Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [166]
For the first time in weeks Hamilton seemed happy. He was home; it was all he had left. Around ten, the kitchen door swung open, startling both men, who grabbed their guns off the table. But it was only Mrs. Steve’s eighteen-year-old son, Charles Campbell. Dillinger lowered his gun. “Charles, this is Johnnie,” Hamilton said. He didn’t have to say more.
Everyone adjourned to a sitting room, where young Campbell watched the two men closely. Hamilton made a clicking sound when he breathed, the result of his earlier wounds. Dillinger, still walking with a limp, remained on edge. He sat by a window saying little, reading a newspaper between peeks outside. After a bit, Hamilton sent his nephew to fetch one of his boyhood friends, a man named Paul Parquette, who came over and was stunned to find himself face-to-face with the country’s most-wanted man. It was an awkward moment, a parody of a reunion; no one knew what to say, so Hamilton showed his old pal how his machine gun worked. This was far too chummy for Dillinger, who rose around eleven and announced it was time to leave. Hamilton begged for just one night to sleep in his sister’s house. But Dillinger said it wasn’t safe. The FBI was out there somewhere, he said, watching.cg
As they gathered their guns, Mrs. Steve began to cry. Not knowing what to say, she handed her brother a jar of venison to take. Hamilton held her for a long moment and softly kissed her cheek. “Bye,” Hamilton said. “I hope we see you again.”
They wouldn’t. The last time Anna Steve saw her brother, he was walking down the muddy hill away from her house; Hamilton left his car behind for her as a gift. At the bottom he slid into Dillinger’s car and drove to the town of St. Ignace, only to find they had missed the last ferry across Lake Michigan. Dillinger found a hotel where they could stay the night, and Cherrington signed them in.5
Purvis’s men were alerted by one of Mrs. Steve’s neighbors, but by the time they reached Sault St. Marie the next day, Dillinger was gone. The agents, accompanied by local deputies, raided the Steve home and led Hamilton’s sister and her son away in handcuffs. In Washington, Hoover had no sympathy for their plight; he wanted a message sent to anyone who would harbor dangerous criminals. For Mrs. Steve, the price for a bacon-and-eggs dinner, two haircuts, and a three-hour reunion with her brother was three months in a federal women’s prison.
While Purvis’s men questioned Anna Steve that Friday, Dillinger returned to Chicago and found refuge at a place that should no longer have been safe: Louie Cernocky’s Crystal Ballroom in Fox River Grove. A week earlier, Beth Green had told the FBI all about Cernocky’s tavern, how it served as a rest area for both the Barker and Dillinger Gangs; she described a visit there by Dillinger just weeks before.
The Bureau, in fact, had been sniffing around Cernocky since the previous summer, when Frank Nash’s widow told them of Nash’s fondness for the place. Cernocky’s name popped up repeatedly in the Bremer investigation; Hoover, in fact, had approved a tap on his phones in March. FBI men had interviewed Cernocky’s neighbors, and a squad of agents searching for the Bremer safe house had driven by the tavern just that weekend. Amid the blizzard of tips his men followed that week, however, Purvis never found time to place it under surveillance.
Had he done so, Purvis would have greeted a sight from his dreams, the gathering on Thursday, April 19, and Friday, April 20, of the entire Dillinger Gang. It was the first time the men had assembled in one group since scattering in St. Paul three weeks before; for some reason, Nelson brought along Harry Sawyer’s bartender, Pat Reilly. Everyone agreed they needed a spot to regroup, to kick back and decide their next move in safety. The weekend loomed; they needed a getaway. Maybe it would