Public Enemies (53 page)

Fighting to get the car off the stump, he threw two pistols into Cherrington’s lap and told her to start shooting. She told him to go to hell. When the car was freed they passed the lodge a second time, drawing gunshots that struck their tire; the car door swung open and Cherrington fell out, fracturing her left shoulder. Later that night, after replacing their punctured tire at a filling station, the two hapless fugitives drove their car into a mud hole. Stuck, they sat in a field drinking whiskey, becoming drunk.
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Not till the next day, after a series of further misadventures, did the two reach St. Paul.

Dillinger and the others, meanwhile, thrashed through the pines, looking for a house with a car they could steal. In the darkness Tommy Carroll became separated. In the end it was Carroll who had the easiest time of it; he made his way to Manitowish, stole a Packard, and drove toward St. Paul. Dillinger, Van Meter, and Hamilton emerged from the woods a quarter mile north of Little Bohemia; had the FBI established roadblocks or patrolled Route 51 they might have been spotted. As it was, Van Meter was free to step out onto the road and attempt to flag down a passing car; the car, driven by Nan Wanatka’s brother, George LaPorte, was following the ambulance to the lodge and didn’t stop.

Across the road, Dillinger spotted Mitchell’s Rest Lake Resort, a wood-frame house with several cabins behind. Inside, its seventy-year-old owner, Edward J. Mitchell, was trying to explain something to his German handyman. His wife was lying on a couch, sick with the flu, when they heard a knock at the door. It was Hamilton, who after asking for a glass of water, casually walked across the living room and yanked the phone from the wall. The Mitchells had heard the rumors about gangsters at Little Bohemia. They’d heard the shots, too.

“You couldn’t be Dillinger, could you?” Mrs. Mitchell asked.

Dillinger grinned. “You couldn’t have guessed better,” he said. He noticed the terrified look at Edward Mitchell’s face. “Now don’t worry, old man,” he said, “I’d never harm a hair on your head.”

“My wife is just getting over the flu,” Mitchell said.

Dillinger took a moment to drape a blanket across the old woman. “Here you are, mother,” he said.
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All he needed, Dillinger said, was a car. Mitchell said he had a Model T, but it had been sitting on blocks all winter. Van Meter walked outside and saw a Model A truck, but it wouldn’t start. He asked Mitchell who owned a green Ford coupe parked next to it. Mitchell said it was his carpenter’s. He lived in one of the cabins. The carpenter, Robert L. Johnson, had been asleep when he was awakened by a knock on his door. He dressed, grabbed a flashlight, and shuffled in his slippers to the door, where he found Dillinger, Van Meter, and Hamilton hovering outside. Dillinger said they needed a doctor for Mrs. Mitchell. The .45 in his hand suggested the matter was more urgent than that. Johnson led them to his car.

Baby Face Nelson had the worst of it. Cut off from the rest of the gang, he ran the other way, south along the lakeshore, stumbling through underbrush for a half hour until he saw the lights of a cabin a half mile beyond Little Bohemia. Inside was another elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. George W. Lange. Nelson didn’t bother knocking; he walked right in, pistol in hand. “Now don’t get excited,” he told the Langes. “I won’t harm you, but this is a matter of life and death.”

Nelson sagged onto a couch, stuck his pistol inside his coat, and began petting the Langes’ dog, which began barking. After resting a few minutes, he pointed his gun at the frightened couple and said he wanted Lange to drive him in his car, a 1932 Chevrolet coach. Mrs. Lange began to cry. Nelson needed her to calm down, but as always the human touch that came so easily to Dillinger eluded him. “Come on now, shut up” was the best he could come up with.

The Langes put on their coats and got in the car, Mr. Lange driving with Nelson beside him. The headlights wouldn’t come on. Nelson told him to drive anyway. Lange edged out onto Route 51 and turned right, toward the Birchwood Lodge a half mile down the road. The car had only gone a few hundred yards when it stalled.

Nelson was in a precarious position; any minute he expected a carload of FBI men to drive by. To his left he saw a house ablaze in light. “Who lives there?” he asked Lange.
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“Alvin Koerner,” Lange said.

