Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [169]
Wanatka told him, then stepped into the kitchen. This was worse than he thought. Six men with guns in a remote lodge on a late-winter weekend: the first thing he thought of was Dillinger. In the kitchen he found a Chicago Tribune. On the front page was a photo of Dillinger. It was him. Wanatka’s heart raced. He returned to the table but found he had lost his appetite for cards. He studied the men. They appeared to be split into two groups. The cool one, Johnnie, seemed closest to the one with the missing fingers, Red. The chatty kid, Jimmy, was with the pug-nosed Tom. The quiet skinny one, Wayne, was the loner.
At one point Nan’s sister Ruth brought her daughter over from Birchwood Lodge to chat. Dillinger asked Wanatka who they were, then bought them drinks. Ruth’s daughter asked why the nice man had hair a different color from his eyebrows.11 The women shushed her.
Around ten Wanatka, urgently wanting to quit the game, began to fake yawn. He rose to say he was turning in,12 walked upstairs with his two collies, Shadow and Prince, and readied for bed. In a minute Nan was beside him, pestering him with questions: Who were they? Bank robbers? What should they do? Wanatka took a deep breath. “I think the one with the dyed-red hair,” he said, “is Dillinger.”
They lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Eventually Emil nodded off, but Nan lay awake, listening. Every time one of the dogs yipped, every time a door opened during the night, she froze. She heard someone—a man, she thought—pacing the corridor.
The next morning Emil was first to awake, padding downstairs to let the dogs out at six. Tommy Carroll was already in the barroom, stretching. “Good morning, Emil,” he said. “Boy did I sleep. How about breakfast?”13
Wanatka said he’d have something ready when everyone got up. Carroll went upstairs to wake the others, and before long all the gang came shuffling down the stairs, yawning, the women in their robes. They ate in the kitchen. When they were finishing up, Wanatka said to Dillinger, “Johnnie, could I talk to you?”
The two men walked into the lodge office, where Wanatka shut the door. “Emil, what’s wrong?” Dillinger said.
Wanatka couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to know.
“You’re John Dillinger,” Wanatka said.
Dillinger’s expression remained unchanged.
“You’re not afraid, are you?” he said.
“No,” Wanatka lied. “But everything I have to my name, including my family, is right here, and every policeman in America is looking for you. If I can help it, there isn’t gonna be any shooting match.” Dillinger placed a hand on Wanatka’s shoulder. “Emil, all we want is to eat and rest for a few days,” he said. “We’ll pay you well and get out. There won’t be no trouble.”14
Afterward the mood at Little Bohemia took a sharp turn; Dillinger presumably told other gang members Wanatka knew who they were. From that point on, Dillinger or Nelson kept a watch on the lodge phone and made an effort to overhear any conversations; whenever a car entered the drive, Dillinger asked Wanatka who it was. After breakfast Dillinger sent Pat Reilly on a run to St. Paul. They were low on ammunition, and Van Meter wanted some cash Harry Sawyer was keeping for him. Pat Cherrington volunteered to go as well. They left around eight, promising to return the next day.15
When they left, Dillinger got out a .22 rifle, and he and Van Meter and Nelson took target practice, shooting at a can on a snowbank a hundred yards away. Dillinger asked Wanatka to take a few shots as well. For years afterward Wanatka would brag that only he and Van Meter could hit the target. Van Meter grabbed a submachine gun, and everyone shot that, too. A little later the Wanatkas’ eight-year-son, Emil, Jr., brought out his baseball mitt. Dillinger and Nelson played catch with the boy until he quit, complaining that Nelson threw too hard.
This was too much for Nan Wanatka. She didn’t want her son around these kinds of men: who knew what they could