The Hunt (aka 27)

by William Diehl

  "What's bawdy parts?" Roger asked.

  "The love parts," she answered quickly. He made a face and lost interest. The boy fingered the two-inch-thick stack of Cops ‘N' Robbers bubble gum cards carefully wrapped with a worn and dirty rubber band that lay beside his dinner plate.

  "Tommy's got two John Dillingers. Two! And a Melvin Purvis," Roger complained. "And he wants five of my cards for one of his John Dillingers. Don't seem fair."

  "Doesn't seem fair," Louise corrected.

  "It's business, son," Ben Scoby said. "Called the law of supply and demand. He's got the supply, you've got the demand."

  "But he's my friend!"

  "Don't count in business matters," Scoby said.

  "Doesn't," Louise corrected.

  "Doesn't," Scoby said with a frown.

  "You and Fred do business at the bank with your friends," said Roger.

  "Different," Scoby said, and started explaining collateral and interest and payments to the seven-year-old, who quickly tuned him out and concentrated on how he was going to get the Dillinger card away from Tommy Newton without severely depleting his own collection.

  "Which card is worth the most?" Fred asked.

  "Oh, John Dillinger by far," Roger said. " ‘Pretty Boy' Floyd is second, but he's nowhere near John Dillinger."

  Scoby sighed. "Here I am in the banking business and my son's primary interest in life is to acquire a gum card with the face of the worst bank robber in history." He shook his head. "What's the world comin' to?"

  "It's supply and demand," Roger answered, and they all laughed.

  Dinner at the Scobys' was routine. The conversation centered around Roosevelt and how he was handling the economy, and the baseball season, and the county fair coming up in two weeks, and what the Dillinger gang was up to now, and whether Jack Sharkey had the stuff to whip the German, Max Schmeling, for the heavyweight championship of the world. That was about as close as they ever got to German affairs. After all, Europe was half the world away from Drew City.

  "Tell you what, Rog," Dempsey said. "I've got to go up to Chicago this weekend and see my mother. Maybe I can find you a John Dillinger up there."

  "Really!"

  "Maybe. Can't promise but I'll check around."

  "Why don't you take the Buick," Louise offered. "I won't be using it and you can get back a lot earlier on Sunday."

  Dempsey reached in his pocket and took out the makings of a cigarette. Roger watched with rapt attention as he pulled a sheet of the thin paper from the packet and curled it with his forefinger into a little trough, then shook tobacco out of the package along the length of the curve of paper, rolled it into a tight cigarette and licked the paper and sealed it.

  When Dempsey took out his lighter, Louise held out her hand. He put it in her palm. She loved the sensual feel of its smooth, gold sides, rubbing her thumb up and down its length and across the unique wolf's head on the top, before she snapped it open and lit his cigarette.

  Dempsey finally shook his head. "I'll take the Greyhound like I always do," he said.

  He walked home in the cool spring rain and when he got to Third Street he stopped across the street from the old Victorian house that sat by itself in the middle of the block. Shoulders hunched against the rain, his hands stuffed in his pockets, he stared at Miss Beverly Allerdy's parlor, where the shades were always drawn and you could hear the loud, Negro blues music playing inside the jaded walls and men sneaked in the back door and there was a lot of laughter. Women's laughter. He wondered how far the ladies would go in this small town. He could not risk visiting the house. As he stood there he felt the familiar urge again, felt the familiar tightening in his crotch and the anger building up.

  Dempsey had invented the story of an ailing mother in Chicago when the familiar urge had first come over him. Since then he had taken the four o'clock bus to Chicago every six or seven weeks, checked into the Edgewater Beach Hotel and employed one of the most expensive party girl services in the Midwest, girls who were willing to endure his sadistic games for the right price. He had been thinking about taking the trip for several days. The need was building in him.

  He decided he would bring up the trip to Chicago again and accept Louise's offer of the car for the weekend—after a reasonable protest, of course. It might be interesting for a change, cruising the streets of Chicago, looking for something different.

  As he walked home in the rain, Dempsey thought about what he had learned about Americans in the nine months since he had come to Drew City. They were generous. Too trusting. Good friends when they got to know you. They were crazy for fads. They loved sports and entertainment and elevated ballplayers and movie actors, even the very rich, to a kind of royalty status. They were radically independent. Their slang expressions changed from one place to the next, impossible to keep up with. Everyone went to church on Sunday. They all seemed to have an unusual fascination with the weather. And the entire nation seemed to gather around their radios every night.

  But most encouraging of all, thought 27 with satisfaction, they were complacent.

  TWENTY-ONE

  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 er 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 G-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?"

  "I 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."

&nbs
p; "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 bank 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."