Seven Silent Men (31 page)

Cole turned to Bass. “Your friends here know about the Altmont?”

Bass told Jessup and Daughter, “The Altmont lobby reputedly is a meeting place for homosexuals.”

“No maybe 'bout it,” Cole said. “Been clerking all my life, and I know queer sissy boys when I see 'em. Know all about 'em. The Altmont lobby's queer sissy boy. I seen young boys go up to his room too, I didn't tell you that afore,” Cole told Bass. “Three times, late at night, young boys went up to his room. I stopped the first one and asked him where he thought he was going. We're licit here. The young boy said he was picking up a delivery. I can't call Mister Jahad 'cause he don't want phones ringing. I send the boy up and sure enough he comes down soon with a package. A big package wrapped in brown paper and tied with rope. Mister Jahad comes down right after mad as mean hell. He says he don't want me interfering with his messenger boy or he'll check out. A night or two later another young boy comes in and goes up to his room. I know 'cause I snuck behind him seeing where he went. It was three-oh-two, Mister Jahad's room. He come down quick too, that boy, and carrying the same kind of big package as the first boy. The third boy, he didn't come down that fast. The third boy went up to Mister Jahad's room a couple of nights later. Went up real late and stayed long. That's the only night Mister Jahad ever made a phone call. Called the Firestone Motel and asked if somebody or other had registered. I missed the name 'cause another call came in on the board and I had to switch off a minute to take it. When I got back to listening, Mister Jahad was saying, ‘You must have a reservation for him.' Somebody at the Firestone said back they absolutely didn't have a reservation or anyone registered. But no name I heard was mentioned. Later the boy comes down. He didn't have no package with him. Maybe an hour after that, just before daybreak, Mr. Jahad says he's going to check out. I bring the five bags down to his car, a station wagon. The bags are lighter now. He pays his bill in cash. He's got a fistful of twenties and fifties thick as ever I saw that he's paying with. I don't get no tip again either. Not one thin dime.”

“Do you have any of that money?” Jez asked.

“All money here gets deposited the next morning,” Cole said.

“And the money got deposited the next morning? In a bank?”

“It did,” answered Cole.

“Was the money old or new? Old, used bills or newer bills?”

“Old and used.”

“How old and used?”

“Some was in such bad shape they was torn or pasty-feeling. I remember thinking this was peculiar.”

“How many days ago was it that Mister Jahad checked out?”

“Five.”

“How long was he at the hotel before checking out?”

“Ten days.”

“You said you couldn't recognize Mister Jahad all that well from the photograph, is that correct, Mister Cole?”

“The face shape is the same,” Cole said. “And the hairline and swarthiness. The man was Arab-like 'cept the blondishness. His hair is blondish.”

“Do you have his registration card?”

“It's out at the desk. I know what it reads, it reads A. G. Jahad, Beirut, Lebanon.”

“Was he foreign-sounding?” asked Jessup.

“Hell, no. Spoke like he was from Kansas.”

“Can you describe him physically?”

“Just like the other gent described him to me.” Cole indicated Bass. “Five foot eight, a hundred fifty or sixty, darkish skin, blondish, light eyes and maybe forty-five years old.”

The call from Baton Rouge to Prairie Port was placed exactly at 4
P
.
M
. Strom Sunstrom and Cub Hennessy were on the receiving end. Jessup did the Baton Rouge talking with Yates and Brewmeister listening in.

Attention centered on the interview Jez had conducted with A. L. Sonny Cole one hour and ten minutes earlier at the Lafayette Inn. If A. G. Jahad was indeed Bicki “Little Haifa” Hale, and their descriptions certainly seemed to match, then the five suitcases carried up to the room might very well have contained money stolen from the Mormon State vault. Old, worn currency like that used to pay the hotel bill. The two bulky packages carried from room 302 by the first two young men could have been shares of stolen funds being distributed to gang members waiting at different locations in Baton Rouge. Following this scenario further, they concluded the lobby of the Altmont Hotel must have been the contact point between each robber and the gang's paymaster, Little Haifa Hale.… that on two different occasions Hale had gone and sat in the known homosexual pickup spot and rendezvoused with two different robbers, worked out times and addresses for money delivery, dispatched the young men with paper-wrapped bundles of loot … that a foul-up had occurred the last night of Bicki “Little Haifa's” stay when a messenger boy was waiting to make a delivery but someone hadn't contacted Bicki as planned. Someone who was supposed to have checked into the Firestone Motel. Was supposed to have been there a day before Mule Corkel actually did check into the Firestone. Mule possibly was the intended recipient of the delivery that was never made.

