Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (19) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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By Roger Owens

Tuesday,
February 23, 1915

Joe knew it was time to make a move. They needed money. They sold untaxed bootleg moonshine up and down the coast, and were expanding into the center of the state, but the profits were slim. His side business running call girls and taking protection as a Palm Beach Deputy were over.
    He’d shaved, dressed up, and gone into Palm Beach to see Geneva, who told him she’d got wind of a large deposit at the Stuart Bank and Trust. The cash shipment would arrive on Tuesday, the 22nd, late at night.

    The next morning the gang, in two cars, headed up the Dixie Highway for Stuart, Florida. Joe drove a 1913 Peugeot 153 he’d bought with his takings as the Dapper Bandit, which could approach one hundred miles an hour. With him were Ed, Bob and Frank.

   In a souped-up 1913 Austin 20 they used for bootlegging, stripped down and capable of making eighty, were John, Shorty Lynn, Hanford Mobley, and Kid Lowe.
    Either auto was more than able to outrun the Ford Model T police cars driven by the Palm Beach County Sheriffs, which topped out between sixty and seventy. Joe Ashley and “Handsome” Hanford Mobley would be the getaway drivers. Hanford had yet to engage in a robbery but was a good driver. Joe Ashley was simply God-damned if anyone else was going to drive his beautiful car.

They approached the bank about 12:30 PM, when they calculated most of the Sheriff’s deputies would be eating lunch. Lowe and Lynn went in first, standing in line in their Chicago clothes like any other customers. They might have been salesmen. Bob and Frank came separately, counting on not being recognized, and got in different lines, to avoid detection.
    Ed kept watch outside, smoking and loitering back and forth. Joe was parked on the same side of the street to the left of the front door. Hanford was across the street, parked pointing the other direction. They would split up the minute the robbers hit the doors on the way out and make off in different directions.
    John jumped from the back seat of the Austin and plunged through the door, and his .357 blasted once into the ceiling, sending the customers scattering and screaming. “Get on the floor! Get down or I’ll shoot!”
    They got down, leaving only the robbers standing. Lowe rushed the counter and ordered the tellers to empty the cash drawers.
    John considered; Lowe seemed to be making a real effort to rectify his earlier fuck-up, sticking right with the plan. The Chicago goon wasn’t lacking in backbone, he had to admit that.
    According to plan, Shorty, Kid Lowe, and Frank Ashley took all the cash from the drawers, while John and Bob marched into the manager’s office, to find him cowering under his desk. The man was almost gibbering in fright. Bob dragged him out and set him on his feet, holding him by the collar. He wore a black bespoke suit John figured must have cost a hundred dollars or more, and made him look less like a bank manager and more like a preacher in a fancy church. Episcopalian, maybe. All he lacked was a white clerical collar. He was thin, balding, and bespectacled.

The bank manager shuddered in fear

    John stepped up to him and he thought the poor bastard was going to piss himself. He put a hand on his shoulder, brushing off his suit jacket while the man shuddered in fear.
    “Settle down now,” said John calmly, “nobody’s going to hurt you if you do what we say. Now, you know what we want. Open that safe and let us get what we want, and we’ll go.”
    Gulping, the terrified manager tried shaking his head. “I— I can’t. I don’t have the combination.”
    John was shaking his own head. “Yes, you do. I know you do, and if you don’t,” and he raised his revolver, “I’ll be forced to blow your brains out all over the floor. You wouldn’t want that, now, would you? You have a wife? Kids?”
    Bob was amused; John could be just the politest gentleman when he chose.
    The poor man, shaking in terror, nodded frantically.
    “Then be sensible, and don’t make them a widow and orphans.” John pressed the barrel of the .357 to his forehead.
    The smell of piss wafted from the manager’s pants, a dark stain spreading at his crotch. Bob winced in disgust.
    John did know; Joe had told him the manager most certainly did have the combination. Only John had any idea how Joe knew, as Joe kept his association with Geneva Pitt secret from everyone except John, especially Lugenia, and he knew his Pa wouldn’t steer him wrong.
    His calm assurance convinced the sweating, incontinent manager; he nodded jerkily and led them to the right out his office door and spun the dials on the safe. When the door opened Bob pushed him inside with them. Two heavy bank bags rested on a shelf to the left.
    John loosened the lanyards tying the tops closed through brass eyelets. They were both stuffed with cash, the most cash John had ever seen. He took the manager’s collar from Bob, while Bob, the brawniest of the Ashley boys, grabbed up the bags and headed for the door at a run.
    John shoved the manager to the floor and hightailed it after him. “Let’s go boys, time’s a’wastin!”
    Shorty, Kid and Frank beat John to the door, all carrying bags of cash. Bob was down the street to the left, tossing the safe bags into Joe’s speedster. John, Frank and Lowe beat it across the street, threw their bags on the floorboards and jumped in, Frank yelling to Mobley, “Go, go, go!”
    Right then a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s car turned the corner, coming the same way as Hanford’s car was pointed. He wheeled out and floored it, sure he could pull away from the cops as soon as they had clear highway ahead.
    As they screeched north, the Sheriffs in hot pursuit, Joe Ashley, with the majority of the cash, waited for the Sheriff to go past, then pulled slowly and cautiously out and headed leisurely to the south. Less than a minute passed before Joe and the men with him heard gunfire.

