“I expect we better locate him first,” Purvis said. “It’s deer season. Half the men in Ohio will be out shooting at each other with deer rifles, anyway.”
“Deer season doesn’t concern me, and it shouldn’t concern you,” Hoover said. “All you need to think about is that Public Enemy Number One is terrorizing Ohio. Your job is to eliminate him.”
“Uh … eliminate him?” Purvis asked.
“The Dillinger solution was the right one,” the Director said. “I’m holding you personally responsible for this operation, Purvis. I don’t want Floyd to leave Ohio alive—is that clear?”
“Local sharpshooters would be better, sir, they’ll know the terrain,” Purvis said. G-men had only recently been given permission by Congress to carry guns, and in Purvis’s view, the Director was lax with this newly acquired status.
“What if Floyd surrenders?” he added, worried about overzealous citizens shooting first and asking questions later.
“He won’t,” Hoover assured him. “The car’s waiting to take you to the airplane. I want reports on the hour.”
“Who said it was Floyd?” Purvis asked.
“The bank manager, that’s who,” Hoover said. “Get going.”
“I hope the bank manager had his specs on,” Purvis said. “Otherwise, some small-time hoodlum will have most of the deer hunters in Ohio shooting at him.”
“I told you, get going—we don’t need any Hamlets in this bureau!” Hoover barked.
Agent Melvin Purvis had no idea what the Director meant by the remark, but he knew he’d asked enough questions.
The plane had to come back to the airport twice because the door kept blowing open. The second time it blew open, it sucked off Agent Purvis’s hat.
“Somebody wire that damn door shut when we get down,” Purvis said. Somewhere far below, his hat was fluttering toward the Anacostia River.
“I hope I don’t get my picture taken before I get the chance to buy a new fedora,” he remarked.
“Why, are you going bald on top?” the pilot asked.
“No, but the Director doesn’t like to see pictures of G-men without their hats,” Purvis said.
18
Charley was lighting a stogie when the cows ambled into the road.
“Watch where you’re goin’, Charley!” Beulah yelled.
It was drizzling rain, and the road was slick. Charley braked and swerved, just enough to miss the cows, but the car went into a skid and bounced across the ditch. Before he could stop, it whacked into a fence post. Beulah, Rose, and Richetti all hit their heads on the roof of the car when it bounced across the ditch.
“Charley, I smashed my chapeau!” Beulah said, looking at her mashed hat. It was a pink hat, acquired in Buffalo, where they robbed a bank of enough traveling money to buy the car they had just wrecked.
Charley was disgusted with himself for not paying better attention to his driving. When he got out and saw the crumpled fender, he was even more disgusted.
“See!” Beulah said. “I said you was driving too fast.”
“I wasn’t driving too fast,” Charley said—he hated to have his driving criticized.
“Then why are we in the ditch?” Beulah asked.
“Because the cows was walking too slow,” Charley informed her.
The cows, meanwhile, were back across the road, looking at the car and the passengers. One of them mooed; Richetti immediately opened the trunk of the car and yanked out the Tommy gun, promptly taking aim at the cows.
“What the hell are you doin’, Eddie?” Charley asked, looking at Richetti as if he had suddenly lost his senses. “Those are milk cows.”
“So what? I don’t drink milk,” Richetti said. “They look dangerous to me.”
“Put the heater away, bud,” Charley said, waving his hand at Richetti.
“I’m a city gal—they look dangerous to me, too,” Beulah said.
“Jeez—I never met grown people in my whole life who were afraid of milk cows!” Charley said, shaking his head in exasperation.
Beulah’s hair-trigger temper was about to go off again.
“Yeah, well, what about you? You were in such a hurry to get home to your tattletale wife that you had to go and have a car wreck.”
“Aw, lay off him, Beulah,” Rose said. “He can’t help it if the road was slick.”
Charley looked down and noticed water leaking out of the radiator, which didn’t improve his spirits any.
“Aw, let her rattle,” he said. “Who cares?”
“Not you, you stiff!” Beulah said. “All you can think about is Oklahoma.”
“That radiator’s gotta get fixed, or we won’t make it out of Ohio,” Charley said. “Damn the luck—I ain’t worried about the fender, but the radiator’s serious.”