Jez, Strom and Cub concluded that Sam Hammond's widow, Natalie, and his mother, Ida, may both have been accurate in their differing recollections as to which weekend in Baton Rouge the distribution of funds was to be made. Somehow, Jez and Strom and Cub reasoned, a failure in communications or a misunderstanding had resulted in Bicki “Little Haifa” and some of the gang arriving in Baton Rouge and transferring loot before the arrival of Mule Corkel, River Rat Ragotsy and Wiggles Loftus. If Jahad was Bicki, he had been gone from Baton Rouge a full half day when Mule checked into the Firestone.

Such presumptions could explain why Mule Corkel had waited in the Altmont Hotel lobby at the same time on four consecutive afternoons for a half hour: to meet with Bicki “Little Haifa” Hale and arrange for the delivery of his share of the stolen money. Wiggles Loftus and River Rat Ragotsy might be here for the same purpose.

“What do we do when Wiggles, Mule and Ragotsy find out there isn't going to be a payday?” Jessup asked Strom long distance. “When they realize Bicki Hale has left town?”

“Maybe the arrangements are for Bicki to return at a specified time if the first rendezvous is missed,” Strom suggested. “Maybe he'll be back.”

“Carrying five large suitcases?” Jessup wondered aloud. “That doesn't seem too smart or typical, not if Bicki is behaving as cautiously as the night clerk suggests.”

“What has our star crystal-ball gazer to say?” Strom asked. “Yates, how does this look to you?”

Yates, on an extension line in the room adjoining Jessup's, thought for a moment. ‘We don't know if Jahad is Bicki Hale. If he isn't, Ida Hammond might be right and the payoff weekend is this weekend. Bicki and the others could be arriving any time now. There's another possibility. It could be that Bicki ran out on some of the gang without paying them. That Mule, Wiggles and Ragotsy are three of the men who didn't get paid and they've come here looking for Bicki. I have a feeling Mule isn't here in the best of humors.”

Strom, always intrigued by Yates's circuitous logic, asked, “How do you reconcile both Natalie and Ida saying Baton Rouge was the payday place, and Natalie, in particular, telling you her husband was to be away from home several weeks?”

Yates answered, “Ida never said Baton Rouge was the payday location. Ida merely said she was coming here to try to find Bicki before he left. Ida never really admitted a crime came down, only that the men she named were around her house before the theft.”

“Yates, are you saying you don't think this gang is the thieves?” Strom spoke with concern.

“I think they're the ones, Strom,” Billy Yates said. “I'm only dealing with Ida and Natalie's statements. Ida could have been coming down here to find Bicki before he left for South America. Maybe she wanted to go to South America with him. I feel it's likely that Natalie, or Sam, got the Baton Rouge end of the operation a bit muddled in their minds. Natalie said Sam told her some of the men would be going to South America. What if Baton Rouge was merely the rendezvous point for Sam going to South America? For getting tickets and passports and all that? Maybe the distribution of stolen money took place somewhere else before this? Maybe Mule and Ragotsy and Wiggles were unhappy with their share. Maybe they got completely cut out. Mule and Ragotsy and Wiggles are sort of the Prairie Port clique, the others have to be old friends of Bicki. Bicki brought the others in. Maybe Bicki and his old friends short-sheeted the Prairie Port crooks. Maybe that's why the Prairie Portians, Mule, River Rat Ragotsy and Wiggles, are here, to get even, or get their money before Bicki takes off to South America.”

“How do you come up with these ideas, Yates?” Strom asked.

“You asked for the possibilities as I saw them,” Yates said. “This is what I saw.”

“What happens,” Brewmeister asked, “if Bicki Hale doesn't show up in Baton Rouge? Shall we go on surveilling Mule, Ragotsy and Wiggles if they leave town? Or should we pick them up?”

“I'm not sure,” Strom said. “We don't have that good a case against them yet. If we surveille and they lead us to the others, we'll be in a far stronger position, convictionwise. And I'd love to have some of that stolen money back.”

