Seven Silent Men (54 page)

The technicians deduced that the radio-alert aspects of the system were disrupted by two power shortages at approximately 8
P
.
M
. and 8:12
P
.
M
. Friday, August 20. These drainages temporarily neutralized the radio transmission capabilities and also altered the wave length over which communications were to be sent. The neutralization was why no alert occurred when the base of the vault was bored into by a high-speed drill. Hours later the vault was exploded open and the radio aspect did begin emanating a message, but over the wrong channel at the wrong frequency. Instead of alerting the police via cable when no response was received from the security service in thirty seconds, the Thermex seemed to have waited fifteen to twenty minutes. By this time the cable to the police headquarters communications room had been washed away by the severe tunnel flooding. Most every cable of every security operation in the city was washed away or disrupted by that flooding. When the cable was finally restored early Sunday morning, August 22, the Thermex's coded message was received. The message was somewhat inaccurate, stating as it did that the armed robbery was still in progress.

Otto Pinkny was summoned back before the grand jury and asked the question that had previously been avoided: What, if anything, had the robbery gang done to the bank's alarm system?

“Lots was done,” Otto Pinkny had been only too happy to testify. “What they did was follow the installation man home. The installation man from the Thermex company was putting in the alarms, and one of the Latinos followed him home and stole all the plans out of his truck. They made copies of the plans and put the originals back in the truck where they found them. See what I mean? The installation man never knew nothing was wrong. Otto Pinkny takes the copies to someone who knows something about it in Chicago. Otto Pinkny learns the Thermex has two ways of asking for help, radioing for it and phoning in. Radioing is what counts. So Otto Pinkny jams up the Thermex by cutting off the electricity to it. That's one of the reasons Otto Pinkny had that second generator turned on under Warbonnet Ridge when he did. It created a power shortage. Power shortages fuck up Thermexes.”

“I'm looking for Mister Fred A. Anglaterra.”

“Why?” The tall, scrawny young man standing at the porch doorway of the elm-shaded house in Sparta, Illinois, was hollow-cheeked and prematurely bald.

“My name's Martin Brewmeister, FBI.” Brew's credentials flipped open and shut.

“That still don't answer what you want with Fred.”

“I'd like to ask him some questions.”

“About what?”

“You Fred?”

“Maybe.”

“I want to know about your uncle, Teddy Anglaterra.”

“Jesus Christ, can't you guys forget about him!”

“Then you are Fred.”

“You knew that all the time. Whatcha want now?”

“Can we go inside?”

“No way.”

“What about over there?” Brew indicated several neatly painted white wicker chairs down the porch.

“You wanna talk, we'll go out behind the house where no one can see. How much embarrassment you after causing a family anyway?” Fred led Brew into the backyard, sat opposite him at a wood-plank picnic table. “This gonna take long?”

“I just want to review a few points about your interview with the FBI.”

“Which one?”

“There were more than one?”

“Whatcha pulling? I talked to you guys lotsa times, you know that.”

Brew was well aware the index cards for the twelfth floor showed Fred Anglaterra having been talked to only once, September 4. “Let's begin with the interview of September fourth. It was conducted here at your home, if I'm not mistaken.”

“They were all conducted here, all three of them. I still don't know which one September fourth was.”

“The one where you were visited by special agent Vance Daughter.”

“That's the last one. Daughter was here with Troxel.”

“Two agents?” The filed report on the interview had only Daughter's name on it, did not mention another agent being present.

“All three times. Troxel was here all three times. Twice with some guy who didn't say a word and once with Daughter, who did the talking.”

“In that last interview of September fourth, you were asked if you knew where Teddy Anglaterra was. Do you remember what you answered?”

“I don't even remember being asked that, let alone what I answered.”

“Then you don't recall your answer?”

“I just told you that.”

“When asked that question, you said you didn't know his whereabouts.”

“If that's what I said, that's what I said.”

“How could it be?”

“How could what be?”

“How could you answer that, say that you didn't know where he was, when your uncle Teddy was buried here in Sparta a few days earlier?”

