Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [145]
A month later, when FBI agents learned of it, Hoover decided to make an example of Dr. Mortensen. He received a prison sentence of one year. When Dr. Mortensen died in 1971 at the age of eighty-seven, he was still insisting he had no idea his patient had been John Dillinger.
After seeing Mortensen, the gang divided the money. A rare glimpse at the delicate nature of intragang relations comes from the FBI’s debriefing of Pat Cherrington, who fell into federal hands later that spring. According to Cherrington, Nelson “was very much disliked by all members of the mob . . . [T]hey had a continuous fear when they were around him, and particularly subsequent to a bank robbery; that the usual procedure after a bank robbery, at which time they would all meet to divide the loot, was that they would invariably have Nelson sit in the middle of the room, although he was not aware that they were arranging things in that way, and allow him to count off each one’s share; that all the hoodlums would get around the room as that each one would be facing Nelson, as they expect at any time . . . that Nelson would shoot them and take the entire amount.”19
After dividing the money, the gang began to scatter. Van Meter and his girlfriend Mickey Conforti settled into their apartment on Girard Avenue in St. Paul. Dillinger and Billie had already moved into a new set of rooms on South Lexington Avenue; they had been obliged to vacate their Minneapolis flat after Hamilton’s gun accidentally went off: Dillinger didn’t want to take the chance they had been noticed. In the new apartment Hamilton slept on the couch with Cherrington.
For the moment, Hamilton and Cherrington had the place to themselves, for Dillinger had business to attend to. On the Wednesday morning after his midnight visit to Dr. Mortensen, he took Billie and drove to Chicago. Art O’Leary was in Piquett’s office when the phone rang. “Be in front of your office, on the Wacker Drive side,” a voice said. “I’ll pick you up in about fifteen minutes.”20
It was a short meeting. O’Leary listened as Dillinger talked and drove. He wanted Piquett to help Billie arrange a divorce so they could be married. O’Leary promised to relay the message. Piquett could only roll his eyes. For the trouble of representing America’s most-wanted man, he had yet to receive a cent. That night and the next, Dillinger and Billie bunked in a basement room at Louis Cernocky’s Crystal Ball Room in Fox River Grove. They had another quick meeting with O’Leary Sunday afternoon, in which O’Leary had the pleasant task of explaining to Dillinger that Piquett wasn’t a divorce attorney. If Billie wanted a divorce attorney, O’Leary said, she should find one herself.
The next morning Dillinger dropped off a package of money for O’Leary. It contained $2,300, including a thousand each for Piquett and Pete Pierpont’s parents. He then drove Billie to the airport, where she boarded a flight to Indianapolis to see Dillinger’s father. In Mooresville, Billie gave the elder Dillinger several bundles of cash and the wooden gun Dillinger had used to escape from Crown Point.21 Billie also passed on a note Dillinger had written his sister Audrey. It read:
Dear Sis:
I thought I would write you a few lines and let you know I am still perculating [sic]. Don’t worry about me honey, for that wont help any, and besides I having a lot of fun. I am sending Emmett [Audrey’s husband] my wooden gun and I want him to always keep it. I see that Deputy Blunk says I had a real forty five that’s just a lot of hooey to cover up because they don’t like to admit that I locked eight deputys and a dozen trustys up with my wooden gun before I got my hands on the two machine guns and you should have