Koerner was the switchboard operator. At that moment he was sitting with his wife in his living room, petrified, having heard the gunfire at Little Bohemia followed by the panicked call from the wounded John Morris. His maid and two children were asleep in a back room. Peeking out his window, Koerner saw the Langes’ car before he saw them, and hurriedly telephoned Birchwood Lodge to report it.

Nelson shoved his pistol into George Lange’s back and marched the couple up the muddy lane to Koerner’s front door. Koerner, not seeing Nelson behind them, let the trio in. Nelson announced he wanted the Koerners to drive him to the town of Woodruff. Koerner, groping for an excuse, said he couldn’t; he had children to care for. Nelson trained his gun on him and said it didn’t matter.

The two men were still arguing when a car drove up.

“Who’s that car belong to?” Nelson demanded.

“Don’t know,” said Koerner.

It was George LaPorte and a friend named Carl J. Christiansen (no relation to the constable), who after declining to pick up the hitchhiking Van Meter had stopped by Little Bohemia, where Emil Wanatka and his two employees jumped in the car. Wanatka’s group needed coats and had decided to come to Koerner’s to get some. Leaving Christiansen in the car, the men walked into the house. Nelson let them in. “Hello, Jimmy,” the bartender said. The two men had gotten along well that weekend; Nelson was a great tipper. “Never mind the bullshit,” Nelson said, producing the pistol. “Just line up against the wall.”

Wanatka reached for Nelson’s gun. “Put that gun down, Jimmy,” he said. “These people are friends of mine.”

Nelson stepped back.

“Who’s in that car out there?” he asked Wanatka.

“Nobody,” Wanatka said, forgetting that Christiansen was still in the backseat.

“Are there any G-men in that car?”

“No.”

“Now I’m getting out of here,” Nelson said, motioning to Wanatka and Koerner, “and you two are going with me.”

Nelson jabbed the gun toward the two men and they walked outside. Mrs. Koerner began to cry. Nelson ordered Wanatka to drive; he sat beside him in the front seat, keeping the pistol pointed at his side. Koerner got into the backseat beside Carl Christiansen.

“Jimmy,” Wanatka said, “I have no keys for this car.”

Just then a car drove up behind them. At the wheel was Agent Jay Newman.

 

 

Adrenaline surged through Nelson as he leveled his gun inches from Agent Newman’s face.

“I’ll kill you!” he snarled. “Get out of that car!”

Newman leaned back in his seat, hoping Carter Baum, who had a submachine gun in his lap, or the constable, Carl Christiansen, might take a shot. When neither man moved, Newman slid his hand inside his coat and reached for his pistol.

“Don’t reach for that gun!” Nelson said. “I’ll kill you! Now get out of the car!”

Newman stopped. Beside him Baum, the agent stricken by guilt over shooting an innocent man, ducked his head behind Newman’s shoulder, as if to hide; he made no move for his gun. Christiansen ducked his head behind Baum. Slowly Newman opened the door and stepped into the driveway. Newman’s foot had just touched the ground when Nelson fired. His first bullet struck Newman in the head, a glancing wound just above his right eye; he fell facedown in the mud, dazed but alive.

Nelson turned and fired into the car, at Agent Baum and Christiansen. Both men tumbled out the passenger door, Baum landing atop Christiansen. Baum stood to run but Nelson shot first. Three slugs tore into Baum’s neck. He toppled over the white fence, landing on his face, a sick gurgling sound coming from his throat. Christiansen stumbled forward, into the headlights. Nelson turned on him. Two bullets struck Christiansen in the hip, knocking him off his feet. As he fell into a ditch Nelson kept firing, hitting him three more times.

At the sound of shots Emil Wanatka ran. Nelson was crazed; he shot at everything that moved. Wanatka dived into a snowbank, bullets kicking up gravel behind him. Alvin Koerner made it back to the house and locked the door.

When he ran out of moving targets, Nelson jumped into the FBI car, threw it into reverse, and stomped the accelerator, the Ford’s tires circling so violently they sprayed bits of gravel against the side of Koerner’s house. Just as Nelson backed down the lane, Agent Newman came to his senses. Finding his gun in his hand, he raised it and fired, emptying it at the Ford. It did no good: Nelson disappeared down Route 51.

