Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [161]
Chicago, Illinois Monday, April 9
The next morning, Dillinger and Billie slept late. Lying in bed they talked about the future. Dillinger was in a warm mood. He spoke about finding a quiet place, maybe somewhere in the country, where they could settle down, live like normal people. Billie said she would like that. Dillinger said he was thinking about cosmetic surgery on his face. Doctors nowadays could make a man almost unrecognizable, he said.
When they finally reached Chicago around noon, Dillinger telephoned Piquett’s investigator, Art O’Leary. He trusted O’Leary, who was to become his primary contact in coming weeks. They met at 3:00 at the corner of Sacramento and Augusta, then drove neighboring streets as Dillinger described what had happened at St. Paul and Mooresville. “By the way,” Dillinger asked at one point, “doesn’t Piquett know a doctor who does plastic surgery work?” He pronounced the lawyer’s name “Pikwatt,” as he sometimes did.
“Why?”
“I’d like to have him work on me. I want to live like other people. Billie and I would like to be married and settle down somewhere.”13
O’Leary promised to ask Piquett about a doctor. Afterward Dillinger drove downtown to the U Tavern on State Street, where Billie walked in and talked to one of Opal Long’s old boyfriends, a man named Larry Strong. She needed a place to stay. Strong said he would try to find something, and they agreed to meet at a bar called the Tumble Inn at eight. What Billie didn’t know was that Strong had already been questioned by the FBI. When she left, he—or someone he talked to—walked to a phone and telephoned Melvin Purvis.cb
The Tumble Inn 8:00 P.M.
Purvis pushed through the front door of the dim, dingy tavern a few minutes past eight. He had dressed down for the occasion. Larry Strong was sitting at the bar, half-drunk, talking to a middle-age bartender. The only other people in the room were an elderly man and a boy. Purvis took a seat at the bar, making small talk with Strong and the bartender. Neither man recognized him. A few minutes later a musician wobbled in, and Strong asked him to play something on the piano. There was no piano. It was that kind of place.
Outside, a dozen agents lurked in the streets. About eight-thirty Dillinger slid his Ford down Austin Street and pulled to the curb beside the tavern. Standing down the block, Agent James J. Metcalfe saw the car pull up. A small, quiet man, born in Germany and raised in Texas, Metcalfe was one of the few members of the group of agents who would come to be known as the Dillinger Squad who would achieve prominence after his FBI career. He wrote poetry, and after leaving the Bureau he embarked on a career as a journalist and then a syndicated poet, his sentimental verse published in newspapers across the country.
Unfortunately, Metcalfe was a far better poet than FBI agent. Studying the car in the gathering darkness, he couldn’t see the features of the man behind the wheel. When he saw a woman step from the car, he realized he needed to get a better look. As Billie disappeared into the Tumble Inn, Metcalfe strolled down the sidewalk past the parked car. Dillinger sat behind the wheel, a Thompson gun in his lap. Metcalfe passed no more than five feet from him.
Inside, Purvis saw Billie when she walked in. She stepped to the bar, standing between him and the drunken Larry Strong. Purvis offered her a stool. She shook her head no, ordered a beer, and leaned toward Strong to talk. Purvis strained to hear the whispered conversation but he couldn’t. After a minute he stepped outside, saw one of his men and nodded. Agent Ralph Brown, pulling a submachine gun from beneath his coat, hustled inside, followed