Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 1, January, 1957

Shoot Them Down by Bob Bristow

If he couldn’t shake free, Drumright was ready to die... and take me with him.

Warden Walters was smiling when he came into my office. I turned and watched him amble toward my desk. His face sobered as he came closer.

“What’s the matter, Hugh?” he asked in a slightly anxious tone.

“I don’t know, Warden. Something’s in the air. It’s electric.”

His face remained serious. I had been right too many times during the past ten years that I’d been his head guard at the prison. Sometimes he told the other guards I smelled trouble like a bloodhound.

“What do you think it’s all about?” he asked, as he leaned his full weight against my desk.

“I don’t know. I’ve sent for a stoolie.”

“Who?”

“Willie Jessup. You remember him. He’s the one tipped us on the Dutcher-Robbins break last year. I figure he’ll know something.”

“Probably nothing to it,” he said grinning. But when I glanced at him, he wrinkled his brow slightly. “But you go ahead, Hugh. Good idea to keep your finger on the pulse. I can’t see a riot coming up. They seem too satisfied.”

“It’s something, Warden. I know it. I’ll check with you after I’ve talked to Jessup. Will you be around today?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be here all day.” He strolled easily from the office.

I liked him. He was my kind of man. He learned prisons by the book, but I’m not one of those guys that can’t stand to see a man with an education take the top spot. He studied penology, criminology, all of that stuff, and he can tell a lot about a con by watching the way he lights a cigarette. He’s smart and he’s wide awake.

When he got the job, I wasn’t sure. But after about a week, he started asking “why” it was this way, and “why” we did it another way. Pretty soon a few new ideas began to take their place. Not an overnight change, like some would have done, Walters eased his changes in so that, unless you were keeping tab, you wouldn’t notice the differences.

The cons liked him. He brought the reform movement to us. Better conditions, better food, extra privileges, stuff like that. But he was smart. He knew that you can be just so nice to the cons and then you had to draw a line, a sharp, clear line that they’d all see. His prison wasn’t becoming a country club. It was still prison, more tolerable, but a prison, and we didn’t let the cons forget it.

That was my job. As guard captain, I was the hand of authority. I learned my criminology and penology one day when I was fourteen. My dad was a guard and they brought his body home to us, after a con had driven a shiv into his back.

I was the one who kept reminding the cons that this was still a prison. There were no beatings, no solitary for long stretches, and no chain gangs. But they knew, every moment, that they were in prison and that prison wasn’t fun.

The misguided kids who had fallen into trouble were gently, but firmly, led back toward a world of decency. The cons who had made more than one mistake were watched a little closer. The prison psychiatrist worked on them constantly, trying to make them see the difference between right and wrong, so that after they got out they wouldn’t be back in a year or two.

And then there were the big time boys. The cons who never quite got it through their heads that hour for hour, year for year, a career of crime is the lowest paid profession in the world. They were usually in for a long stretch and would try anything to get out. These were my boys, the wild, the desperate, the dyed in the wool bastards.

And when I felt myself going soft, I remembered my father’s body, cold and still in the grave. That took care of it.

As I waited for Jessup, I glanced over a list of known trouble makers. I was half-way down the list when Jessup appeared at the door, nervously fingering the cap in his hand.

Jessup was in for burglary. Forty five years old, whiny voice, sneaky type. He’d sell out his mother for an extra privilege.

“Over here, Jessup,” I barked angrily, setting the pace for what was to come.

Jessup moved nervously to the desk, standing rigid before me. I motioned for him to take the chair beside me. He sat, an apprehensive expression frozen on his face. I lit a cigarette and rolled it across the desk to him. He picked it up and puffed on it greedily.

“What is it, Jessup?”

He looked at me quizzically. “What’s what?” he asked.

“Don’t play dumb, Jessup. What’s brewing out there?”

“I don’t know of nuthin’,” he said in a low voice, glancing about him.

“Come off it,” I snapped. “Something’s in the air. I know it. Spill it, Jessup. I want to know bad.” He sat there, dragging on the cigarette, studying me with cool eyes.

Suddenly I swung hard. My open hand smacked against his cheek, jarring the cigarette to the floor.

“Didn’t bring you up here to play games, Jessup!” I shouted at him. “I want to know what’s in the air out there. Let’s go, boy. I’m in a hurry.”

“I don’t know from nuthin’,” he answered quickly, his hand covering his cheek. “Honest, I ain’t in the know.”

“You’re lying, Jessup.”

He leaned back away from my reach. “Don’t hit me again. Please. I don’t know nuthin’.”

I decided to play it his way. I felt sure he knew. But he was afraid. “Somebody warned you. That’s right, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer.

“Is it a riot? Is that what it is?” Jessup glanced around, quickly. For a moment his mouth slipped ajar and I thought he was going to spill. But he didn’t. “I don’t know of nuthin’,” he repeated like a parrot.

I pointed a pencil at him menacingly. “If it comes off, Jessup, if it happens and I find out you knew about it, I’ll nail you good.”

Still, he only shook his head from side to side.

