Харлан Эллисон: Murder Plus: True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

The noon sun glinted on steel towers and high-tension wires strung across the stubbled field on the outskirts of Fort Meade, Florida. The two men cruised the Aeronca low over the area, circling the high-piled gray sand hills of the fertilizer company beyond a wooded area.

It was about 12:10 P.M. when the pilot set the plane down in the field, sailing in beside the high-tension power wires, bouncing across the stubbled, rutted earth. The tall man tossed an empty bottle into the weeds.

At 711 West Broadway in Fort Meade, Ex-Chief of Police, L. M. Roberts, who had retired in 1953 after 14 years of law service to run a filling station/beer tavern, noticed two strangers in coveralls strolling in from the Sand Mountain Road, headed downtown.

Fort Meade, a placid, sun-blasted town well inside the Florida cattle country, has less than 4,000 town residents; strangers attract attention. Ex-Chief Roberts had that faint sense of something being wrong, an intuition developed in years of law work; but it was nothing he could pin down. Two strangers walking into this isolated town was odd. He thought perhaps they’d had car trouble on the Sand Mountain Road, which had been the route to Wachula before the new highway was built. He expected that the newcomers would ask aid, but they strode past, sweating in the noon heat.

They crossed the railroad tracks, strode east on Broadway. Mrs. Maxine Johnson and Mrs. Neil Heath, in the drugstore, noticed them when they bought dark glasses, because aside from being strangers, both appeared to be drunk. The taller was especially taut and nervous, almost as if he were hopped up.

Across the street the Fox Theater advertised its Saturday feature, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” but neither man glanced toward its marquee. The girl behind the soda fountain warned the smaller man he’d better watch his friend or both would be arrested for being intoxicated.

“Tough town, huh?” the tall man said sarcastically. He marched to the pay phone at the front of the store, and, though he could see the police headquarters building across the street, he dialed its number.

The girl watched open-mouthed as he asked for the police chief. Told that Glenn Baggett was home at lunch, he asked, voice slurred, who was speaking? “This is Constable Harry Godwin,” came the reply.

“Well, Constable Harry Godwin, you better get down here on East Broadway. Couple men acting drunk and mighty disorderly.”

Laughing, the two men walked out to the street as Harry Godwin pulled his patrol car up alongside the curb and got out.

The constable was a stout, well-built officer. He beckoned to the two strangers, who were staggering, and said with good humor, “All right, fellows, get in my car and we won’t have any trouble.”

Meekly the two coveralled men obeyed. Godwin got behind the wheel, pulled away from the curb.

Suddenly his passengers sobered. “Drive outside town,” the taller one ordered.

Constable Godwin frowned at the sight of automatics which the men carried. They forced him to surrender his own pistol, stop the squad car in a wooded area off Highway 17. The tall man gouged his gun into Godwin’s side. “You don’t think we mean business, do you?”

He jerked his gun upward, fired it within inches of the lawman’s face. “Now do you think I mean business?”

Godwin said, “I think you do.”

The tall bandit announced, “We’re going back into town at two minutes of 1:00. You’re going to drive us.”

Godwin drove slowly. As he turned his car into Highway 17 his heart lifted. Coming toward him in his official car was County Patrolman Herbert Goodson. Godwin swerved his car into the patrolman’s lane, but Goodson, riding with another man, laughed and made way for him, waving as he passed.

At the intersection of Highway 17 and East Broadway, Constable Godwin pulled into the path of another oncoming car. Courteously, the driver gave way for him.

“You want to get hurt, bad,” the tall man threatened, “pull a trick like that one more time!”

It was now 12:58 by the constable’s watch. The tall man could no longer sit still. He and his stocky companion pulled women’s stockings over their faces and ordered Godwin to pull his car into the side street beside the First State Bank of Fort Meade. The building has a drive-in teller window in its west wall.

Just beyond the glass doors of the First State Bank entrance, the building wall was being torn down as part of a remodeling job. Thinking Halloween had come early, J. T. Smith, Winter Haven contractor in charge of the project, stared at the masked men herding the constable ahead of them.

Smith no longer thought it a prank, however, when one of the men jabbed a gun in his ribs and ordered him into the bank, along with Grover Altman, a Fort Meade garageman, who happened to be passing.

Twenty-four-year-old Morris Lunn, assistant cashier, saw the group enter the front door. The taller man held Constable Godwin by the belt, kept his pistol at the back of the lawman’s head.

Four women tellers, Mrs. Cleo Brown, Mrs. Lila Crews, Mrs. Leona Cloid and Mrs. Patricia Futral, were speechless at the sight of Constable Godwin held helpless and in danger of being slain by the grotesquely masked men.

The smaller man tossed several cloth bags at the tellers. The other gunman shoved Godwin forward so that he stumbled. “You dames start shoveling money into those bags or I’ll blow his brains out!”

Morris Lunn stared at the tall gunman. This was no fear of robbery he felt, but realization that the nervous bandit was a potential killer at the moment. The tall hold-up man began cursing at Lunn. From the moment he entered the bank, the desperado talked continuously, cursing and pistol whipping the constable to demonstrate how serious he was in his threat to kill the officer if his commands weren’t obeyed. He threw a sack at Cashier Lunn, ordered, “Fill it up!”

Worried for the lives of the women and the people in the bank, Lunn told the tellers to comply.

“Don’t put in anything less than tens,” the tall gunman pressed.

Lunn turned around. “You’ve got all the big currency,” he said.

The cashier’s words seemed to infuriate the bandit. He struck Lunn across the back of his head with the gun. The cashier slumped to the floor, his head almost at the doorway.

Head clearing, Lunn saw a man standing outside the bank door. He muttered, “We... we’re being robbed!”

The onlooker simply stared, uncomprehendingly. Lunn cried out, “Get the police!” but when the man didn’t move, he murmured, “Get on away from here!”

Rolling out of the doorway, Lunn stared at the robbers. The smaller crook had collected the money-ladened bags, was pleading with his companion to leave. “Let’s scram before our luck runs out.”

The tall desperado stood in the center of the room as if receiving a charge from this moment of evil triumph that might never come again. They’d been inside the bank no longer than seven minutes. Their loot consisted of more than $26,000.

“Come on.” The stocky man moved toward the door. “Do you have to put on a show for ’em?”

The tall gunman backed toward the door. He glanced at Cashier Lunn, jerked his gun up, fired a shot to cow the witnesses. The bullet lodged in a window sash.

Before the sound of the shot had died, before the hold-up victims had recovered from the paralyzing effects of the raid, the two bandits leaped into Constable Godwin’s car and sped west on Broadway.

Alton Bourne, employee of the hardware store beside the bank, had been alerted about the robbery by bank Vice-President J. H. White. He in turn had called police headquarters, where the alarm had been radioed to Chief Glenn Baggett.

The police chief arrived at the bank as the two bandits piled into Constable Godwin’s car and sped away. Baggett gave chase.