Public Enemies (65 page)

On Sunday, July 1, when Sage moved into the apartment on North Halsted, Hamilton moved in, too. Three days later Dillinger joined them. Sage gave him two keys, to his room and to a closet, where he stowed his guns and a bulletproof vest; Dillinger wrapped the keys in a rubber band and carried them in his pocket.
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The day Dillinger moved in, Hamilton telephoned her boss at the S&S Café and said she had been in a car accident and wouldn’t be in for several days; in fact, she took the next three weeks off, spending every available hour with Dillinger.

At the apartment, Dillinger proved an amiable tenant. He was just an Indiana farm boy, he told the two women, who took to making his favorite farm fare, baking-powder biscuits with chicken gravy, steak, strawberries, and, occasionally, frog legs. After dinner, just as he had with Billie, Dillinger would strap on an apron and help with the dishes. In off hours he played cards, usually pinochle, with Sage and her son, Steve. Several times he and Hamilton double-dated with Steve and his girlfriend, taking in the movies
Viva Villa,
with Wallace Beery, at the Grenada, and
You’re Telling Me
with W. C. Fields, at the Marbro. Steve Choliak thought “Jimmy” was a swell guy.

For the first time in months, Dillinger seemed to relax. He liked the neighborhood around Sage’s apartment. He bought a new white shirt at the Ward Mitchell store, placed a few bets with the bookie who worked around the corner in a loft above the Biograph Theatre, and had his hair trimmed at the Biograph Barber Shop. Much later, the
Chicago Daily News
would report he felt safe enough to visit Chicago’s detective bureau four separate times. Hamilton was applying for a new waitressing job, and her prospective employer required she obtain a medical certification. The medical examiner was in the same building as the detective bureau; four times Dillinger waited for Hamilton outside the examiner’s thirteenth-floor office, while two floors below, the Chicago police busied themselves looking for him.

As he settled into his new routines, Dillinger remained in touch with O’Leary and Van Meter. On Tuesday night, July 10, the two bank robbers took their girlfriends on a double date to the World’s Fair, wandering through the crowds at the lakeside. Two nights later Dillinger met O’Leary, and the two drove south, into the suburbs, where they found Van Meter at a barbecue stand. The two talked for a half hour in Van Meter’s car, then returned to O’Leary’s. O’Leary listened as Van Meter began complaining about Nelson. Apparently the two were having a disagreement over the disposition of some bonds.

“I had it out with Jimmy,” Van Meter said. “I told him I wasn’t going to pay him any twenty-five hundred dollars. I never did care a hell of a lot for that guy anyway.”

“He was always complaining about you, too,” Dillinger said.

“We had it pretty heavy there for a while,” Van Meter said. “I thought we were going to draw guns on each other.”

“Forget it, Van,” Dillinger said. “We’re through with Nelson, anyway. He’s outta the gang.”

“I suppose that’s good,” Van Meter said. As he left, he told Dillinger, “Don’t forget about the ‘soup.’”

As they drove back into Chicago, Dillinger told O’Leary about their next job. It was to be a train robbery. In fact, it had been proposed by Nelson’s pal Jimmy Murray, who ten years earlier had masterminded the Newton Brothers’ Roundout robbery. Murray was claiming that this train too would be carrying millions.

“It’ll be one of the biggest jobs in the world,” Dillinger enthused. “Just me and Van. We’re not cutting anybody else in on this. We’ve got it spotted, we’ve been watching it for weeks, we know all its stops. We need the ‘soup’”—nitroglycerin—“to blow the door of the mail car. We know how much money it will be carrying, and it’s plenty. We’ll have enough to last us the rest of our lives, and right after it’s over we’re lamming it out of the country.”

Van Meter’s tightfistedness forced Dillinger to take yet another meeting with O’Leary two days later, on Saturday, July 14. Their surgical assistant, Harold Cassidy, was pestering Van Meter to be paid for tending him after the South Bend robbery. Dillinger, O’Leary, and Cassidy met that afternoon in a park at the corner of Kedzie and North avenues. Dillinger slid Cassidy $500, saying it was from Van Meter. In all likelihood it wasn’t. It was just Dillinger’s way of defusing a bad situation; the last thing he needed was someone feeling unsatisfied.

