The Hunt

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 ‘Wally 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 Dillinger 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 Dillinger’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 or 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,” Dillinger 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.”

The young policeman ducked into the b.ank and shook the rain off his raincoat. He walked across the floor with his weekly scrip check in hand and presented it to Dempsey for his initials. Luther Conklin was a local boy who had played football in high school, then spent two years at the state college. He was Tyler Oglesby’s deputy. He had been on the force for eight months and everyone in town was proud of him.

“How are you today, Luther?” Dempsey asked, scribbling his initials on the green slip of paper.

“Just fine, sir. Hear about the fire up in Delphi?”

“No. When was this, last night?”

“Goin’ on right now,” Luther said earnestly. “They called down for help. Sheriff Billings’s on his way up there to check things out. That new Five and Ten they got is burnin’ up.”

“Well, I hope nobody gets hurt,” Dempsey said.

The bank teller honored Conklin’s script and counted out his twenty-five dollars. He walked out f the bank counting it. Dempsey looked at the clock over the door. Ten more minutes and he’d be through for the weekend and on his way to Chicago. His mouth started to get dry thinking about the trip.

Clark guided the Packard slowly down Broadway, turned right, went down a block and turned back the way they had come. They drove past the police station as a young cop entered the front door. The police car was parked in the driveway.

“Well, guess we know where the laws are,” Dillinger chuckled. “Swing back around up at the corner, Russ. We’ll let Homer and Lester out.”

The two men got out of the car and walked casually toward the bank as Russell drove through the intersection one more time. He went down half a block and let Harry Pierpont and Dillinger out. They walked back past the harness shop toward the bank, their guns muzzle-down under their raincoats. When they got to the bank, Van Meter and Nelson were crossing the street toward them.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Dillinger said and they entered the bank. A moment later, their partners came in behind them.

Dempsey, as he always did, looked up as the men entered the bank. Strangers, he thought. Then he took a second look. The one in glasses looked vaguely familiar

Dillinger swung his shotgun out from under his coat. The man behind him twisted the “Open” sign in the doorway over to “Closed” and pulled the shade on the front door.

“All right, everybody.” The man with the shotgun yelled a loud, harsh, no-nonsense command. “Shut up and listen to me. I’m John Dillinger and we’re here to rob this bank. Don’t you scream, lady, just swallow it, I know a screamer when I see one. All of you just shut up and sit down on the floor. Make yourselves comfortable and don’t ring no alarms or yell or make a sound, otherwise some folks could get hurt. That there’s Baby Face Nelson and he has a very itchy trigger finger. Four minutes, Homer! Now we don’t mean to hurt nobody, you understand. We’re just here to make a withdrawal.”

He laughed as he peered through the window, pointing the shotgun at the ceiling. There were six employees and four customers in the bank. Van Meter, Clark and Pierpont all dropped to their knees and Nelson ran up their backs and sprang over the teller’s window. He shoved one of the two women back and opened the door. As Dillinger stared at his stopwatch, the other three got up and went into the business compartment. The vault was open.

Dillinger stared through the window and saw a police officer walk down the opposite side of Broadway.

“Christ,” he said under his breath, ‘a copper.”

Tyler Oglesby had left Luther Conklin to handle the phone while he did his three o’clock rounds, he had planned to go to the bank but the shades were drawn and the closed sign was out. He checked his watch. Either he was slow or Ben Scoby was fast. He went into the barber shop.

“Hey, what’s this we hear about a fire over in Delphi?” Nick Constantine said as he entered.

“Yeah,” Tyler answered. “Big fire. Still out of control. Lester went on up to help

Probably gone to get a haircut, Dillinger thought as Oglesby entered the barber shop. He turned back to his hostages, strolling past them, his shotgun butt resting on his hip. He took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth, lit a wooden match with his thumb.

