Public Enemies (63 page)

The death of Tommy Carroll gave Hoover’s men their first new batch of clues in weeks. None came from Jean Delaney; the morning after Carroll’s death, agents questioned her till 4:15 A.M., but she said little of use. Even the persuasive Hugh Clegg got nothing out of her. She was sentenced to a year and a day and shipped to the federal women’s prison in West Virginia.

The clues were in Carroll’s luggage, a black leather Gladstone bag. Two of the dead man’s dress shirts were still in wrappers from a laundry in suburban Niles Center.
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When the owner was shown a photo of Carroll, she identified him as one of her customers; he’d only been in a few times. Shown photos of other Dillinger and Barker Gang members, she identified Baby Face Nelson as Carroll’s friend, “Mr. Cody,” a “nice young man” who had been bringing in his laundry since early May. Once, she remembered, when he arrived to pick up a load of shirts that wasn’t yet ready, he snapped his fingers and remarked that he had driven fifty miles to pick it up.

Despite some progress, Cowley still had a lot to learn. His worst mistake was taking his men off Mickey Conforti. Conforti knew she was being watched; Cowley thought it a waste of time to keep her under surveillance when she was unlikely to contact Van Meter. He was wrong. On the night of June 14 his office received a call from Conforti’s foster mother. Conforti had disappeared.

Cowley could kick himself. Van Meter had simply approached one of Conforti’s girlfriends, sending her to Conforti’s house with the message he wanted to reunite. She had thrown some things in an overnight bag, met him on a corner, and vanished. Two weeks to the day after Purvis had let Baby Face Nelson retrieve his wife—the debacle that prompted Cowley’s reassignment—Cowley had done the same thing. The last known link to the Dillinger Gang had slipped from his hands.

 

 

 

Losing Mickey Conforti was bad enough. But Cowley’s most inexplicable oversight in those sultry days of June was his failure to put a tail on Louis Piquett. Cowley’s men had investigated Piquett’s background, dredging up bits of dirt on his involvement in various stock swindles. They had interviewed his former secretary Esther Anderson, the woman who turned Dillinger away after his Crown Point escape; Anderson wasn’t asked about that day’s events and she didn’t volunteer anything. Through it all, Piquett was allowed to roam free.
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As a result, Piquett and Art O’Leary were able to continue tending to Dillinger’s needs right under the FBI’s noses. The two visited Probasco’s house every few days. Piquett was brimming with schemes to cash in on Dillinger’s notoriety. He offered a reporter for the
Chicago American
an interview with Dillinger for $50,000; the paper declined. Piquett and the paper also discussed the possibility of the
American
handling Dillinger’s surrender. Dillinger was game for anything short of surrender, even an autobiography; Piquett said he would bring in a tape recorder so Dillinger could record his memories.

Dillinger was most excited by the idea of a movie. Piquett proposed that they purchase cameras and recording equipment and have Dillinger and Van Meter filmed lecturing on the evils of crime.

“I’ll give out a message to the youth of America!” Van Meter enthused.

“No, that’s not the idea, Van,” Dillinger said. “We just want to tell them that crime does not pay.”

“Well,” Van Meter said, “you tell them that crime does not pay, and I’ll give my talk to the youth of America.”
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When he wasn’t discussing these and other pipe dreams, Dillinger spent much of his time in Probasco’s living room reading newspapers. Van Meter, who wasn’t a reader, spent hours hunched over the police band of Probasco’s radio, avidly relaying items he heard to Dillinger. They chuckled over the stream of bogus sightings the FBI and Chicago police were forced to pursue. There were reports Dillinger had been seen in Kentucky, in Wisconsin, even hiding in the Ozark Mountains with Pretty Boy Floyd. For the most part, Dillinger just laughed. He only lost his temper when the radio carried the spurious news that the attorney general had issued orders that he be shot on sight.

When O’Leary came by the house that night, Dillinger handed him a slip of paper. On it he had scribbled the home addresses of Melvin Purvis and Agent Harold Reinecke, who had earned Dillinger’s ire after newspaperreports that he had browbeat Billie Frechette while she was in FBI custody. “I want you to check up on these addresses and see that they’re right,” Dillinger said. O’Leary went to Piquett. Harboring was one thing, murder another. Piquett confronted Dillinger the next day. “Just what are you planning to do, Johnnie?” he asked.

