Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (26) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Wednesday,
June 2, 1915,
continued at
6:47 PM

Miami Police Officer John Reinhart Riblet was talking to Desk Sergeant Edwin V. Stevens, who was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of City Hall, two blocks west on 12^th Street from the city jail and Wilber Hendrickson’s house. Stevens wanted to talk about his application to become a lieutenant.
    The City of Miami boasted a total of eighteen officers, only one of which was currently a lieutenant, and that lieutenant, one Gordon R. McDade, was also currently up on charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and reckless endangerment. He had taken a ride on Henry Flagler’s railroad to Key West. While on the train he had gotten drunk on the complimentary drinks, scandalized a female passenger, raised nine kinds of hell, and displayed his badge and firearm.
    The scuttlebutt in the Department was that McDade’s goose was cooked, to a perfect golden brown. Which, Stevens surmised, paved the way for him to move up. He only had one other sergeant to contend with, unless the brass went out of town, and nobody thought they’d do that.

Neither husband was on the take

    But John “Bob” Riblet was impatient with the banter. He wanted to get over to Wilber Hendrickson’s for his usual cup of joe with his fellow Ohioan before they started work. Now and then Mrs. Hendrickson would have a nice strudel or might have saved him a piece of crumbcake.
    Marion and Bob’s wife, Madge, shared a rare honor: neither of their husbands were on the take. What they did not share was the talent to make a good cake. Madge Emily Bell Riblet could cook just fine, thank you, but her baking skills extended no further than frying-pan cornbread.
    Riblet had moved to Fort Pierce Florida in 1906 and worked on the railroad there as a member of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. There he married Madge Emily Bell, a child of a well-to-do local family, and in 1912 they moved to Miami, as the railroad neared completion.
    Henry Flagler’s railroad had been offering bonuses and higher pay for men who would help finish the sidings and switches necessary to operate the railroad through the Everglades. Bob had refused. He’d seen the Everglades, and he wanted no part of that snake-infested, mosquito-plagued Hell.
    Besides, the place was crawling with alligators, but the very worst of the many dangerous critters who lurked there walked on two legs. Weren’t no place for no Ohio farmboy, that was for sure and for certain.
    He’d made a decision to change careers, and it turned out to be a good one. The next year, 1913, Henry Flagler had taken a tumble down the marble staircase in his Whitehall mansion in Palm Beach, busted his head and died. This had put a real damper on enthusiasm for the railroad. Problem was, Key West was a dead end. Not many people wanted to go there, and the trains south of Miami often ran empty of passengers, serving mainly to ship cattle to the isolated Keys and on to Cuba.
    John applied to the City of Miami in February 1913 and become a patrol officer, and when it incorporated several surrounding townships that November, he was kept on. A few of the other townships’ “Marshals” had been let go, mostly for drinking, running whores and taking protection money.
    The Law Enforcement Movement of Dade County had gone so far as to offer rewards of five hundred dollars for any law officer arrested for taking bribes to let illegal speakeasies and bordellos operate. The reward for a Chief of Police or a Sheriff was one thousand, and for a judge who took payola, the prize was one thousand five hundred dollars. The good citizens of Miami had decided they were tired of the rampant lawlessness and were willing to put their money where their mouths were.