“One thing I want to make clear,” Dillinger said as he lit the cigarette. “I ain’t no gangster, I am a bank robber. Gangsters are scum, they work for the likes of Capone and that bunch and they get paid for bumping people off. You know what they say about John Dillinger, he’s got the fastest brains and the slowest guns in the country. I ain’t no killer, regardless of what you might’ve read in the papers. Three minutes, Homer! We rob banks because the banks rob you! Take your homes, charge you to use your own money, act like they’s holier than God. They don’t deserve no better than what we give ‘em.”

Back in the vault, Baby Face Nelson was throwing money in a bag held open by Homer Van Meter.

“Why the hell does he have to walk around jawin’ like that,” Nelson snarled, stuffing packets of twenties in the bag. “Makin’ a damn fool of all of us.”

“Keeps their minds off things, Lester,” Van Meter answered. “Just do your job there and let Johnny do things his way. This’s gonna be one hell of a haul.” He grinned broadly as he shook the bag and let the loot settle iii the bottom.

“Lookin’ good, Johnny,” Van Meter yelled.

Dillinger checked the front door again. No sign of the copper. He reached in his coat pocket, took. out a pistol and waved it toward the ten people sitting on the floor.

“See this? This is my good luck charm. This is a wooden gun. That’s right, wood! Carved it out of the top off a washboard and colored it with bootblack. Walked out of the Crown City jail with it, right past the National Guard and everybody else and drove off in the sheriff’s car. Ain’t a jail made can hold John Herbert Dillinger, folks.”

Dempsey sat on the floor, holding his knees, and he thought about the situation and could not help smiling. Dillinger saw the smile. He walked across the bank floor and leaned over Dempsey.

“You think this is funny, pal?”

“No, Mr. Dillinger,” Dempsey answered.

“Well, I like a man with a sense of humor, friend. Here, have a cigar.”

He slid a cigar in Dempsey’s inside jacket pocket. “If you don’t smoke, you can frame it.”

He looked at the stopwatch. “Two minutes, Homer.” He strolled back to the front door as he spoke, never excited or hurried. He opened the blind an inch and peered out. No sign of the cop. He turned back to the group n the floor.

“Hell, times bein’ what they are, a man can’t get a decent job if he wants to. Listen, I was born in Mooresville, right down the road. Did my first time in the State Reformatory. I’m just a hometown boy when you get right down to it. My pap runs a grocery down in Mooresville just like that one across the street. I’m wanted in seven states, hell I’m wanted in states I ain’t even been to yet! Not that we ain’t taken our share of banks, mind you. Hell, we took down over a dozen banks. Harry Pierpont, the dandy there, he’s been in on fifteen, sixteen. And Homer Van Meter must’ve robbed, what, twenty banks, Homer?”

“Twenty-two,” Van Meter called back from the vault.

“Twenty-two. You know, there’s a number that just seems to dog me. I was born on the twenty-second of the month, stole my first car on the twenty-second, was paroled on the twenty- second. I took my first bank on the twenty—second and escaped the G-men up in Wisconsin just a month ago on the twenty-second. Now here it is the twenty-second of May. One minute, Homer. Well, you gents and ladies will remember this day for the rest of your lives, May 22nd, 1934, and you will tell your grandchildren that you was in the Drew City bank the day it was held up by the John Dillinger gang. Sure is more excitin’ than sitting around with a fly swatter, whackin’ flies, now ain’t that a fact, everybody? People’ll come from far and wide just to visit here and you will talk about this day for years to come and when you do, you will tell everybody that Johnny Dillinger wasn’t a bad sort, he was mannerly and pleasant and didn’t hurt a soul and took no money except what was the bank’s. Ten seconds, boys, wrap it up.”

“Lot more here,” Nelson yelled from the vault.

“I said wrap it up.”

“Johnny,” Harry Pierpont said, looking out the window. “Across the street, that copper’s comin’ out of the barber’s.”

“Damn!” Dillinger thought for a moment. “Okay, Russ, go out and get in the car and crank’er up just like normal. Don’t show your weapon. If he comes on toward the bank, put the drop on him and tell him to stand fast and no harm’ll come to him. Tell him who we are. Soon’s you got the car hot, we’ll pile in. Go on now.”