“Just nod if I hit it right. Hear me, Jessup? Just nod.”

Jessup swallowed anxiously.

“Riot?”

He didn’t move.

“Somebody after a guard?”

Same.

“A murder?”

Nothing.

“A break?”

He didn’t nod, but something happened inside him. A very faint change in his eyes, an extra effort not to show any signs, and it gave him away.

“So it’s a break?”

“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say it.”

“Have they threatened you?”

“They haven’t done nuthin’. There ain’t nuthin’. Why don’t you lay off me?”

“Are you clean?”

“I’m always clean. You know that. I’ve helped you guys a lot. You know, before. But lay off me now. Please, I got to get back.”

I tossed him my pack of cigarettes. “Thanks, boy,” I said. “Take off.”

Jessup unwound from the chair and beat it real fast. I decided to make a check of the gates. As I left, I passed Warden Walter’s office. It occurred to me that I should tell him that maybe a break was in the making. But it was too vague. I’d find out the details and then tell him.

There are two gates to the prison. One is the shakedown gate that the trusties and prison farm cons use. The other is the front gate. That’s used by prison personnel. I made the con gate first. A guard shack is built on top of the wall, equipped with guns, ammunition, search light, tear gas and stuff. In the shack is the lever that controls the opening and closing of the heavy gate. Eric McCombs was on duty. Good man, Eric. Tight-lipped. Serious. Efficient to the last letter. Also, a damned good shot.

“Hugh Miller,” he said smiling, “what brings you?”

I glanced around at the cons milling about the prison yard. “I smell somethin’,” I said. “Noticed anything going on the last few days?”

“No,” Eric rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Has anybody been extra good for no reason?”

He grinned. “I haven’t noticed nobody bein’ extra good.”

Still watching the groups of cons below, I said, “If anybody starts out, stop ’em. If it’s wrong, open fire and we’ll ask questions later. Nobody goes out unless it’s right. Mow ’em down if you have to. Follow?”

“Sure, Hugh,” he said softly. “Call if you see anything unusual.”

I started for the other gate, mulling over some of the bad boys in my mind. And one, just one, stuck in my head until I couldn’t think about anybody else. His name was Keith Drumright. He was in for life, convicted of the murder of a bank teller. He’d been in on the planning of a break three or four months back, that had never come off.

I reached the other gate. Charlie Bates was on duty. Charlie had been a guard since the depression days. He was good, but the years were beginning to catch up with him. Still, you don’t fire a man like Charlie Bates. There’s always a place for a man with that much experience. He was in the right spot.

“Noticed anything funny goin’ on, Charlie?” I asked.

“No, sir,” he said raising an eyebrow. “Been quiet lately.”

“I may be wrong,” I said, looking out over the yard. From the top of the wall, through the windows of the guard shack, the prison stretched out like a giant ant bed.

I’m wrong sometimes. Maybe more often than I’d like to admit. I lit a cigarette and leaned against the door of the shack. Maybe I was getting the jitters, trying to keep at least one thought ahead of every dangerous con in this human zoo. But the quick glances I got this morning from some of the boys had given me that uneasy feeling. And then there was the way Jessup had acted.

It’s not imagined, this tension I felt. I’d been through it before too many times. It’s like walking into a dark room and knowing the minute you are inside that someone else is there. Okay. So this time maybe I was wrong.

The phone in the guard shack buzzed twice. Charlie moved easily inside and lifted the phone.

“Yes sir,” he said. “I’ll be ready for you, Warden.”

He replaced the phone and turned back.

“What was that?” I asked.

“The Warden. Says he’s going into town on an errand. Wanted me to be ready to open the gate.”

The pieces fell into place suddenly. I brushed past Charlie, jerked the phone and buzzed the warden’s office. One... two... four times the buzzer sounded and there was no answer. “I’ll be here all day,” he had told me.

I wheeled to the door of the shack as the black limousine swept around the corner of the concrete drive to the gate.

The car moved swiftly, slowed, then stopped thirty feet from the gate. Charlie reached for the lever to open it, but I got to him and grabbed his arm. Warden Walters was sitting in the front seat, a man on each side of him. Three men were in the back. My eye fell on the driver. It was Keith Drumright. Warden Walters sat staring up at us, his face a mask of death.

“It’s a break, Charlie,” I said, feeling my breath growing short. Charlie reached inside the shack and grabbed the riot gun from the wall. He eyed me frantically, waiting for the signal to fire.

“Hold it!” I yelled.

I heard Drumright. “Open it up fast or the warden’ll get his.”

Then the warden’s voice, following the pattern he himself had initiated. “Shoot, Hugh! Shoot it out!”

Drumright turned in the seat and swung hard. The gun butt smashed against the warden’s head and he slumped, a trickle of blood moving from his temple.

Charlie waited for me to give him the word to fire, the gun trained on the windshield.

“Let us out or we’ll kill him!” Drumright shouted.

I tried to think, tried to wipe away the numbness from my mind. Drumright was going all out this time. If he didn’t make it, he’d take the warden to the grave with him.

