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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
March 1915,
concluded
Hanford had been hit in his upper right arm, and although it missed the bone it was a nasty wound. The same bullet had passed through his arm and punched a thumb’s worth of flesh from Frank’s left shoulder as he turned at the sight of the old fuck with the damn antique artillery.
“Civil War shit,” Frank said over a few snorts of ’shine, back to the homestead. Shook his head. “Who’d’a thunk?” He didn’t admit it, but the old man and his surprise weaponry had scared the hell out of him. He’d never been shot, and had never killed anyone before either, although that too he kept to himself. John had. Hell, even Hanford had killed a man, at just seventeen years old. By God, if they could do it, he sure could.
Bob Ashley had been trying to figure how to break John out of the Dade County Jail. He’d gone to the big Army tent and pressed Kid Lowe and Shorty for ideas, thinking they might know something he didn’t, bein’ big-time Chicago gun-thugs an’ all.
“What we need is a distraction” |
Bob’s eyebrows went higher the longer the little gangster talked. He had a funny accent, talking high and sly with his teeth together, but he was makin’ pretty good sense. Still…he cocked his head and examined the puny Lynn one-eyed like a kid deciding whether to step on an ant. Shorty was nervous but didn’t flinch.
“How the fuck’d you get there?” Shorty gulped, looking up at Bob, head and shoulders taller. An ugly, mean fucker, Shorty Lynn thought, but I seen a million of ’em, and mostly better dressed. In his estimation, these swamp schmucks wore nigger clothes. I’m smarter’n ’em, he thought, and I’ve killed some of ’em too. This mug’s no different.
“Mobley loaned me his car, see? I told him what I wanted to do, and he not only said yeah but hell yeah. Only smart thing to do, case the joint first. Set up a distraction, like I said, see?” Lynn took in Bob’s sideways look and lowered his head, like this was something he’d been through before. A lot.
“Yeah yeah, I know, you guys think I’m stupit” |
Bob’s jaw clenched, but when he took a step towards the little shit Lowe stepped in front of him, hairy hands up like a boxing ref.
“He don’t mean nothin’, it’s just how he is. He knows damn near everything, never forgets nothin’. He’s the brains between us, I know it, I’m just the muscle. He never lets on to a mark how sharp he is, the dumbshit stuff is an act. And he’s real, real good at this shit, casing, planning, checking things out, weaselin’ things out. Sorry, Short,” and he looked over at his partner with a shrug.
Lynn shrugged back, his eyebrows rising and the ghost of a smile haunting his youthful face. “That’s what he did for the bosses in Chicago, the big guys, the heavy hitters, and I was his bodyguard. What got us in trouble and we had to come here was, he weaseled out something about one really bad, bad cocksucker. That’s the thing-he was a cocksucker. Best-kept secret in Chicago, until Shorty weaseled it out. And this guy, did I mention he was bad? Fuck, he’d kill a bartender for givin’ ’im a warm beer. Shorty knows whereof of he speaks.”
“I went to school, see?” |
Bob, only moderately brighter a bulb than Frank, nodded, spoke slowly, still working over what had just happened, what had changed. “Well…yeah. You could say that.”
The look Lynn gave him was almost disgust. Shorty had long since resigned himself to the fact that most criminals weren’t that smart, and he was. Smarter people usually knew how to make money without risking jail or death, but the truth was, Ray “Shorty” Lynn liked the life. He had dreamed all his short life—no pun intended, he thought, his favorite joke with himself—how he could have been a Roman Centurion, a Viking raider, a conquistador. But he was a runt, born in the wrong century, so he made the best of it. If he couldn’t loot and pillage with a sword and shield, he’d do it with a gun, and with smarts and good planning. Besides, the Romans and conquistadors had mostly been runts too. He’d learned that in school.
Bob seemed to accept that Lynn was the guy to case and plan. The only thing Shorty Lynn could not know was that Bob was more ignorant than he’d imagined, about a specific, critical item in their planning. Frank, John, and Ed were all competent mechanics. Hanford Mobley knew practically everything there was to know about any motor vehicle. Robert William Ashley knew fuck-all about cars. He was barely able to drive. Had Lynn asked he would have told him so, but he didn’t. And Hanford, with Joe’s consent, had told Bob to bust his little brother John out of jail, and by God, that was what he was going to do. He listened closely as Shorty laid out the plan.
“So here’s what we gotta do, see?” |
Bob didn’t move at all. It was like elbowing an oak tree. Bob didn’t smile.
“OK, so we, I mean me and Kid here, we boost two cars somewhere out of town.”
Bob looked sideways at him. “He’s the hell and gone in Miami. Why don’t we just boost two cars here?”
Shaking his head at the floor of the tent, Shorty put his hand on Bob’s arm.
Bob scowled at the hand, teeth together, but Lynn didn’t move it.
“Nah, nah, nah, y’see, that’s why you need me for this shit. If we boost the cars here, that leads the cops right back here, see?”
Bob did see, and wondered why he hadn’t thought about that. Maybe this little punk wasn’t as dumb as he looked, like Hanford had said. Bob had already convinced himself he’d heard it from Mobley personally.
In fact, Hanford Mobley had said no such thing, and had only reluctantly given Shorty keys to an old truck Albert Miller kept for deliveries behind his grocery. The little prick was damned persuasive, and when they were alone, he talked like a mobster but an educated mobster. What he actually told Lynn was not to get caught, not to wreck the truck and not to call attention to himself. And that if he fucked up, Hanford Mobley would personally shoot him right in the nuts.
He hoped that was a joke, but he’d seen Mobley drive like a maniac just like Lowe had, heard how he’d killed that bank guard without a blink; Shorty Lynn harbored no desire to test his theory.
“You have the key. We cause a distraction |
It sounded like a good plan to Bob, and if Shorty had talked to Hanford about it, it must be all right, he thought.
Shorty hadn’t, but Bob didn’t know that. If it had feet, fins or feathers, Bob Ashley could tell you where to find it, how to catch it, how to kill it, and how to cook it. He could hide out in the swamp for a year and eat like a king. He had no formal education whatsoever. Of books and planning he knew nothing. He had only been an outlaw for a few months. If Hanford wanted him to get the keys and bust John out, he figured Hanford knew he could do it, or wouldn’t have said.
“So what kind’a distraction you talkin’ about?” He asked, being a wise-ass, but added, “Should I wait till it happens or what?”
Shorty was nodding, with a smile that said, now the boy is getting it.
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
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