“Right,” Clark said.

Across the street, Tyler Oglesby stared at the bank. His watch still said five minutes to three. He decided to go over anyway, he was sure Ben would let him deposit his scrip.

As he started across the street a man exited the bank and got in a black Packard parked on the corner. Oglesby smiled at him as he approached the car and then the man swung his hand up and pointed a .38 at him.

“Stand fast there, copper. This is the Dillinger gang. You make a move and a lot of people could get hurt.”

Oglesby stopped short. His mouth fell open. And then the door to the bank burst open and four men came rushing out carrying bank bags. Without thinking, Oglesby grabbed for his pistol, clawing it out of the holster and backing up at the same time.

Russell Clark fired. Oglesby felt the bullet hit his chest. It felt like somebody had punched him very hard and he fell over on his back. He heard people screaming and the screeching of tires but they seemed very far away. He felt numb all over and then the world seemed to spin away from him as he felt like he was falling into a deep, dark well.

The people of Drew City seemed frozen in time, staring with disbelief at Tyler Oglesby who lay spread-eagled in the middle of Broadway, staring up at the rain. Dempsey was the first to get to him. He ran from inside the bank and dropped on his knees beside him.

“Tyler!” he cried. He turned and yelled up at Dr. Kimberly’s window over the Dairy Foods.

“Doc, hey Doc, come quick! Tyler Oglesby’s been shot.”

Oglesby looked up but did not recognize him. A moment later his eyes lost their focus and glazed over. Dempsey heard his deep sigh and knew he was dead. He looked up at the crowd gathering around and shook his head as Oglesby’s young deputy spun around the corner in the city Ford.

“After ‘em, Luther,” Ben Scoby yelled from the bank door. “It’s the Dillinger gang!”

As the getaway car roared down Broadway, Nelson thrust his tommygun out the window and fired a long burst at the hardware store. The bullets shattered the plate window, splintered ax handles and kerosene cans and snapped harnesses like twigs as they hung from hooks in the ceiling. The people inside dove to the floor as the bullets raked the store above their heads, showering them with debris.

“What the hell’d you do that for?” Dillinger yelled.

“Give ‘em something else to talk about,” Nelson yelled back. “Hey, looks like a patrol car swingin’ in behind us.”

“That must be the other copper. Step on it, Russell.”

“I’m goin’ almost seventy now!”

“I’ll just slow that son-bitch down,” said Nelson.

“No mere killing, Lester!” Dillinger yelled.

“Right,” Nelson said. He smashed out the back window of the Packard with his tommygun and waited as the patrol car drew closer. When it was in range he fired one burst, then another.

In the patrol car, Luther Conklin saw the window smash out but could not see clearly because of the rain. Then he saw the flash of the machine gun and heard the bullets ripping into the radiator, heard the steam hissing from it. The radiator cap exploded off and steam poured out. Conklin swerved in the road as another burst tore into both front tires. They burst under him and the car veered, skidded wildly on the wet pavement. He frantically fought the steering wheel, trying to gain control, felt the car skid into the shoulder and saw the tree rush toward him, felt it tear into the far side of the car. He smashed against the steering wheel, his breath rushing from his lungs.

Nelson settled back in the seat with a grin. “Cooked that little bastard’s goose for him,” he said.

“Christ, we killed another cop, maybe two,” Dillinger said, shaking his head.

Conklin staggered Out of the car, clutching his sprained ribs and fell back against the ruined police car. Rain poured down his face. He stared with frustration and disappointment as the most famous bank gang in history disappeared down the rain-swept highway. Dillinger, Pierpont, Clark, Nelson and Van Meter. He had no way of knowing that within six months all of them would be dead, tracked down by the man they feared most, the C-man Melvin Purvis. Dillinger would be the first to die, exactly two months later. On the twenty-second day of July.