He looked over at Beulah, who was busy trying to straighten out her pink hat.
“You think you can find your way back to that last little town?” he asked.
“Sure, and if you give me a couple of hundred-dollar bills, I can find my way to Chicago, or maybe Philadelphia, too,” Beulah said. She hated having her clothes messed up, and the newer the clothes, the more she hated it.
“With a little cash, I can always find my way to someplace lively,” she added.
Charley took several bills out of his wallet, and handed them to her.
“Forget the lively, or I’ll lively you,” he told her. “Just get the radiator fixed and hurry back. If they want to hammer the fender out, that’s all right, too. Give ’em a big tip and tell them to hurry.”
“Ain’t you coming?” Beulah asked.
“No, I seen two laws when we was driving through,” Charley said. “Me and Eddie can’t risk it.”
“What’ll you do in the meantime?” Beulah asked. “I hate to leave you out here in the wet.”
“I might teach Eddie how to milk a cow,” Charley said, grinning at Richetti. “Once we get that out of the way, we’ll count squirrels.”
“Aw, come with us, honey,” Beulah said. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”
“Nope,” Charley said. “There’s too many nosey folks in these small towns. Some sheriff might spot us and try to make his reputation by catching a notorious public enemy, like Eddie here.”
“I ain’t notorious,” Richetti said—he thought he’d been insulted.
“Charley, I don’t like leavin’ you here,” Beulah insisted. “Rose don’t like it, either. Can’t you just sit in a cafe with your hat pulled down or something, while we get the car worked on?”
“It’s too risky,” Charley said. “You and Rose go buy yourselves ice cream sodas while you’re in town—there’s nothin’ better on a rainy day than a root beer float.”
“Yeah, there is—and you know what I’m talkin’ about, too,” Beulah said, winking at him as she climbed behind the wheel of the car.
With Charley and Richetti pushing, she managed to get the car back across the muddy ditch.
“What’s to keep ’em from stealing the car, once they get it fixed?” Richetti asked, after the girls had disappeared around a curve in the road.
Charley turned, and winked at Richetti.
“Why, our handsome faces, bud,” Charley replied, hunching his shoulders down into his overcoat.
19
Agent Melvin Purvis went straight from the little landing field to the bank in Salem, Ohio, that had been robbed the day before.
The manager, Mr. McNair, was eager to tell his tale. In Purvis’s experience, all bank managers were talkative after a robbery; what they weren’t apt to be was accurate in their accounts of their big adventure.
“You are sure it was Charley Floyd?” Agent Purvis asked.
“Sure as sure can be,” Mr. McNair said. “It was Pretty Boy, all right. I’ve had his picture right here in my desk for several months. I happened to look up, and there he stood, pointing a gun at Clayton here.”
Clayton, the clerk who had handed over the money, lacked his boss’s air of cer
titude.
“Only problem is, Pretty Boy’s hair is dark,” Clayton said. “The fella who robbed us had blond hair.”
Mr. McNair was annoyed with his clerk—no one had asked him to volunteer his opinion.
“Well, naturally, he dyed his hair,” Mr. McNair said.
“Wouldn’t you dye your hair, if you were about to rob a bank?”
“Floyd’s never dyed his hair that we know of,” Agent Purvis said.
“Well, he dyed it this time,” Mr. McNair insisted. “I guess I know a man whose picture’s been in my desk for six months.
“His hair wasn’t so much blond as it was light,” he added.
“What did his accomplice look like?” Purvis asked.
“His which?” Mr. McNair asked.
“The second man,” Purvis said. “The one with the Tommy gun.”
“It wasn’t no Tommy gun, it was a sawed-off shot-gun,” Clayton volunteered.
“Clayton, you need your specs changed!” Mr. McNair said, irritably. “It was a Tommy gun—I should know, he pointed it right at me.”
