the river almost immediately after he died. According to the M.E. report he was killed between noon on August nineteenth and noon on August twentieth.

“You much of a statistics buff, Billy? I am. Know how many corpses, on the average, are found in the river here at Prairie Port? Three a year. Two of those bodies have died of natural or accidental causes; the third, under suspicious circumstances … suspicious circumstances being a catchall phrase which includes murder and suicide. But in a ten-day spread back in August of this year, from the eve of the robbery to the middle of the next week, the river coughs up one suicide, which floats on downstream, and two murders. That triples the year's quota on suspicious deaths. There's also a fourth body found at Prairie Port during this period that I haven't mentioned. A woman. A mental patient who fell into the river pretty far upstream and drowned the day before the robbery. She alone accounts for fifty percent of the year's allotment in natural or accidental deaths. But it wasn't statistical probability that made me suspicious of Teddy.”

Brew was back behind the desk again. “You're the man with the flytrap memory, Billy. Who is Teddy Anglaterra?”

“The guy who caused a to-do between the eleventh and twelfth floors, isn't he? The guy whose name was on some list?”

“That's him.”

Yates recalled more. “Night watchman, wasn't it? He'd come down from Illinois to apply for a watchman's job at Mormon State, but never showed up. There was some flak about who should be investigating him, our office or the twelfth floor. The twelfth floor did it without authority … without telling us.”

“Ever see their report on him?”

Yates shook his head.

“That's what I went back to our office to get. Here it is. Several agents traveled to his hometown, Sparta, Illinois, after the robbery. Teddy wasn't to be found. Most of his neighbors weren't concerned. Teddy had the reputation of being a drunk who went off on long toots. Teddy's nephew said the same thing.” Two typewritten pages were displayed. “Here's the interview with the nephew done in Sparta on September fourth. He says his uncle came to Mormon State looking for a job and probably got drunk and kept on going. The nephew's name in the agent's report is the same as the one in the coroner report you're holding, the nephew who came to claim the body, Fred Anglaterra. When I was back at our office a few minutes ago I called the Sparta police. They confirmed there was only one Fred Anglaterra in Sparta, and that his uncle is Teddy. But the police were never aware Teddy was missing or murdered. All that their records show is that Teddy was buried in Prairie Port. That's what's so interesting. The morgue here records Teddy's body being discovered on Tuesday, August twenty-fourth. As a John Doe. His fingerprints were sent out on August twenty-fifth. His next of kin, nephew Fred, was notified on August twenty-sixth, arrived and made positive identification of Teddy. The body is released to Fred, and we can presume he accompanied it back to Sparta, where on August twenty-seventh it was buried. The only thing is, eight days later an agent interviewed Fred, and Fred doesn't say Teddy is dead. He says Teddy is probably off on a drunk somewhere.”

Yates took the two-page interview.

“Our reports give no indication Teddy died,” Brew went on. “In fact, the file on Teddy ends with that last interview done with his nephew on September fourth. That's odd by itself, but it isn't the point. When I got back here and was waiting for you, an obvious thing finally hit me. I'd been reviewing statistical improbability of four corpses appearing in the river in a short period of time without asking the most logical question of all … why had one of those corpses, Sam Hammond's, been washed down to Cape Girardeau and the other corpses stayed here? Sam Hammond was the key. You listening, Billy?”

“Sorry. What was that?” Yates tried to refocus on Brew.

“I wanted to know why Sam Hammond's body hadn't washed up at Prairie Port like Cowboy Carlson's, Teddy Anglaterra's and the woman mental patient's.”

“He was caught in the Treachery,” Yates said. “How else could he have gotten down to Cape Girardeau that same night?”

“Exactly, he had been caught in the Treachery, while the woman who died before him hadn't and the men who died after him hadn't. We know approximately when and where the woman mental patient drifted, and we know it took her approximately one day to get from there to where the Treachery begins north of Prairie Port. By the time she reached here the Treachery had stopped running for the month. If the Treachery was running she would have been washed down to Cape Girardeau like Sam. The same would have been true of Cowboy's and Teddy Anglaterra's bodies. And that's the point, Billy. We know the Treachery was running until about one
A
.
M
. Saturday morning, August twenty-first. We know that Teddy Anglaterra was in Prairie Port, was in the security employment agency between nine and eleven Friday morning, August twentieth, to make an appointment for an interview at the bank later that day, an appointment he never kept. We know from the autopsy report he was dead and thrown in the water by noon that same day. But thrown in the water where? If he had been thrown in the Mississippi River here at Prairie Port after leaving the employment agency, he would have been swept on down to Cape. Girardeau by the Treachery. The Treachery was still running, ran until one the next morning. But Teddy's body didn't float into Prairie Port until Tuesday morning, August twenty-fourth. Where had he been since leaving the agency four days before? And why?”

Brew lowered his head, rubbed his temples. “Of course, this is random speculation. Maybe there's a perfectly logical explanation that—” He looked up to see Yates hurrying out the door. “What's the matter?”

Yates hardly heard. He had, at long last, found something he'd been searching so long for, the reason for the déjà vu, for the feeling he had experienced Mormon State before.

“Yates, what in Christ's name is happening?” Brew stood at the door watching Billy high-step away. “Yates?”

“Cover for me, Brew. I should be back tomorrow. Cover for me.”

… And Billy Yates drove through the night and morning and afternoon and by early evening was in Maryland and nearing his destination.

