Public Enemies (81 page)

Outside all three suspects filed into a Ford coupe. Agent Ray Suran followed in a Bureau car as the Ford swung out onto Lake Shore Drive and headed north, then turned left into a side street. The car stopped in front of one apartment building, then another, each time one of the women scurrying out to check something, as if looking for an address. The procession pulled onto Broadway and then to Melrose, where Suran’s car got caught in traffic. In frustration he watched as the two women who were their best leads on the Barker Gang drove out of sight.

 

 

It took four days to find them again. Armed with its license plate number, agents tracked the car to a local dealership, where a salesman identified a photo of Dock Barker’s friend Russell Gibson as the man who had bought the car. Meanwhile, a check of phone calls the women made from the Hotel Morrison led to the Hotel Commonwealth on Pine Grove Avenue. The room they called was occupied by a man named John Borcia, who the manager described as five-six, heavyset, and typically wearing a dark overcoat and derby hat. It matched the description of the man at the Morrison.

Hoover approved a tap on Borcia’s phone. Agents traced one of his calls to a North Side apartment house where, four days later, they spotted Mildred Kuhlmann on the sidewalk, her arms full of Christmas packages. Two of Connelley’s men tailed her into a neighborhood of luxury apartment buildings off Lake Shore Drive. As they watched, Kuhlmann disappeared into the Surf Lane Apartments. The next day agents found the name A.R. ESSER on Apartment G-1; it was the false name Kuhlmann had used at the Hotel Morrison. The manager said “Mrs. Esser” had rented her apartment two weeks earlier. For several days, he added, “Mr. Esser” had lived there, too, but he was now traveling. Downtown, Connelley was willing to bet “Mr. Esser” was Dock Barker.

Connelley arranged to rent a surveillance apartment at the Surf Lane and sat back to wait for “Mr. Esser” to return. Agents followed Kuhlmann through her routines, leaving her apartment most afternoons and returning after nightfall, always alone. One day they followed one of her visitors to a building at 3912 Pine Grove Avenue. Connelley rented yet another surveillance flat, installed a set of agents, and sat back and waited for the Barkers.

 

 

The day Karpis boarded the steamer in Havana, December 5, the waves were unusually high and he got seasick. At Key West he boarded a train for Miami, where he found Delores waiting at the station as they planned. With her, to his surprise, was the gang’s gofer, Willie Harrison. Harrison drove them into Miami and briefed Karpis on the gang’s whereabouts. Freddie and Ma were living in a house on Lake Weir in Central Florida. Another gang member, Harry Campbell, had driven to Oklahoma and reunited with his teenage girlfriend Wynona Burdette. They were at Lake Weir, too. Karpis was suspicious. The last Karpis had heard of Burdette, she was in FBI custody in Cleveland.
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In Miami they checked into the El Commodoro; as luck would have it, agents watching the hotel had returned to Chicago the previous week. Delaney was in the eighth month of her pregnancy, and she asked Karpis if she could give birth in Miami. Karpis said sure. The hotel’s manager, Joe Adams, hardly recognized Karpis his tan was so deep. Karpis asked about a house to rent, and Adams said he knew a place, an old bootlegger’s bungalow on 85th Street. Karpis told him to hold off. He needed to get a sense of how hot he was in Miami before he decided to stay.

The next morning, Karpis went downstairs and found Adams in his office. He needed a car, so Adams dispatched Duke Randall to buy him a Buick sedan. Adams also sent a telegram to Fred at Lake Weir, asking him to come to Miami. The next morning Fred arrived at the hotel. He and Karpis hadn’t seen each other in almost three months. Barker told Karpis all about the excellent fishing and deer hunting in central Florida. He said Ma was dying to have Delaney come visit. “Well wait a minute,” Karpis said. “Is that Yona Burdette up there?”

Barker laughed. “Yeah, Campbell’s got her there.”

“How the hell did she get away from the FBI?” he asked. “And how come your mother is letting her stay there with you and her?”

Again Barker laughed. “It’s kind of a long story,” he said. “You know when you left Chicago and went to Cuba, why, Campbell came down to Florida when my mother and I did and he was living with us. And he finally decided that he wanted to get Yona again. He decided he’d drive all the way to Oklahoma to get her.”