A bullet zipped through the Austin

       Hanford Mobley was scared shitless. He’d thought he was up to this game but now he thought his heart was gonna come out his mouth. They made it over the bridge across the Saint Lucie River, and he had the Austin going almost sixty within a minute from the bank, but the Sheriffs were still on their tail. Then they started shooting. A bullet zipped through from back to front, cracking through both windows and sailing right in between everyone in the car. Hanford looked wildly around, for what he didn’t know.     Kid Lowe was in the front seat beside him, and had drawn his gun, one of those big-ass .45 Colts the Army made. It was a cannon. Behind him, Shorty had pulled too, put his little .380 Savage out the window and started firing. John, behind Kid Lowe, unloaded his last five shots left-handed out the window. Next to the pop-pop of Lynn’s Savage, the .357 boomed. The left side of the Sheriffs’ windshield shattered. He turned to re-load and right then Lowe leaned out, firing right-handed, as if they had co-ordinated it.     Mobley had time to think that was smart, he’d have to pay attention and learn that kind of shit. As the Kid’s massive automatic crashed out eight shots, the Austin hit a pothole, bouncing on its stiff suspension, and John shouted in pain. He continued to cry out as they broke through seventy miles an hour and began to pull away. Kid Lowe was screaming. “Fuck fuck fuck!”     Hanford risked a look back and saw John with his hands over his face. They were covered with blood. It dripped all down his shirt. Hanford discovered he was screaming too. 

“Handsome” Hanford Mobley was seventeen years old

    Shorty Lynn kept his head and reloaded time and again, pop-pop-popping until the Sheriff car, trailing steam from a punctured radiator, dropped behind. Looked like they were outrun anyway. Hanford’s little baby Austin had the goods, he’d done most of the work himself. He stopped screaming and started laughing, low and a little crazy; he’d just realized he was having the time of his life. “Handsome” Hanford Mobley was seventeen years old.
    “Shit, Kid,” yelled Shorty, “he’s dyin’ back here!” His baritone voice was surprising in such a small guy. John’s head lolled, and his shirt and lap were soaked with blood. He began to choke on it.
    “Fuck! Lean ’im forward, Shorty!” Lynn pushed John’s head against the back of Lowe’s seat, and his breathing cleared. He was trying to speak but he slurred so badly they couldn’t understand him.
    Lowe was yelling in Hanford’s ear, “He needs a fuckin’ doctor! Where’s a doctor?”
    Mobley shook his head. They all had to yell over the roar of the engine and the wind of their flight. “Only one this way’s the hell and gone to Vero!” He was thinking of Wild Wilbur, but it was just too far. “We got to double back, get back to Gomez. Pa has a doctor down there takes his pay in liquor.”
    Lowe was snapping his head back and forth. “Fuck no you ain’t, they’ll catch us if you do!”
    Hanford pulled his own Police Super .38 and stuck it in Lowe’s face. “He’ll die if we don’t! He’s my uncle and by God I’m going back. Get the fuck out if you don’t like it!”
    Kid Lowe snarled but he backed down. He was a fish out of water, a city boy, and he knew it. He and Lynn were completely dependent on the Ashleys to know where to go. The Ashleys who, it just so happened, knew every dirt track all the way across the state.
    Hanford’s eyes narrowed as he thought that maybe Lowe and Shorty weren’t very smart. They needed someone to tell them what to do. He decided he’d keep that in mind.
    Hanford cut left down a rutted marl road where the tortured limbs of sea oaks closed together less than ten feet overhead. Their scrubby, lime-green leaves gleamed and flashed in the afternoon sun. It was a lot cooler under the trees, and mangrove and sea grape straggled down to puke-green water on either side. He pushed the Austin back up to fifty and Lowe began to get nervous.
    “Ya gotta go so fast, kid?”
    Hanford just stared at him, and he shut up. The boy pushed the car up near sixty. He kept staring at Lowe. Now Lowe was wide-eyed.
    “Lookit the road kid! Whadda ya doin’, lookit the fuckin road!”
    Up to now the road had been arrow-straight, but the gangster from Chicago could see a sharp left turn coming up fast. Getting shot at didn’t scare him but getting squashed like a roach, wrapped around an oak tree, sure as hell did.
    Through gritted teeth, Hanford Mobley spat out the words. “Do what I fuckin’ tell you.”
    Lowe nodded frantically. “Ok, ok, ok, yeah!”
    From the back seat, Shorty Lynn was wailing, “Ahhhhhhhh!”
    Hanford held Lowe’s eyes and waited till the last second, snapped his head around, stomped the brake and yanked the wheel. The Austin lifted off the right-side wheels for an instant, then they were around the turn and barreling down another shaded lane surrounded by greenery.
    Hanford looked back at Lowe. “I’ve run this road at least fifty times. I know every inch, every turn and branch. Good as you know the streets in your town. So don’t fuckin’ tell me how to get around in my home town.”
    He looked back at John, who was still, with his forehead against the back of the seat. “How is he?” he asked Lynn.

