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“Are you Father Deere?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Can you get to St. Paul by six o’clock?”

“Yes.”

The man thrust an envelope into the priest’s hands, then walked out to a waiting brown sedan and was driven off. Father Deere, an acquaintance of the Bremer family, saw that the envelope was addressed to Adolph Bremer. He returned inside and picked up the phone.

By 6:00 the envelope was in Adolph Bremer’s hands. It contained detailed instructions for delivery of the ransom. The money, $200,000 in small bills whose serial numbers the FBI had recorded, had been loaded into two suit boxes. A little after seven the boxes were loaded into Walter Magee’s car at the brewery. Worried about being robbed, Magee drove through backstreets to the spot on University Avenue where, as the kidnappers’ note promised, he found a parked Chevrolet coupe. Shell Oil signs were bolted to the front doors, giving it the appearance of a company car. Magee slid behind the wheel of the Chevrolet. He noticed that the windows had been clouded with some kind of chemical that made it difficult for him to see out.

In the left-door pocket Magee found the keys and a typewritten note. Following its instructions, he drove to the town of Farmington, twenty miles south of St. Paul, where he pulled up to the bus station. The bus to Rochester left at 9:15. Magee fell in behind it. He followed the bus through the towns of Cannon Falls and Zumbrota, pulling over when the bus stopped to disgorge passengers. Then, four miles south of Zumbrota, Magee saw the four red lights on a hill above the highway. He hit the brakes. Three hundred feet farther, just as the instructions promised, there was a dirt road. Magee turned into it.

Magee inched down the darkened road. About a half mile later, a car materialized behind him and flashed its headlights five times. Magee got out, walked around to the passenger door, took out the two suit boxes, and placed them on the road. Then he got back in the car and drove forward, eventually reaching the small town of Mazeppa.

Wednesday, February 7

Fred Barker was wearing a huge smile when he reached the safe house outside of Chicago the next morning. “We got it!” Barker shouted as they lugged the suit boxes into the kitchen.

“How much did you get?” Karpis asked.

“We got the whole thing,” Barker said. “Two hundred thousand dollars.”

It fell to Karpis to return Bremer. They forced him to shave and gave him a new suit of clothes to wear. Karpis explained to Bremer that he had read an article that outlined how the FBI could retrieve fingerprints from clothing, and he wanted to ensure Bremer returned with nothing they had handled. They burned his old clothes, even his underwear. Bremer asked for his garters back, but Karpis refused.

At nightfall they threw a handkerchief over Bremer’s head and led him to the Buick they had parked in the alley. Karpis drove, Dock Barker beside him in the front seat, Bremer pushed down on the rear floorboards. In central Wisconsin they found a gasoline cache Fred Barker had laid. Karpis held the funnel while Dock poured the contents of the first can into the Buick’s tank. In the darkness his hand slipped and the ice-cold gas splashed inside his glove. “Jesus Christ, don’t you know you got me half froze?” Karpis said, shaking his hand.

“Well, I got it on my gloves, too,” Dock said.

Dock took one of his gloves off while he poured the second can. “Goddamn, you ought to keep your gloves on,” Karpis said.

“I got gasoline in one of ’em.”

“That don’t make no difference, goddamnit, you might leave some prints or something.”

“Well, nobody’ll find the cans anyway. Even if they did, they wouldn’t know we used ’em.” Karpis was too cold to argue.

They drove through the night to Rochester, Minnesota, pulling up behind a downtown building about eight o’clock. Dock pushed some bills into Bremer’s fist, guided him out of the car, and told him to count to fifteen before taking off his blindfold. Shivering, Bremer began to count. “We haven’t left,” he heard a voice say. “Start