They talked for hours. Barker asked if he might be interested in returning to Cleveland to rob an armored car. Karpis begged off. “By the way,” Karpis said. “Where’s Dock?”

“He’s living in Chicago now,” Barker said. “He’s living with some guys around there, Rusty Gibson and some guys.”

It went without saying that neither man wanted much to do with Dock Barker. He was an unreliable drunk. Karpis suggested they look at banks in Georgia and Alabama. The only reason nobody hit Southern banks, Karpis knew, was the notoriety of Southern prisons. There were plenty to rob. When Barker returned north, he took with him Karpis’s promise that he would visit as soon as he got settled.

The next day, Karpis took Delaney to look at the house Joe Adams recommended on 85th Street. They liked it, and Karpis handed over $1,000 to rent it for the winter. Adams arranged a nurse who would double as a maid. They moved in a few days later and settled into their quiet routine, listening to the radio, turning in early. Delores’s little bulldog took to doing battle with the coconuts that dropped like bombs onto their lawn. Karpis hated the falling coconuts. The dents they made in the perfect green grass offended his sense of order.

The following week Freddie and Ma appeared at the El Commodoro, and Karpis accepted their invitation to go deep-sea fishing. On the drive back, Freddie again suggested they make a run to Cleveland. This time Karpis agreed. Delores pouted at the news, reminding him that the baby could come any day, but the following Monday, Karpis followed the Barkers to central Florida anyway. He found Freddie and Ma’s lake house outside the hamlet of Oklawaha, thirty miles south of Ocala. To his surprise, it lay just a stone’s throw off the main road. It was a far more accessible site than he would have chosen; when they walked in the yard, Karpis noticed, they could be seen by anyone driving by.

The next morning they headed north. In Cleveland they received a hearty welcome from Karpis’s old boss, Shimmy Patton, who briefed them on the FBI’s investigations in the city. Cleveland, Karpis decided, was still far too hot for their return. He returned to Miami, relieved.

New Year’s came and went quietly. Then, in the first week of January, Freddie drove up to Karpis’s house. With him were Dock Barker and Russell Gibson. Irritated, Karpis took Freddie aside.

“What the hell are they doing down here?” he hissed.

Dock had wanted to pull a job in Cleveland, Freddie explained. But Shimmy Patton had insisted that Freddie and Karpis be brought in. No one wanted to do business with Dock by himself. Karpis sighed. There seemed no way to get rid of Freddie’s brother.

A few days later Karpis returned to Lake Weir to discuss the Cleveland job with Freddie. Dock was packed and ready to drive back to Chicago when Karpis arrived. Everyone sat around the kitchen table planning how to get in touch once everything was set for the Cleveland job. Dock would send word, but he wanted to be certain he could remember how to find Freddie’s lake house. He hunched over a road map. “Well hell, I know, I’ll just circle it right here,” Dock said, “and I’ll know this is the town you want me to send the word to. I’ll send it in a letter. Is that the way you want it?”

“Yeah,” Freddie said, “just send a letter down here. Say anything in it, that my brother’s sick or anything, we’ll know they want us in Cleveland.”

Dock stuffed the map into his suitcase.

Earl Connelley stared out the window of the cramped second-floor apartment at 3920 Pine Grove Avenue, one of the two apartment buildings agents had been watching for a week. The night before, “Mr. Esser,” the man they suspected was Dock Barker, had returned to the other building, the Surf Lane Apartments. Below, in the Pine Grove apartment, two couples were living. The agents suspected one of the men was Dock’s pal Russell Gibson. The other, tall and thin, they couldn’t place. An hour earlier they had seen one of the women take her brown Chow tinkling in the alley. A little after that they had seen the thin man on the back porch in his bathrobe.

Connelley studied the ground. The apartment had a single rear entrance, up a flight of wooden stairs from a scrubby backyard. Twenty feet behind the stairs a four-foot fence fronted the alley. Along the walls of the surrounding apartment buildings and garages, Connelley saw, he could station twenty agents. He was satisfied. If all four occupants were inside the apartment, they would raid the building at nightfall. After that they would hit the Surf Street address.

