Red grass river, p.35
Red Grass River, page 35
They followed at a distance but kept to the edge of the woods and faded into the cover of the trees every time the suspect turned to look over his shoulder. As they drew close to town the man veered from the tracks and took to a narrow dirt path through the pines and the sheriff and his deputy closed their distance from him now that they were better hidden in the shadowed woods. The suspect seemed less wary and but infrequently looked back anymore.
When they got into town they kept a couple of blocks back of him. Then he went into a drug store and they quickly closed the distance and the deputy took up a position on the opposite side of the street and from there watched the front door. The sheriff lit his pipe and casually strolled past the drug store and glanced in the window as he went by the he saw the suspect talking on the telephone and smiling and saw that he fit exactly the description he’d been given by the Palm Beach sheriff. A minute later the man was outside again. He looked at a piece of paper in his hand and looked around and got his bearings and set out toward the river. The sheriff and the deputy, one on either side of the street, followed at a block’s distance.
Forty minutes later they were in a residential neighborhood near the river and the man stopped before a large Victorian house that had been converted to rooms to let. He checked the piece of paper in his hand once more and then went up the front steps and onto the porch and knocked on the door. The main door opened and he spoke to someone just the other side of the screen door. Now the door swung open and he went in and the screen door closed and then the main door behind it.
They waited ten minutes and then went around to the kitchen side door and knocked and the sheriff showed his badge to a shapeless woman who said she was the cook. She let them in and went to fetch the house manager. He was a bespectacled man of middle years and in answer to the sheriff’s question said that the man who’d come in just ahead of them had been expected by one of the tenants, a young woman who’d received a telephone call from him a little earlier. Her room was on the second floor, number 222.
They ascended the stairs and moved softly down the hall and stopped at room 222 and drew their pistols. The sheriff put his ear to the door and listened for a moment and grinned at the deputy. He backed away from the door and mouthed the question “Ready?” and the deputy tugged his hat down and gripped his gun tightly in both hands and nodded. The sheriff raised his booted foot and delivered a powerful kick to the door that burst it off its lock and they rushed into the shrieking room.
“They say the Matthews boy went ten feet straight in the air when the door bust open,” the day jailer said. He was a fat man named Glover who never stopped sweating. He was leaning on the cell bars and fanning himself with his hat. “They say he stood there with his hands stickin up in the air and his dick stickin out in front of him all shiny with pussy juice.”
Hanford Mobley sat on his bunk smoking a cigarette and grinned. It galled him plenty that Matthews was the only one of them to escape being caught at Plant City, especially since it had been the bigmouth’s fault that him and Clarence had been taken. If Matthews hadnt told that bitch in Sebring about Lakeland the cops never wouldve known where to hunt for them. Hanford couldnt help feeling a little lowdown for taking pleasure in a partner getting caught, but he didnt really mind the guilt. He was glad Roy Matthews had been caught while humping some whore and no use to deny it. The jailer had said Matthews would arrive at the Broward jail tomorrow. Hanford Mobley expected to be long gone by then.
“They sky ever man in the house come into the hallway and all of em crowdin at the door and makin fun of the nekkid fella and gawkin at the girl in the bed with the sheet up to her chin and just cryin her eyes out,” Glover said. “That sheriff up in Duval, he can be a good old boy or he can be one mean sumbitch, all depends, and this time he was feelin mean. Told the both of them to get their clothes on and never made a move to close the door to give them the least bit of privacy from the them old boys lookin on. They say the gal really got to cryin then and said would they turn they backs and the men all just laughed. The sheriff told her it was the price a person paid for a life of crime. She said she aint never led no life of crime and he said they’d see about that. Hell, he knew she wasnt no member of you all’s gang, he was just blackassed about havin to foller Matthews over half of Duval County in the blazing sun and sweatin like a hog.”
“Figured he’d make her blush some, hey?” Hanford Mobley said, He began to roll another cigarette.
