The Hunt aka 27 (24 page)

Indiana Highway 29, a long, slender finger of concrete, stretched south from Logansport to Indianapolis under a bleak and threatening sky. A black Packard
hummed
toward the town of Delphi, its five passengers dressed in suits and dark felt hats except for the man sitting in the front next to the driver. John Dillinger wore a straw boater, which had become somewhat of a trademark for him.

“Car’s hummin’ like a bee, Russ,” Dillinger said to the driver.

“Put in new plugs and points, new air filter.

“Can the crap, okay?” Lester Gillis, who called himself Big George but was known to the world as Baby Face Nelson, growled from the backseat. “I wouldn’t know a spark plug from the queen of hearts and I don’t wanna”

“Everybody straight on the plan?” Dillinger said, leaning sideways in the seat and facing the three in the back. They all nodded confidently. “We need to go over it again?”

“Nah, we got it, fer Chrissakes,” Nelson said.

“You can be a real pain in the ass, y’know that, Lester,” said Dillinger.

“Don’t call me that. I told you, I like to be called George.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” the driver chuckled. “I suppose if your name was George you’d want us to call you Percy.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“Awright, awright,” Dillinger said. “No need to get hot. We got work to do.”

Nelson settled back and shook his shoulders. His short temper overrode a lifelong inferiority complex—he was only five
-
four, and he resented the fact that Dillinger was
the
most wanted man in America when Nelson felt he rightfully should have been
Public Enemy Number One. But his own gang had been shot out from under him and he couldn’t operate alone. He calmed down.

“How come you do all this planning?’ he asked Dillinger.

“Learned it from the expert.”

“Who’s that?”

“Herman K. Lamm.”

“Who?” Homer Van Meter asked, speaking for the first time since breakfast.

“Herman Lamm. You ought to know that name, he’s the father of modern bank robbery. When you say you’re takin’ it on the lam? That expression is named for Herman Lamm. Robbed banks for thirteen years before they grabbed him.”

“C’mon,” Van Meter said skeptically.

“Where’d you meet him?” Nelson asked.

“Didn’t. You remember Walter Dietrich?”

“Yeah, retired, didn’t he?”

“Laying low,” Dillinger said. “I knew ‘
W
ally when I did my first stretch at Michigan City. He ran with Herman Lamm for thirteen years.
Thirteen
years without gettin’ caught. Lamm’s secret was planning, execution and speed. He cased everything, drew plans just like mine, never stayed on the spot more’n four minutes. And he always knew how to get out.”

Dillinger was a man of average height with thinning dishwater-blond hair, dyed black, and a high forehead. His intense blue eyes were disguised by gold-rimmed glasses with clear lenses. And although Dillinger had spent painful hours having his fingerprints altered with acid and his face lifted, vanity prevailed. Dillinger was a ladies’ man and he continued to sport the thin mustache ladies loved and which, with the pie-shaped straw hat, was his trademark.

The other men in the car were Harry Pierpont, a dapper, gaunt man who liked to be called “Happy’ Homer Van Meter, who said very little and had been with Dilli
n
ger the longest; and Russell Clark, a lean, hard-looking man who some people thought resembled Charles Lindbergh. Clark was an ex-mechanic and a fine driver.

Van Meter, Clark and Dillinger were old pals. Nelson was a latecomer to the gang and Dillinger was having serious second thoughts about him. Nelson liked to kill
and
had done so many times, a violation of one of
John
Dillin
g
er’s
unwritten laws—no killing. Thus far Nelson had violated the rule only once—he had killed a cop while trying to rescue Dillinger from the police. Dillinger could hardly complain.

“What’s the name of this town again?” Russell Clark asked.

“Delphi,” Dillinger answered, his voice Indiana-flat, crisp and authoritative.

Russell laughed. “Well, if it ain’t on the map now, it will be after today.”

“Delphi,” Pierpont said. “What kinda name’s that?”

“It’s Greek,” Dillinger answered.

