Public Enemies (55 page)

While his assistant Jimmy Wilson tended their patients, Moran closeted himself in Room 210 above his office in the hotel. He spread the money on the bed. At one point, Wilson, unaware of the scheme, knocked on the door. Moran, who was drunk, opened it, a bottle of beer in his hand. Wilson peered inside. He saw Boss McLaughlin, Izzy Berg, and Russell Gibson standing over the bed, counting the largest stack of money he had ever seen. He watched as McLaughlin put a brick of bills into a briefcase. “How much more do you want?” Wilson heard Berg ask.

“What’s going on?” Wilson asked.

“Don’t get nose trouble,” Moran slurred.

“Close that door,” McLaughlin snapped.
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They moved the first $10,000 quickly, and when they were finished Dock Barker came by and picked up the laundered cash.

“Any problems?” Dock asked.

“Nope,” Gibson replied.

“Good,” Dock said. “We have a lot more.”

It took a few days to move the next $20,000. Boss McLaughlin and his friends did the leg work, while Moran drank himself into a stupor. Everything went swimmingly until Monday, April 23, the day after Little Bohemia. That morning, as FBI agents waved the last wisps of tear gas from Emil Wanatka’s barroom, a Chicago bank teller discovered he had been passed a bill whose serial number was listed on the FBI’s Bremer-ransom circular. A supervisor called the FBI. The very next day, as Purvis’s men scrambled to trace the bill, Dock Barker got the call that Dillinger wanted to meet.

 

 

That Tuesday morning, as police and vigilantes combed Minnesota and Wisconsin in search of him, Dillinger limped back into the Chicago suburbs. It was as desperate a moment as he had faced since escaping from Crown Point. In the backseat John Hamilton lay dying; his blood was all over the inside of the car. They had bought bandages and medicine in Dubuque, Iowa, but if Hamilton was to have any chance to live, they needed a doctor. They had stolen a set of license plates, but Dillinger knew he couldn’t drive the streets of Chicago long with a bleeding man in the backseat before someone noticed.

The doctor Dillinger attempted to find that day was none other than Joseph Moran, who at that moment was closeted in his hotel room laundering the Bremer ransom.
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Failing to find him, Dillinger drove to the HiHoInn, a Cicero nightclub operated by a pair of syndicate men, brothers named Bobby and Joie O’Brien. The O’Briens apparently wanted nothing to do with him. They sent Dillinger away, promising to find Dr. Moran and bring him to a rendezvous that night.

Dillinger’s visit set off a flurry of phone calls. The O’Brien brothers telephoned Elmer Farmer, the man who owned the Bremer safe house, who they believed could find Moran. In turn, Farmer called Dock Barker, who tried to reach Moran but couldn’t. Meanwhile Joie O’Brien drove to suburban Aurora, thirty miles west of downtown Chicago, and retrieved Volney Davis, who had been living in an Aurora apartment for several weeks. Everyone gathered that night in a parking lot behind the Seafood Inn, a restaurant in suburban Elmhurst .
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It was the first time Dillinger met members of the Barker Gang, but there was little time for pleasantries. They lifted Hamilton out of the car and put him in the back of Volney Davis’s Buick. Dillinger and Van Meter then followed Davis back to his apartment in Aurora. Davis sent his girlfriend, Edna Murray, to stay with friends, and Hamilton was carried in and placed on a bed. He didn’t have long, they could see. Gangrene had set in. Not even a doctor could help Hamilton now.

Members of the two gangs tended to the dying man all that night and the next day, doing their best to ease his pain. Hamilton lasted two more days, finally dying around three on Thursday afternoon, April 26. At dusk, Dock Barker and Volney Davis drove to a quarry six miles south of Aurora and dug a grave. After dark they loaded Hamilton’s body into a car, drove him to the quarry, and laid him in the ground. Davis had purchased several cans of lye to destroy his features. Dillinger bent over the dead man and in a low voice said, “Red, old pal, I hate to do this, but I know you’d do the same for me.”
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And then he poured the lye over Hamilton’s head. Barker and Van Meter filled in the grave, and Davis found a roll of barbed wire to place over it as a marker.
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When they returned, Davis’s apartment was a mess, so Davis called Edna Murray to come clean it. Murray nearly fainted when she arrived. White disinfectant powder covered the bedroom floor. Bloody sheets sat in a heap, waiting to be burned. The sink was piled high with dishes, medicines, and reddened bandages. Murray opened a closet door and yelped when the grave-digging shovel fell out. Over everything there hung the stench of gangrene and death.
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The last thing on Purvis’s mind that week was the Bremer case, even though a dozen agents were still working it full time. On Hoover’s orders, the exasperating search for the house where Bremer had been held was continuing, taking up hundreds of man-hours. Even as half the Chicago office hunted Dillinger, the other half stayed on the road, revisiting every town between Joliet and central Wisconsin in search of the right combination of trains, church bells, and factory whistles Bremer had heard while in custody. The agents churned out hundreds of reports but had found nothing. Some griped that it was a useless exercise. In St. Paul, Hugh Clegg had actually floated the idea of hiring Boy Scouts to canvas their hometowns.