Downtown, Doris Rogers watched the men assemble for the raids. She was struck by the transformation they had undergone these last few months. The nervousness and unsteadiness she had seen in the Verne Miller and Dillinger raids were gone; in its place was a cool professionalism, men comfortable with their guns, jaws set, eyes confident. All that afternoon FBI agents filtered into the two surveillance apartments. Connelley would wait until all the occupants were inside. Then they would move in.

It was a mild January evening, the temperature in the upper thirties. Old snow, gray and gritty, clogged the gutters and lined the sidewalks. A dozen agents lingered at spots all around the building. Connelley had left orders to await the raid at 3920 Pine Grove unless the man they believed was Dock Barker attempted to leave.

Jerry Campbell, the marksman Hoover had hired from the Oklahoma City Police Department, was sitting in a car outside the Surf Lane with a rookie named Alexander Muzzey when they saw Mildred Kuhlmann and Dock Barker emerge into the apartment’s courtyard and begin walking toward them. Campbell, a veteran police officer, reacted immediately. Tucking a Thompson gun beneath his overcoat, he stepped from the car. Muzzey got out, too. As the couple strolled out onto the sidewalk and turned west, away from Lake Michigan, the two agents fell in behind them, about twenty feet back.

“Are we gonna take them?” Muzzey whispered.

“Yeah,” said Campbell.

They walked a few more feet. Barker glanced over his shoulder. Kuhlmann kept walking. When Barker turned around once again, Campbell took out his machine gun, Muzzey his pistol. They could see other agents converging all around.

“Stick ’em up!” Muzzey hollered. “We’re federal agents!” Three agents in front of the couple drew their guns.

Barker froze. He made a whimpering noise. He began to raise his hands, then wheeled and stepped between two parked cars into the street. He had barely begun to run when he slipped on the ice, pitched forward and fell facedown in the muddy slush. The agents were on him within moments. Jerry Campbell dragged Barker to his feet while another agent applied the handcuffs. Other agents pinioned Kuhlmann.

Someone asked Barker his name.

“You know who I am,” he spat.

As agents began to haul Barker toward their cars, he sighed. “This is a helluva time to be caught without a gun,” he said.

The night stretched on. The occupants of Apartment One North hadn’t been seen since 6:45. Finally, at 11:00, agents saw a man stroll down the back alley. He slid into the darkness behind the apartment. A moment later the kitchen light clicked on. At the same time, agents saw the tall man and the two women walk up the front sidewalk and into the lobby. It was time.

Connelley, stationed with ten agents next door, walked out into the night air in front of the building. He strode to a waiting car and ordered the four agents inside to proceed to the back alley to reinforce the ten agents already there. He took a moment to arrange other men around the front of the building. When he was satisfied, Connelley took three agents into the lobby. There was no doorman; the apartment was up a flight of stairs and down a hallway. Standing in the lobby, Connelley pressed the call button for Apartment One North.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice.

“Is Mr. Bolton in?” Connelley asked. It was the name on one of the suspect car’s registrations. A pause. Then the woman said, “No, he’ll be back at the end of the week.” Connelley identified himself as an agent of the United States Department of Justice. “The building is completely surrounded,” he said. “All of you come downstairs, one at a time, with your hands up, and no one will get hurt.”

Connelley glanced at Agents Sam McKee and Ralph Brown, cradling Thompson submachine guns at the foot of the stairs. A third agent drew his service revolver. There was no response from the woman upstairs. Again Connelley pressed the call button. “All persons occupying the apartment come down immediately or the place will be gassed,” he said.

Nothing. The agents traded glances. A minute ticked by. Then two.

“All persons occupying the apartment come down immediately,” Connelley stated a third time. “Do not attempt to escape through the rear. The apartment building is completely surrounded, and anyone attempting to escape will be killed.”

A moment later a woman shouted down the stairs, “We’re coming down!” Clara Gibson, who was married to Russell Gibson, stepped down the stairs into the lobby, her brown Chow in her arms. Behind her came a woman the agents later learned was Willie Harrison’s wife. Connelley ordered both women to lie on the lobby floor. A few moments later Shotgun George Ziegler’s sidekick, tall, thin Bryan Bolton, walked down the stairs, hands in the air. He too lay on the lobby floor. Connelley demanded to know the first woman’s name. “Clara Gibson,” she said.