Mr. Hubert. It was of course concerning the availability of your armored trucks?
Mr. Fleming. Chief Batchelor asked if I had been the person, or rather if I were the person who had contacted him with reference to Armored Motor Service, and I stated I had. And he said, “We would like to borrow a truck from you people for the purpose of transporting this prisoner.”
Mr. Hubert. Did you tell him that the truck would be available?
Mr. Fleming. I told him that the truck, we would be very happy to oblige, but that it would take me sometime to make it available, because I had the problem of determining who had keys and how we could get it.
Mr. Hubert. Did you indicate to him how long it would be before the truck would be available?
Mr. Fleming. No; I did not.
Mr. Hubert. How did you leave the matter then with him on that occasion?
Mr. Fleming. I told him that I would get started immediately to locate the people who had the keys, and parenthetically I might explain that for security reasons the same person doesn’t have the keys all the time. And I think neither the manager nor the assistant manager had it. In other words, to save time, I told Chief Batchelor we had several sizes of trucks, and asked that he take the measurements of the door and have them ready so that I could call him when I arrived at the terminal, to determine what size truck we should bring to transport the prisoner. And I told him I would call him as soon as I learned how soon we could be there.
Mr. Hubert. What did you do next?
Mr. Fleming. I then attempted to call Mr. Hall by telephone, and Mr. Paul Leonard, who is our operations manager for Dallas, by telephone. Neither was in. Then I called Mr. Tom Mastin, Jr., president of Armored Motor Service in Fort Worth, explained the commitment that I had made, and asked if he had any suggestion as to whom I might call to find out who had the keys. He suggested that Mr. Tom James, who is vice president of Armored Motor Service in semiretirement, lived next door to the church that Mr. Hall and Mr. James attended, and suggested that I call Mr. James to get Mr. Hall personally and proceed from there, which I subsequently did.