Cub reminded everyone, “Mr. Hoover's a fanatic about recovering stolen money.”

“How effective is the surveillance, if we had to go further?” Strom asked.

“Top grade, so far,” Jez told him. “They have forty men on the street right now, stake-outs at three hotels, two mobile units operative and good communications. I understand they've more than enough vehicles ready if we have to go interstate, and they work well with the Louisiana troopers. Louisiana's the best there is on highway tails.”

“Interstate spreads you thin,” Cub observed, “particularly if they take you in three different directions.”

Jessup said, “It might be a good idea to get warrants out on the guys here, just in case. If something breaks, we're in a position to pick them up without delay—”

“Yes, I'll do that,” Strom agreed. “And let's try to get that Flying Hamster Squad off its butt. We need identifiable photographs of Bicki Hale. Let's make positive identification from that hotel clerk. I'll work on Corticun, you pressure Daughter.”

Kirkwood came into the office, whispered into Jessup's ear.

“We got to go, Strom,” Jessup said. “They're on the move. All three of them. Mule, Wiggles and Rat Ragotsy. Each one is leaving his own hotel.”

Wiggles, his right leg slapping out sideways, passed the wrought-iron fence of the Old Capitol Building. Rat Ragotsy went directly to the playground and sat on a bench. Mule followed a route his surveillers had never seen him take before, turned left from his hotel onto a cyprus-shaded avenue leading down to the river. Rat Ragotsy got up and left the playground.

Yates and Brew, in a dented, unmarked 1968 panel truck following Wiggles, heard over the cab radio that Mule had gotten into a taxi … minutes later learned the taxi had stopped to pick up Ragotsy … shortly after that were told the two suspects had gotten out and entered the city zoo, a hundred-and-forty-acre tract of forest and walkways and animals where surveillance would be doubly difficult.

The driver of the panel truck told Yates and Brew it looked as if Wiggles might also be heading for the zoo. The prediction came true. Wiggles, a quarter of an hour later, limped into a narrow zoo path leading into a thick growth of trees and disappeared.

Walkie-talkie in hand, surveillers deployed along the zoo's perimeter, kept in touch with one another, dared not penetrate too deep inside the compound out of fear they'd be seen.

Yates and Brew became restive and wandered into a zoo refreshment stand. Then, munching sandwiches and sipping sodas, they meandered up a slight rise, sat down on the grass and surveyed the surrounding terrain as best they could … on a visible stretch of curving lagoon-side walkway saw Wiggles and Mule. Wiggles limping into view from the left, Mule emerging from the trees to the right, with neither one knowing the other was there because of dense shrubbery in the nook of the bending path. They moved closer to one another. Saw one another. Stopped as if surprised by the sight. Wiggles held out his arms, seemingly to embrace a long-lost comrade. Mule snatched a thick stick from the undergrowth and, hand on high and face lowered, charged Wiggles. Smashed into him headfirst. Knocked Wiggles down onto the path and began beating him with the stick and kicking him and shouting at him. Jumped onto Wiggles and tried to thumb his eyes out. Wiggles, thrashing his head from side to side to avert the gouging, twisted sharply and heaved and dislodged Mule and leapt back up and tried to explain something … and was charged again. Tumbled to the ground again with Mule on his chest shouting and pummeling. Wiggles fought back, punched and rolled with Mule. Rolled both of them into the waters of the shallow lagoon.… found a rock and began pounding Mule in the face with it.

Rat Ragotsy came along the path from the right, saw the battle, started running to them shouting they should stop. Ragotsy reined to a halt yards short of the combat. Pointed off to the left. Cupped his hand beside his mouth shouting at them. Ran off as a mopedriding zoo ranger appeared on the arching path to the left.

Speaking into his walkie-talkie, the ranger debiked, went down to water's edge and tried to separate Mule and Wiggles. Wiggles smashed the ranger in the forehead with the rock. Mule clubbed the ranger with his stick, kicked Wiggles in the chest and knocked him back into the water, ran up to the path and straddled the idling moped and rode off to the right. Wiggles scrambled up the path and directly into the woods behind. A second moped ranger came in from the left. Dismounting, he rushed to the aid of his bloody and motionless comrade, raised the walkie-talkie and spoke into it.