Circulars listing the serial numbers of every bill in the Bremer ransom had been mailed to banks across the country. That Monday morning, as Purvis and his men trudged back to their desks from Little Bohemia, an officer at the Uptown State Bank on Wilson Avenue discovered that a customer had passed one of his tellers $900 of the Bremer ransom. The customer had disappeared, but that afternoon agents descended on every bank in the area, checking for signs of other bills. By nightfall they managed to find Bremer money at the Main State Bank on Milwaukee Avenue and several other institutions.

For two days agents continued canvassing North Side banks. Then, that Thursday morning, April 26, the day John Hamilton died, a call came in from the City National Bank and Trust Company on LaSalle Street, a few blocks from the Bankers Building. More Bremer money had been passed, and when agents interviewed the teller who had taken the bills, he said his customer had mentioned that he worked at a bookie joint in the neighborhood. Two agents walked the teller to the bookmaking establishment, on the second floor of an office building at 226 South Welles Street. The teller pointed out his customer. It was William Vidler, Boss McLaughlin’s friend. Agents handcuffed Vidler and took him to the Bankers Building, where he was searched. In his pocket they found $2,200 of the Bremer ransom.

Vidler talked. Friday morning at 10:30, Pop Nathan led a squad of agents to Boss McLaughlin’s apartment building on West Jackson Boulevard, leading the old pol and his son away in handcuffs.
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That night, as headlines in the evening papers carried news of the arrests, agents began interrogating the McLaughlins at the Cook County Jail, hoping they would lead them to the Barker Gang. No one had any inkling that the same trail could lead them to Dillinger.

That same morning, as Pop Nathan took Boss McLaughlin into custody in Chicago, Ole Catfish rose from his bed, leaving Baby Face Nelson asleep. For three days everything had gone smoothly at the little shack. The women cooked Nelson meals, and he passed the days mostly in silence, watching the woods. Around noon that Friday a trapper tromped up and talked with Catfish; Nelson hid in the kitchen, watching. Afterward he demanded to know who the man was. All afternoon Nelson grew increasingly nervous. At 6:00 he told Catfish it was time to leave and demanded the old Indian lead him to the next town.

Catfish protested that he was sick. Nelson produced his gun and said, “Start walking.” They headed down an old railroad bed, Ole’s wife, Maggie, behind them, until Nelson waved her back. Into the woods they trekked, the gloom deepening around them. Catfish complained that his heart was weak, and they stopped several times to rest. Night fell. A full moon, as bright as a spotlight, rose over them.

Around nine, after walking six miles, they spotted a fire. Three fishermen Catfish knew were clustered around it. Nelson walked up to the fire and warmed his hands. A few minutes later a car parked about fifty yards away. “Come on, let’s go over and see who those fellows are,” Nelson told Catfish. Two Indians were standing beside a 1928 Chevrolet sedan. Anothercar, a Plymouth, drove up just as Nelson approached. Inside were two locals heading out for a night of fishing. As the men stood, swapping small talk, Nelson walked over to the Plymouth and studied it. “Is that yours?” Nelson asked its driver.

One of the men gave Nelson a dark look. He asked on what authority Nelson was fishing on the reservation. Nelson whipped out his gun. “This is my authority,” he said. “You line up with those Indians over there.” Nelson yanked the distributor cable out of the old Chevy, disabling it. He told Catfish to get in the Plymouth. Catfish doubled over, as if in great pain. “Me sick,” he said.

Nelson poked the pistol in the old Chippewa’s ribs and told him to get in the car. Nelson slid behind the wheel, then yanked a hatchet hanging by a cord from Catfish’s neck. “Don’t want you killin’ me while I’m driving,” Nelson said.

