Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [102]
The gang scattered. Van Meter and Carroll returned to St. Paul, while the Nelsons drove west, crossing New Mexico and then Utah before reaching San Francisco a few days before Christmas. It was then that Nelson found Fatso Negri outside the bar on Pacific Street. Over the course of several days, Nelson laid out his plans to a Midwestern bank-robbing blitz the following spring. Negri signed on.
The Dillinger Gang’s good times ended suddenly on December 14 when a Chicago police detective was sent to investigate a tip that one of the gang’s Auburns was being serviced at a Broadway garage. John Hamilton appeared at the garage that afternoon. Approached by Detective William Shanley, Hamilton panicked, drew his gun, and fired, killing Shanley. Hamilton ran into the street and escaped. The killing of Detective Shanley was front-page news, and two days later it led the Chicago Police Department to form a special forty-man Dillinger squad.
Dillinger decided it was time to take the Florida vacation he had been thinking about. The gang left in a four-car convoy. Dillinger was the first to arrive at Daytona Beach, on December 19, and he and Billie Frechette quickly rented a sprawling two-story beach house with enough rooms for everyone. They spent the next week strolling the beach and fishing, happy to be away from Chicago; it was the first time most of the gang had ever been to an ocean beach. After a few days everyone piled into the cars and took a two-day trip to Miami, where they took in the dog races and a nightclub or two.
A few days after Christmas, having returned to Daytona, Billie decided to leave to visit her family in Wisconsin for the holidays. There have long been reports that her decision followed a fight with Dillinger—thirty years later Mary Kinder claimed Dillinger had blackened one of her eyes—but there is no evidence to back this up. Dillinger stayed behind, saying he would see her after New Year’s.
Shawnee, Oklahoma Saturday, December 30 1:45 A.M.
Of all the skills Hoover’s men were attempting to master that winter, the strategies and tactics of gunplay were by far the most difficult. Marksmanship courses were under way at most offices, but soda bottles and paper targets didn’t return fire. Capturing armed fugitives was a skill the men of the FBI would learn only after funerals.
After the debacle of Verne Miller’s escape at Halloween, the Bureau’s next test of fire came in a cold rain in Shawnee, a small town east of Oklahoma City. That night Ralph Colvin, the Oklahoma City SAC, and a squad of FBI agents and policemen crept through a heavy fog toward the back of a clapboard house where an informant said the outlaw Wilbur Underhill was hiding. Colvin had been nipping at Underhill’s heels for weeks. Unlike Pretty Boy Floyd, who had vanished, Underhill had been spotted robbing banks all across the state. He represented the FBI’s best chance to break the Kansas City Massacre case.
As Colvin approached the back of the house, a dog began to bark. At Colvin’s side was an Oklahoma City detective named Clarence Hurt; Colvin liked Hurt, and would lure him to the FBI within months. The two men hustled through the muddy backyard toward a bedroom window. The blinds were up. Inside, standing in his long underwear, they saw a man. It was Wilbur Underhill. A woman was sitting on a bed beside him.
“Stick ’em up, Wilbur!” Hurt shouted. “It’s the law!”
Underhill froze. He started to raise his arms, then whirled toward the window. Hurt fired a tear-gas canister; it crashed through the window and struck Underhill flush in the chest before falling to the floorboards, hissing. Colvin braced his submachine gun and fired three bursts. Glass shattered. Underhill fell.
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