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“Who has the key?” Dillinger asked.

“I don’t know,” Pittenger said.

“Don’t be a fool,” Dillinger said. “We don’t wanna be forced to kill you.”

“I don’t want you to kill me,” Pittenger said. “I have a couple of kids at home.”

“That’s the reason we don’t want to kill you,” Dillinger said.

With a sigh, Pittenger reached into his pocket and handed over the key. They marched him to the deserted police station and up a set of stairs to the weapons closet. While Van Meter covered Pittenger, Dillinger took out three bulletproof vests and two pistols.1

Within hours Matt Leach had roadblocks thrown up all over northern Indiana. Vigilantes sprang from their beds to man them. All the efforts were in vain. By daylight Dillinger was safely back in Chicago, where the evening papers carried the news that Billie would be transferred to St. Paul at any moment.ce

Locked away in the FBI’s nineteenth-floor conference room, bathed in hot lights and interrogated around the clock for two long days, Billie gave Purvis nothing, and he was happy to send her to St. Paul for trial. In Indianapolis, Earl Connelley was having no better luck with Dillinger’s relatives. He rounded up and browbeat Hubert Dillinger and several of the cousins, but none seemed to know where Dillinger was hiding. One, Fred Hancock, helpfully suggested they check Arizona.

What they needed, Purvis saw, were better informants. The ones they had were offering plenty of tips; unfortunately, almost all were worthless. The Detroit SAC, Bill Larson, spent that week working one talkative snitch in Muncie. Purvis sent men to Muncie, Fort Wayne, Elkhorn, and South Bend checking the man’s stories; none panned out. An informant Earl Connelley had hired, the onetime insurance-company snitch Art Maginnis, had been sent to hang around the Dillinger filling station, but his leads were no better. By the time Dillinger raided the Warsaw station Friday morning, Maginnis had Connelley on a fruitless stakeout in Louisville, Kentucky. Purvis talked to Washington and suggested they post a $5,000 reward for information leading to Dillinger’s capture. Hoover vetoed the idea.

The Warsaw raid suggested to Purvis that Dillinger was still close; without Billie, the chances he would take another Florida or Arizona vacation seemed slim. That weekend Purvis drove to South Bend and then to Muncie checking more dead-end tips. By the following Monday, April 16, Hoover was growing impatient. They were charging off into the countryside without a plan, without discipline. What they needed, Hoover saw, was an orderly system for analyzing leads. That Wednesday, Hoover told Purvis to quit running around Indiana and stay in Chicago. Connelley and the other SACs were to clear all leads through Purvis and telephone him at least once a day. The very next morning they got the word that Dillinger had been seen in Sault St. Marie.

While Purvis, Connelley, and their men scrambled across Indiana and northern Kentucky in search of him, Dillinger remained in Chicago. A light rain was falling that Saturday, the day after the Warsaw raid, when Art O’Leary went to meet him at the corner of Belden and Campbell Avenues. When O’Leary saw Dillinger standing across the street, he tipped his hat to signal that he hadn’t been followed. When Dillinger did the same, O’Leary crossed the street and got into his car. Dillinger climbed behind the wheel, his hat tugged so low it obscured his face. Two men O’Leary didn’t recognize were sitting in the back, and for a split-second he feared he had stepped into a trap.

“Johnnie, is it you?” he asked.

“Of course it’s me.”

“Take off your hat.”

Dillinger laughed as he doffed his wet hat and introduced O’Leary to John Hamilton. O’Leary shook his hand, noticing the missing fingers. Dillinger made no effort to introduce Van Meter. It was a fast meeting. Dillinger wanted O’Leary to tell him how Billie would be taken to St. Paul. He said he would call on Monday for details.2 No one thought Dillinger’s idea of rescuing Billie was sound; both Van Meter and Hamilton