Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [94]
Dillinger was finishing inside the vault. He glanced out a back window. It was a long drop to the parking lot below. “We’ll have to shoot our way out the front!” he yelled. He waved his gun at Grover Weyland and three woman tellers hiding under a counter, beckoning them to come forward. When Weyland tarried, Pierpont slapped him, sending his eyeglasses skidding across the floor. Weyland glared. “If you didn’t have that gun in your hand, you wouldn’t have that much guts,” he said.2
At that point another policeman walked into the lobby. “Come right in and join us,” Dillinger quipped.
“What the hell’s going on?” the man asked.
Officer Boyard shook his head and the man went quiet.3
Each of the five robbers selected a hostage or two, and together they headed out the front door. So many people had gathered on the sidewalk, however, that the gang literally had to push their way through the inquisitive crowd. A number of onlookers, noticing Officer Boyard, assumed he had taken the gang members hostage and crowded forward to get a look. “Get back! Get back!” people yelled.
As the crowd began to part, two detectives burst around a corner twenty yards away.
“Mack!” Pierpont cried.
Makley turned and fired a burst from his submachine gun. The detectives took cover in the Wylie Hat Shop.
The crowd lingered on the sidewalk even as the scrum of gang members and their hostages inched east toward the lakefront and their waiting car. Several hostages melted into the crowd. At least one passerby found himself briefly taken hostage. It was chaos. As the gang reached the parking lot, Pierpont again spied the two detectives peering down an alley to the south. “There’s that fellow with the gun again,” Pierpont snapped to Makley. “Get him!”
Makley loosed a volley down the alley, and the detectives dived into the rear entrance of the Liberal Clothing store, showers of dust and asphalt erupting at their heels. When they reached the car, Dillinger slid behind the wheel. “C’mon, Mr. President, you’re going with us,” Pierpont said to Weyland. He turned to a teller named Anna Patzke and said, “And you in the red dress.” The two hostages took positions on the running board beside Dillinger. Officer Boyard stood opposite them.
Dillinger sped away, the car whizzing past two running police officers. Weyland waved his arms as they passed, indicating they should not shoot. With Hamilton reading the git, Dillinger drove west across town, running two red lights before sagging into a traffic jam. They told Boyard to beat it and pulled the two remaining hostages inside the car, not wanting to attract attention.
The traffic jam cleared after a moment, and within minutes they were driving on dirt roads into the yellowing fields of the Wisconsin countryside. They stopped to change license plates, then again to fill up at a gasoline cache they had left. When Mrs. Patzke said she was cold, Pierpont lent her his coat. He gave Weyland his hat. Tensions ebbed. Dillinger’s mood, in fact, turned buoyant. They kept to the cat roads, passing several farms. At one point they passed an old man on a tractor. “Hi, Joe,” Dillinger hollered with a wave.
Finally they pulled into a glade and tied the hostages to a tree. Pierpont plucked his hat off the bank president’s head, and with that they were off.
The gang was back in Milwaukee by day’s end. Mary Kinder was waiting when they walked in, Dillinger kidding Pierpont about lending Mrs. Patzke his new coat. The take came to roughly $5,000 each.
By nightfall, as posses spread across southern Wisconsin in a vain attempt to track the robbers, reporters and police from Milwaukee to Indianapolis descended on Racine. One of Matt Leach’s men was there, and the Dillinger Gang’s responsibility was quickly confirmed. Asked what Dillinger was like, Grover Weyland told