• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Irritated, Nelson moved on, looking for refuge in his old Bay Area haunts. The two cars crossed into California separately on the theory that two cars with Illinois plates might arouse suspicion at the border agricultural checkpoint. The next morning everyone rendezvoused at a sprawling country inn, the Parente Hotel, in the wine-country town of El Verano outside Sonoma. The inn was owned by Louis Parente, a cousin of the bootlegger who had employed Nelson in Sausalito. Nelson wasn’t sure whether to trust Parente, but Negri, whose familiarity with the northern California underworld now made him Nelson’s de facto guide, assured him Parente was “all right.”

Parente was outside the hotel that morning when Nelson drove up, wearing white flannel slacks and a straw boater. “Hello, Louis,” Nelson said. “How’s the chance to get rooms in the hotel?” Parente just stared. “Don’t you remember me?” Nelson asked. “I used to work for your cousin.” Parente pointed Nelson to the front desk, where Nelson muttered that Parente had given him “the cold shoulder.” The manager, Gus Zappas, assigned Nelson rooms on the first floor.

“Don’t you remember me?” Nelson asked Zappas.

“You’re Jimmy,” Zappas said.

“Haven’t I changed a lot?” Nelson asked.

“Not very much,” Zappas said.

After lunch Nelson sent Perkins to the post office to see whether their wanted posters were displayed; to his relief, they weren’t. He sent Negri into San Francisco to fetch his old bootlegging foreman, Soap Mareno. Mareno reluctantly agreed to drive up to El Verano, arriving around midnight. During a walk around the darkened hotel grounds, Nelson asked whether Mareno could arrange a hideout for the gang, preferably an isolated ranch. After an hour Mareno returned to San Francisco, leaving Nelson bitterly disappointed. “Can you believe that?” he told Negri. “Soap won’t do a thing for me.”

Any hopes Nelson had of hiding at the inn were dashed the next day after lunch. As they were leaving the dining room, someone yelled, “Hey, Fatso!” Negri turned and saw David Dillon, an officer with the San Francisco Police, eating with his wife. Negri stepped over to chat. “Who was that?” Nelson demanded when Negri returned. Negri explained that Dillon was a friend; he wouldn’t say anything. Nelson was irate. He walked straight to the front desk and checked out.1

Nelson lingered in the wine country while trying to coax a hiding place out of old friends. The next night, after dinner in the town of Agua Caliente, he had the first of two meetings with Louis “Bones” Tambini, a bootlegger up from San Francisco; Tambini also said Nelson was “too hot” to hide. That night the Nelsons camped in a field, while Negri went to a hotel in Napa. Homesick, he walked to a pool hall and called his mother.

The next morning, Negri mentioned the call and Nelson became irate. “Haven’t I told you never to use a telephone or write to anyone that you know?” he demanded. Nelson told Negri to go home to his mother and watch the Chicago Tribune classifieds; if they needed him, they would place an ad containing the word “Nondo.”

His old haunts closed to him, Nelson stayed on the move, flitting between tourist camps in towns all across Northern California, in Caspar, Scotia, Eureka, Weaverville, and Sacramento, before heading south, staying in motels outside Salinas and Stockton.2 Nelson saw that too many sets of eyes were seeing them at too many places; they needed a spot to settle down, even if it meant camping.

That’s what it meant. Crossing into Nevada the morning of August 9, Nelson’s band pulled up beside the Fallon Mercantile Store in Fallon, Nevada, east of Reno. Nelson stayed in the car while Perkins and the others shopped. They bought a $5.95 Coleman camping stove, a $5.95 Coleman lantern, an $18 Range Tent, camping utensils, groceries, and a Winchester rifle. Perkins paid for everything from a fat roll of one-dollar bills then, politely declining the owner’s offer to help, used a hand truck