On the corner of Railroad Avenue in front of the cobbler’s shop the car almost brushed Frank Burke, an itinerant glassblower down for the day from Brockton. The gunman in the front seat aimed directly at him and pulled the trigger, but the hammer merely clicked. “Get out of the way, you son of a bitch!” he bellowed at Burke, the curtains blurring his face.
Louis DeBeradinis in his cobbler’s shop was giving an order to a salesman, Merle Averill, when he heard the tattoo of shots. “What the hell’s that?” Averill asked him, dropping his order book and running to the door. DeBeradinis followed. Together they saw the touring car sputter past the shop. The gunman leaned out and fired almost in DeBeradinis’ face. Again the weapon misfired.
At the poolroom at 66 Pearl Street, beyond the stable, Carlos Goodridge, a Victrola salesman, had been having a quick game with Peter Magazu, the proprietor, who also owned the shoe store next door, when he heard the first shots. He walked to the window, saw nothing, came back, and was chalking his cue when he heard more shots and people shouting. This time, stepping out to the edge of the sidewalk, he saw the dark touring car only twenty feet away and a swarthy man leaning out of it pointing a revolver at him. He ducked back inside and slammed the poolroom door, then peered out through the glass as the car spun by. The gunman had lowered his hand now, but he still held the revolver. Goodridge, his stomach tightened in a knot, watched the car swerve past the bakery, a gun barrel protruding from the gap of the rear window.
It gathered speed, running more smoothly, rolling past the stores and the frame two- and three-family houses and the barber shop with its spiraling striped pole. At 54 Pearl Street Nicola Damato, the barber, watched it pass, as did a shoe worker, Olaf Olsen, who had just come out of Torrey’s Drugstore. Both of them saw the gunman leaning out. Olsen noticed how he kept his left hand over his mouth as he held the pistol in his right. As the car swung left onto Washington at the top of Pearl Street, the tires spewing up the gravel, one of the men in the rear seat threw out several handfuls of tacks.
Elmer Chase, loading a truck in front of the Co-operative Society a hundred yards down Washington Street, heard the squeal of brakes and the grinding of gears. He looked up at the oncoming car, expecting a smashup. It slowed slightly as it passed him, and he had a glimpse of a sickly-looking driver and a stocky dark man with blowing hair bent over next to him.
Scarcely a minute had elapsed from the first shot until the getaway car vanished, but with its disappearance the actuality faded and the myth took over. All in all there were more than fifty witnesses of the holdup in its various stages, yet each impression now began to work in the yeast of individual preconceptions. The car was black, it was green, it was shiny, it was mud-streaked. There were two cars. The men who did the shooting were dark, were pale, had blue suits, had brown suits, had gray suits, wore felt hats, wore caps, were bareheaded. Only one had a gun, both had guns. The third man had been behind the brick pile with a shotgun all the time. Anywhere between eight and thirty shots had been fired. On some points there was a rough agreement: The car was a touring car, there were five men in it, the driver was a fair, sallow man, and the two men who had begun the shooting were short and clean-shaven.
The three gunmen had scarcely climbed into their car before Jim McGlone crawled from the excavation to where Parmenter lay sprawled on a stone. “I got him by the shoulder,” McGlone related two days later at the inquest, “and asked him where he was hurt and he didn’t answer, and I lowered his head to the ground. I went to the double team and got a horse blanket to put under Parmenter’s head and my brother came along and we lifted Parmenter up and they spread the horse blanket out and we put Parmenter in, and my brother and two other fellows took hold of a corner of the blanket and we carried him into the house.”
As soon as the car had passed the water tower Jimmy Bostock ran back to Berardelli. The detective lay on his side, his lips open, and with every breath blood foamed from his mouth. Bostock propped the guard’s head up slightly and wiped his face with a handkerchief.
Berardelli gave a shudder, the bright bubbling at his mouth stopped, and Bostock knew that the man was dead. In the gravel Bostock noted four spent shell cases. He picked them up and put them in his pocket.