“They’re out to kill me, aren’t they?” Dillinger said. “Why should I sit around and wait for it? We’re going to be parked outside their houses one of these nights and get them before they get us.”

“Don’t you realize what a stunt like this would mean?” Piquett said. “They’d call out the army and place the town under martial law, and hang me from a lamppost.”

Piquett won the argument, but in it lay the seeds of a rift between the two men. It widened when Dillinger and Van Meter playfully warned Piquett they were planning to rob “all the banks” in his Wisconsin hometown. Piquett didn’t get the joke. Losing his temper, he swore—as he did over the idea of assassinating Purvis—that if Dillinger went forward, “you and I will be through.”
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Nor was Piquett too excited about Dillinger’s forays into the streets of Chicago. He was going out almost every night now, days as well. He took in another Cubs game or two, revisited the World’s Fair, and apparently began regular trips to a North Side whorehouse. No one seemed to notice him. Dillinger further disguised his appearance by dying his hair black, growing a mustache, and buying a pair of gold-rim wire spectacles. After the dark weeks spent in the red panel truck, his confidence was growing. Van Meter, who had rented Mickey Conforti a room on the South Side, thought Dillinger was nuts for cavorting so openly and said so. “You’re going to get it one of these days, running around so much,” he chided.
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The subject arose again on June 23, when Homer Cummings announced a new $15,000 in rewards for Dillinger’s capture. Nelson warranted only $7,500. “Looks like my price is going up,” Dillinger joked to Van Meter. “Watch Jimmy burn when he finds the government put a cheaper price tag on him than on me. And you, Van, you don’t rate at all.”

“Nuts to you,” Van Meter said. “You just better watch out that someone doesn’t cash in on that reward.”

 

 

 

At the Bankers Building, Cowley had agents on half a dozen stakeouts. He asked Washington for more men and got them. Eight agents had been added to the Dillinger Squad that month, bringing the total in Chicago to twenty-two. Still, by Wednesday, June 27, Cowley was no closer to catching Dillinger than when he arrived three weeks before. That day he held a strategy conference at the Bankers Building. Earl Connelley drove up from Indianapolis, Hugh Clegg came down from St. Paul, and a headquarters supervisor named Ed Tamm flew out from Washington.

They debated every lead and reassessed every stakeout. In Indiana, Connelley’s agents were watching a dozen places, while Connelley himself was keeping in regular touch with the informant Art McGinnis. Tamm argued they should increase the pressure on the Dillinger family. Clegg’s agents were launching raids all around the Twin Cities; that same day they had their first success, picking up Harry Sawyer’s bartender, Pat Reilly, who had been at Little Bohemia. Reilly prompted a flurry of news articles by stating he thought Dillinger was dead. Reporters flocked out to Mooresville to see John Dillinger, Sr., who assured them his son was still very much alive.

Cowley’s most promising stakeout was back at the Audrey Russ home in Fort Wayne; the Russes were insisting that Van Meter would return any day. Reversing himself, Cowley stationed four men there around the clock, including two of his best new marksmen, the Cowboys Charles Winstead and Clarence Hurt, who passed the days dodging the wrath of the combative Mrs. Russ.
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For the moment, Cowley was satisfied. They had agents working half the towns between Indianapolis and Chicago. Unfortunately, none were in the northern Indiana city of South Bend, which is where Dillinger struck that Saturday.

 

 

 

Dillinger’s robbery of the Merchants National Bank in South Bend was probably the most chaotic and confusing episode of his career. Among the few things known for sure is that the planning took place at a remote schoolhouse in Nelson’s territory, the northwest Chicago suburbs.
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Several nights that June, Van Meter and Dillinger drove out to the school to meet Nelson, who was usually accompanied by his growing band of acolytes, now including his California pal Johnny Chase; the rotund Bay Area bouncer Fatso Negri; his childhood friend, the racketeer Jack Perkins; and a Chicago mechanic Nelson knew from his racing days named Clarey Lieder.
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Only Negri was to give accounts of these meetings, and his versions changed over the years.
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To this day, no one is certain exactly who took part in the South Bend robbery. Eyewitnesses variously counted four, five, or six robbers; most versions put the number at five. Dillinger, Van Meter, and Nelson were confirmed participants. Jack Perkins was later tried and acquitted of joining them. It’s possible, if unlikely, that the fourth and fifth robbers that day were Johnny Chase and Fatso Negri.