Newman stood. He was woozy; the bullet had grazed his forehead. Blood gushed down his face and into his eyes. He wobbled to the parked car and saw LaPorte’s friend, Carl J. Christiansen, cowering in the backseat. “Come out with your hands up!” Newman ordered.

“Please don’t shoot me,” Christiansen begged. “I’m a resident.”

Newman heard a moan and saw the fallen bodies. He shoved Christiansen toward Koerner’s front door; even in his dazed state, he could see they needed immediate medical attention. Christiansen banged on the door, shouting, “Alvin! Open up!,” but Koerner wouldn’t answer. The two men circled to the back of the house, where they could see people in the kitchen. Newman banged on the window, slapping his badge against the glass. No one moved. After yelling for another minute or two, Newman said, “I’m going to Voss’s and you’re going with me.”

“The hell I am,” Christiansen said. “I’m staying here.”

“Goddamn you,” Newman said, pressing the pistol into Christiansen’s side. “You’re going with me.”

They climbed into the car and headed out onto the road.

 

 

Moments after Nelson escaped from the Koerners’ home, the car carrying Werner Hanni and three other agents from St. Paul sped north along Highway 51 toward the Birchwood Lodge. As they neared the lodges, Hanni saw a black Ford approaching on the two-lane road. He dimmed his lights and peered at the car, thinking it might be FBI men.

Suddenly a spotlight flashed from the oncoming car and momentarily blinded Hanni as the two cars passed each other. Several of the agents craned their heads to see whether the car would stop. A minute later Hanni pulled into the drive at Birchwood Lodge to see whether the car would return; it didn’t. Later that night Hanni realized the car with the spotlight had been driven by Baby Face Nelson.

As Hanni and his men stood at the roadside, another car drove up. Two deputy sheriffs got out; they had been called about some kind of shooting. A minute later a third car drove up. “Are you officers?” someone from the car shouted.

“This is Hanni,” Hanni said.

A man bleeding from a head wound stepped out of the car. “This is Newman. Where’s the nearest doctor?”

Purvis still crouched in the driveway at Little Bohemia, studying the lodge for signs of a gang that was no longer inside. The first inkling he had of his woes came when Emil Wanatka hustled up out of the woods. He had run all the way from Koerner’s, and was so winded he couldn’t raise his hands when an agent ordered him to. “All your men are dead,” Wanatka finally managed to say. “At Koerner’s.”

Purvis looked at him skeptically. He asked Wanatka for his name and address. When Wanatka couldn’t spell Manitowish, Purvis got snippy with him. “Who’d you come here for?” Wanatka shot back. “Me or Dillinger?” Purvis told a pair of agents to drive to the Koerner home and check out Wanatka’s story.

Werner Hanni’s men reached the Koerner house first, a half hour after the shooting. They found the wounded constable, Carl C. Christiansen, sitting up, leaning against the picket fence. An agent named Thomas Dodd took Christiansen’s flashlight and after a minute found Carter Baum lying facedown in a pool of blood, dead.
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No one had come out of the house to check on them; they were all too scared.

As the wounded were ferried to hospitals, Purvis and Clegg remained at Little Bohemia, convinced despite all the evidence that at least some of the gang remained inside the lodge. An hour passed. After midnight they grew so cold they opened the garage and took positions inside. The rest of the agents remained out in the woods, freezing, until the eastern sky began to redden around four. At that point Clegg was told the local sheriff and a group of deputies were down the road and wanted to join them. He called them up. The locals wanted to storm the lodge, but Clegg insisted they fire in gas grenades first.

Even that didn’t go smoothly. There was only a single gas gun, and despite all their efforts, the agents couldn’t get it to fire a grenade through the inn’s window screens; the grenades hit the screens and fell to the ground, hissing. A group of five agents stood behind the garage debating what to do. It was decided that the only way to get a grenade inside the inn was for someone to run up and throw one through the door. If Dillinger was still inside the lodge—and everyone believed he was—it was likely to be a deadly errand. An agent named John T. McLaughlin volunteered to do it. “I am the only single man here,” McLaughlin explained. “It was the bravest act that I saw during those days and to me, John McLaughlin has always been a hero,” another agent, Robert G. Gillespie wrote years later.
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