Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [110]
The motor bandits, meanwhile, were planning further crimes. Raymond-la-Science obtained some silver nitrate, which the thieves used to lighten their hair. Bonnot and Garnier shaved off their mustaches, and Bonnot went on a shopping spree to buy them all new suits, complete with bowler hats, that would make them seem respectable. A fellow anarchist, Élie Monier, who used the alias Simentoff, proposed that they join him in a payroll robbery in the city of Nîmes, in the south of France. On February 26, the three bandits stole another Delaunay-Belleville (evidently Bonnot favored them). The owner had planned to drive it in the upcoming Tour de France, and in the passenger compartment, the trio found an added bonus: a fox-fur-lined cloak, an overcoat with an astrakhan collar, stopwatches, and maps. 14 With these additions to their own new wardrobes, the criminals now truly resembled the wealthy, fashionable people they despised — not unlike Fantômas himself.
Unfortunately, on their way south, the car required repairs that took several hours. It was not so easy in those days to find a place to stay on the road, and Bonnot feared that someone would notice the stolen car if they parked and slept in it, so he turned around and headed back to Paris. Once more disregarding a customs barrier, this time at the Porte d’Italie, he crossed the Île de la Cité, virtually within sight of police headquarters, turned left onto the rue de Rivoli, passing the Louvre and the Tuileries, and then headed north into the eighth arrondissement. Bonnot picked up speed as the street ran downhill, and he nearly hit a bus that was backing out of a bay at the Gare Saint-Lazare.
Bonnot avoided the collision, but the car jumped the curb, ran onto the sidewalk, and stalled. Garnier had gotten out to turn the crank that would restart the engine when a traffic policeman walked up to chide the driver for his reckless speed. By the accounts of witnesses, Bonnot never looked up at the man, staring ahead stone-faced, waiting for the engine to roar into life. As soon as it did, he put the car in gear, and Garnier had to rush to get back inside. The policeman, naturally incensed at this blatant disregard for his authority, stepped onto the running board and grabbed the steering wheel. Garnier didn’t hesitate: he leaned across Bonnot and fired three shots into the policeman, who fell, dying, onto the pavement as Bonnot hit the gas and roared off.
Now the car was hotter than ever, but the bandits, reluctant to abandon it, somehow hid it long enough to use for another attempted heist two days later. At midnight, they entered the town of Pontoise, northwest of Paris, somehow having learned the location of the home of a wealthy lawyer. They broke in through a side door and found a safe. Their efforts to try to move it — they apparently hoped to make off with it in the car — woke the lawyer and his wife. The lawyer looked out of an upstairs window and, as luck would have it, saw a baker going by on his way to work. He asked the baker to check to see if the door was locked. As he approached, Callemin and Garnier ran out, fired their guns into the air, and headed for the car, where Bonnot sat waiting for them. The lawyer had his own pistol and returned fire as they drove out of sight. Disgusted, the three men who had terrified all of Paris abandoned their magnificent automobile after setting fire to it.
What had been for the bandits a comedy of errors was portrayed in the newspapers as the triumph of lawlessness over order. The anarchist gang, which was now thought to number in the dozens, had shot down a police officer in cold blood in the heart of Paris and driven off unmolested. Politicians were not immune to criticism, and the minister of the interior instructed Guichard’s boss, Louis Lépine, the prefect of police, that he wanted results tout de suite. Anyone who had ever been suspected of anarchist leanings found themselves in jeopardy.