“How come they named a town after a Greek?”

“Beats the shit outa me,” Dillinger answered with a shrug.

“What the hell’s that?” Van Meter said suddenly.

Half a mile ahead of them, a state trooper was stopping traffic. Cars were backed up ten deep.

“What the hell Clark said.

Dillinger looked to their right and left. Ahead of them, past a cornfield, was a dirt road.

“There,” he said, “grab a right there, Russ.”

Russell didn’t even slow down.

“Grab a right here.
Here!
Damn it, Russell.”

Clark braked the Ford down and screeched rubber as he skidded into the dirt road.

“What the hell’s going on? They having a cop convention
o
r sompin?” said Homer.

“Goddamn it, Homer, shut the hell up. Just keep drivin’, Russ. Just drive on here like we’re regular people.”

“Jeez, lookit the smoke,” Van Meter said.

To their left a pall of black smoke broiled up from the town.

“Christ, the whole town must be burnin’ up.”

“Well that’s just fuckin’ great,” said Homer.

Dillinger clawed a road map from the tray under the dash

and opened it.

“Where the hell are we?” he said to himself, tracing a finger across the center of the map.

“We’re gonna run outa road.”

“Here we are,” Dillinger said. “Hey, we’re okay. Grab a left at the next road. We’ll come back out on the highway just south of town. Hell, it’s perfect.”

“It’s an omen,” Pierpont said. “We probably woulda screwed up anyways. And it’s beginning to rain.”

“We’re not through for the day,” said Dillinger. “Not by a long shot. And rain’s good, keeps people inside”

“Where we goin’ now? A picnic,” Nelson sneered.

“Yeah, a picnic about twenty miles down the road. They’re serving tea and crumpets at the other bank.”

“What other bank?”

“Homer and I cased three banks, yesterday,” said Dillinger. “We’ll take the number two bank. Probably be just as fat. And they stay open on Fridays until three o’clock. We hit ‘em at quarter to three—it’ll be dark three hours later.”

“I don’t like it,” Homer Van Meter said. “I told you, these one-horse towns with one way in and one way out make me nervous.”

In the front seat, John Dillinger shook a Picayune from his pack and lit it.

“Trouble with you, Homer, you’re a crepe hanger.”

“I try to figure it all out ahead of time, like you do,
Johnny.”

“You wanna hit a big town again?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“We tried that in East Chi, look how that went. Charlie gets killed. A bank guard gets knocked off and I end up in the cooler. Now everybody thinks I’m a killer. I’m always the one gets the heat.”

“That’s cause you’re famous, Johnny,” Nelson snickered jealously.

“I don’t like bein’ blamed for somethin’ I didn’t do,” he snapped.

“What do you want me to do, write a letter to the
News
and confess?” Nelson said, and he laughed.

“Hell,
Johnny writes letters to the papers all the time,” said Pierpont. “Even sent a book to old
. . .
whatsisname?”

“Matt Leach,” said Dillinger proudly,
“Captain
Leach, head of the Indiana State Patrol. Sent him a copy of
How to Be a Good Detective.

“Damn fool stunt, you ask me. No use makin’ them any madder than they are already,” Van Meter replied.

“C’mon, Homer,” Dillinger replied, “they can’t get any madder than they are and they can’t come after us any harder.”

“Still makes me nervous,” Van Meter said. “Gonna be a lot of people in the street, Friday afternoon. Payday, all that.”

“Nobody’s gonna get hurt,” Dilli
n
ger said flatly. “They’ll lay down like a buncha tank fighters. Four minutes, we’re on our way to Indy. Time they get themselves together and call the C-men we’ll be halfway there. It’ll take the feds three, four hours to drive down there from Chicago.”

“How about the state cops?” Pierpont asked.

“They can’t find their nose with their hanky,” Dillinger answered.

“Damn one-horse town,” Van Meter mumbled.

“With the fattest bank in Indiana and three cops in the whole town counting the sheriff.”

