• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2110 0

came gunshots. It was Nelson, loosing a volley at a reporter from the Mason City Globe Gazette who had heard the shots; the reporter dived into the Yelland and Hanes Book Store. A moment later a large Hudson sedan drove by. Nelson yelled, “Get back!” then shot at it, too, the bullets striking the radiator; the car stopped with a loud squeal of brakes, reversed direction, and sped back into the town square, narrowly missing bystanders. A little girl in the crowd began crying hysterically.

Nelson swung his gun in a menacing circle, watching for police. As he did, several eyewitnesses said, he began laughing. He fired a burst at a row of parked cars, then another at the second story of a hardware store. Several bystanders thought he must be deranged. Just then a man named R. L. James, secretary to the Mason City school board, strolled up the sidewalk beside the bank, unaware of the robbery in progress. “Stop right there!” Nelson yelled, but James, who was hard of hearing, kept walking. Nelson fired, hitting James in the leg. He fell bleeding to the sidewalk. Nelson trotted up to him, snatched up a portfolio James was carrying, and searched it.

“I thought you were a cop, you son of a bitch,” Nelson said.

“I’m not a cop,” James moaned.

Dillinger took a few steps down the sidewalk, toward Nelson. Spotting the wounded James, he said, “Did you have to do that?”15

“I thought he was a cop!” Nelson snapped.

As Dillinger stepped back behind the wall of hostages, an elderly judge named John C. Shipley was peering down from a third-floor window directly above him. In Shipley’s hand was an old revolver he had fished from a desk drawer. Drawing a bead on Dillinger, he pulled the trigger. The bullet struck Dillinger a glancing blow in the right shoulder. Dillinger whirled, staring upward, then raised a pistol and fired several times at the windowsill. Shipley ducked down, unharmed.

As he turned back toward the hostages, Dillinger spied a city patrolman darting through the town square. The officer, James Buchanan, dived behind a large boulder used as a Civil War monument. Dillinger raised his gun and fired, the bullet ricocheting off the boulder. “Come out from behind there and fight like a man!” Dillinger shouted.

“Get away from that crowd and I will!” Buchanan shouted back. He peered around the boulder but held his fire.

Dillinger could see that the situation was getting out of hand. Van Meter stepped back into the lobby, waving away the tear gas, and yelled to Hamilton, “We’re leaving!”

“Give us three more minutes!” Hamilton yelled back. In the vault, Harry Fisher’s pace had gone from slow to glacial. “Gimme the big bills!” Hamilton snapped at Fisher, who ignored him, carefully bringing out one bag of singles after another.

“We’re going!” Van Meter hollered again.

“Just gimme another minute!” Hamilton replied. He was torn. “It’s hell to leave all that money,” Fisher heard him say.16 The bags in Hamilton’s hand contained about $52,000. There was another $200,000 in the vault. Hamilton decided he couldn’t wait. A moment later he turned from the vault door, grabbed a bank employee, and pushed him toward the front. In a minute all six gang members were on the sidewalk outside, surrounded by about twenty-five hostages. Each man shoved a knot of people toward the Buick. They were in a foul mood. When Eddie Green spied a jeweler staring from behind a parked car, he snarled, “Pull in that damn turtleneck! I’ll cut your head off!” He fired a single shot as the jeweler ducked behind the car.

Just then Judge Shipley raised his head to peer out his third-floor window, directly above the gang. Spying Hamilton with the money sack, he fired one final shot. The bullet struck Hamilton in the right shoulder. Hamilton lurched forward, stumbling into the getaway car. The wound was not serious, nor was Dillinger’s.

Five hostages were shoved onto the running boards, two more onto the front fender and several more on the rear fender. “Get up there, you bald-headed son of a bitch, or I’ll drop you,” one of the robbers, apparently Nelson, snapped