Fiction: A Killing on a Bridge (41) A historical fiction

Saint Sebastian River Bridge
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all published instalments]

By Roger Owens

Friday,
July 9, 1915,
concluded

The gang converged on the bank at what they thought would be near the end of the business day. They didn’t know about the workers coming in from Fort Basinger and Belle Glade, and as they wheeled into the crushed shell parking lot, the tangle of trucks and cars came as a surprise.
    The line for the teller windows was out the door, and some folks were waiting in their cars, drinking from flasks and trying to get a little relief from the heat.
    Laura had cased the place earlier, without Roy, in case he would be recognized when they made their move; nothing had indicated a crowd would form later in the day.
    They gathered under a red swamp oak that already had several people taking the shade of its massive spread of branches, out by Hooker Highway, not looking a bit out of place with all the other folks, from office workers to grove laborers, white, black and Spanish.

“C’mon, Pa, it’s hot”

    “What you wanna do, Pa?” Ed asked, and Joe glared at him. He was supposed to talk like a chauffeur when they were working. “C’mon, Pa, it’s hot.” He looked around. No one was paying them any attention. “We could just wait.”
    Joe was shaking his head. “No. By the time all these rednecks and swamp rats cash their chits, there won’t be anything left. That’s why we’re here, for the payroll. God damn it, we should have hit this morning.”
    Hanford Mobley was nodding. “Let’s do it. Fuck the farmers, half of ’em are on our side anyway.”
    He looked at the bank building, a good fifty yards away. “We need the cars up close. Don’t wanna run through a crowd what just figgered out they ain’t getting’ paid today.”
    They got in the cars and jammed their way to within a few yards of the front doors. Hanford and Laura would stay behind in their respective cars to make a getaway.
    As usual, Joe wouldn’t hear of anybody driving his Peugeot and left it running as he walked towards the doors. He knew Mobley and Laura would discourage any would-be car thieves.
    Ed walked at his side, carrying a satchel as if it were heavy with something, presumably money from the looks of his “employer,” who appeared to be a man of some means. For a guy dressed like that, the crowd of lowly workers moved aside.
    Frank and Tom Middleton went in behind them but, looking like anybody else, they got no consideration whatsoever. Middleton began shoving people out of the way, but big as he was, many of the men in line were just as intimidating, and in no time he was in a wrestling match with an Okeechobee crappie fisherman who wasn’t taking any shit from some white-trash turpentiner.
    Laura got out of the Model T and said to Hanford, “We have to do something. Hell, they come out, the crowd might stop them, even the cars…”
    Hanford looked around and he realized immediately that she was right. “What you wanna do?”

“Such a sweet boy”

    She gave him her sly little smile, which always made his cheeks hot. “Such a sweet boy,” she said coyly, then pulled her British Bulldog .38 short revolver from under her skirts and cracked three shots off into the air.
    Men stared, women screamed. She pointed the gun around at them. “We’re the Ashleys! This is a holdup! You better run or you’re gonna get robbed!”
    She then shot the windscreen out of an empty truck, bounced another round off the roof of a car square in the middle of the way out, then turned on the man duking it out with Tom Middleton. “I got one shot left asshole, and it’s for you!”
    It was like a stampede. Engines were frantically cranked, women shouted for their men to hurry. The Mexicans, who had all come in company vehicles, ran without a backward look. Their white foremen burned rubber getting out of the lot. The blacks hid behind their trucks, and some drew guns of their own. The fisherman let go of Tom and took off like a scalded dog.
    Laura trained the Bulldog on his ass and trailed him across the parking lot. He looked back at her and literally shit his overalls. Sloppy turds hit the crushed white shell, like brown splats of thick paint.
    Laura roared with laughter, waving the pistol around, and Hanford ducked for cover. That woman is crazier than nine hundred niggers, he thought, and this was the man who drove without looking.
    Terrified customers scattered. Cars and trucks careered out onto the highway, many on two wheels. Laura had become a legend in a single moment.
    Inside, Joe and Ed fought their way against a tide of frightened workers who were trying to run for the doors. Frank and Tom, left alone when the crowd outside ran off, battled the same tide to get in the door.
    Joe fired his Short Colt into the ceiling, and the few customers left punched and clawed at each other to get out.
    Frank, Ed and Tom drew their guns and jumped over the counters, shouted at the tellers to get down, and began scooping cash from the drawers.
    A hall exited the lobby to the left, and Joe hustled down it to the manager’s office door. D. E. Austin was just pulling the door open to see what the commotion was about and wound up staring down the barrel of Joe’s pistol.
    “Get out here and open that vault.”

