Red Grass River

man was one he’d sometimes seen roaming deep in the sawgrass country to the southwest, a halfbreed who seemed to know his way in the Devil’s Garden. The fellow sitting behind Deputy Bob he’d seen before too, but could not recall exactly where nor if he knew his name.

He knew what they wanted and was already resolved to go to jail rather than give them the information. As his dugout drew near theirs he said, “Might’s well just go on and take me in, Bobby, because I dont know a thing.”

Bob Baker smiled. “Another fella was tellin me just yesterday he didnt know a thing neither and he didnt sound truthful to me anymoren you do. So I figured I’d test him. And do you know that not ten minutes later he was just jabberin like a parrot? I reckon I could make you do the same, Scratch, but truth is, I dont really need your information anymoren I needed his.”

Scratchley hove up within ten feet of the deputies’ boat. “Well then, what-all you want?”

“I want you to know you been makin a big mistake workin for the Ashleys,” Bob Baker said. “You and all them others. And now you know it.”

The breed stood up and it was as if the twin-barreled shotgun had materialized from the very air, so suddenly was it in his hands. He took aim and one of the muzzles flashed bright yellow and the buck-shot load blasted through the forward hull of Scratchley’s dugout and the great blue herons feeding along the banks broke for the sky in a terrified frenzy of wingflaps.

The impact jarred the boat under Scratchley’s feet and he almost lost his balance and the dugout prow was already sunk as the breed raised the barrels and Scratchley saw the man’s blue eyes behind the dark muzzles settling on him and the last thing he ever saw was the grin or grimace of the man behind Bob Baker who lacked both front teeth. Then the shotgun boomed again and he felt himself moving blackly through the air and then there was nothing.

Just after sundown they dumped his bloodymeat remains in a gator hole some five miles deeper in the Devil’s Garden.

ELEVEN

The Liars Club

THERE WASNT ANYBODY TO GET EVEN WITH, THAT WAS OLD JOE’S problem. The man who killed Bob Ashley was killed by Bob himself in return and thats all she wrote. There wasnt nobody else at fault. Nobody ordered the cop who shot Bob to do it. Old Joe didnt have nobody to blame for Bob’s killing, not even Dade Sheriff Dan Hardie. Truth be told, he was in Dan Hardie’s debt for saving John from a lynch mob. Some said the old man snuck a whole carload of his best stuff out to Hardie for a present and the sheriff was appreciative. Anyhow, they say Old Joe went around for months looking like a man searching for something he couldnt even put a name on.

It didnt help Old Joe’s spirits any that John Ashley was in jail down in Miami all this while. He was allowed one visitor at a time but they had to sit on the other side of a wide table from him and there was no touching allowed and there was always two guards standing right there and listening to everything was said. But Sheriff Hardie did allow Old Joe to bring John in some special dishes and treats Ma Ashley baked for him.

They dropped the attempted murder charges since there was no way they could prove he fired any of the shots at the cops who’d chased the Stuart bank robbers. But he stayed in the Dade County Jail under heavy guard for another year and a half before they finally let him out from under the murder of DeSoto Tiger. He mostly passed the time playing cards and exercising to keep from going soft. They say he got so he could do all kinds of card tricks and wouldnt none of the other jailbirds play him for money because he could deal himself any card he wanted and nobody could catch him at it. When he wasnt playing cards he was doing pushups and situps and such. He’d put his back to the cell door and take hold of the bars over his shoulders and then lift his legs straight out in front of him. He could do that a hundred times in a row. They say after a few months his belly looked like it was wrapped with rope and there wasnt a white man in that jailhouse could beat him at arm rassling.

The state said finally it was dropping the Indian murder case against him. Nolle Prosqui they called it—a high-sounding way of saying, “We cant prove it so we quit.” Some said it was because they never could find their chief witness Jimmy Gopher anywhere—but they hadnt found him the summer before either and that didnt stop them from going ahead with the trial. Truth is, there was talk that Old Joe had passed a hefty sum of money to the judge and prosecutor by way of Gordon Blue and that the reason it took so long to bring the case to trial was all the negotiating over the deal. Supposedly the state’s attorney and the judge each wanted ten thousand dollars. Back then that wasnt nothing less than a small fortune and Old Joe thought they were out of their mind to ask so much. He figured five grand each ought be way more than enough. But the prosecutor and the judge said they wouldnt even think about it for less than eight and they finally told Joe take it or leave it and he couldnt do a thing but take it. Then they argued about exactly what that sixteen thousand dollars would buy. Old Joe didnt see what there was to argue about. He naturally thought all the charges ought be dropped. Supposedly the prosecutor was willing but the judge wouldnt hear of it. The way the story goes, the judge was willing to see the murder charge dropped but Johnny would have to stand trial for the bank job—and plead guilty. If John pled not guilty and made the prosecution work for his conviction, the judge swore he’d give him thirty years, but if he pled guilty he’d only give him ten. Joe didnt like that deal for shit. Him and the prosecutor argued about it for a time before they finally agreed to a five-year sentence.

So John Ashley went to trial for the bank robbery and pled guilty—and the judge gave him seventeen years. Old Joe sat there like he’d been pole-axed. He musta felt like the fella who paid for a pearl and got him a pebble. The prosecutor looked at him and shrugged like he didnt know what was going on either and then quick skeedaddled. They say the judge was smiling as he left the bench, that the seventeen years was his way of letting Joe know he shoulda paid the ten thousand. The courtroom was about empty when Joe finally got up and walked out with Frank and Ed. The story goes that when he got outside he looked up at the sky and hollered, “The law aint nothing but a untrustworthy double-crossing son of a bitch!” Like it might of just come as news to him.

They transported John Ashley to the state penitentiary at Raiford in November of nineteen and sixteen. He was still there when the country went to war against the Hun. None of the Ashley boys went off the to the army— Old Joe’s view was that the family had enough enemies right here in Florida without having to go fight a new bunch a them on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Besides, he needed his boys to help him run his business. In 1917 the feds passed a wartime prohibition law that made it illegal to use grain for making whiskey, and a short time later they extended the law to include beer and wine. Naturally, the moonshine business just boomed.

They say Joe was paying protection money by the wheelbarrowful to the high sheriffs of three of four counties and to deputies and police chiefs and cops all up and down the East Coast and all around Lake Okeechobee. Supposedly he even had him a judge or two on the payroll. The more successful he got the more it was costing him to stay in business. Probably the only ones not on the Ashley payroll were the Bakers, but it wasnt no secret Joe Ashley had some of Sheriff George’s deputies in his pocket and for sure Sheriff George knew it. By now George Baker’s health was staring to go bad and he was giving Bob more and more authority to run the department in his place. Bobby knew a lot of the deputies were friends to the Ashleys or on Joe’s payroll and he didn’t trust many of the cops on the force except for about seven or eight he knew real well—the main ones being the Padgett brothers and Henry Stubbs and Grover Pass and Slim Jackson, a coupla others. His cousin Freddie was his closest bubba and sort of his personal lieutenant. He was a good old boy and easily the most popular policeman in Palm Beach County.

The rest of the department got to calling Bobby and his bunch the Baker Gang, and some say the most valuable man in the bunch was Heck Runyon. Even after Sheriff George was forced to fire him for killing a prisoner, he kept using him as what he called a special public agent. He said he needed him because there wasnt anybody on the county force as good at tracking a man in the Devil’s Garden, and there wasnt. But there were rumors he used him to fight crime in other ways too, ways maybe not all that legal but ways Heck Runyon was awful good at. Hardly anybody was too bothered by these rumors because Heck wasnt really a policeman anymore and because