“Made her damn good and mad too is what he did,” Glover said. “At everdamnbody, includin the Matthews fella. When the sheriff asked him his name he said Reynolds, but the girl hollers no it’s not, it’s Matthews, Roy Matthews, and he’d a no-good son of a bitch criminal who never brung her nothin but trouble is who he is. Whooo, she was hot! They say the Matthews fella looked like he wanted to kick her all the way go Georgia.”
Mobley laughed. “That’s the way it is with whores aint it—cant trust a one of them. I bet the sheriff made her get out of bed nekkid anyhow.”
“Damn sure did. She tried to keep her arms crossed over her titties, but hell, she couldnt keep everthin covered all at once and get herself dressed too, could she now? Right goodlookin too, they say. Nice jugs on her. Real nice ass.”
“You best quit tellin me such,” Hanford Mobley said with a chuckle. “It aint polite to get a man all hot and bothered when he’s in the can and cant do nothin about it.”
“I wouldnt of minded seein that show my ownself,” Glover said. “They say she was a real redhead that one, if you get my meanin and I reckon you do. Say she had a damn tattoo. A little turtle, like, right down here, just over her pussy.”
Hanford Mobley sat with the cigarette to his mouth and a ready match in his hand and stared hard at something that was not there.
When Hicks the night jailer came on duty Hanford Mobley called him over to the bars and said he wanted to postpone things till the following night, His partner was being brought in tomorrow and he wanted to take him out with him.
“Whoa now, bubba,” Hicks whispered, looking about and leaning against the bars. “That aint the deal. Old Joe paid me just for you. He didnt say nothin about nobody else.”
“You’ll get paid for it,” Mobley said.
“How I know that?”
Hanford Mobley stared at him. Hicks licked his lips. “You’ll tell Old Joe you asked for your partner too?”
Hanford Mobley turned and spat on the stone floor and then looked at him again.
“Goddamn, man, I just wanna be sure I get paid for it is all I’m sayin.”
They brought Roy Matthews into the jail that afternoon and put him in a cell at the far end of the lockup. As Matthews went past Hanford Mobley’s cell they looked at each other but neither said anything.
That evening W. W. Hicks came into the cell block with his heels clacking on the stone floor and a clipboard under his arm. Besides Hanford Mobley and Roy Matthews, there were but five other inmates in the lockup this night and some of them observed the proceedings with idle curiosity. Hicks went to Hanford Mobley’s cell and called out loudly in his official jailer’s voice, “All right, Mobley, you’re on cleanup detail tonight and I dont want no fucken argument about it and no slackin on the job neither! You and…” He made a show of looking at his clipboard, of running his finger down a sheet of paper. “You and the fucken new fish…Matthews.” He unlocked Hanford Mobley’s cell and Mobley followed him down to the end of the block where Roy Matthews sat on his bunk and stared out at them. “Get on out here, new fish,” Hicks said. “Dont nobody get free room and board, not in this jail. You gone earn you keep with a bucket and mop.”
He led them to a closet just outside the barred door to the row and from it they took a broom and a mop and a bucket. “Now I want you boys to start out here in the store room where they was unpacking stuff this week and it’s a real mess,” Hicks said, still addressing them in his official voice as he guided them down the hall to a thick door he unlocked with his ring of keys. They went in and he closed the door behind them. The room was littered with broken boxes and small crates and baling wire and torn canvas tents.
“All right, you boys,” Hicks said, “there it is.” He pointed to a skylight nearly ten feet over the center of the room. The glass was thick and iron-framed and locked shut with a padlock through an eyering. A slim crowbar about two feel long lay on a box and Hicks took it up and said, “This oughta do for her.” Roy Matthews took the crowbar from him and tested its heft.
“Now you got to tie me up good,” Hicks said as he rummaged in the debris. “Make it look right.” He came up with some thick strips of canvas. “This here’ll work good as rope. Then you put a gag on me and get youselfs out that skylight and thats all she wrote. You just a coupla jailbirds got the jump on me and made away.”
“Maybe that rope there be better for tying you,” Roy Matthews said.
“What rope’s that?” Hicks said, turning to look where Matthews pointed. Matthews swung the crowbar against the back of his head with a soft crack and Hicks fell as if his bones had gone to milk.
“God damn, man!” Hanford Mobley said. “What you do that for?” He stepped over Hicks so he could watch Matthews ever as he squatted to check the fallen man.
“Make it look right, didnt he say?” Roy Matthews said. “Well, this’ll look right and didnt take near as long. What the hell, he aint but a fucken jail hack.”
“He’s a friend of Grandaddy’s, who he is,” Mobley said. He probed for a pulse under Hicks’ jaw and could not find it and was sure Hicks was dead and then he felt it. Mobley stood up. “He’s alive, no thanks to you.”
They both looked up at the skylight and then around the room. “Dont look like any these busted crates any good for standin on,” Roy Matthew said.
“Give me that iron and make a stirrup with you hands,” Hanford Mobley said.
Roy Matthews looked at him.
“I’m lighter than you,” Mobley said. “You boost me up and I’ll bust the lock. Then we’ll make a rope of them pieces of canvas and I’ll brace myself and haul you up.”
“Real good plan, sonny,” Roy Matthews said. “What’s to keep you from going on without me once you make the roof?”
“You damn fool. You think I couldnt of got out of here before now? I been waitin on you. Not cause I give a shit about you—cause I dont. It’s only cause Grandaddy wanted me to. Now we gone stand here arguin all fucken night or we gone get out of here?”
Matthews gave him the little prizing bar and interlaced the fingers of his hands to form a stirrup and Hanford Mobley stepped into it and Matthews heaved him up and braced Mobley’s foot at belly level. Mobley caught hold of the frame around the skylight with one hand to steady himself and worked the bar into the padlock yoke. On his third hard pull the yoke broke open. He took the lock out of the eye-ring and tossed it aside and pushed the skylight window up and it fell open onto the roof with a loud bang and it was a wonder the glass did not shatter.
“Shitfire!” Roy Matthews grunted under Hanford Mobley’s weight on his hands. “Think you might can be a little noisier about it?”
Hanford Mobley laid the crowbar on the roof and called down, “Higher! Boost me higher.”
“God damn,” Roy Matthews said. He grit his teeth and raised Mobley’s foot up almost to his chin, elevating him high enough so he could pull himself up onto the graveled roof by arm strength. Mobley took a moment to catch his breath and then slipped the crowbar into his belt and lay on his belly to look down at Roy Matthews who was quickly trying together some of the strips of canvas. Matthews then tied a loop in one end of the line and slipped it under his arms like a sling and tossed up the other end of the line to Mobley who took up the slack and wound it around his back for support and then sat at the edge of the skylight with his legs drawn up and his heels braced against the frame of it. He leaned forward into the opening and reached as far down on the line as he could and got a tight two-hand grip and then slowly straightened and leaned back and pushed himself away from the window frame with his legs and thus raised Roy Matthews up high enough so he could grab onto the skylight frame and work himself up on the roof.
They scurried to the corner of the building and shinned down the drainpipe there. They paused to listen for sounds of alarm but heard none and then raced across the moonbright stretch of grass to the woods beyond and plunged into the pines. They made their way to Turtle Creek and followed it eastward through the swamp where little light of the waning gibbous moon did penetrate. They came at last to the lagoon which formed a portion of the intracoastal waterway and they began searching for the skiff. The clouds of mosquitoes were so thick they could be clutched by the fistful and squeezed to bloody paste in the palm. They flailed at the maddening whine at their ears as they tramped through the brush and stumbled on mangrove roots along the lagoon bank and finally both of them dug dripping scoops of malodorous muck and coated their faces and arms with it against the rage of mosquitoes.
They found the skiff lashed to a mangrove in a small cleared portion of bank about twenty yards north of the creek. In it was a jug of water and a croker sack containing a dozen oranges, some smoked mullet and cornbread, a box of matches and a sheathed skinning knife. They gobbled down the food and Hanford Mobley put the knife on his belt. Then Roy Matthews set himself in the fore of the boat and Mobley pushed them off and took up the pole and stood near the stern and began poling north for Skeet Massey’s fishcamp at Pompano.
Roy Matthews turned once and grinned palely in the moonlight and said, “We done er,” and Hanford Mobley said, “Yeah we did.”
They spoke no more as the skiff glided through the water with a barely visible green-yellow glow in its wake. The mosquitoes were not so severe out here on the water where there was at least a small breeze to help keep them at bay. From the dark pine came a deep hollow hooting of an owl. An enormous school of mullet broke the surface ahead of them in a great phosphorescent shimmer like a shattering of burning glass and both of them sucked their breath at the sight.
The moon rode high and made slow progress across the black heaven and its spangled of stars. After a time the mangroves drew in on them from both sides and shadows dappled the skiff and again mosquitoes closed on them in a densely humming mass.
Hanford Mobley put down the pole and slipped the skinning knife from its sheath. The blade was eight inches long and felt razorous to his thumb. He had intended to use the crowbar but a knife was so much better. An engine of keener intimacy. Used properly a knife allowed for at least a moment’s mutual reflection between the principals and thus a truer sense of reckoning. He stepped forward lightly as a cat.
Roy Matthews noted the slowing of the boat and started to turn around as Mobley’s shadow fell over him and he felt a sudden horrid pain at his neck and knew in the instant that his throat had been slashed to the neckbone.
His hands went to his wound in a desperate pawing and he tried to get up but Hanford Mobley kicked him in the chest and he sprawled in the rocking bow and felt the blood coursing hotly down his chest and sopping his shirt and his horror was such that he would have screamed but for windpipe and voice box having been severed as well. The sound from his mouth was the deep gurgle of a drain abruptly unplugged and blood rushed into his lungs and he choked and saw the dimming moon above the through his last loud try for breath he heard Hanford Mobley asking if she’d been worth it.
TWENTY-ONE
The Liars Club
THE RUMOR WAS EVERYWHERE THAT OLD JOE ASHLEY’D HAD A hand in Hanford Mobley and Roy Matthews slipping out of the Broward jail, and might could be he did or might could be he didnt. Only thing for sure about that rumor was the same as always: nobody had a lick of proof for it.
They say when Bob Baker heard about the escape him and Freddie Baker drove straight down to Fort Lauderdale and he went right into the high sheriff’s office there and asked where that goddamn jailer Hicks was at. The sheriff said he was in the hospital with a skull fracture. Said he wished he’s never accepted the two bank robbers into his jail because he sure as hell didnt need all this bad newspaper publicity. Bob Baker called the sheriff a dumb lazy peckerwood loud enough for everbody in the jailhouse to hear him. He stomped back out to his car and Freddie drove him over to the hospital and Bob Baker told the doctor he had to ask the injured jailer a few important questions. The doctor said all right, but the patient was in a bad way, so go easy on him. But Sheriff Bob wasn’t in no go-easy mood, not with the fella responsible for his prisoners getting away laying right there in front of him. He grabbed Hicks by his hospital gown and shook him like a dog with a rabbit. Called him a lowdown shiteating son of a bitch and said he knew he’d helped the prisoners break out and he would by God prove it and send him to prison for the rest of his miserable life. They say Hicks’s bandage was slipping down over his eyes and he was screaming for somebody to help him. It took the doc and Freddie both to pull Bob Baker offa him. That’s the story we heard Another thing we heard was that a couple of days later Heck Runyon was seen at side door of the county jail one evening and Freddie Baker let him in and they say Heck didnt come out of there again until late at night.
Hicks got fired sure enough. He told the newspaper he was being made a whipping boy. Said it was unfair to be blamed for being attacked from behind. He never really recovered from that whack on the head with a crowbar. It left him part-crippled and strange in the head for all his days after. He couldnt walk in a straight line but had to bear at a slight angle to the direction he really wanted to go, and one eye was always half-closing on him. He got to talking to himself, even when he was walking down the streets and there was people all around. He’d sit on a park bench sometimes and get into mean whispering arguments with himself. He took bad to drink. A coupla years after the jailbreak he killed a fella in a drunken fight or some such and got sent to prison for life. That’s a true fact.