Austin had plenty of insurance

    The safe door was at the end of the hall just to Joe’s left. Austin was not an excitable man. He had plenty of insurance and wasn’t all that worried he’d get shot. Bank robbers rarely killed anybody, it added murder to the charges, and they didn’t want the heat. At least, that was what he had heard at the brand-new Kiwanis Club’s inaugural dinner, just the other night.
    Getting robbed was, in fact, about the most exciting thing that had happened to him in ages. He almost smiled.
    “Are you John Ashley?” Austin hadn’t expected the man to be dressed like a gentleman, with a butler no less, nor to be as old as the man before him.
    Joe waved the gun at the safe. “We’re the Ashley gang. John’s in jail in Miami, or hadn’t you heard?”
    Austin looked a little disappointed, but dutifully turned to the vault. Unlike any other bank manager Joe had ever robbed, the man wasn’t apparently scared, didn’t lie, didn’t claim not to have the combo or any of that shit. He behaved as if this were any other transaction, and he carried it out calmly and quickly.
    In less than a minute the door swung out, and John could see that he’d been right about the payroll. His eyes popped wide as he took in stacks of cash lining shelves on either side of the central isle.

“Forget the drawers, boys !”

    “Forget the drawers, boys we’re gonna need some more sacks!”
    Austin stood calmly aside while they raked more cash than they’d ever seen into every bag they had, mostly the ubiquitous Army-issue duffels from the Great War, and they could hold a great deal of cash indeed. They stuffed it inside their clothes, into the tops of their boots.
    Austin pulled out his pocket watch, glancing at it nervously.
    Joe smirked at him. “You have somewhere to go?”
    Austin shook his head. “No,” he stated seriously, “but you do. I estimate it will be no more than another twenty minutes or so until Smith Drawdy gets here. Smith’s a fine fellow, sort-of deputized by Sheriff Merritt over in Fort Pierce, but a little quick to start a fight. I’m afraid you gentlemen would make ground beef out of old Smitty, and I sure would hate that. He’s a cattleman. Big payroll. Reckon that’s it right there in your hands, for this week anyway. Boy, that’ll set him off for sure. Me and Marge have him and the wife out for barbeque of a Sunday after services. She takes quite a shine to Smith; she’s a Drawdy herself on her momma’s side.”
    Joe wondered if he’d smoked opium or something; people said you had tremulous dreams rather like this if you did. He was having a civilized discussion with the manager of a bank that he was in the process of robbing at gunpoint.
    Ed, both arms hanging heavy with this calm fella’s cash, stopped as he headed for the cars. “You ain’t afraid or nothin’? What about your money?”
    Austin actually smiled. “No skin off my nose, son, it’s all insured. In fact, I might even make a profit. Say, if you wouldn’t mind…”
    Joe looked askance at him. “What?”

“Would you mind… shooting up the place a little more?”

    Austin looked embarrassed. “Would you mind…shooting up the place a little more? I could skim a bundle on refurbishing the office…”
    Joe and the boys laughed out loud. “You hear that Tom? He wants us to shoot the place up! Hell, he’s as big a crook as any of us!”
    Tom Middleton was shaking his head in amazement. “If that don’t beat all…”
    Joe started by firing his Short Colt through the nearest teller window, and everybody jumped. This wasn’t the Dapper Bandit talking. This was Joe Ashley, trapper, alligator hunter and all-around bad-ass.
    “Get the damn money to the cars and quit fuckin’ around!” He then proceeded to unload his pistol at the teller windows, which exploded satisfyingly and scattered broken glass on both sides of the counter.
    Austin actually looked happy. As the other robbers ran out the front, he was rubbing his palms together.
    “I’m going to dine out on this for the next ten years. I will ride this right into the mayor’s office!”
    Joe had stopped to reload. “What the fuck are you raving about, mister?”
    Austin looked at him with sincere gratitude. “Don’t you get it? I’ve been robbed—me personally—by the great John Ashley! I’ll be famous! I’ll be telling this to my grandchildren.” He looked around. “Could you do a little more shooting?”
    Joe snorted. “Okay, mister. How about you step into that vault and pull the door to, and we’ll show you some shooting you can brag on for the rest of your life!”
    Joe hoisted two heavy duffels of money and hustled out the door.

D.E. Austin hated those pictures

    D.E. Austin stepped gleefully into the vault, leaving it open just a crack so he could hear. The boys and Laura took an extra minute and unloaded on the doors, blasting wood splinters and glass shrapnel all over the lobby. Rounds penetrated the doors and smacked into walls, hammered tables and chairs, and flung broken pictures to the floor. D.E. Austin heard it all, grinning like an ape. He hated those pictures.
    Outside, only three trucks remained in the parking lot, all filled with black laborers. One older man approached Joe as he reloaded his pistol and put it in the shoulder rig.
    Joe was taken aback by this humble-looking man in worn overalls, who twisted his battered straw slouch in his hands. The greasy slouch hat was already about to disintegrate.
    “Please, Mistuh Ashley suh, we’s awful po’, and we gots families and chilluns t’ feed. We needs our pay. People say you a good man to the po’. Please, Mistah Ashley suh.”
    Joe hesitated, then Laura walked over. “What’s your name, sir?” She was sure she knew him.
    He looked her over with a small smile and replied, “I’s Jeremiah Harp, miz Laura, but everybody call me Will. I ’member you from when we’s a’buildin’ Mistuh Meserve’s sto’e, you ’as allus hangin’ ’round, aksin’ questions an’ getting’ up to no good.” He said this with a fond smile.
    Laura’s face lit up. “Uncle Willy! I knew it was you!” She threw her arms around his shoulders and gave him a big hug.
    Harp looked awkward for a moment; a black man hugging a white woman could end up at the end of a rope but quick, and they all knew it.
    “Uncle Willy’s a good, God-fearin’ man, and he works hard for his money,” Laura told Joe. She reached into one of the duffels Joe had dropped into the car and pulled out a wad of hundreds. “How much you figger you an’ your boys are owed?”
    Willy Harp looked at the money with wide eyes. “I reckon ’bout three hund’ed dallahs, mo’ o’ less.”
    She peeled off ten hundreds and handed them to him. “Now you see this gets split up fair between y’all, Uncle Willy. You an’ Miss Mildred was always good to my momma, and I never forgot it.”

“Yo’ mamma was good to us, too”

    Willy took the money and nodded his head. “Yo’ mamma was good to us, too. She deserved better. An’ I know you took up with that Collier fella just to get away from that sum’bitch Bob. He done the same nasty thangs to yo’ momma when they’s kids, that boy been bad since Creation Day. He don’t like ’em, once they gets too old.” He hesitated.
    Laura knew “too old” was about fifteen.
    “You deserved better too, miz Laura.”
    Laura had married Calvin Collier at fourteen years old. Collier had been twenty-six, and they had two children by the time Laura turned eighteen.
    “It was better than stayin’ around and lettin’ Bob do what he wanted to me. Calvin wasn’t a bad man, but I never loved him.”
    Joe, impatient, said, “This ain’t Old Home Week, God damn it! Let’s get the hell out of here, if you’re done giving away our money.”
    Laura just smiled. “You go on now, Uncle Willy, and give Miss Mildred my love.”
    Will Harp gave a resigned shrug. “She done give up th’ ghost, ’bout three years ago. I shore do miss her.”
    Laura said nothing, just patted his shoulder and got in the car with Roy.
    Harp hustled to the waiting trucks, flashing the cash, to cheers and laughter from the workers. They sped off north on Hooker Highway.

“Queen of the Everglades”

    The Ashley Gang sped south, headed back to Gomez. Laura Upthegrove was now solidly established as a crazed gun-moll to the upper classes in South Florida, and a hero to the poor white crackers and the blacks as well. The July 10^th edition of the Okeechobee Call carried the story of the “daring, daylight raid,” and the shocking amount of money taken, in which Laura Upthegrove was first called “Queen of the Everglades.”
    When Joe Ashley read it, along with editions of the Fort Pierce News and the Palm Beach County, he realized why D.E. Austin had been so cooperative. Although the gang had made off with a fortune, nearly ninety thousand in cash, silver and bearer bonds, the bank had reported that over one-hundred twenty-five thousand had been stolen.
    That sumbitch Austin had made a profit all right, starting with sandbagging an extra thirty-five grand out of the insurance company. Brilliant, just God-damned brilliant, Joe thought enviously.
    It chapped his ass that he would be hanged in a heartbeat for a robbery of thirty-five big ones, but that would never happen to somebody like Austin.

Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens