Public Enemies (35 page)

The three policemen followed the car into downtown Tucson, where it parked outside the Grabe Electric Company. The cops walked inside, found Makley standing at a counter, and told him he was under arrest. Makley protested, saying he was a vacationing Florida businessman. An officer told him he could explain the mix-up downtown.

At the station, Makley was led into Chief C. A. Wollard’s office.

“What’s your name?” Wollard asked.

“J. C. Davies,” Makley said. “Come up to my house. I can clear this up in a minute. All of my papers are there.”

The chief, eyeing Makley’s mug shot, said he needed to fingerprint him. Makley objected.

“Well, Makley,” Wollard said, “we’re gonna fingerprint you whether you like it or not.” He was thrown in a cell.

One down, three to go. The chief called in three of his best men, Sergeants Frank Eyman and Dallas Ford and a detective named Chet Sherman. Somewhere in Tucson, Wollard suspected, the rest of the Dillinger Gang was hiding. Making sure the three studied photographs of the other gang members, he told them to keep Makley’s Second Street bungalow under surveillance. Maybe someone would show.

The three officers were soon parked outside Makley’s bungalow. They had been watching the house for a little over an hour when they began to grow impatient. The least they could do, they agreed, was check whether anyone was inside. They came up with an easy ruse. Detective Sherman got out of the car and walked toward the house, taking a letter from his jacket pocket. On the porch, he rang the bell. A woman opened the door. It was Russell Clark’s girlfriend, Opal Long.

“Yes?” she asked.

Thrusting the letter forward, Sherman said he had a delivery. When she reached for the letter, Sherman threw his shoulder against the door and stepped inside. There he came face-to-face with Russell Clark. Sherman drew his service revolver and ordered Clark to raise his hands. Instead Clark lunged for the gun, grabbing it by the barrel. The two men wrestled for the pistol, whirling in circles through the living room and into a bedroom. Outside, spying the commotion, Detectives Eyman and Ford broke into a run, bounding up the front steps. Opal Long saw them coming and slammed the door, just as Ford thrust his hand forward; the door shut on his finger, breaking a bone.

Sergeant Ford kicked the door open, knocked Long aside, and burst into the bedroom to find Clark and Sherman grappling on a bed. Clark was reaching for a pillow when Ford brained him with his pistol. Sergeant Eyman grabbed Clark’s shoulder and pulled him off the bed. In moments they had him in handcuffs. Beneath the pillow they found a .38. A further search turned up two Thompson submachine guns, an automatic rifle, two pistols, two bulletproof vests, and $4,526.68 in cash. The three officers bundled Clark and Long into a car and took them downtown. No one thought to remain at the house.

Two down, two to go. Downtown, Chief Wollard canvassed his men. Dillinger and Pierpont had to be out there; if they learned of the arrests before the police located them, they could melt into the desert within minutes. The chief’s instincts were dead-on. As he spoke, Pierpont arrived at Makley’s bungalow. Walking up the steps, he noticed drops of what appeared to be blood on the porch. He jogged to his car, drove back to his tourist cabin, and told Mary Kinder to start packing.

As the couple packed, a patrolman walked into Chief Wollard’s office and mentioned the friendly Florida tourist he had encountered a few days earlier. The description matched Pierpont. The chief dispatched Sergeant Eyman and two patrolmen to check out the tourist camp where the “Florida tourist” had said he was staying. Just as the three men drove up, they spotted Pierpont driving off in his new Buick. The three lawmen followed the car for several blocks, discussing how to proceed. They decided to stage a routine traffic stop; maybe they could take Pierpont unprepared. Honking their horn, Sergeant Eyman waved for Pierpont to pull over. He complied. The sergeant stepped out.

“How do you do,” Eyman announced. “May I please see your driver’s license?”

Pierpont handed over the license—a fake—and Eyman looked it over. He handed it back and apologized, pointing out that Pierpont didn’t have a visitor’s inspection sticker on his car, as the law required. It was no trouble to get one, Eyman went on. If Pierpont could just drive down to the police station, he could have a sticker within minutes. Outnumbered, Pierpont had to agree. “I’ll even ride down with you,” Eyman volunteered, sliding into the backseat.

