Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [185]
When they returned, Davis’s apartment was a mess, so Davis called Edna Murray to come clean it. Murray nearly fainted when she arrived. White disinfectant powder covered the bedroom floor. Bloody sheets sat in a heap, waiting to be burned. The sink was piled high with dishes, medicines, and reddened bandages. Murray opened a closet door and yelped when the grave-digging shovel fell out. Over everything there hung the stench of gangrene and death.8
The last thing on Purvis’s mind that week was the Bremer case, even though a dozen agents were still working it full time. On Hoover’s orders, the exasperating search for the house where Bremer had been held was continuing, taking up hundreds of man-hours. Even as half the Chicago office hunted Dillinger, the other half stayed on the road, revisiting every town between Joliet and central Wisconsin in search of the right combination of trains, church bells, and factory whistles Bremer had heard while in custody. The agents churned out hundreds of reports but had found nothing. Some griped that it was a useless exercise. In St. Paul, Hugh Clegg had actually floated the idea of hiring Boy Scouts to canvas their hometowns.
Circulars listing the serial numbers of every bill in the Bremer ransom had been mailed to banks across the country. That Monday morning, as Purvis and his men trudged back to their desks from Little Bohemia, an officer at the Uptown State Bank on Wilson Avenue discovered that a customer had passed one of his tellers $900 of the Bremer ransom. The customer had disappeared, but that afternoon agents descended on every bank in the area, checking for signs of other bills. By nightfall they managed to find Bremer money at the Main State Bank on Milwaukee Avenue and several other institutions.
For two days agents continued canvassing North Side banks. Then, that Thursday morning, April 26, the day John Hamilton died, a call came in from the City National Bank and Trust Company on LaSalle Street, a few blocks from the Bankers Building. More Bremer money had been passed, and when agents interviewed the teller who had taken the bills, he said his customer had mentioned that he worked at a bookie joint in the neighborhood. Two agents walked the teller to the bookmaking establishment, on the second floor of an office building at 226 South Welles Street. The teller pointed out his customer. It was William Vidler, Boss McLaughlin’s friend. Agents handcuffed Vidler and took him to the Bankers Building, where he was searched. In his pocket they found $2,200 of the Bremer ransom.
Vidler talked. Friday morning at 10:30, Pop Nathan led a squad of agents to Boss McLaughlin’s apartment building on West Jackson Boulevard, leading the old pol and his son away in handcuffs.cm That night, as headlines in the evening papers carried news of the arrests, agents began interrogating the McLaughlins at the Cook County Jail, hoping they would lead them to the Barker Gang. No one had any inkling that the same trail could lead them to Dillinger.
Lac Du Flambeau Indian Reservation, Wisconsin Friday, April 27
That same morning, as Pop Nathan took Boss McLaughlin into custody in Chicago, Ole Catfish rose from his bed, leaving Baby Face Nelson asleep. For three days everything had gone smoothly at the little shack. The women cooked Nelson meals, and he passed the days mostly in silence, watching the woods. Around noon that Friday a trapper tromped up and talked with Catfish; Nelson hid in the kitchen, watching. Afterward he demanded to know who the man was. All afternoon Nelson grew increasingly nervous. At 6:00 he told Catfish it was time to leave and demanded the old Indian lead him to the next town.
Catfish protested that he was sick. Nelson produced his gun and said, “Start walking.” They headed down an old railroad bed, Ole’s wife, Maggie, behind them, until Nelson waved her back. Into the woods they trekked, the gloom deepening