A Dark and Lonely Place (32 page)

“You know what this means?” John whispered to Laura, beside him. “Our lives are changed!”

“You sure it’s for the better?” She looked troubled.

“Are you kidding?” Frankie was exuberant. “What new sheriff could be worse than Baker?”

“Damn straight.” Joe Ashley, the family patriarch, lifted his glass, smiled his crooked grin, and reached for Leugenia’s hand. “Happy days are here again!”

“Marry me,” John said when they were alone that night.

“It’s time,” she agreed.

They arranged to slip into Miami and quietly exchange vows at Saint Stephen’s Church in June 1921. A piece of their Miami dream would finally come true. The long feud with Baker was over. They believed life was about to become simpler, better, and more forgiving.

They could not have been more wrong.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

T
he bad news hit hard.

Palm Beach had a new sheriff. His name was Baker. The governor had appointed Bob Baker, the late sheriff’s son, to fill out his father’s term. The new sheriff was the former jailer from whom Ashley escaped on that stormy Palm Beach night. He’d been humiliated, belittled by the press and other lawmen—including his father. No one ever let him forget it.

Baker lacked his father’s physical stature and his reputation as a lawman. But he had ambition, a long memory, and a hunger for revenge that kept him awake at night. John Ashley had taunted, tormented, and ridiculed his father. He swore the man’s health had suffered and his life had been shortened by the frustration and lack of respect he’d endured at Ashley’s hands. Payback time had come. He vowed to make it happen.

Leugenia burst into tears at the news. The Ashley men were grim. Baker was a pipsqueak and a coward, but his single-minded obsession could only bring them grief, and they had no shortage of that in their lives.

John found his share on a three-day business trip. As he unloaded cases of contraband liquor at a Wauchula garage, northwest of Lake Okeechobee, he was confronted by Hardee County Sheriff John Poucher. The delivery had been so damn routine that John had left his pistol in the car. The rural sheriff had no idea who he was, so John peacefully surrendered, gave a false name, and hoped he’d be able to post bond quickly or escape from the local jail before anyone had a clue to his real identity. His face was famous in South Florida but not way up in Hardee County. He remained calm, casual, and low-key. So far, so good. But as he was booked into the jail, another inmate began to shout.

“Lordy! It’s John Ashley, the outlaw!” he cried. “That’s him! Right there!” He pointed, as all heads turned. “The sheriff done brought in John Ashley! John? How’d you ever let ’em catch you up here, man?”

John sighed and replied with an icy stare. Too late.

The sheriff choked on his cigar, broke into a cold sweat, locked John into a solitary, high-security cell, and assigned several men with shotguns to guard him.

John was immediately returned to Raiford Penitentiary to finish his seventeen-year term.

Laura agonized. She should have gone with him. He never let his guard down when she was beside him. She would have had the pearl-handled revolver he’d given her. She would have had his back, could have distracted the sheriff or gotten the drop on him. Could have, would have, should have.

Their scheduled wedding date came and went.

Laura conducted business on the mainland while Ed and Frank continued to run liquor in from the Bahamas, operating as best they could without John’s personal touch, insight, and business acumen.

And John, during a long, dark night in his North Florida prison cell, experienced a clear and lifelike nightmare so unsettling that he awoke flailing, in a cold sweat, tears on his face. That morning he sent urgent word for his father to come at once.

He’d had the same sort of ominous and disturbing dream in his Miami jail cell the morning of that fatal day when Bobby came to town. He’d experienced a similar, waking vision the day the tramp found Leugenia home alone. But this new dream was far less vague. Details this time were as sharp as knife thrusts, an entire scenario he could not prevent from unfolding around him in horrific three-dimensional color.

He neither ate nor slept. How could he? He prayed and paced for days until a jailer said he had a visitor.

“Pop!” He slid into a seat behind the wire-mesh screen that separated him and his father. Their skin looked sickly gray behind it and the harsh lighting cast unkind shadows on their faces.

