Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [152]
Up in Apartment 303, Billie begged Dillinger not to start a gunfight. But the minute he heard shots, Dillinger raised his submachine gun and fired a burst through the door. He opened the door a few inches, stuck the Thompson gun’s muzzle outside and began firing down the hallway. Detective Cummings flattened himself into an alcove as bullets whizzed by his chin. The moment Dillinger stopped shooting, Cummings ran down the front stairs. Inside the apartment, Billie came out of the bedroom and found Dillinger smiling. Thin shafts of sunlight stabbed into the room through the holes he had blasted in the door.2
“Keep your shirt on,” Dillinger repeated when Billie begged him not to fire again. “You’re coming with me. Snap that suitcase together and follow along.” Dillinger stepped to the door and fired another burst of bullets down the hallway. Billie followed, lugging his heavy suitcase with two hands; there were more guns inside.
Outside, chaos had engulfed the neighborhood. Cars were stopped, and people were leaning out of windows. Recognizing Coulter’s assailant as the man from the green Ford, Agent Nalls pointed out his car, and Coulter promptly shot out one of its tires. Nalls ran toward a drugstore to telephone for reinforcements.
Neither agent thought about the building’s rear entrance. It was from this door that Billie and Dillinger emerged; Van Meter sprinted out the same door a minute later. Dillinger, in a light-gray suit and no tie, walked casually down the alley, carrying the Thompson gun close to his right leg. He handed Billie the car keys and took the suitcase, watching over his shoulder as he walked.3 Billie hurried ahead to the garage where they stored their black Hudson and backed the car out. Dillinger threw the suitcase into the backseat and got in. Billie stomped the accelerator, and the Hudson roared down the alley. “Slow down! Slow down!” Dillinger ordered. “You’ll attract attention.”
None of the FBI agents and St. Paul police who descended on the neighborhood had any idea who was doing the shooting. One agent telephoned Washington to say the suspects didn’t match the descriptions of anyone in the Barker Gang. Not until two hours later, when agents finally stormed Apartment 303, did the FBI realize who it had found. Inside, amid an arsenal of pistols and submachine guns and drawerfuls of men’s suits and ladies undergarments, they found three photos. One showed a baby boy, another a teenager. The third was a Navy sailor with a crewcut and a familiar crooked grin. It was Dillinger. Fingerprints taken from a Listerine bottle confirmed it. And from the drops of blood agents found in the hallway outside, they guessed he had been hit.
In the getaway car blood reddened Dillinger’s pant leg. He had been hit by a ricochet, one of his own bullets. It struck high on his left calf, a “through and through” just below his knee. As sirens sounded over St. Paul, Dillinger told Billie to head to the apartment of Eddie Green, the redheaded jug marker. He needed a doctor.
Green directed them to an office building in downtown Minneapolis, and a doctor named Clayton May. May was a forty-six-year-old general practitioner whose practice included fifty-dollar abortions and treating the venereal diseases rampant in St. Paul’s underworld. When Green said he had a friend injured in the explosion of an illegal still, May followed him outside. Dillinger was sitting in the backseat with Billie. They drove to an apartment complex on the south side, where the doctor treated his shadier clients. Billie threw an arm around Dillinger and helped him limp into a first-floor apartment.
Dr. May later insisted that Dillinger had threatened his life, but in fact the roll of cash the outlaw was carrying was all the persuasion Dr. May needed. The wound wasn’t serious. They bandaged it and applied a mercury solution