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“Quit your squawking,” Piquett said playfully. “They’ll probably never get another look at his coattails.”

The gin flowed freely for the next few hours as the four celebrated. Bogue ran out and grabbed newspaper extras that were already appearing, and they read them between drinks. Outside, police were swarming into the streets, taking positions at the main entryways to the city from the south. Piquett realized his office would be watched. He thought of a former secretary, a woman named Esther Anderson, who lived on Wellington Avenue, on the North Side. He sent Billie over, then followed in a taxi. O’Leary stayed behind, waiting for Dillinger’s call. It came around three. Dillinger’s only words were, “Where will I go?”

“Go to 434 Wellington Avenue,” O’Leary said. “Piquett will be waiting.”

Piquett was leaning against the Wellington Avenue building, hat tucked down, hands stuffed in his pockets, when Dillinger drove up.

“Hi ya, counsel,” he said with a wave.

Piquett stepped to the car. Herbert Youngblood was lying flat on the backseat, the two tommy guns clutched in his hands. “Is this the place I’m gonna stay?” Dillinger asked, eyeing the building.

“No,” Piquett said, “I just want to bring you up here for a few minutes so we can talk.”

The two men walked into the lobby, where Billie leaped into Dillinger’s embrace. Upstairs, Esther Anderson took one look at Dillinger and told them to get out. Dillinger returned downstairs to the car, Billie attached to his side. Piquett came down a minute later.

“Billie says we can go over to her sister’s place on Halsted,” Dillinger said. “Come over there this evening about half past seven. And I need some money. Let me have whatever you’ve got with you.”

Piquett fished in his pocket and handed Dillinger a roll of bills, about three hundred dollars.

“Thanks, counsel,” Dillinger said. “I’ll see you soon.”

On the way to the apartment, Dillinger put Youngblood on a streetcar, handed him $100, and thanked him.bo He and Billie drove to her sister’s place, a second-floor flat at 3512 North Halsted. That night Piquett visited and listened as Dillinger, snuggling with Billie on a davenport, told them what had happened at Crown Point.

“Say, Dillinger,” Piquett said at one point. “When am I gonna see some money? I haven’t had a dollar yet, you know?”

A cloud passed over Dillinger’s face. “What? Didn’t [that lawyer my father hired] give you anything? He took my dad’s last five hundred dollars. You tell him to cough up those five C’s, or I’m coming down and take care of him.”

The next day Dillinger stayed in the apartment, speaking at one point with John Hamilton, who briefed him on the arrangements with the Nelson gang. Everything was set. That night Nelson’s partner Tommy Carroll drove up in front of the building in a green Ford. Dillinger and Billie came out a side entrance, carrying suitcases as they ducked into the backseat. Under their coats both carried submachine guns.

They headed northwest out of the city, toward St. Paul and Dillinger’s rendezvous with his new partner, Baby Face Nelson.bp

While Indiana politicians and prosecutors squabbled over responsibility for his escape, Dillinger arrived in Minnesota that Sunday night, thirty-six hours after fleeing Crown Point, and tossed his things into Apartment 106 at the Santa Monica Apartments on South Girard Avenue in Minneapolis. The jug marker Eddie Green had rented the flat for him under the name “Mr. and Mrs. Olson.” Billie handed the janitor a fifty-dollar deposit, and they wired the shades closed.

No record exists of Dillinger’s first meeting with Nelson’s gang the next day. The two gang leaders probably knew each other; there are unconfirmed accounts they met in East Chicago the previous June, and there had been talk of teaming up for a train robbery that autumn. Certainly they knew each other by reputation. Dillinger was grateful for Nelson’s acceptance after his escape; for weeks afterward he remarked to people what a huge favor Nelson had done for him.

As for Nelson, working