The good citizens of Miami were tired of the rampant lawlessness

    Riblet had considered that if Stevens moved up, his own application to be made Sergeant would be considerably improved. Besides, nobody had liked McDade. The man was a loud, profane drunk, and mistreated his women. Accordingly, Bob was just telling Frank he wished him the best in his endeavors, when he heard a loud gunshot. Definitely a rifle, or a heavy pistol.
    Stevens was on his feet as screams filled the air, then a wild succession of shots echoed between the buildings. Both officers were already on the run when Riblet counted the last of six more shots after the first one. Smaller gun, he thought, a revolver. A homeowner, defending against a burglar?
    It was early yet, the summer Florida sun lingering, and still blistering, until as late as nine o’clock. The gunfire was coming from down 12^th Street, near Wilber Hendrickson’s house and the jail. What moron would try to rob someone within sight of the damn county lockup? Hendrickson himself would likely be out in the street, killing or collaring the miscreant.
    A car came down 12^th Street from the west, and Officer Riblet stepped in front and held up his hand. It was Will Flowers, the local librarian’s son, who worked for the City as a surveyor and building inspector. “Get out, Will, we need your truck.”
    It was a 1910 Ford open truck, with a tiny stake-sided bed he used for his survey equipment. Will Flowers jumped out without a blink, but he’d come to find out what the shooting was about, and he wasn’t going to let Bob and Ed have all the fun. It was his damn truck, after all, not the City’s.
    As the officers sped off to the east, Stevens at the wheel, Will rolled over the stake-side and into the bed. Bob glared at him out the back window, but he just grinned, and Bob shrugged and turned back.
    When they got to Wilber’s house Riblet leapt out, running around the truck, his heart pounding. The door was standing open, and Marion was sobbing inside. He stopped short in the doorway and saw his friend, clearly dead, his blood spreading on the floor, on Marion, on Wilber’s uniform.
    Oh no, no, his head was shaking, he was crying. He hadn’t cried since his mother died.
    Wilber Jr. stood several steps behind his mother, his eyes unfocussed, the boy clearly in shock. His eyes had been dry; he only started to cry when he saw Uncle Bob crying, like it wasn’t real until someone other than his mother reacted to it.
    Marion Platt Hendrickson cradled Wilber’s head, his dead face staring at Bob Riblet, his mouth open as if he was surprised, and maybe a little embarrassed, to find himself so summarily deceased. She looked up with hate in her red, swollen eyes. She still held Wilber’s service pistol. Through her clenched teeth she gave him his orders.
    “You go get that son of a bitch, Bob. You go get him and you kill him. You owe us that, Bob. He went up Avenue L for a few minutes, then cut back over 12^th and came right back past our door right there, looked at me and took off south down Avenue K on foot, like a scair’t rabbit. Now you go. You kill him, you hear me, John Riblet? You. Kill. Him.”
    She bit the last three words off like she was eating her own heart, and he knew if it was him on that floor, if that was Madge saying those words to Wilber, he would damn well do it or die trying.
    As Bob Riblet ran back to the car, shouting at Eddie to go south, he was surprised she even knew his given name; he never used it. Madge must have told her, they were thick as thieves, and enjoyed their women’s talk as much as he and Wilber enjoyed—had enjoyed, he thought grimly—our men’s talk.
    As they accelerated down Avenue K his eyes were narrowed, his teeth clenched as tight as ever Marion Hendrickson’s were, and he told himself he could kill this man. He would kill this man. But something, the natural decency that informed his moderate, Methodist approach to life, wasn’t so sure.

T. F. Duckett was driving south on Avenue I in his spanking-new 1915 Model T Ford panel truck. He’d dropped a load of bread for Marvin’s Bakery, one of the businesses he delivered for, at the Italian place on 24th and Avenue K. His niece Annalee Brickell was riding with him, chattering with excitement at her forthcoming 16^th birthday party.
    “I really, really think Father will get me a pony this year, I’m sure of it. He knows how much I want one. Why, even that spoiled brat Maude Tuttle has a pony, I simply must have one!”
    Duckett just smiled and watched the road, which exasperated the girl. It was quite possible that her father, William Barnwell Brickell the Third, would in fact buy her a pony for her sixteenth birthday, it was just the kind of grand gesture Bill liked. On the other hand, he would be damned and go to Hell if he would let that on to this beloved but self-absorbed little girl. His brother-in-law spoiled her too much.
    He couldn’t complain, though. Bill had loaned him the money to get his first truck over ten years ago, and he’d built a solid business delivering bread and other baked goods in Miami and the surrounding areas. He had three other drivers working for him, all in trucks he owned. As the owner, he always got the newest truck, which he thought was only fair.
    “Uncle Thomas, are you listening to me? You do think Father will get me a pony, don’t you?”

Her uncle had indeed stopped listening to her

    But her uncle had indeed stopped listening to her. He heard gunfire. Screams. As they passed 12^th he saw to their right a commotion, people out in the street, right by the jail.
    He shook his head and pressed the accelerator. God damn it, he thought. As a member of the Law Enforcement Movement, Duckett was as tired of the robberies, the gambling and whores, as any of his neighbors.
    He looked right again as he passed 11^th and saw a man in overalls running flat-out south, parallel to them, over on J. Looked like he was carrying a leg of mutton or something, wrapped in blue butcher paper. But the way he carried it didn’t look like a man carrying meat. It wasn’t heavy enough and it was too skinny. He held it upright, in one hand, like…like a rifle. Gunshots, he thought. He’d heard gunshots.
    He slowed down, thinking to let this apparent maniac get ahead of them one block over, or maybe he should go a different way?
    At 10^th, he saw a gang of other men chasing the guy in the overalls.
    Just before 9^th Street, he stopped on I, wondering what to do. That man had to be the one shooting up the place.
    He decided to get going, and they rolled forward, but at 9^th his worst fear came charging out from the right, a wanted man in overalls with a rifle in his hand.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens