There were mutterings in the crowd but nobody spoke up. Dan Hardie pointed at the jail doors and shouted, “John Ashley’s
He stood with his hands on hips and swept his gaze over them and every man’s eyes jumped away from his.
And now in softer tone he said, “You all move aside now and let Doctor Combs get this body out of here. I dont want it stinking up my jail.”
And move aside they did.
An hour later Bob Ashley’s body lay alongside those of Wilber Hendrickson and J. R. Riblett in W. H. Combs’ funeral parlor. By then more than a thousand people had gathered outside the parlor and were insisting on seeing the desperado’s remains. Combs became fearful and telephoned the sheriff who advised him to let them look.
So the undertaker placed Bob Ashley’s body in a room by itself and then permitted the public to come in and view it—men and women both, but no children under twelve. He posted a man next to the body to keep people beyond reach of it and prevent them from taking locks of hair or other mementos. The line of gawkers snaked through the front door and into the viewing room and out the side door to the alley through the rest of the afternoon. At nightfall Undertaker Combs pled exhaustion and promised he would show the body again in the morning.
At sunrise, the line of people waiting to go inside was already a block long. Word had spread that Bob Ashley’s corpse was on display to any who cared to see him, and thrillseekers had come from as far off as Palm Beach. Combs was coming up the street toward the parlor when he was approached by two strangers in suits, one of them carrying a camera and rolling a toothpick in his mouth. The other, who looked too big for his clothes, said, “Mister Combs, sir, I’d like a word with you.”
He guided Combs into the alley out of sight and earshot of the waiting line—and though his touch was gentle on Combs’ arm the undertaker could feel the ready strength in his hand. The man said his name was Hal Croves and he would pay Combs thirty dollars for ten minutes in the room with Bob Ashley’s body and no one else in attendance but the photographer.
“Oh, I’m afraid not, Mister Croves,” the undertaker said. “We have a strict policy, you see—to protect the deceased from souvenir takers and such.”
The big man laughed but his eyes roused in Combs a sudden unease. “
“Fif—!” Combs said. He glanced about for eavesdroppers, “Well…I suppose if you were to promise not to actually
The man laughed again. “Sixty it is,” he said.
Combs let them in by the alley door and showed them to the room where Bob Ashley lay. “I’ll just wait out here,” he said. He consulted a pocketwatch. “Ten minutes.”
“Be just fine,” the big man said. Combs went out in the hall and the big man closed the door and Combs heard the latch slide home. He went to the front door and opened it and announced to the crowd that he was running a little late but they would be permitted inside in just another five minutes. He turned up his palms at the chorus of complaints as if the entire matter were one of those things that couldnt be helped.
When the two men came out again, Combs was waiting in the hall with his hands clasped before him like a penitent. He raised his brow at them. The man named Croves paid him thirty dollars and showed his big yellow teeth and Combs stood there gaping, looking from the money in his hand to the retreating backs of the two men. The big man’s laughter echoed in the high-ceilinged hall as he headed for the alley door.
At eleven o’clock that morning Edward Rogers, Bill Ashley’s father-in-law, arrived haggard and disheveled on the train from Hobe Sound and went directly to the Combs Funeral Parlor and made arrangements to ship Bob Ashley’s body the following day. He said no more than necessary and refused all reporters’ requests for interviews.
There were rumors in the street all day that Old Joe Ashley and his other sons had been in town in disguise, though nobody had any proof of it and nobody could offer a reasonable explanation for their presence other than the possibility that they intended to try to break John Ashley out of jail themselves.
The moment Bob Ashley shot the jailer, Kid Lowe knew the plan was gone to hell. And because he knew Claude Calder had abandoned the car, he figured his best chance for escape was by the alleyway in back of the house. He vaulted the railing at the end of the porch and jogged around to the backyard, holding his pistol low and close against his leg. He nearly jumped at the sound of the shotgun blast from the front of the house and he knew Bob had been at the wrong end of it and was certain he’d been killed.
In the backyard a pair of Negro yardmen stood like statues with their tools in their hands and stared at him in stark fear. He pointed the pistol at them and said, “You aint seen nobody, you hear me?” The two men nodded jerkily and dropped their gaze and Kid Lowe hurried away down the alley.
He walked fast, restraining himself from running even when he heard a gunshot from somewhere near the jail. He reckoned Bob might yet be alive and was making a fight of it—or Claude Calder was. At the end of the alley he paused and heard now more gunshots but from greater distance. He slipped the pistol into his belt under his shirt and walked out onto the sidewalk and saw people hurrying toward the intersecting street that led back to the jail. He went in the other direction.
Two blocks away he stole a new Dodge sedan and made his way to the Dixie Highway and there turned north. At dusk he was just south of Stuart but did not even slow down at the branching oystershell road that led into the dark pinewoods and beyond to the Ashley Twin Oaks house at the edge of the swamps. The last man he wanted to meet with anytime soon was Old Joe Ashley.
He drove and drove and stopped only to take on fuel and buy sandwiches and soda pop beer where he could find it. Just before sunrise he parked within the sound of breakers and slept in the car for a couple of hours and then drove on. He had decided on returning to Chicago to see if he might make his peace with Silver Jack O’Keefe’s former competitors. If they should prove unforgiving he would push on to Detroit and try his luck there.
A few days later and just south of Macon, Georgia, the Dodge began to sputter and ten minutes later it quit altogether and coasted to a halt on the red clay road. In the absence of the motor’s clatter the countryside silence seemed huge. The Kid sat on the front fender and smoked cigarettes and drank his last warm bottle of beer and regarded a pair of redtails wheeling on the hunt over a distant pasture.
Some time later a farmer happened along in his two-mule wagon and they hitched the Dodge to the wagon’s rear axle with rope and the farmer towed it to a smitty shop at the edge of town. He absolutely would not accept the Kid’s offer of a dollar for his help. The smith said the trouble was likely in the fuel line and he could fix it in about a half-hour but wouldnt be able to get to it for an hour yet. He directed the Kid to a barbershop down the block where a man might get a haircut in the chair by the front window or a shot of spirits in the backroom.
It was a dim place but cool and comfortable and the Kid sat on a stool at the makeshift plank bar and threw down two quick shooters before taking a third more slowly with a beer back. His very bones seemed to sigh with pleasure. An hour later he was glass-eyed drunk and ruminating bitterly about the way things had gone in Miami. A beefy fellow came in and straddled the adjacent stool and looked over at him and wrinkled his nose and said, “Whoo! Been a while since you was last near a tub of water, aint it, shorty?”
Kid Lowe squinted blearily at him and wondered if he’d been insulted and seeing no smile on the man’s face decided that he had. In a single smooth motion remarkable in one so drunk he slid off his stool and punched the man squarely in the mouth and man and stood went over onto the floor and the half-dozen other patrons cheered and applauded with delight at this entertaining turn.
The man sat on the floor and gaped up at the Kid less in pain than in astonishment. He put his hand to his bleeding mouth and one of his front teeth came away in his fingers. Someone among the spectators said loudly, “Hey, Turner, you forgot to duck!” and there was a chorus of laughter.
“You half-pint son of a
