I got directions to the nearest precinct station, an old brownstone building with arched and shadeless windows.
The inside of the building was similar to that of a thousand other precinct houses, caged booking counter, interrogation cubicles, several steel-gray desks supporting typewriters, wire baskets and telephones. From a receiver somewhere, the ever-present crackling voices of a dispatcher and the answering cars read like a litany. Familiarity with this scene was a part of me.
At the desk a sergeant was talking to a plainclothesman. I walked over and identified myself as a private investigator, bringing about momentary interest, then polite boredom.
As I told my story, I could see that Sergeant Hartenstein was my main obstacle. He refused to believe that any matter was urgent or actionable without predetermination of every insignificant fact. He was a ruddy-faced, gray-haired man with a perfectly trimmed mustache, a slow and correct thinker. I was reminded of Sergeant Avery, in Layton.
'You say they're an insurance company?' Hartenstein asked, rolling a broken-clipped ball-point between sausage fingers.
'They say that,' I told him.
His blue eyes shifted to the right and looked past me at a tall, broad-shouldered man in a lieutenant's uniform. The man had straight black hair, watery, sensitive dark eyes and an oversized nose that hadn't been set after a break.
Sergeant Hartenstein looked relieved, his facial muscles noticeably relaxing. 'Tell your story to Lieutenant Morri,' he said.
I did.
'That's beyond our jurisdiction,' the lieutenant said, looking inscrutable and scratching the side of his neck.
'I figured that. Don't you have a cooperative arrangement with these other departments?'
'Sure, under certain circumstances, or if they request it.'
'Who's your superior?' I asked him.
The lieutenant didn't care for the question, but he gave me the name and phone number of a captain.
I asked if I could use the phone, and they pointed to a black wall phone near the interrogation cubicles. On the gray-painted wall around the phone were penciled dozens of phone numbers, most of which probably belonged to bondsmen or lawyers.
Lieutenant Morri seemed worried, but he didn't have to be. Instead of phoning the captain, I called Dale Car Ion.
The situation enraged Carlon. He said he wasn't sure what he could do, but that he'd do something. Money speaks louder than words and usually has the final say. But we were a long way from Layton. When I hung up, I mentally gave Carlon a slightly better than even chance of being able to make things happen.
One thing Carlon definitely hadn't made happen was the arrival of the press. But nobody's flawless. The press was with us at Devon Acres, equipped with cameras, recorders and mobile TV unit vans.
Lights still glowed in the windows of the house of the Gratuity meeting, as they did in the windows of the other completed houses scattered about the graded development. The night seemed darker, and I tried to stay out of the way while the operation took form.
I remembered when, years ago, my brother had sold life insurance and I'd helped him work on his sales approach. The company he sold for had used, on tough customers, a tactic they called 'the hard sell death knell.' 'If tomorrow you die…' was the salesman's opening line of the horror story. Gratuity Insurance had assumed control of the 'if' of that opening line.
Within minutes, exits from Devon Acres were blocked, and men were stationed in the wooded area to cut off a retreat in that direction.
Several unmarked cars drove up slowly to park around the house, then four patrol cars rushed to block the driveway and park in strategic positions along the street. I saw several dark shadows move swiftly to the rear of the house. Car doors swung open, figures crouched, and I saw the thick barrels of riot guns. Police from three departments were ready for a shootout if necessary.
Cued by a radio command, dozens of spotlights popped into brilliance and were trained on the sprawling ranch house, giving it the unnaturally bright, unshadowed look of a movie set.
The law had provided the lights, the press the cameras. Whether or not there would be action depended on Jerry Congram.
The major who was in command asked, in a polite but professionally firm voice, for the occupants of the house to come out unarmed. He then explained to them that they had no choice. But for the lights that shone in the windows and the cars lining the driveway, he might have been talking to an empty house. Beside me a man braced on a patrol car fender kept a portable TV camera aimed at the spotlighted house while he murmured something I couldn't understand under his breath.
The major with the bullhorn repeated his instructions.
Around me there was talk of tear gas, of high-density firepower.
Then the front door opened, and Congram led them out.
There were ten of them-six men and four women- all walking with hands raised to shoulder height, squinting at the brightness concentrated on them. Some of them appeared frightened, some baffled. Con-gram looked like a man whose worst suspicions had been confirmed. His expression was resigned, enduring, distantly amused.
As the line of Gratuity employees reached the police, there were flurries of motion and the clamping on of handcuffs. Several armed patrolmen rushed into the house through the front door, seeking more prisoners. Everyone around me began to close in on the now-diffuse scene.
The press sensed right away that Congram was the leader; he had that about him. He was leaning against the door of a police car, his wrists handcuffed behind him. I heard him patiently, even condescendingly, explaining to a reporter that a man is guilty only if established as such in a court of law.
'You maintain your innocence?' the reporter asked.
Congram addressed his answer to the half-dozen microphones thrust at him. 'Of course. I'm as innocent as any of you. The only wrongdoing one can commit is the mistake that leads to his conviction and labels what actions he's taken as unethical or immoral. Until that conviction, no wrong act has really been committed. In the truest sense, the crime is in being caught. You all know that.'
They acted as if they agreed with him.
'Innocent until proved guilty is the basis of our society…' he began, but his lecture was interrupted by the arrival of the police van to transport the Gratuity employees to holdover cells. They cooperated with the police in brisk, businesslike fashion so that the van was loaded in less than a minute. Congram was the last inside, and he nodded pleasantly to the officer holding the door open and climbed into the van without hesitation. One of the reporters yelled something about another Manson cult, but Congram ignored him, sat down and seemed to order the officer to close the van doors.
In a way I had to admire Congram, which was what made him dangerous. He was the ultimate and inevitable extension of the system itself and, though he would deny it, the product of compromise.
One after another, engines roared to life around me, as if at the beginning of a race. I started walking to where my own car was parked. It was time to return to Alison's apartment.
'How do you figure in this?' someone asked me.
I pretended not to have heard the question and walked on, unsure of the answer.
26
The day after Gratuity's unexpected 'liquidation' Carlon arrived in Chicago with a battery of anonymous- looking lawyers. I talked to some of them, filling them in on what the police might have missed telling them, and found them to be sharp, cold individuals. They pondered legal angles that sounded ridiculous until they discussed them so seriously that they became serious.
