Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [120]
Crown Point, Indiana Monday, February 5 2:00 P.M.
Dillinger shuffled into the courtroom, his hands and feet in shackles, a grin on his face. The Lake County Criminal Courts Building was lined with forty deputies for his initial hearing. The newspapers were carrying reports of rumors that John Hamilton, the only gang member still at large, would stage a raid to rescue Dillinger, and deputies searched everyone who entered the courtroom. Hundreds crowded the hallways, straining to get a look at the prisoner.
Dillinger, wearing a blue shirt and the vest of his blue serge suit, listened quietly as a one-armed attorney his father had hired, Joseph Ryan, argued for more time to prepare his case. Ryan spoke in a low voice, so low many struggled to hear him. From Dillinger’s body language, he seemed unimpressed with his representation. Judge William Murray listened and gave Ryan four days. Dillinger would be arraigned on Friday, February 9.
Among the spectators that afternoon was a white-haired forty-nine-year-old Chicago attorney named Louis Piquett. Piquett was a caricature of the gangland mouthpiece, a melodramatic, arm-waving former bartender who worked his way through Democratic circles to become Chicago’s chief prosecutor in the early 1920s until his indictment on corruption charges in 1923, charges that were later dropped. In Piquett’s private practice, his clients were the scum of syndicate Chicago, abortionists, bootleggers, and killers; in his spare time, Piquett engaged in a variety of minor stock market swindles. Like a host of Chicago criminal-defense attorneys, he saw Dillinger as a ticket to fame, and he had managed to have one of his cards slipped to him the week before. When Dillinger sent word he would meet him, the two met twice inside the jail. They were perfunctory conversations, both men feeling each other out, and ended when Dillinger’s father hired Joe Ryan.
After the hearing Monday afternoon, the head jailer, Lewis Baker, took Piquett aside: Dillinger wanted to see him. They met in a cell at the jail. Worried their conversation might be overheard, Piquett loudly tapped a coin throughout their talk. Gone was the cocky front Dillinger had erected for reporters. Here was a man worried about the electric chair. “Mr. Piquett,” Dillinger said, “I can’t have that fellow Ryan. My God, he’s going to send me to the hot seat! He all but convicted me just in asking for a continuance.”
“Ryan’s all right,” Piquett said.
“I want you to represent me. How about it?”
“I’ll be frank with you,” Piquett said. “It’s going to cost you money.”
“All right.”
Dillinger said he could raise the lawyer’s fee, and Piquett agreed to represent him.3 Piquett quickly became, in every way imaginable, the most important person in John Dillinger’s life. Publicly, he became Dillinger’s principal defender, the flamboyant leader of the burgeoning John Dillinger admiration society. But it was behind closed doors that Piquett was to serve Dillinger most ably, doing everything from ferrying secret messages to fielding book offers. Dillinger’s relationship with Piquett, and with Piquett’s investigator, an easygoing mook named Arthur O’Leary, became the foundation upon which the outlaw’s future exploits would be built. In time the two became his secret partners, his enablers, fixers who handled his every need.bg
For now, Piquett returned to his Chicago office and got to work preparing for Dillinger’s trial. It was to be the high point of his legal career; it would bring him untold fame and fortune. And it would never happen.
St. Paul, Minnesota 4:30 P.M.
Father Deere, a Catholic priest who lived outside St. Paul, answered a knock on his door at 4:30 that afternoon. A man with sunken eyes