“You saying I'm lying?”

“I'd just like to know why you gave that answer.”

“I gave it 'cause I didn't know where the hell he was. If I'da known, I woulda said.”

“You didn't know he was dead?”

“That's right.”

“You didn't know he was buried right here in Sparta?”

“I told you, no! I didn't find out till a week later. Get it through your head, I don't give a shit for my uncle. He's been a disgrace to us all his life. I make a practice of
not knowing
about him. Living or dead, he's no difference to me.”

“If he's no difference, why did you go to Prairie Port and claim his body on August twenty-seventh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Did you or did you not go to Prairie Port on August twenty-seventh?”

“Prairie Port, Missouri?”

“On August twenty-seventh.”

“Hell, no, not then or ever! I've not been over Prairie Port way in ten years. Mister, I think you got me confused with someone else.”

“… Tell me about your first two meetings with the FBI. With … who did you say the agents were?”

“Alex Troxel, that's what I wrote down,” Fred said. “I never got the other one's name. Don't even remember if it was given. They came knocking on my door like you did. They told me that my uncle Teddy's got himself in some kind of trouble. I tell them Teddy is a no-nothing rummy drunk who's only brung disgrace to the family and whatever he's done ain't no business of me or mine. They say if that's the case, would I mind giving them approval to help Teddy out as best they can. I tell them, sure. They go away and when they come back a few days later they say they've taken care of Teddy's trouble and would I mind signing one or two forms for them, just to clear the legal loophole of what they did. They being the FBI, I didn't look at the papers too close. One said somethin' about Teddy's possessions, the other was giving permission to let Teddy travel somewhere. When I found out later Teddy died and had been brought back to Sparta and buried late at night with nobody knowing, I was satisfied. Only I kinda wished they could have buried him somewhere else.”

“You think the FBI buried him?”

“Who the hell else knew where he was?”

“Did you learn how he had died?” Brew asked.

“Guess he was killed somehow.”

“That doesn't surprise you?”

“That it didn't happen sooner is what's surprising. Teddy was always getting in terrible fights. Always supposedly going off to find jobs someplace or other but really using it for an excuse to get drunk and knocked down a lot. He had a real nasty mouth when he got drunk, my uncle Teddy.”

“Do you think it possible he went to look for work in Prairie Port and got into a fight and got killed?”

“Anything's possible, only Teddy never went downriver all that much. Never went into Missouri, neither, that much. East Saint Louis in Illinois is where he went mostly. Where he got into most of his trouble.”

“Troxel and the other agent who came here never told you Teddy was dead, is that right?”

“That's right.”

“And the two times they came to see you, Troxel did all the talking?”

“Like I said, I didn't even get the other guy's name. He stayed in the back just listening. And sweating. I remember it was hot as hell and this guy was wearing a heavy dark suit with stripes.”

“On September fourth Troxel comes again, only this time he was with a special agent Daughter.” Brew, of course, knew neither Troxel nor Daughter operated from Prairie Port … even so, Daughter's name was familiar to him. And he did know who the man in the dark suit with pinstripes was.

“That's right, Troxel came with Daughter,” Fred said.

“And where Troxel did the talking the first two times you met with him, this third time only Daughter did the talking.”

“That's right.”

“What did he talk about?”

“He asked questions about Teddy.”

“What sort of questions?”

“Where Teddy was. When I'd seen him last.”

“Didn't this seem odd to you … I mean Troxel had said they were helping Teddy out. He and another agent had you sign certain documents?”

“What I really thought was that Teddy got arrested somewhere and this was all part of what had to be done.”

“Then Daughter's questions did or did not seem odd to you?”

“Didn't seem.”

“Did you tell Daughter that Teddy had gone to Prairie Port looking for a job?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Daughter seems to remember you saying that.”

“He remembered wrong. Like I said, the only places I ever knew of Teddy looking for work was up near East Saint Louis so he could get drunk.”