“What is it, son?” The family patriarch, low-key and taciturn as
usual, looked pinched, his shoulders hunched as if in defeat. The trip had been long and hard, north from Palm Beach to just south of the Georgia border.

“I’m worried about Ed and Frank, Pop. You know how I dream sometimes?”

Joe nodded slowly.

“I had a dream so real it scared the hell out of me. Warn the boys. Give ’em a message as quick as you can.”

“Tell me the dream, son.”

John sighed. “Ed and Frank were on a run to the Bahamas aboard the
Sea Spray.
They loaded ’er up with good whiskey and started home in rough seas, but they were hijacked, robbed by some of the competition, those three bastards who work out of Vero Beach: Donny Ridge-way, Jack Allen, and Will Holliwell. Same ones tried to cross us once before. I never trusted them. Didn’t like—”

“The dream?” Joe persisted. “What happened?”

John took a deep breath. “They shot Ed and Frankie, hijacked their liquor, then scuttled the
Sea Spray
with them aboard.”

Joe gave a slight nod.

“Talk to ’em, Pop. Tell ’em to watch out for those guys, avoid ’em, don’t turn their backs on ’em. Never. And if they ever make any false moves, tell the boys to use their guns. I mean it. They’re dangerous.”

Joe sat quietly, eyes downcast.

“Will you do that for me, Pop? Right away?”

Joe paused. “No, son. I can’t.”

John’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“Ed and Frankie took the
Sea Spray
to the Bahamas last week, with thirteen thousand dollars for a load. Your brothers didn’t come back, son. Young Hanford and Joe Tracey took the other boat over to look for ’em. They were told that Ed and Frankie loaded up but bad weather delayed ’em overnight. When the weather didn’t let up the next day, they pushed off for the mainland anyhow. The crew who helped ’em load said conditions were hazardous and the boat was overloaded.”

“God help us,” John whispered. “But if they’re gone”—his voice rose—“it wasn’t weather! It was those bastards!”

“Hanford’s a smart boy, like you,” Joe said. “He asked what other
crews were there when our boys were. He came back with a list. The names you mentioned are on it, son.”

Neither Ed nor Frank Ashley was ever seen again. No trace of their boat, money, or liquor was ever found.

Laura believed that John’s arrest in Wachula and his return to prison may have saved his life. Had he been free, he might have been lost at sea with Ed and Frank.

John was sure that if he hadn’t been arrested, he would have been with his brothers, and might have saved them.

While he served time at Raiford, gang members operated the business. Clarence Middleton and Roy Matthews spent most of their time hijacking other bootleggers’ whiskey when it was being moved by boat or car.

Hanford Mobley, more creative, came up with another idea. He visited Laura at the Ashley home one afternoon. She always had been fond of John’s favorite nephew but was startled when Hanford asked if he could try on, then borrow, one of her long skirts and frilly blouses. He’d only wear them once, he promised, and asked her to keep it between them. Joe and Leugenia needn’t know. More than ever, Laura wished John was there for a man-to-man talk with a younger family member.

She helped Hanford select a long black skirt, a white blouse with lace-trimmed sleeves, and a fussy hat with a smoky veil that draped across his face. They fit Hanford, a slender lad, perfectly.

The next morning, in nearby Gomez, Mobley, in his girly getup, frantically flagged down a passing motorist. When a driver braked to assist what appeared to be a damsel in distress, Matthews and Middleton burst out of the bushes, hijacked his car, and tied him to a tree.

Soon after, John Taylor, the cashier who still worked at the Stuart bank, found himself, in a moment of déjà vu, being robbed by the Ashley Gang. Again. This time it wasn’t young Bobby who walked in and held everyone at rifle point. Instead, it was a fashionably dressed creature in a black skirt, white blouse, and veiled hat. The attire was definitely feminine, but the gait, hairy arms, and voice were not. Hanford Mobley’s accomplices, their noses pressed up against the plate glass window out front, burst in on cue and robbed the bank.

The robbers fled in the stolen car, but Sheriff Bob Baker was soon hot on their trail. He immediately alerted sheriffs all over the state. Fast action and better means of communication worked. Mobley and Middleton were arrested halfway up the west side of the state, at Plant City, in Hillsborough County.

Hanford and Clarence stonewalled, refused to name the third robber or even speak to Sheriff Baker, who shouted, punched, kicked the wall, and vowed to bury them in prison for life. Frustrated, Baker modified his tactics. He questioned Clarence alone. Still somewhat drug-addled, Middleton immediately confessed to all he knew and more, then begged the sheriff to keep it secret because Mobley would surely kill him if he knew. He not only implicated Matthews, he helpfully told the sheriff precisely where his friend had gone to hide out in Georgia. He even drew a map. Matthews was found and arrested.

Mobley made several unsuccessful attempts to escape from the Palm Beach County Jail, so Baker booked all three prisoners into the more secure Broward County Jail, a fortified, escape-proof facility in Fort Lauderdale.

Hanford Mobley became a model prisoner. Like his uncle John, he was helpful, friendly, and nonthreatening to the newly appointed jailer, W. W. Hicks, right up to the moment he and Matthews escaped. Middleton refused to go with them at the last minute. He claimed he was scared he’d be shot in the back as they fled. What he actually feared was that his friends knew he’d confessed and would kill him. He felt safer in jail.

Hanford, weary of revenge-crazed sheriffs named Baker, fled the state and traveled as far west as a man could go. He gave up crime and drove a taxicab in San Francisco. He marveled at the cable cars, the people, the tall buildings. Soon restless, he went back east and signed on to go to sea again, big-time. A crew member aboard a transatlantic ocean liner, he made several trips to Germany. But as much as he enjoyed new places and strange sights, they all paled compared to Florida. Her sons and daughters are hooked for life, he realized. You can leave Florida but it will never leave you. He began to write home for news.

For his part in the bank robbery, Middleton was sentenced to fifteen years in the state pen at Raiford, where he was happily reunited with
John Ashley and Joe Tracey, Laura’s half brother, and made the acquaintance of their new pal, Ray “Shorty” Lynn.

Ray, from an old Florida family like the Ashleys and the Upthe-groves, had married young. An outdoorsman, he loved to hunt, trap, and fish. One morning, in a patriotic fervor after a long night of drinking, he enlisted in the army. He quickly regretted it. The free-spirited country boy who’d grown up roaming frontier Florida at will found military rules, regulations, and regimentation unbearable. He went AWOL, much to the alarm of his young, pregnant wife, in need of a nest and a husband who could provide for her.

She refused to join Ray in hiding in the Everglades. That was no place for a pregnant woman, or any woman, she told him. His explanation—that he hoped to meet John Ashley and join his gang—appalled her even more. He did not meet Ashley. His wife divorced him. Then he was arrested. Prison life, he feared, might be worse than the army, until there, behind bars, he met John Ashley! He felt his luck had changed, that this was meant to be. Eager to be part of an enterprise he could relate to, with like-minded companions, he was thrilled to join the Ashley Gang.

John, the model prisoner, was sent to a road gang. Again. Soon after, a former customer of John’s in Okeechobee was fixing his supper one evening when a pebble struck his kitchen window. Then another, and another. He snatched up his shotgun, charged out onto his porch, and there, crouched behind the front steps, was John Ashley.

“Hey! Come on in, John.” He waved him inside.

“You alone?”

“Yup, my wife and kids went down to Fort Pierce to do a little shopping and visit her mother. Damn good to see you again, John. Heard they sent you off to Raiford for a long stretch.”

“They did,” John said as he climbed the steps.

“How’d you get out?”

“Broke out.” John grinned, as his host handed him a drink.

“How’d you do that?”

John winked. “Bribed a guard.” He downed the drink and scowled. “Where’d you get this rotgut, Ernie? You make it yourself? I can get you some really good, smooth whiskey.”

“Good deal, John. I’m in the market.”