Pierpont adjusted his rearview mirror to keep an eye on Eyman as he drove downtown. Eyman kept up a stream of happy chatter as they went, going on about Tucson’s beautiful weather. Pierpont nodded a lot and smiled. Mary Kinder sat frozen. Slowly Sergeant Eyman drew his gun and slid it between his legs, out of sight. He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Pierpont. He declined.

At the station, Sergeant Eyman led Pierpont and Kinder down a flight of stairs to Chief Wollard’s office. The guns collected from Makley and Clark lay spread across the chief’s desk, and the second Pierpont entered the ruse was blown. Instinctively he reached for the gun in his shoulder holster. But Eyman was too fast. He drew his gun and said, “Drop it!” Pierpont went for his gun anyway. Eyman and two other officers tackled him, and the group fell to the floor in a heap.

“Drop that gun!” Eyman shouted. “Or I’ll kill you!”

Pierpont went slack. An officer vigorously twisted his arm while the others searched him. “You’re treating me pretty rough, aren’t you?” Pierpont said, forcing a smile.

“What do you want us to do? Kiss you?” Eyman said.

Three down, one to go. John Dillinger was somewhere in Tucson; the police were sure of it. Night was approaching. With no clues to work on, officers kept watch on the Makley bungalow and the Sixth Street motor court. A squat Irish detective named James Herron and two uniformed policemen drew up to the bungalow. The sun was just beginning to set as they parked out front. The two officers slipped into the house through the back door. Detective Herron circled back to move his car, thinking it might scare Dillinger off should he appear.

Just then a shiny new Hudson sedan rounded the corner and parked in front of the house. Herron shrank behind a bush as a man in a brown suit got out and approached the front porch, leaving a woman sitting in the front seat. Herron stepped from behind the bush just as the man lifted his foot to climb the steps. As he did the man paused, looking down at the bloodstains. He whirled, as if to run to his car—and came face-to-face with Detective Herron.

Dillinger and Herron stood five feet apart on the front lawn. It was a moment out of the Wild West. Herron drew first, a pistol appearing in his right hand. “Put up your hands!” he ordered.

Dillinger stared. Herron stepped forward and jammed his pistol into his ribs. “Up with those hands or I’ll bore you!” he snapped.

Dillinger slowly raised his hands.

“What’s this all about?” he asked.

Just then the two officers materialized on the front porch.

“Cover the car!” Herron said.

As the two officers hustled past, Herron grabbed Dillinger by the coat and shoved him forward. It was then that Dillinger realized he could not fake his way free. He went for the gun in his shoulder holster. Herron jabbed his pistol deeply into his back and one of the officers poked a riot gun in his face. Dillinger gave up.

Game, set, match, Tucson police.

 

 

The arrests in Tucson were front-page news across the country. The next day crowds of the curious swarmed the Pima County Jail, where the four gang members and their girlfriends were kept under guard. Chief Wollard’s office was inundated with telegrams and phone messages. Out at the airport, every arriving plane disgorged a stream of reporters and photographers from Chicago, New York, and other cities. Every time a cop left the jail, he ran a gauntlet of flashing cameras.

At 10:00 that morning, all seven of the prisoners were led in shackles into a packed courtroom to be arraigned. Dillinger glumly slumped in a chair. “Stand up,” the judge ordered.

“I ain’t Dillinger,” Dillinger mumbled. A bailiff yanked him to his feet. The gang members were ordered held on $100,000 bail each. Flashbulbs popped madly as the prisoners were led out of the courtroom. Billie smiled at Dillinger, who smiled back. He leaned over and kissed her.

That afternoon a steady procession of reporters, politicians, and policemen filed by the gang’s jail cells, ogling the infamous gangsters from the distant Midwest as if they were monkeys in a zoo. Dillinger warmed to the attention, finally admitting his identity and playing his favorite role of gregarious, big-time bank robber.

“I’m an expert in my business,” he told a group of scribbling reporters hovering at his cell. “I can play tag with the police any time. They just dodge around on old trails like fox hounds that don’t know what’s going on. And the dumbest ones in the world are the Chicago kind. Right now none of these smart-aleck coppers have got a bit of evidence that I killed anybody or robbed any bank.”

The others took their cue from Dillinger, smiling and mugging for the cameras. Pete Pierpont actually traded wisecracks with the governor of Arizona. “These cops out here ain’t like the ones in Indiana,” Pierpont joked. “They pull too fast for us.”

