Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [108]
It wasn’t Clyde’s idea; it was Hamilton’s. In early January, Hamilton had promised $1,000 to the unreliable Mullins, an eight-time loser about to be paroled, if he would find Clyde and arrange with him to smuggle guns into the prison farm. After his release, Mullins headed to Dallas and found Raymond’s brother Floyd. Floyd Hamilton was part of Bonnie and Clyde’s support network, ferrying food and other items to the couple every few nights outside the city. He took Mullins to see Clyde, at a roadside clearing outside Irving, ten miles west of Dallas.
Mullins recognized Clyde from prison. Bonnie’s appearance surprised him. She was dirty and appeared to weigh no more than eighty pounds. Her leg remained bandaged. She limped. Sitting in his car in the darkness, Clyde listened to Mullins’s plan. The appeal of working alongside Raymond Hamilton was strong; with Hamilton as his partner he could be a bank robber instead of a beggar. But Clyde didn’t trust Mullins. The Hamilton brothers wanted the guns smuggled in Sunday night. Fearing a trap, Clyde said they would do it Saturday night. He told Floyd Hamilton to stay with Mullins every minute until they left.
The next evening, after buying a pistol at a pawnshop, Hamilton and Mullins met Bonnie and Clyde on a highway east of Dallas. At sunset they drove south toward Madisonville, then turned onto the cat roads, hoping to find one that would lead them to the spot where the guns were to be planted. Around one-thirty A.M., they came to the edge of the prison farm. Mullins took the pistol, two clips of ammunition and one of Clyde’s .45s, wrapped them in an inner tube, and crept toward the prison buildings. About a hundred yards from Hamilton’s dormitory, Mullins slid the package beneath a culvert.
They were back in Dallas by dawn. Sunday was visitors’ day at Eastham, and Floyd Hamilton drove down to tell Raymond the guns were in place. Clyde and Bonnie, meanwhile, returned to the edges of the prison farm. It took several hours, but they found the field where Hamilton’s work group was clearing brush that week. They took several more hours mapping their escape. It was raining and the roads were muddy. Twice they were forced to cut through fields, closing gates behind them.
The escape was set for that Tuesday morning. At dawn, after leaving Bonnie in the car, Clyde and Mullins pushed through underbrush to the edge of the field, squatted behind a bush and waited. An hour later they were still waiting. If Hamilton’s escape was delayed, they had promised to be in place three straight mornings. They were about to leave when out of the fog they heard two shotgun blasts.
Clyde strained to hear. Two shotgun blasts was the guards’ signal for help. A minute passed, then two. Worried, they headed back to the car. Suddenly they heard voices approaching through the mists. “Get something else!” someone yelled. It was Raymond Hamilton.
“What?” Clyde hollered.
He didn’t understand. Assuming Hamilton was being pursued by guards, Clyde raised his Browning and fired into the treetops. Mullins did the same. When the guns were empty, they handed them to Bonnie to reload. A moment later, four men emerged from the fog: Hamilton, a convicted murderer named Joe Palmer, and two prisoners who had run after them. All were breathing hard after running almost a mile.
“Nobody but Raymond and Palmer can get in the car,” Mullins announced. “Everybody else go back.”
“Shut your damn mouth, Mullins,” Clyde snapped. “This is my car. I’m handling this. Three of you can ride back there.” He motioned to the trunk. “Guess four of us can ride up here.”
Within an hour roadblocks were being thrown up across the area. Sticking to the cat