Dillinger spent Sunday with Polly Hamilton. At one point, while she and a girlfriend went bicycle riding, Dillinger spent several hours watching Steve Chiolek play softball. When she returned, Hamilton found Dillinger buying bottles of beer for both teams. He seemed without a care in the world. By nightfall they were back at the North Halsted apartment. The next morning they woke to find the newspapers reporting a vicious gunfight northwest of the city. It was Nelson.

That night Nelson held a meeting of “his” gang on a wooded side road deep in the northwest suburbs. Johnny Chase and Fatso Negri arrived first, followed by Jack Perkins. They parked their black Fords, turned off the headlights, and got out to talk. Helen sat in Nelson’s car, reading a magazine by flashlight.

The men were deep in conversation around two o’clock when a pair of state troopers, Fred McAllister and Gilbert Cross, passed by the entrance to the road, heading home after long days on duty. McAllister spotted the three darkened cars back in the woods and decided to investigate. He turned into the dirt lane, stopped, and got out. Four men were standing in a ditch beside the cars.

“What’s the trouble here?” McAllister asked.

“No trouble at all,” a voice answered.

Then there came a burst of gunfire, almost certainly from Nelson’s submachine gun. McAllister was struck in the right shoulder and fell, but most of the bullets raked the squad car, hitting Officer Cross six times. He managed to open a door and roll into the ditch. The two troopers lay bleeding as the men leaped into the cars and drove off. McAllister, after emptying his pistol at the fleeing cars, was able to drive them to a hospital. Both he and Cross survived.
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The shootings were front-page news in Chicago the next day, and all the articles speculated that Dillinger was involved. Agent Arthur McLawhon was dispatched to the Des Plaines hospital to interview one of the wounded troopers. He showed him photographs of Helen Gillis and Marie Conforti, but he could identify neither. The trooper assured McLawhon the shootings were the work of a band of bootleggers tending a 2,000-gallon illegal still that troopers found inside a barn about 250 yards from the site of the shooting. After talking to several other officers, McLawhon wrote Sam Cowley that “they were quite positive that the Dillinger Gang were not involved in any way.”
⁴

And so it went. Cowley was spending much of his time on Nelson. Agents picked up his mechanic friend, Clarey Lieder, but released him when Lieder said he hadn’t seen Nelson in years. The FBI’s most intriguing new lead surfaced on Monday, July 9. Several days earlier the Bureau had secured an informant inside Louis Piquett’s office; the informant’s name is blacked out in FBI files.
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Whoever it was, he or she suggested agents follow Piquett that day. When they did, they saw Piquett engage in a street-corner argument with an unidentified man. When the two parted, the agents followed the stranger, trailing him to a two-story house in Oak Park. The next day a check with the landlord revealed that the man was the mysterious “Ralph Robiend”—Wilhelm Loeser, Dillinger’s surgeon. An agent rented an apartment next door to Loeser’s building and settled in to watch him.
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In hindsight, Homer Van Meter was right: Dillinger
was
a fool to be living so openly. By that third week of July, a dozen different people knew of his stays with Jimmy Probasco or Ana Sage, and Dillinger’s carefree new life-style constituted a bet that not one of them would be tempted by the $15,000 reward for turning him in. Given the realities of the Depression, it was a bet he could only lose. During the week of July 16, while Dillinger continued cavorting with Polly Hamilton and studying the train robbery, there were hints of no fewer than three separate conspiracies to betray him.

According to FBI records, the first involved Wilhelm Loeser. Loeser feared he would be returned to prison if his surgery on Dillinger became known. But he was too weak a man to turn himself in. Instead, in an apparent effort to cushion the blow should he be arrested, he sent two anonymous letters to the FBI. The first, mailed earlier that summer, detailed work Piquett had paid him to do in an unrelated case; there is no suggestion in FBI files this tip was acted upon. A second letter described the work Loeser did on Dillinger. Loeser, however, did not mail this letter until Monday, July 23, at which point it would have no bearing on Dillinger’s fate.

