• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2080 0

supervising the Bremer case, decided they needed a police escort. Agent Coulter volunteered to find a patrolman while Nalls drove ahead to establish surveillance. Nalls reached the building just before ten and parked beside it. A few minutes later he watched as two women left the back entrance. They walked to a parked car, talked to a man inside, and then drove off. As a matter of routine, Nalls wrote down their descriptions. Not till later would anyone realize he had seen Opal Long, Pat Cherrington, and John Hamilton. They were heading out for breakfast and grocery shopping. Nalls didn’t recognize them.

At 10:15 Nalls saw Agent Coulter and a policeman drive up and disappear inside the building. A minute or two later Nalls watched as a thin man drove up in a green Ford sedan, got out, and walked inside. Agent Nalls was still sitting in his car a few minutes later, watching the front entrance, when he saw Agent Coulter running toward him across the building’s snowy front yard, holding his pistol. Coulter turned and exchanged gunshots with the thin man who was chasing him.

Agent Coulter and a sixty-five-year-old St. Paul detective named Henry Cummings had stood before the door of Apartment 303, waiting for someone to answer their knock. After a long minute, the door opened a few inches. A woman peeked out over a chain. Detective Cummings identified himself and asked to speak with Carl.

Billie forgot Dillinger’s alias.

“Carl?” she said. “Carl who?”

“Carl Hellman.”

Billie gathered her senses. “He’s just left and won’t be back till this afternoon,” she said. “Come back then.”

“Are you Mrs. Hellman?” Cummings asked.

Billie nodded.

“We’ll talk to you then,” he said.

“I’m not dressed,” Billie said. “Come back this afternoon.”

“We’ll wait until you dress,” Coulter said.

Billie said it would take a second. She closed the door. Coulter heard a second latch close inside.

Dillinger was still in bed when Billie ran toward him.

“It’s the cops!” she said. “What should I do?”

Dillinger jumped out of bed and began dressing. “Keep your shirt on,” he said, “and get some things into the large bag.”

As Billie tossed clothes into their bag, Dillinger opened a dresser drawer and lifted out the parts of his submachine gun. Then he walked toward the door. Outside, Coulter and Detective Cummings waited in the hallway. Coulter didn’t like this. “We’ll have to call for some help,” Coulter whispered. “You can go call or I will.”

“Who do you want?” Cummings asked. “Your department or ours?”

“I want to get our department,” Coulter said.1

Coulter trotted downstairs to the manager’s office to phone the office. When he returned upstairs, Cummings was still standing in the hallway. Together they waited, nine more minutes by Coulter’s estimate.

It was then that Homer Van Meter, having parked his green Ford outside, appeared at the head of the third floor’s rear stairwell. He sensed trouble the moment he saw the two outside Dillinger’s door. His head lowered, Van Meter walked right up to the two lawmen, shouldered past them, and stepped to the head of the front stairwell. Then he stopped. “Is your name Johnson?” he asked Coulter.

“No,” Coulter said.

As Van Meter headed down the front stairwell, Coulter stepped forward and said, “What’s your name?”

Van Meter turned and stopped on a landing. “I’m a soap salesman,” he said.

“Where are your samples?” Coulter asked.

“Down in my car.”

Coulter asked if he had any identification.

“No. But I have down in my car.”

Van Meter disappeared down the stairs. After a moment, Coulter decided to follow him. He walked down to the lobby and peered outside. The “soap salesman” was gone. Coulter had just turned to walk back upstairs when he saw Van Meter crouched in the shadows of the basement stairs, a pistol in his hand.

“You want this, asshole?” Van Meter asked. “Here it is!”

As Van Meter raised his gun to fire, Coulter leaped backward, crashing through the front door. He turned and ran across the snowy yard, and Van Meter gave chase, firing wildly, his shots throwing up little explosions of dirty