Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [277]
Barker froze. He made a whimpering noise. He began to raise his hands, then wheeled and stepped between two parked cars into the street. He had barely begun to run when he slipped on the ice, pitched forward and fell facedown in the muddy slush. The agents were on him within moments. Jerry Campbell dragged Barker to his feet while another agent applied the handcuffs. Other agents pinioned Kuhlmann.
Someone asked Barker his name.
“You know who I am,” he spat.
As agents began to haul Barker toward their cars, he sighed. “This is a helluva time to be caught without a gun,” he said.
3920 Pine Grove Avenue 11:00 P.M.
The night stretched on. The occupants of Apartment One North hadn’t been seen since 6:45. Finally, at 11:00, agents saw a man stroll down the back alley. He slid into the darkness behind the apartment. A moment later the kitchen light clicked on. At the same time, agents saw the tall man and the two women walk up the front sidewalk and into the lobby. It was time.
Connelley, stationed with ten agents next door, walked out into the night air in front of the building. He strode to a waiting car and ordered the four agents inside to proceed to the back alley to reinforce the ten agents already there. He took a moment to arrange other men around the front of the building. When he was satisfied, Connelley took three agents into the lobby. There was no doorman; the apartment was up a flight of stairs and down a hallway. Standing in the lobby, Connelley pressed the call button for Apartment One North.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice.
“Is Mr. Bolton in?” Connelley asked. It was the name on one of the suspect car’s registrations. A pause. Then the woman said, “No, he’ll be back at the end of the week.” Connelley identified himself as an agent of the United States Department of Justice. “The building is completely surrounded,” he said. “All of you come downstairs, one at a time, with your hands up, and no one will get hurt.”
Connelley glanced at Agents Sam McKee and Ralph Brown, cradling Thompson submachine guns at the foot of the stairs. A third agent drew his service revolver. There was no response from the woman upstairs. Again Connelley pressed the call button. “All persons occupying the apartment come down immediately or the place will be gassed,” he said.
Nothing. The agents traded glances. A minute ticked by. Then two.
“All persons occupying the apartment come down immediately,” Connelley stated a third time. “Do not attempt to escape through the rear. The apartment building is completely surrounded, and anyone attempting to escape will be killed.”
A moment later a woman shouted down the stairs, “We’re coming down!” Clara Gibson, who was married to Russell Gibson, stepped down the stairs into the lobby, her brown Chow in her arms. Behind her came a woman the agents later learned was Willie Harrison’s wife. Connelley ordered both women to lie on the lobby floor. A few moments later Shotgun George Ziegler’s sidekick, tall, thin Bryan Bolton, walked down the stairs, hands in the air. He too lay on the lobby floor. Connelley demanded to know the first woman’s name. “Clara Gibson,” she said.
“Are there any others in the apartment?”
“My husband.”
The words had scarcely escaped her lips when gunshots rang out behind the building. “Ooooooh!” Clara Gibson wailed. “They’ve shot my husband!”
A dozen agents were arrayed at the rear of the apartment, hiding behind fences and garages. Nearest to the backdoor were the old Cowboy Doc White and an agent named Al Barber. They crouched in the darkened alley, no more than twenty feet beyond the steps. The rookie agent Jack Welles peeked from behind a garage on the far side of the alley, forty feet from the kitchen window.ep At 11:30 he heard a woman’s voice, apparently talking to someone in the lobby.
As the woman spoke, Welles saw a second woman peek from behind the kitchen blinds. With his service revolver he drew a bead on her head. The woman disappeared behind the blind. A second later a man attempted to open the kitchen window. Welles put the man’s head in his sights.