The giddy mood ebbed when the reporters left. By Sunday morning, when delegations of prosecutors from Ohio, Wisconsin, and Indiana arrived in Tucson to argue for extraditions, the gang members were in no mood for chitchat. At the sight of Matt Leach, who had briefly jailed his mother that fall, Pierpont flew into a rage.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance, you dirty son of a bitch!” he shouted. “You put my mother in jail . . . If I ever get out of this the first thing I’m gonna do is kill you, you rat!”

Leach regarded Pierpont for a moment, then turned to a reporter. “There’s a man who really loves his mother,” he said. When he reached Dillinger’s cell, Leach extended his hand through the bars.

Dillinger hesitated, then shook it.

“Well, we meet again, John,” Leach said. He took a step back and studied Dillinger a moment, then complimented him on the mustache he had grown. Leach asked if he was ready to return to Indiana.

“I’m in no hurry,” Dillinger said. “I haven’t a thing to do when I get there.”
⁷

Once again, it appeared Dillinger’s career was over. In fact, it had barely begun.

 

 

The plane carrying Dillinger touched down at Chicago’s Midway Airport at 6:10 on a dark and snowy Tuesday evening, January 30. It had been a long flight, the outlaw’s first. His departure from Tucson followed a spirited two-day struggle between lawyers from Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio, each making the case to prosecute the gang first. In the end, Arizona’s governor ordered Dillinger to Indiana to stand trial for Detective O’Malley’s murder in East Chicago; if convicted, he faced the electric chair. Pierpont, Makley, Clark, and Mary Kinder were sent to Ohio to answer for Sheriff Sarber’s murder; Kinder was later released. Billie Frechette and Opal Long went free. They took a bus to Chicago.

Dillinger hadn’t gone quietly. After a circuslike day that Monday in which crowds of onlookers were allowed into the jail to see him, deputies had to drag him from his cell. “They’re not taking you to Indiana!” Pierpont shouted. “They’re putting you on the spot, boy!” Dillinger wrestled as his wrists were handcuffed. “You’re shanghaiing me!” he barked. “They can’t take me east without a hearing!”

In Chicago, Dillinger descended the airplane stairs into a throng of photographers and eighty-five members of the Chicago Police Department—“a reception such as had never been accorded a criminal in Chicago,” noted the
Chicago Tribune.
As flashbulbs popped and reporters strained to get a glimpse, two officers shoved Dillinger into the back of a car.
¹

The Chicago police, many outfitted with submachine guns and bulletproof vests, took no chances. Thirteen cars and a dozen motorcyclists, sirens blaring, made up the caravan that wound its way out of the airport into city streets lined with the curious. Across the border into northwest Indiana, the procession headed for the town of Crown Point, the seat of Lake County, where Dillinger was to be tried. A crowd of reporters and photographers was waiting outside the Lake County Jail when Dillinger arrived at 7:40 P.M.

Inside, Dillinger was led into Sheriff Lillian Holley’s office. Mrs. Holley had become sheriff upon the murder of the previous sheriff, her husband; her inexperience would soon become an issue. Thirty reporters followed, jamming inside as they yelled questions.

“Are you glad to see Indiana again?” someone asked.

“About as glad as Indiana is to see me,” Dillinger said, chewing a wad of gum. He seemed utterly unfazed by the crowd.

“You’re credited with having smuggled the guns into the Indiana State Penitentiary just before the big outbreak of September 26,” a reporter said.

Dillinger grinned. “I’m not denying it,” he said.

“How did you get them in?” a reporter yelled.

A smile creased Dillinger’s face.

“You’re too inquisitive,” he said.

Reporters traded glances. This was something new, a headline-making criminal with charm, a bank robber who could crack wise on his way to the electric chair. A Lake County prosecutor, Robert Estill, who had accompanied Dillinger from Arizona and experienced firsthand his disarming friendliness, was standing beside him. A photographer yelled for Estill to put his arm around Dillinger; forgetting himself for one fateful moment, Estill did. As flashbulbs popped, Dillinger propped his elbow on the prosecutor’s shoulder. The resulting photograph was widely reproduced around the country. It outraged many people, including J. Edgar Hoover, who publicly condemned Estill for fraternizing with a man he was scheduled to prosecute.