Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [144]
The car crept along at about fifteen miles an hour as it zigzagged through city streets toward the edge of town. At one point, as they passed the Kirk Apartments, a woman named Minnie Piehm hollered, “Let me out! This is where I live.” Amazingly, the car stopped and Miss Piehm trotted off. An assistant cashier was about to follow when one of the gang said, “Get back here, you.”
The situation wasn’t funny to the hostages who remained clinging to the car’s fenders and running boards. “Stop looking at me or I’ll kill you,” one of the gang members said several times. The Buick’s slow pace gave the police chief, E. J. Patton, time to catch up; his was one of two squad cars that managed to pursue the gang. Patton followed at a safe distance as the Buick turned south onto Highway 18 and picked up speed. At one point, as the fleeing car crested a rise, Nelson said to Carroll, “Wait till they come over the hill and then I’ll pop them off.” Sitting in the front seat, Nelson took a rifle and fired several wild shots at Chief Patton’s car.
Just beyond the city limits, the Buick stopped. Nelson hopped off, fired a shot or two at Chief Patton’s car, which also stopped, then began tossing out handfuls of roofing tacks. Dillinger watched as several bounced under the Buick. In a serene voice, he said, “You’re getting tacks under our own car.”17
When Nelson jumped back into the car, Carroll once again headed south, driving at about thirty miles an hour. It was still snowing, and several of the hostages outside the car were freezing. One of the tellers, Emmet Ryan, gave a woman his jacket. For some reason, this angered Dillinger, who fired him a cold stare. “The coldest eyes you ever saw,” Ryan remembered years later. “Cold eyes and white skin.”
Ryan again irked Dillinger when the car turned onto a dirt road to release several hostages. Ryan began to leave. Then, realizing how cold another hostage was without a coat, he suggested the other man leave instead. “Who the hell is running this show?” Dillinger asked.
Chief Patton was still behind them. He pulled to the roadside when the car stopped. Nelson fired three shots from his rifle, hitting the squad car but missing Patton. “You phone the law!” Nelson shouted at one of the departing hostages. “Tell ’em if they don’t stop following us we’re gonna kill everyone in the car!”
They proceeded that way for forty-five minutes or so, eventually finding their way back to the sand pit and their second car. Most of the hostages were left there, but two accompanied the gang on the drive north; they were released only when Chief Patton turned back to Mason City. When they were certain they had gotten away cleanly, the gang stopped and bandaged Dillinger’s and Hamilton’s shoulder wounds.
They were back in St. Paul by nightfall. Tired and bleeding, the gang headed for Harry Sawyer’s Green Lantern tavern. Sawyer wasn’t there, but his bartender said he knew what to do. That night a doctor named Nels Mortensen was awakened by the sound of someone ringing the bell at his home on Fairmount Avenue in St. Paul. Thin, gray-haired, and locally prominent, the fifty-year-old Mortensen was president of the state board of health; a friend of Harry Sawyer’s, he had treated Fred Barker for syphilis and performed the tonsillectomy on Alvin Karpis’s girlfriend. Downstairs, he parted the curtains. Two cars were at the curb. Opening the door, he found a group of men he didn’t recognize.
The bartender explained that two of the men had just been injured in a gunfight downtown. Mortensen said he didn’t have his medical bag, but let the men inside anyway. Standing in his foyer, Mortensen tore off Hamilton’s bandages and examined the wound; it wasn’t serious. Dillinger almost fainted when he stripped off his shirt.