“You don’t have a chance,” I yelled. “They’ll get you before you get two miles.” I was stalling. There had to be an out, an angle.

“You lousy sonofabitch!” Drumright roared.

The rear door of the limousine opened and a man was shoved free. It was a guard and he hit the pavement, rolled and got up running. Drumright turned in the seat and fired with his right hand. I saw the gun jump in his hand. Twice. The guard dropped to the pavement and struggled to crawl. The gun barked again and the guard shivered, lay still.

It was very quiet for an instant. Then the alarm system was thrown.

Drumright jerked his head up toward the shack. “Open up or we’ll roll the warden out next.”

Drumright changed the gun to his left hand, aimed toward the guard shack and fired. He was aiming for me, because he knew I was the stop gap. But with his left hand his shot went wild. Charlie spun half around, his face suddenly knifed with fear, blood spreading over his right shoulder. Slowly he slipped to the floor of the shack. I was the only one left. I was the one that had to open the gate.

Charlie’s fingers still held the riot gun. “Take it,” he said breathing hard. I reached for the lever to open the gate, but I knew it was useless. They had killed one man, maybe another, and if they got outside they’d kill the warden a few miles down the road. There was only one chance. Stop them here. Now.

I grabbed the rope ladder and threw it over the wall, and went over the side. I heard the gun fire, felt concrete sprinkle my face. Five. That made five shots. They probably had only one gun and Drumright was trying to fire it from the driver’s seat with his left hand. I hit the ground and another shot splashed near me. Six. He’s got three more, and he’s wild.

I crawled directly toward the car, tearing my sleeves, bruising my knees. I was ten feet away, too close for Drumright to fire the automatic again because of the windshield. I heard the gears grind and looked up to see the car bearing down on me.

I waited until the last moment, just before the wheels reached me, and I rolled. Drumright swerved to get me, but he was too late. I heard a voice inside the car. “Did you hit him?”

“I missed.”

“Let’s get out of this rat hole,” somebody shouted fearfully. The sirens were all going now. The break was folding, but I knew that Drumright would either drive out or be carried out. Either way I knew the Warden’s chances of remaining alive were slim.

The gears growled and the car shot into reverse. I grabbed the rear axle and felt my body dragging. My back became hot. I felt my shirt rip, felt the flesh being rolled from my shoulders.

“I don’t see ’im.”

“I’ll get him,” Drumright said. The car jerked to a stop. He had three shots. I scooted under the car as I saw Drumright’s foot hit the pavement. I grabbed it, pressing my legs against the bottom of the car, twisting his foot with all my strength. He went down, turning. He fired as he hit the concrete, but he had fired too soon. Two left. I pulled him toward me, trying to make my mind function over the terrible scream of the sirens. Then suddenly he wasn’t fighting. He was giving in, he was coming under.

“Give it up, Drumright,” I said. “You can’t make it.”

I heard him laugh, a crazed, desperate laugh, because he knew that probably I was right. It was the laugh of a man ready to die, but who wanted you to go with him.

He shoved his face under the car and rammed his hand toward me. I hit it as it came under and the gun exploded with a deafening roar, the bullet smashing into the bottom of the car.

I grabbed for the gun. He had one slug. Just one more, and if I could beat that one, the tiger was dead. I had his arm with both my hands. He jerked frantically. I tried to keep the muzzle out of my face, but Drumright could count. He knew! This one was going to be good; it had to be.

He was half under the car, when he pressed his leg against the outside of the car and I felt his arm slipping away, felt the sleeve tear, the sweaty flesh slip from my grasp. I stared in horror as he eased back, his face insanely wild. I rolled for the far side of the car. I made one turn and when I faced him again I heard the shot. I felt the hot, burning sensation in my stomach. Drumright got to his knees.

I rolled free of the car, raising on my elbow, feeling the pulsating ache in my stomach, my hand stained red with blood. Drumright was running toward the ladder. He was going upstairs to throw the lever himself and he’d get that riot gun when he did.

I looked up at the top of the wall. Charlie was pulling himself up on his elbows. Drumright scooted right up the ladder. He reached the top, his head peering over, his arm grabbing for the rail.

I heard a muted tat... tat... tat... tat... and Drumright’s hand dropped limply, his body sagged for a moment, then fell backward, silent, almost graceful, before he smashed against the concrete.

Charlie swung around toward the car on his stomach, the barrel weaving feebly. A voice screamed over the roar of the sirens, “We give up!” The cons started coming out of the car, but Charlie hadn’t heard them. He got them as they came out, both of them tumbling in a heap beside the door.

Then the old man’s body failed, the riot gun slipped from his hands and fell over the side of the wall.

I leaned back on the hot pavement, the steady drone of sirens throbbing in my ears. The warden stumbled from the car and hunkered down beside me.

In a few minutes a white ambulance swung close to the car. The prison doctor hovered over me, tearing away my clothes, examining my wound. Slowly his face relaxed. “I guess you know you’re lucky,” he said.

It was the best news I’d had all day.