“I’m for that,” said Clark. “Look what happened to Charlie Mackle, messing with the G-boys.”

“Charlie was a damn fool,” Dillinger said with a touch of irritation. “Walks right into Melvin Purvis who’s sittin’ with a tommygun in his lap. Listen here, this Purvis ain’t just an ordinary G-man, he’s nuts. Hoover gave him a clean hand to get rid of us all. I don’t care to mess with those people, do you?”

Nobody answered.

“So we keep to the small towns with the fat banks.”

“Maybe we oughta retire,” Pierpont said.

“We got two hundred bucks, if we’re lucky that is, between the five of us and you want to retire,” Van Meter said and laughed. “You going to Rio on fifty bucks, Harry?”

“I mean hit a string of ‘em. Maybe run down the line, catch four, five banks in one day and call it quits.”

“Won’t work,” Dillinger said, shaking his head. “Gives Purvis and his boys time to get a line on us. Hit and run, hit and run, that’s the way. Keep ‘em off balance.”

“I say we go in blasting, kill anybody that twitches and shoot our way out. Scare the shit outa everybody,” said Nelson.

“You keep that chatterbox of yours down, hear me, Lester?” Dillinger said in his hardest voice. “This town’s just barely breathin’. They ain’t gonna give us any trouble.”

“Know what I heard?” Pierpont said. “I heard Purvis always lights a cigar before he goes after somebody. Calls it a birthday candle. He’s supposed to have a list of twenty-two guys. Says when he’s got twenty-two candles on his cake, he’s gonna throw a party.”

“Twenty-two,” Dillinger said. “Wouldn’t you know it would be twenty-two.”

“Got himself a machine gun squad, now,” Nelson said. “His motto’s ‘show ‘em no mercy.’”

“College kids,” Dillinger said. “Jump a foot when their shoes squeak. The whole thing with Purvis is, Floyd and his bunch killed a federal man when they hit Jelly Nash in Kansas City. The guy was a personal friend of Purvis.”

“What d’ya mean, hit
Jelly? They was trying to spring him,” Pierpont said.

“No way. Conco told me himself. They wanted to get rid of Nash, he had the talkies. The cops got trigger-happy and they ended up knocking over Nash
and
four cops, including the G-man.”

“And that kicked Purvis off his rocker?”

‘1 guess so. He’s got a very short fuse.”

“So let’s not light it when he’s in the room,” Pierpont said. Dillinger laughed. “That’s good, Harry.”

“What’s the name of this bank again?”

“The Drew City Farmer’s Trust and Mortgage Bank.”

“How big’s the town?”

“Three thousand or so, most of ‘em farmers out in the field. The town’s two blocks long, bank’s in the middle of town. I doubt there’s two hundred autos in the whole county.”

“What’re they gonna chase us with, horses and buggies?” Clark snickered.

“Yeah. Like Jesse James,” Nelson answered.

“Shut up and listen. This is the setup,” Dillinger said. He took out a sheet of typing paper with a sketch of the bank and held it up for all to see. “The bank’s on the corner, door faces the intersection, kind of catty-corner. The cages are on the left when you go in. Big shots are in an open area on the right. The teller windows are three feet high, so we use a pyramid. I’ll take the door and the stopwatch. Go for twenties and under, you know how tough it is to pass a C-note these days. Homer and Lester work the vault, Harry and Russell clean out the tellers’ windows. We’ll drive through town once, check it out, then drop off Lester and Harry, then Homer and me. Russ parks the car in front of the bank. Remember, once we’re in, we got four minutes.”

“How about guards?” Pierpont asked.

“One old-timer in the bank.”

“He’s about seventy,” said Van Meter. “Probably can’t see past his nose.”

Dillinger went on. “The cop station’s two blocks away. There’s a phone box here, just inside the bank door, I’ll take care of that. We’ll call in a fake accident from up the highway here, that’ll get the sheriff outa town. So we got two cops and grandpa in the bank.” He chuckled. “Hell, boys, we got ‘em outnumbered.”