TWENTY-ONE

Heeled-high and taffetaed she stood adrift looking out over a dim, distant world of demi-court and dusty pomp. A world of silent bugle, abandoned spear and waiting steed. A lost laughter and unstepped quadrille. A place of civility and form. Of familiarity. Privilege. Youth. Her chin jutted high, for she was Patricia Trask Sproul Ardmore Amory, sired by the merchant barons of Baltimore, twice wed into the British peerage, twice a countess but never a duchess. Her eyes were clear, her vision partial to a memory of parasols and esplanade. Nothing much had happened. Time was simply passing.

“Mister Yates, how nice of you to drop in without calling.” She motioned away the butler who had admitted him to the somber Virginia mansion built by her great-great-grandfather. “Are you planning to stay for dinner?”

“Only to talk to your husband and leave,” Yates assured her. “I'm sorry I didn't call in advance.”

“Barrett is napping. Do amuse yourself until he comes down.” She withdrew, saying, “I'll set another place for dinner.”

Billy Yates rather liked Lady Pat, as his classmates at the FBI's training academy used to call her. He knew the feelings were not mutual, which was all right with him. After all, how chummy does a future agent want to be with J. Edgar Hoover's alleged paramour?

If the most fanciful of rumors were to be believed, Pat was the fabled Carmella Hebbelman, who long ago during Prohibition danced and drank the night away with Edgar in Zion, Illinois.

When saner heads and logic prevailed, a confirmable story told how Lady Pat and Hoover were first introduced in 1942. World War II was in full rage, and Patricia had returned to America with her second titled British husband, the Earl of Ardmore. Ardmore, who was in England's secret service, had come to this country to confer with OSS chief William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan on the formation of Anglo-U.S. training programs for espionage operatives. Ardmore had created several such curriculums for Britain. Among the aides accompanying him and his wife was Patricia's cousin Orin G. Trask. Trask, a thirty-year-old scholar with a penchant for criminology, was in London researching a book on Scotland Yard when war with Germany broke out. He stayed on and joined his cousin-in-law's unit. Development of training programs for espionage whetted Trask's appetite for similar programs in crime fighting. Trask, as early as 1941, envisioned the FBI transcending Scotland Yard as the dominant post-war law-enforcement entity … saw a great university of criminology being established by the Bureau, a university of his design.

When the Earl of Ardmore and Pat were asked to a small dinner party that J. Edgar Hoover was to attend, Trask wangled an invitation and cornered Hoover. The FBI Director was intrigued by what the young American had to say. He was more taken by Trask's stately cousin Patricia. Patricia had been bred to believe in men. She avidly believed in cousin Orin and his work. She believed in Ardmore and his work. The same was immediately true for J. Edgar Hoover. That was the beginning.

How often and how surreptitiously Lady Pat and Edgar met during the war is problematic. It couldn't have been often. She was back in England for the duration, made only two quick junkets to America, both with her husband. J. Edgar Hoover was not known to have gone to England. But he did write, ostensibly to Orin Trask. Trask's letters back to Hoover contained sealed messages from Pat.

A year and five months after peace was declared, the earl died. Patricia, Countess of Ardmore, was devastated. Notions she had not loved Ardmore were discredited. Suspicion grew as to how much control her cousin Orin Trask wielded over her.

Since earliest childhood, independent, iron-minded Pat had always succumbed to Orin's will. Though he was a year her junior, he had always acted as his cousin's protector. She, on many occasions, acted as his. Rarely had Pat and Orin exchanged confidences. They were from private, nonconfiding stock. The idea that there had been any carnal relationship between them was farfetched. They were not a passionate or incestuous lot, the Trasks. Trask women, even before the great fortune had been amassed, married for convenience. Remained married and loyal and caring. Ruthless in defense of their own. Indefatigable in maintaining decorum. Which was why many friends doubted her relationship with Edgar ever ended in bed. A few insisted it had … that there was no way it could be avoided, since Orin wanted it that way.

It had fallen to Orin to shake Pat free of her protracted grief and mourning. He had convinced her to abandon England and return to the family home in Virginia. To get out and be with people again. To reestablish her friendship with J. Edgar Hoover. Critics saw the steering of Pat back toward Edgar as Trask's most self-serving manipulation of his titled cousin.

J. Edgar, from their first meeting in 1942, had been ambivalent toward Orin Trask. He, assessed the young Virginia plutocrat as being at once brilliant, erratic, ambitious and merciless. Opportunistically, for Edgar, there was much to be gained by an alliance with Orin. The Trask family in and of itself was respected and wealthy and politically potent on Capitol Hill and throughout the southeastern seaboard. Orin's avowed dedication to creating for the FBI a university-level training academy bearing Hoover's name was appealing. Also to be considered was Orin's cousin Pat, the Countess of Ardmore.

In the wake of Hitler's surrender, Edgar Hoover became increasingly disaffected with Orin, who was in Germany studying the structure and substance of Nazi police organizations. Trask was forever making public statements on his plans for the FBI Academy as well as shooting off unsolicited reports to Hoover. Twice he woke the Director with transatlantic phone calls, chitchat calls having no relevance. By late 1947 reports had filtered back to Hoover that Orin was not only consorting with known Nazis under the guise of research but was protecting several notorious Gestapo men, as well as an SD Ausland aide to Walter Schellenberg … that he might even be planning to smuggle one of them into the U.S. Edgar Hoover determined to sever his relationship with Trask. Patricia returned in time to dissuade him.

Patricia came home to America and the Trask family estate, Three Oaks, in early 1948. It was there at Three Oaks where Edgar went to lunch with her. She related, as best she could, the tragic loss of her husband. But enough of me. What of you, Edgar? How goes it?