Art O’Leary became aware of a second, more worrisome, potential betrayal that Tuesday, July 17, when he swung by Probasco’s house to pick up a rifle and a radio Dillinger had left there. After swearing him to secrecy, Probasco told him that Piquett had come to him with a proposal to turn in Dillinger. Further, Probasco insisted that Piquett proposed to have
O’Leary
murdered, thus eliminating the only man who could contradict whatever tangled yarn they concocted for the FBI.
⁶

O’Leary left Probasco’s home badly shaken. That evening at six he kept a meeting with Dillinger in the park at Kedzie and North. Dillinger was sitting on a large white rock when O’Leary drove up. He rose and walked to the car, sliding into the front seat.

“Hello, Art,” he said. “Have you seen Probasco?”

“I was up there this afternoon.”

“Did he tell you about Piquett?”

So Dillinger knew.

“Yes,” O’Leary said. “But I don’t believe any of that bunk.”

“Well,” Dillinger said. “I believe it.”

“Oh, don’t pay any attention to Probasco. You know he’s drunk practically all the time. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Well . . . ,” Dillinger said, “Van Meter has also been warning me against him. He said he’s been talking surrender too much.”

Dillinger stared off into the distance for several moments. “Art, I want you to get out of town,” he finally said. “Take your family and go on up to the north woods or some place.”

“What do you think you’re going to do?”

“I’m going up to Piquett’s office and leave him my card.”

“You’re crazy, Johnnie,” O’Leary said. “You can’t get away with anything like that. Anyway, Lou isn’t going to double-cross you. He isn’t that kind [of person].”

“I’m telling you to get out of town for a week,” Dillinger said, “and then I’ll get in touch with you. How soon can you go?”

“I can leave tonight, I suppose.”

“That’s fine,” Dillinger said. “How are you fixed for money?”

“I’ve got enough.”

Dillinger flipped open his billfold. He handed O’Leary $500.

“That’ll take care of you for a while.”

And then Dillinger got out of the car and disappeared into the park. Afterward O’Leary drove back to his house, gathered his family, and drove to northern Wisconsin. Later he claimed Dillinger had telephoned Piquett in his absence. According to O’Leary, Dillinger told Piquett he wanted to discuss a surrender. The two men set a date, Monday, July 23, to discuss it.
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It was a meeting Dillinger would never make. There was a third conspiracy afoot, and this one was real.

It was another hectic Saturday on the nineteenth floor of the Bankers Building. Cowley and a group of agents were busy running down tips the old yegg Eddie Bentz’s brother had given them on Dillinger; none led anywhere. Matt Leach, meanwhile, had dredged up an informant who said Dillinger was in Culver, Indiana, preparing to rob a bank there. Reporters picked up on it and were pelting everyone with calls.

Purvis was in his office a few minutes after four o’clock when a call came in from Captain Timothy O’Neil of the East Chicago police. Purvis knew O’Neil, but not well. The sergeant said he and one of his men, a detective named Martin Zarkovich, had “real” information on Dillinger’s whereabouts. He wanted to meet right away.

Purvis met them outside the Bankers Building a little after six. Together the three men drove to the Great Northern Hotel, taking the elevator up to Room 712, where Cowley was staying. In Cowley’s room, Zarkovich did most of the talking. He said he had an informant, a woman he had known for years, whose girlfriend was dating Dillinger. The three were going to a movie on the North Side the next night, Sunday. The informant was prepared to tell the FBI which theater they would be attending. The Bureau, Zarkovich said, could handle it from there. All O’Neil and Zarkovich wanted, they said, was the $15,000 reward.

Before he cut any deals, Cowley said he wanted to meet the informant. Zarkovich said it had already been arranged; Sage had agreed to meet them that night. A bit later the four men left the room and walked downstairs. Outside, Purvis and Zarkovich got into one car, Cowley and O’Neil into a second. With Zarkovich leading they drove into the North Side, and a half hour later parked across from the Children’s Memorial Hospital at 707 West Fullerton Street.