Alice Maywell Sunstrom examined her new coiffeur one last time in the salon's triptych mirror, carefully brought a silk Hermès scarf on up under it and around her shoulders. She couldn't decide whether to protect the hairdo with the picturesque scarf or not. She decided not and went out into the main arcade of the River Rise Shopping Mall. Alice eyed the recently opened chocolate shop next to Mormon State National Bank and thought of going in and buying Strom the champagne truffles he so liked. Once again she was undecided. The truffles would of course be bad for Strom's diet, but what with the dinner she was preparing, the
canard à l'orange
, Riesling wine and a dessert of rich Russian crème, what difference would it make? She opted to buy instead of the truffles a best-selling novel about demons called
The Exorcist
. Strom truly loved ghost and horror stories, if they were well written.

There was no particular occasion being celebrated that night by the Sunstroms. The meal was meant solely to be a diversion. Alice was concerned with Strom's disaffection over the Otto Pinkny grand jury inquiry. If indictments were handed up, as Strom was certain they would be, she knew he would be despondent. Alice hoped to surprise him with the meal. Force his mind off of this Otto Pinkny. Strom always said she was such a bad cook, and she was. But he was always delighted when she undertook what he called her “culinary adventures.”

The Mall Book Shoppe had sold out
The Exorcist
. Alice bought Strom a copy of Gay Talese's
Honor Thy Father
, and for herself she got
Tracy and Hepburn
by Garson Kanin. She walked around to the parking lot, got into her car and drove carefully to the lot exit. Once on the service road beyond, she felt something cold press at the base of her neck.

“That's a gun you feel, cunt sucker,” a voice from the back seat told her. “Keep driving right onto the highway or I'll end it for you now.”

Alice, in her horror, drove up the ramp and onto the elevated superhighway.

The gun nozzle moved around to the side of her neck and up across her jaw. “Open your mouth.”

She did, and the nozzle was pushed in.

“Suck on it.”

Again she obeyed, sucked on the cold metal. The person in back clambered over the seat and dropped in beside her. Glancing out the side of her eye, she saw it was Mule … the man she'd been terrified might find her … the man she'd seen kill Tall Groucho.

“Suck so you make noise,” he ordered.

She did.

He ripped open her skirt, ripped away the panties beneath. “Don't stop driving. Don't slow down.” He plunged his hand between her legs, spread them … pulled the gun from her mouth and jammed the nozzle up her vagina.

She cried out.

“We get off at Exit Twelve,” he told her. He pulled a second gun from his jacket, prodded open her lips, made her take the nozzle in her mouth again. “I'm letting go of both, and if either one falls out of its hole, you're dead.” He tore open her blouse and brassiere and began fondling her breasts … told her how he was going to rape and sodomize her. Mutilate and kill her if she put up any resistance. Mutilate and kill her just for the fun of it if it struck his fancy.

Tears streaming from her eyes, her teeth and vagina muscles straining to hold metal where it was, she drove off the ramp at Exit 12 and on along an ascending road and up the solitary lane of a vast estate … on up to a large, eave-roofed lodge by the side of a lake.

Mule took out the guns, dragged her from the car by the hair. Dragged her up several steps before hoisting her over his shoulder and carrying her on up through the front door and down a hallway and through a door and dumping her on the carpet and leaving.

Alice lay on the floor heaving hysterically. She realized, slowly, that she wasn't alone. Someone had been there all along. There behind her. She swiveled around. Stared up. J. Edgar Hoover sat in a straight-back chair near the window.

Edgar apologized for Mule's roughness with her but explained the matter at hand was urgent. Alice started to get off the floor. He told her to stay where she was. He chatted on idly for a bit, then wondered aloud what it would have been like if he had chosen to marry, concluded that perhaps his wife would have made him a greater man than he already was. “Just as you, Missus Sunstrom, shall have the chance of making your husband a greater man,” he told Alice. “John Sunstrom is blessed, do you realize that? He carries with him the glory of the FBI. He is fated for great achievement, dear woman. The successful determination of Romor 91 will be his. Will be ours. His name shall be repeated wherever they speak of noble deeds and justice. Nothing must deny him this destiny. You above all must not deter him.”