Agent Purvis felt tired. He hadn’t had time yet to purchase a new fedora, a fact which made him feel undressed. Even after the door of the little plane was wired shut, an unpleasant draft had whistled through the cabin during the whole flight. One of his ears seemed to have closed up, perhaps in response to the draft. Then the sheriff in Salem had informed him that four banks had been robbed the day before, within a fifty-mile radius of Salem. Agent Purvis concluded that he was either in the wrong bank, or the wrong town, or both. The Director had failed to inform him of at least two of the other Ohio bank jobs.
“The accomplice was tall,” Clayton put in. “He nearly bumped his head on the door when he come in with that shotgun.”
“It wasn’t Richetti, then,” Purvis concluded. “Adam Richetti’s a runt. And if it wasn’t Richetti, I doubt it was Charley Floyd. They robbed a bank in Buffalo together four days ago. Our suspicion is that they’re traveling together.”
Mr. McNair was reluctant to abandon his conviction that he had been robbed by Pretty Boy Floyd. Being robbed by Public Enemy Number One would be something to tell his grandkids, the first of which had arrived the week before. Being robbed by a lesser criminal would spoil the story.
“It sure looked like Pretty Boy to me,” he repeated.
“Thank you for your time,” Agent Purvis said. “Where might the nearest store be, so that I could purchase a hat?”
“Right across the street,” Clayton suggested.
“Next time we get the Bureau in here, you better mind your own business, Clayton!” Mr. McNair said emphatically, once the G-man was gone. “Who do you think manages this bank, anyway?”
Clayton knew perfectly well who managed the bank, but he chose to dodge the question.
“Well, the man needed a hat,” he said, looking out the window.
“If Pretty Boy didn’t rob this bank, I’d like to know who did,” Mr. McNair said, to no one in particular.
“A blond fella, and a tall man with a sawed-off shotgun,” Clayton replied.
20
“Can’t we build a fire?” Richetti asked, shivering. “I’m freezing.”
Charley sat on a stump about a hundred yards from the road, smoking. Richetti was walking around in circles, trying to keep warm. He was getting more peeved by the minute.
“Sure, build a fire,” Charley said. “Then the first hayseed that drives past will report us to the nearest fire department.
“Go on, build one,” he said, again. “Order me a ham sandwich, while you’re at it, too … I wonder why the girls ain’t back?”
“If there’s a store in that town, they done been trapped,” Richetti said. “They’re shoppin’.”
“I doubt there’s much in East Liverpool that’s up to Beulah’s shopping standards,” Charley observed. “I could be wrong about that, though.”
Just then, a farmer with half a haystack piled in the back of his truck came purring along the road. He turned his face toward Charley and Richetti, and slowed down for a moment. After he’d had a good hard look, he sped up and was soon out of sight around the bend.
“Two bits says that old sucker calls the sheriff,” Charley said. He was beginning to feel nervous; he had probably been wrong to send the girls into town alone.
“Maybe we should’ve gone on into town ourselves and stole a car,” Charley said. “I don’t like this part of Ohio, there’s a town every mile or two. It’s too easy to locate a sheriff, if a sheriff’s what you want. Down on the plains, it’s thirty miles at least between towns.”
“I say we go to Florida,” Richetti said. “It don’t ever get this cold in Florida.”
“Shut up about Florida, Eddie,” Charley snapped. “I got more on my mind than palm trees … I could kick myself for letting those girls go off alone.”
“So what if that old clodhopper finds a sheriff?” Richetti asked. “It ain’t a crime to sit on a hill and freeze, is it?”
“You got a short memory, bud,” Charley said. “We pulled two jobs in the last week—remember?”
“They wasn’t big jobs,” Richetti ventured.
“No, but they were bank jobs,” Charley said. “Every sheriff in eastern Ohio’s probably heard about them by now. It might look suspicious, two fellas in overcoats sittin’ on a hill, enjoying the drizzle.”
Before another quarter hour had passed, they saw a police car come speeding around the same bend the old man had disappeared beyond. The car stopped not far from where they had wrecked the car. A short sheriff and a fat deputy got out.
“I knew it—here comes trouble,” Charley said.
“Now what do we do?” Richetti asked.
“It’s their move,” Charley said. “Don’t pull your cannon yet, maybe we can bluff ’em.”