Catfish guided Nelson to an intersection with State Highway 70, at which point Nelson let him out of the car and drove off, heading south. Driving the length of Wisconsin, he pulled up the next morning at Louis Cernocky’s tavern at Fox River Grove. Cernocky welcomed him inside and fixed him something to eat. Nelson’s luck held. Despite the tips from Beth Green, despite the fact that Emil Wanatka had told the FBI it was Cernocky who sent the Dillinger gang to Little Bohemia, despite wiretaps and numerous interviews with Cernocky’s neighbors, Purvis had failed to put the tavern under surveillance.

 

 

While Nelson made his way toward Chicago that Friday, Dillinger sat hunched over the radio in Volney Davis’s apartment in Aurora, shuttling between the radio and police bands. Edna Murray watched him carefully. Dillinger’s charm was lost on her. She thought he had a killer’s eyes, and his lopsided grin struck her as a smirk. He ignored her and spoke rarely, usually to curse.
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Much of his anger was directed at Louis Cernocky, who Dillinger believed had led the FBI to Little Bohemia; he and Dock Barker agreed it must have been Cernocky who had betrayed Frank Nash, triggering the Kansas City Massacre. Dillinger and Van Meter kept their steel vests on, submachine guns across their laps. They were tired and tense and dirty. Hamilton’s death had hit both men hard, especially Dillinger. No one wanted to die like that.

There was a rare moment of humor when they heard a news flash about Nelson’s stay with Ole Catfish. “Well, Baby Face isn’t hungry,” Van Meter said. “He has plenty of catfish with him.”

But the real jolt came with the Friday evening papers. Boss McLaughlin’s arrest was front-page news. This was bad. McLaughlin knew Davis lived in Aurora. Dock Barker explained the situation to Dillinger. If McLaughlin talked, the FBI could be on their doorstep within hours. Dillinger caucused with Van Meter. They couldn’t leave without a new car. For the moment, they decided to stay. If the FBI came, Dillinger said, they would be ready.

As night fell, everyone took positions in the living room. It was a first-floor apartment; they could step through each of the three large windows onto the sidewalk. Dock Barker took a Thompson gun and stationed himself by one window, Van Meter a second, Dillinger the third. Volney Davis lingered outside in the streets, watching.

An hour went by, then two. Edna Murray was sitting in the bedroom worrying when suddenly Davis burst through the front door. “Dock, I think we got it!” he hissed at Barker. “They’re here! A car pulled up on Fourth Street and parked and two men got out and walked up the street. There’s another car on Fox Street. Three men got out of that!”

Davis ran to a closet, yanked out a suitcase, and threw it in the middle of the living-room floor. “Rabbit, you get out of here—get in my car,” Davis told Murray. “Let’s all get ready!”

Dock Barker’s voice was even. “Rabbit, you stay right where you are,” he said. “You don’t leave this apartment. If fireworks start, you get behind me and this tommy and I’ll take you out of here.”

Suddenly Barker uttered an oath and swung his submachine gun toward a pair of men who had appeared across the street. One lit a cigarette. Barker thought it was a signal for FBI men to attack. He raised the gun to fire.

Dillinger’s voice was a harsh whisper. “Don’t do that, Dock!” he snapped. “Wait till we’re sure we’re right. Then we’ll give it to ’em!” The room went quiet. Murray could hear herself breathe. The two men in Barker’s gun sights walked on, disappearing around a corner. Barker lowered his gun. The moment passed. It wasn’t the FBI.

They remained like that, poised with guns at the windows, until later that night, when Dock’s pal Russell Gibson pulled up in front. He came to the door and was surprised to find himself staring into the barrel of Dillinger’s Thompson gun. Inside, Gibson told them everything was okay: McLaughlin wasn’t talking. How long that would last he didn’t know. He urged everyone to leave as soon as possible.
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Dillinger talked it over with Van Meter. They decided to stay another night.

 

 

At the Cook County Jail, Purvis’s men questioned Boss McLaughlin until dawn. Only after they threatened to bring charges against his son did the wily old pol decide to talk. He said he had been approached three weeks earlier by a con man he knew who had introduced him to two men named “Smith” and “Jones.” McLaughlin insisted he never found out more about the pair, nor met any members of the Barker Gang. But he did say Smith and Jones were working out of the Irving Park Hotel and seemed to be from Toledo. It was the first hint the FBI fielded that the Barkers were in Toledo, but in the uproar over Dillinger, Purvis never found time to pursue it. In a subsequent search of Dr. Moran’s phone records, there were several calls to Toledo, but Purvis’s men wouldn’t get around to checking them for months.