Red Grass River

back out to the car Mobley said it surely was pathetic to see a fella practically having to beg women for a date just because he couldnt get him a steady one. “I’m sure glad I got Glenda,” Mobley said. “She makes both them girls back there look like skanks.” Roy Matthews spat and laughed and let the remarks pass. Now they got on the paved main highway and bore north for Lakeland, still nearly sixty miles distant, but the roads from here on were all good and they would be there in two hours.

Barely fifteen minutes after the fugitives’ departure from Sebring a three-car caravan of Palm Beach County police officers swept into town in a crashing rain. At the Fort Basinger bridge fishcamp they’d learned that two men who’d been fishing from a skiff just upriver from the railroad had seen a Ford sedan drive over the trestle earlier that afternoon and Sheriff Baker knew it was the robbers.

“They say it was only three men in the car,” Fred Baker said as he drove off in the lead car with Bob Baker in the passenger seat beside him.

“Dont matter,” Bob Baker said. “One might of been laying down. One might of gone off on his own for some reason. I know it’s them, I know it. Let’s move, Freddie, goose this thing.”

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