Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [62]
Bentz agreed.
With a target selected, on June 8 Nelson drove to St. Paul, where he recruited three yeggs to join his new gang. When one was late arriving on the Indiana lakeshore, Bentz suggested he be replaced with two parolees from the Michigan City prison he had met at an underworld hangout in Indiana Harbor.aa “They’re as bad as you fellows,” Bentz said with a grin. “No experience.”
“Who are they?” Nelson asked.
“One is Homer Van Meter,” Bentz said. “Went to stir for eight years for shooting at a policeman in South Bend. The other’s name is Dillinger.”
No, Nelson said, no strangers.8
Grand Haven, Michigan Friday, August 18, 1933
As FBI agents fanned out across the Southwest in search of Machine Gun Kelly, they assembled a list of Kelly’s known associates. Topping the list was his bank-robbing partner, Eddie Bentz. On August 18, as the names and addresses of Bentz’s brothers and sisters spit out of FBI Teletype machines across the country, Bentz was standing in a grove of trees outside of Grand Haven, Michigan, a resort town on Lake Michigan. Standing beside him was his new protégé, the former Lester Gillis. This was the day Baby Face Nelson would stage his first real bank robbery. “Now if you fellows will crowd around here I’ll explain where each man should go,” Bentz announced. He went over each man’s role. Nelson was to lead the gang inside the bank.
Something was bothering Nelson. “Bentz,” he interrupted, “I’m afraid we’ll miss the big money by you staying outside.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Bentz asked.
“Well, it requires experience to have those people open those safes.”
“You got me up here against my better judgment,” Bentz said. “I agreed to take the street and drive; now you expect me to go inside? Who’s to take the street?”
Nelson nodded toward their driver, a Touhy man named Monahan. “Freddie here could drive and take care of the street.”
“Impossible!” Bentz blurted. “You propose to put an inexperienced man on the street? He doesn’t know the first thing about cleaning a street.ab I wouldn’t agree to it—not in this town.”
“Will you go in if we leave two men outside?” Nelson asked.
Bentz fumed. “All right,” he finally said. “But now we’ll take one machine gun in with us. You take it in.”
“Okay with me,” Nelson said.
Then Bentz took out his diagrams, and they went over everything one last time.
A cool breeze was blowing off Lake Michigan as Bentz and Nelson strode into the Peoples Savings Bank a few minutes before its three o’clock closing time. Nelson, carrying a picnic basket, walked down to the last teller cage, slid a twenty-dollar bill beneath the grillwork, and asked for two dollars in nickels. He was nervous. When the teller slid him the nickels, Nelson asked for another two dollars in dimes. Beside him, Bentz snickered. Nelson and the teller exchanged glances. Nelson awkwardly whipped the Thompson out of the picnic basket and yelled, “Hands up!” The teller pressed a silent alarm.
Two other gang members entered the lobby as Bentz ordered the bank employees and two customers to lie on the floor. Nelson covered them as the others yanked down window shades. Their driver pulled up in an alley behind the bank. As the others rifled the teller cages, Bentz ordered the cashier to open the vault. Bentz stepped in and began shoveling packages of bonds into laundry sacks.
The alarm rang at a furniture store across the street. The store owner, Edward Kinkema, who doubled as Grand Haven’s mortician, grabbed a shotgun and ran into the street. Spying the getaway car in the alley, Kinkema raised his gun, and the getaway driver drove off. Kinkema began yelling that the bank was being robbed.
Inside the bank, Nelson turned his head. “Hurry, we got a rank!” he yelled. A policeman. Bentz peeked through the window and saw people running up and down the streets.