The most intriguing theory about the other robbers’ identities has long centered on Pretty Boy Floyd and his sidekick Adam Richetti, whose disappearance had been so complete the FBI had not fielded a confirmed sighting of the pair in a year. One eyewitness firmly identified Floyd as the dark-complexioned “fat man” who worked alongside Dillinger in South Bend that day. Floyd’s involvement was suggested months later by Fatso Negri, who told the FBI he overheard gang members say they would be working with a “big-name Southwestern outlaw.” If it was Floyd, it’s conceivable he contacted Dillinger via Richetti, who served time in Indiana’s Pendleton Reformatory. It’s also possible Negri concocted the story to cover his own involvement.

Whoever accompanied Dillinger that day, it’s clear that tensions were rising between members of the gang. As usual, Nelson was the irritant. He thought Dillinger and Van Meter were living far too openly, and he repeatedly said so. This led to an angry confrontation at the schoolhouse one night between Nelson and Van Meter, after Nelson discovered Van Meter had reunited with Mickey Conforti, whom Nelson deemed untrustworthy. As Negri put it:

The anecdote illustrates Nelson’s renowned volatility and the lengths Dillinger and Van Meter would go to humor him; there’s no suggestion Van Meter ever seriously considered killing Marie Conforti. It was in this emotional climate that the gang debated its next target. According to Negri, they studied several banks in Illinois and Indiana before eventually choosing the bank in South Bend. Van Meter had reconnoitered it that week, wearing his pince-nez. On Friday night, June 29, the gang made final plans at a meeting at the schoolhouse, checking their guns and bulletproof vests. They would need them.

It was a hot, bright summer morning when the gang’s car pulled up just past the intersection of Wayne and Michigan Streets in the heart of downtown South Bend at 11:30 A.M. Trolleys rattled up and down Michigan Avenue. The sidewalks were thronged with shoppers. Out in the intersection a twenty-nine-year-old policeman named Howard Wagner was directing traffic. An amateur boxer named Alex Slaby had just parked his car on Wayne Street when a brown Hudson pulled alongside him, double-parking. Slaby watched as four men jumped out. One looked familiar. He wore overalls, a straw boater, and a handkerchief over his right hand. As Slaby stared, trying to place him, Dillinger drew back the handkerchief and thrust a pistol toward him. “You better scram,” Dillinger said.

Slaby watched, stunned, as Dillinger and two of the others disappeared around the corner, toward the Merchants Bank. With a start, he realized the bank was about to be robbed. Slaby got out of his car, studying the waiting Hudson, whose engine was idling, and began to reach for the keys, which dangled in the ignition.

“What are you doing?” a voice said. Slaby turned and saw a young blond-haired man in front of the car, a machine gun barely hidden beneath his suit coat. It was Nelson. “Nothing,” Slaby said. He walked off unmolested, heading to a pay phone to summon police.

Around the corner, Van Meter pulled out a rifle and stationed himself at the bank’s front door while Dillinger and the unidentified “fat man” entered the bank. Dillinger wasted no time with niceties that day. Two dozen customers were in the lobby, lining up in front of the teller cages. Dillinger whipped out a Thompson submachine gun and shouted, “This is a holdup!”

Instinctively, most of the customers raised their hands and backed away, lining the walls and inching toward a rear wall. A bank vice president hid below his desk. A group of nine or ten people scampered into a conference room and locked the door. Ignoring them all, Dillinger stalked through a waist-high swinging door and began clearing stacks of cash off the counters. Suddenly another robber—probably the “fat man”—raised his submachine gun and fired a deafening volley into the ceiling. As bits of plaster rained into the lobby, he turned and grinned. Women screamed.