“He’s out, but he’s breathin’”

    Shorty shook his head, looking like a boy about to get a whoopin’. “He’s out, but he’s breathin’.”
    They were dropping down towards the Saint Lucie River now. They’d crossed the narrows going north on the Dixie Highway bridge, but Mobley was sure the Sheriffs’d have that blocked by now. That left only one way back, without goin’ thirty miles out of the way. Henry Flagler’s railroad trestle, half a mile west of the highway bridge.
    When they hit the river road Hanford slammed the wheel to the right, causing Kid Lowe, who looked more like an aging mook than a kid, to whimper like a child. The river lay calmly to their left, while trees and bushes slid by on the right. They came to the railroad bed and Lowe was getting nervous again. Hanford bump-bumped gingerly onto the tracks and lined the car up with the railroad.
    Lowe’s mouth dropped open. “You— You ain’t goin’ across that, are ya?”
    “Handsome” Hanford Mobley turned a glare at him. “Shut. The fuck. Up.”
    Kid Lowe shut up. He looked down at the water, thirty feet below him, and gulped.
    Shorty Lynn started in, almost crying. “Ah, uh, ah, um,” and Hanford pulled his pistol, swinging around to stick it in Lynn’s face. “You let him bleed to death and I’ll kill you!”
    Shorty gulped. “Ah, um, no…” but he pulled out a handkerchief and reached around John’s head to hold it against his bleeding jaw.
    Hanford Mobley gunned the engine, and the Austin flew out onto the trestle. Lynn and Lowe both started wailing and he screamed at them. “I’ve done this! The wheels are narrower than the rails, we couldn’t go off if we wanted to!”
    Lynn finally spoke a word when he’d not been spoken to first. “What if a train comes?”
    The car was filled with the brutal rump-ba-bump-bump of the crossties. Unlike on dry land, train trestles have nothing beneath the crossties but air. And in this case, water.
    Hanford looked back at him, his eyes off the road just like before, and Shorty Lynn thought he’d never seen a crazier man in his life. Those eyes widened, accompanying a wide smile. “We all die! Ya like apples? How do ya like them apples?” Then he took his hands off the wheel.
    Lowe had his head on the dash, hands to his face. Lynn considered jumping out of the car, but where could he go? Right into the river? And if he made it, Handsome would find him and kill him, he had no doubt. This mug was crazy as a Chicago sewer rat.

“Waah-hoo!”

    The car continued straight down the tracks, its tires only bouncing off the inside of the rails now and then. Mobley leaned back, interlocking his fingers behind his head. He pushed the speed up to forty. The bumping turned to a fast rattle that shook their bones and made speech almost impossible. Hanford pounded the wheel and shouted, “Waah-hoo!” He looked over at Lowe, who was also considering jumping from the Austin, but after they hit dry land. He too feared that if he did, this maniac would track him down.
    Mobley’s eyes showed the whites. His nostrils flared. His grin was as wide as the gap between what Kid Lowe, hot shit Chicago gun thug, had expected to find in Florida, and the reality. “Better to fly over ’em than fall into ’em!” shouted Mobley.
    Lowe figured he’d better just trust in luck. He really had no choice. These swamp goons were some crazy sons of bitches.
    They got to the south side of the river and Hanford slowed to a crawl, the only speed at which the car could escape the confines of the tracks.
    He turned right on the marl and shell access road for the railroad workers. His goal was a property on the northeast corner of the Gomez Grant. Doc Summerlin was where Hanford was headed, and if he’d been a little older and more experienced, he might have surmised that the Sheriffs would know about Summerlin too. But he wasn’t. Hanford Mobley was capable and fearless, but he was still a boy. So, as he sped towards the driveway to the doctor’s estate, a Palm Beach Sheriff’s car pulled out from a blind and raced after them.
    The siren came as a complete shock to Mobley. Lowe and Shorty just exchanged glances, shrugged and pulled their guns. Hanford took the right into the estate grounds on two wheels, and the Chicago boys didn’t flinch.
    John Ashley awoke to agonizing pain in his face and jaw. He couldn’t see out of his right eye. His forehead was against the back seat of the Austin. He jerked up, crying in pain, and Shorty Lynn almost shot him in fright. He was covered in blood.
    His nephew looked back at him in horror. The right side of his face was bloody and swollen. His right eye was nothing but a mass of red mush.
    “We’ll get you into the Doc’s and then draw them off you!” he yelled, but John was shaking his head. “You…gotta go.” As the car slid to a halt in front of the doctor’s sagging mansion, John got out on his own and waved them on, and Hanford sped away. But instead of going inside, John staggered into the road and held up a hand to stop the Sheriffs.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens