Red Grass River (34 page)

Bob Baker had already considered that from Sebring the robbers could go north, south or west—and he planned to send a car in each direction in hopes that one of them would pick up the trail. But first
all three cars pulled into a filling station for gasoline and the attendant there recognized Bob Baker’s description of two of the robbers and pointed out the cafe where they’d gone after they’d fueled their car. Ten minutes later Marybelle had told him about Lakeland. Ten minutes after that he was in the Sebring police chief’s office, forming a puddle of rainwater at the feet as he talked on the telephone to the Lakeland chief of police, shouting into the mouthpiece to make himself heard above the steady sequence of thunderclaps and the clatter of rain on the roof. The Lakeland chief he’d post cars at every end of town and have any suspicious vehicles stopped for questioning. Bob Baker said he was on his way and rang off.

The police cars motored north through the swirling storm and flickering lightning, their speed hindered by poor visibility, the cars weaving sharply in the windgusts and raising little roostertails of water as they went. At Avon they turned west to Fort Meade and there cut north again and bore for Bartow and Lakeland some twenty miles beyond. Sheriff Bob Baker had been holding his own silent counsel and studying the regional map he’d been given by the Sebring chief.

“What would you do if you were them and you spotted a bunch of cops all over when you got to Lakeland?” Sheriff Baker shouted at Fred over the rain drumming on the car.

“Try to get away to someplace else, naturally,” Fred yelled, staring hard into the slashing rain. “Find me another road out of there if I could.”

“Wouldnt you figure the cope would probly be watchin
all
the roads around there?”

Fred Baker considered for a moment. “I reckon. Leastways the main ones.”

“So wouldnt you maybe figure it’d be smarter to quit the car and travel some other way?”

“Like how?” He glanced at Bob Baker. “Like by train?”

“That’s what I’m guessin.”

“Not the Lakeland depot. Not with cops all over.”

“No,” Bob Baker said, “they wouldnt go there. Stop the car.” Fred pulled off onto the shoulder and the other two cars fell in behind. The rain swept over them in torrents and the cars were jostled by the wind.

Bob Baker was staring at the map spread open in his lap. “Here’s where.” He put his finger to a spot and Freddie leaned over to look.

“How you know?” Fred Baker said.

“
I
dont know,” Bob Baker said. “I just
know
.”

A moment later Freddie was out of the car and the rain knocked
down his hatbrim and pasted his clothes to his flesh as he went to the car directly behind and told the Padgett brothers to bring the shotguns and get up in the first car with him and Chief Baker. He put Henry Stubbs in charge of the rest of the detail and told him to proceed with both cars to Lakeland and take custody of the suspects if they’d been apprehended or to render whatever assistance the Lakeland police might ask for if the robbers were still at large. He told Henry that Chief Baker would join them in Lakeland later that night.

They were almost to the Lakeland city limit when Roy Matthews said “Cops!” and pointed to the two cars bearing police insignia on their doors and looking ghostly in the whipping rain on the shoulder just ahead. Mobley slowed the Ford and pulled off the road and into a filling station as if that had been his intention all along. He wheeled the car in a U-turn to park it next to the pumps on the side away from the highway and further under the overhanging roof for better protection from the rain—or so, he hoped, it would seem to anybody watching them. They maneuver also put the pumps between them and the cops and positioned the car so it pointed back the way they had come. They all three stared back over their shoulders and through the rain at the police cars which remained as before.

“What you boys think?” Clarence Middleton said.

“I aint sure they even seen us,” Hanford Mobley said. “I aint sure they even on the lookout for us. Could be they waitin on somebody else. Could be they just waitin out this damn rain.”

Roy Matthews grimaced. “Who the hell you kidding, boy? You bet you ass they waitin on us. How many other people you know robbed a bank today.

Hanford Mobley glared. “Who knows? Maybe there was a goddamn dozen robberies today. How would we know?”

“It’s
us
they’re lookin for and you best know it,” Roy Matthews said. He alternately checked the loads in his shotgun and looked out at the cop cars as he spoke. “I dont believe they seen us. Not yet. But we can forget about goin to Miz Fingers’.”

“We best get a move on before this rain lets up and they can see some better,” Clarence said.

“It’s that fucken girl!” Hanford Mobley said. “You told her we was comin to Lakeland and now here the cops are, just waitin for us. You and your big mouth!”

“Why would she of called the cops on us?” Roy Matthews said. “She didnt have the first damn reason to call the cops on us.”

“What if the cops went callin on
her
?”

“Well why in the hell would they do
that
?”

“I dont know! But who the hell else knew we were comin here?”

“Goddammit thats enough,” Clarence Middleton said. “This aint hardly the time. What we gone do here?”

And old man stepped out of the station and was struggling into a rain slicker as he started toward them. Clarence Middleton waved him away and yelled, “Never mind, bubba. We dont need no gas after all.” The old man shrugged and went back inside.

“Shit!” Hanford Mobley hammered the steering wheel with the heel of his fist. “They’re like to have cops set up on
all
the roads around here.”

“Listen,” Roy Matthews said, “Plant City’s not but ten miles from here and there’s a backroad to it—about half a mile yonderway. I know cause I took it once. No way in hell they’d think to watch that little bitty road. Dont nobody hardly ever use it.”

“What the fuck’s in Plant City?” Hanford Mobley said.

“A fucken train station,” said Roy Matthews.

The rain did not slacken and they nearly got stuck in the mud several times but Hanford Mobley each time adroitly maneuvered the car free and they pressed on. It took them the better part of an hour to traverse the ten miles. As he drove, Mobley proposed they take the next train to Tampa, a big enough town so strangers didnt arouse suspicion. They would check into a hotel and call Old Joe to jell him of the change in plans and let him say what they should do next. Clarence said fine by him. Roy Matthews shrugged and nodded and said sure, why not.

They deserted the Ford two blocks from the depot. Each of them carried a .45 under his coat but they had no means for concealing the shotguns and the automatic rifle and so had to leave them with the car. Hanford Mobley took the little grip containing the three thousand dollars and tucked it under his arm and they set out down the street at a quick walk. The rain had abated but little and before they were halfway down the block they were sodden. At the corner was a small store with a Chesterfield ad in the window that reminded Roy Matthews he was nearly out of cigarettes. Clarence Middleton said to buy him a pack too. A train whistle squealed and Hanford Mobley said that might be the train for Tampa and called to Matthews to hurry and catch up and he and Clarence set off at a jog.

“Think it’ll rain?” the clerk said as he handed over the two packs of smokes and laughed at his own lank humor. Roy Matthews grabbed
up the cigarettes and threw a bill on the counter and hastened from the store just as the rain assumed a new intensity. At the next corner he had to wait for a few cars to go by and the train whistle blew again and he saw a locomotive huffing steam on one of the sidings in preparation to move out, but the train was a long freight carried facing north, not the passenger transport to Tampa.

And then through the rainy gloom he saw Bob Baker. With him were three other men, none of whom he recognized except to know with absolute certainty that they were cops too. They were coming from the parking lot at the south end of the station and he figured they must have only just arrived. All four were without raincoats and all carrying shotguns and keeping the breeches dry under their arms. Roy Matthews backed away from the curb and stood under the awning fronting a real estate office at his back and slipped his hand under his coat to the Colt automatic and pushed the safety off with his thumb.

The cops paused at the far end of the depot and conferred and every man checked his pocketwatch. Now Bob Baker pointed and two of the cops went off around the corner of the building and Roy Matthews knew he had sent them to cover the depot’s trackside doors. As Bob Baker and the other cop started for the front of the station a man approached them with his hands deep in his raincoat pockets and his head down against the rain and he didnt see them until he was almost on them and then he saw the guns and stopped short and backed against the depot wall. Bob Baker said something to him and gestured for him to go on and the man nodded jerkily and hurried away. Now Bob Baker and the other cop paused at a depot window and the other cop carefully peered inside and then turned to Bob Baker and nodded and they both checked their watches yet again.

And now here came the store clerk around the corner and clutching an umbrella and looking intent. His face brightened on seeing Roy Matthews under the awning. “Hey, mister!” the clerk said, and held up a sheaf of dog-eared dollar bills. “You give me a ten-dollar bill and probably thought it wasn’t but a one. Here’s you change.” Roy Matthews barely glanced at him before turning his attention back to the other side of the street. The clerk stood there with the rain running off his umbrella and his handful of money extended toward Roy Matthews and nothing in his experience told him what to do now.

Bob Baker and the other cop stood waiting by the front door and Baker kept looking from the front door to the pocketwatch in his hand. The freight whistle keened again and let a great blast of steam and the locomotive lurched forward and the couplings of the cars behind sent
up a great clash and clamoring of iron and the cars shuddered one after the other as the train began to move. Roy Matthews saw a pair of men scurry from the bushes fifty yards south of the depot and clamber up onto the side of an empty stockcar. The bigger of the men clung to a slat and struggled with the door and now pushed it partly open and both tramps slipped into the car. The door slid back again but remained open just a little.

Roy Matthews walked quickly down the street and when he was a block north of the depot he jogged across the road and scaled a low wooden fence as lithely as a cat and dropped into the railyard. He loped to the siding on which the freight was slowly rumbling past and ran alongside the cars and looked over his shoulder and saw the cattlecar with the partly open door coming up behind him. He half-expected to hear the warning shout of railroad bulls but this was no big city railyard plagued by tramps and hobos and no warning shout came nor did any bull appear. The train was picking up speed now and here came the car he wanted and as he ran alongside he grabbed a slat near the door and swung his feet up and planted them against the edge of the door and he pushed hard and the door slid open enough for him to wriggle himself into the car feet-first.

The two tramps were standing up and looking at him as he lay gasping on the floor. “Pretty neat trick, mister,” the bigger one of them said. “But this here car’s spoke for, so you can just roll your ass right back out again.” The floor of the car was littered with dirty hay and smelled of cowshit.

Roy Matthews sat up, his breath slowing, and looked at him.

“Ah hell, Bosco,” the other tramp said. “It aint no need to be like that. It’s plenty room for him.”

“Fuck him,” Bosco said, and advanced on Roy Matthews. “Now you gone jump out or I gone throw you out?”

Roy Matthews stood up and stepped away from the open door and pulled out his .45 and cocked the hammer. He pointed the gun in Bosco’s face and said, “Now you gone jump out or I gone kick your dead ass out?”

Bosco stood fast.

“I dont care either fucken way,” Matthews said. “I’ll count three.”

“Hold on,” Bosco said.

Roy Matthews said, “One…”

Bosco raised a hand as though he might deflect the bullet as he stepped back and snatched up his bindle. He went to the door and stared out at the passing world a moment and then glanced at Matthews and then tossed his bindle and leaped after it and was gone.

Roy Matthews put up his pistol and told the other tramp he was welcome to stay. The tramp said he’d as soon stick with his buddy if it was all the same to him. Matthews shrugged and said to suit himself. As the tramp took up his bindle and went to the door Matthews asked if he knew where this freight was headed. The tramp said Jacksonville.

Roy Matthews smiled. “No shit?”

“No shit,” the tramp said. Then looked out of the car and picked his spot and jumped.

Hanford Mobley thought their luck was running just swell. According to the ticketseller the Tampa train would be arriving in eighteen minutes. The man punched out three tickets and passed them through the arched window to Mobley and then counted out his change.

As Mobley scooped up the money he heard Clarence say “Shit!” He turned and saw Clarence leap over a bench and bolt for the trackside door and he was looking back over his shoulder just as Freddie Baker came in though the doorway with a shotgun at port arms. Clarence turned face-front just in time for Freddie to hit him full in the face with the stock of the shotgun like a boxer throwing a right cross and the sound was like a shingle splitting. Clarence’s feet ran out from under him and for an instant he was completely supine in the air before the crashed to the floor like a full sack of feed and with an explosion of breath.

Waiting passengers scattered shrilling from their benches like birds flushed from a roost.

“Duck down, mister!”

Mobley heard the words clearly through a woman’s scream and caught a sidelong glance of the ticketseller dropping out of sight behind the counter and he knew the voice even before he turned and saw Bob Baker pointing a pump action .12 gauge at him from a distance of ten feet. And beside him Joel Padgett with a shotgun pointed at him too.