The sheriff snagged his pants leg getting over the fence, almost losing his balance. Charley and Richetti sat and watched as the fat deputy tried to get him unstuck. The sheriff cursed a few times, but finally got free without too much loss to his dignity. The two men came slowly up the hill.
“Howdy,” the sheriff said, when he was in hearing distance. “What are you fellas doin’ here?”
“Getting wet, mainly,” Charley replied. “We’re waiting for a surveyor, I’m lookin’ to buy some property around here.”
“Well, you won’t be buyin’ this property,” the sheriff told him. “This property belongs to Earl Lowder, and Earl would cut off both legs and probably an ear before he’d part with an acre of land.”
“I thought this was where the surveyor told us to wait,” Charley said. “We could be lost, I guess—we ain’t from here.”
“Earl don’t like trespassers,” the sheriff told them. “He’s the one turned you in.”
“You mean it’s a crime to sit on a hill?” Charley asked.
“It is, if it ain’t your hill,” the sheriff said.
Two more cars came blazing along the road, screeching to a stop when they passed the sheriff’s vehicle. One of them skidded, and almost went into the ditch not far from where Charley’d had the wreck. The men who jumped out of the two cars were all armed.
“The Marines just arrived, looks like,” Charley said, bringing his pistol out of his pocket. “I’ll take your weapons, officers—give ’em over, and nobody will get hurt.”
“Son, we’re just talking about trespassin’—it’s only a misdemeanor,” the sheriff said, startled.
“Maybe, but them Marines are all carryin’ rifles,” Charley observed. “I didn’t know you shoot folks for trespassin’, in Ohio.
“Give over the weapons, quick,” he added.
The sheriff and the deputy handed over their pistols at once. Charley gave one to Richetti, and stuck the other under his belt.
Down on the road, the riflemen were watching.
“Damn, there’s eight of ’em,” Richetti said. “What do we do now, bud?”
“Run for the trees,” Charley said.
“Crawlin’ might be safer, but we won’t be able to crawl fast enough.”
Charley ducked as low as he could; the line of trees was less than fifty yards away. Before he had gone ten steps, bullets began to zing into the weeds, none of them very close. The sheriff and the deputy stood as if paralyzed, directly between Charley and the riflemen. He took as much advantage of their position as he could. He felt confident he could reach the trees before any of the riflemen got far enough down the road to be sure of missing the lawmen.
Adam Richetti slipped on a slick patch of grass and fell. He leapt up at once, but in his panic, he veered away from the trees a bit. Charley yelled—but just as he did, a bullet hit Eddie in the leg, taking him down again. He struggled up, but dropped his pistol. Bullets began to hit all around him, and Richetti raised his hands.
“Charley, I’m hit!” he yelled, but Charley didn’t look back. He ran for all he was worth. Most of the bullets were missing by wide margins, but one rifleman seemed to be an above-average shot. One bullet nearly clipped Charley’s heel, and another ricocheted off a rock, practically at his elbow.
By the time he hit the trees, he was a bit winded, but he kept running. He jumped a little creek, and skirted some thick underbrush. When he knew he was finally out of range, he slowed to a trot. East Liverpool, the town where he had sent Beulah and Rose, was no more than two miles away. If he could sneak in and locate the girls, there still might be a chance he could get away.
Behind him, the firing had stopped.
Suddenly, wings were everywhere, followed by a wild gobbling sound that scared Charley more than the peck of bullets in the grass. A wild turkey nearly flew into him as it took off: he had run into a flock of at least twenty turkeys, feeding on acorns. Charley almost fired his pistol at the thundering noise before he realized it was just turkeys, struggling up through the foliage.
He had never been that close to a wild turkey in his life. He stopped running, and stood and looked. Soon the gobbling faded, and only a few falling leaves marked the turkey’s passage. For a time, the only sound in the forest was Charley’s own ragged breathing. Once he caught his breath, though, he could hear the sound of cars on the nearby highway, and the sound of the lawmen, calling to one another from the edge of the forest. Not since the night he had jumped off the train taking him to the Ohio pen had he felt so much like a hunted animal. He had been pursued in towns and cities and along country roads. But then, he had been in a house, or in a car, and with companions, usually—in towns, he at least felt like a man among men.