Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [203]
Chicago, Illinois Sunday, May 27
Jimmy Probasco’s weatherbeaten frame house stood beside a Shell station at 2509 Crawford Avenue, in an industrial area of Chicago’s North Side. It had a sickly green hedge in front and a board fence that extended around the back, where Probasco kept his two temperamental police dogs, King and Queen. From what the neighbors could hear, his favorite pastime appeared to be cursing at the dogs. The house had two stories. Probasco rented out the top floor.
Piquett and O’Leary were standing outside the Shell station at midnight when Dillinger appeared with Van Meter. Probasco was startled when he opened his front door and found Piquett and two strangers on his doorstep; in the interest of secrecy, no one had told him they were coming. “Jimmy, this is my famous client, John Dillinger,” Piquett said. “Have you got someplace we can all sit down and talk?”3
Dillinger and Van Meter stepped inside. There was a living room and two bedrooms, one in front, the other in back. Probasco shook their hands and led them into the kitchen. He was nervous.
“So this is it,” Dillinger said, looking around. “Have you worked out the price, Mr. Piquett?”
Piquett said $50 a day.
“Don’t you think that’s high?” Dillinger asked.
“Well, you’re pretty hot, you know,” Probasco said, “but I want you to be satisfied. What do you think is fair?”
“How about thirty-five a day?” Dillinger asked.
Agreed. Dillinger asked Piquett about the doctors. Everything was set. They would come to Probasco’s house the next night to perform the surgery. Dillinger took out his wallet and counted out $3,000. “You’ll get the rest after the operation,” he said.
Just then a stout woman with dark hair entered the kitchen. Dillinger looked annoyed. “Who’s the woman?” he asked. She was Probasco’s live-in girlfriend, Piquett explained, a nurse who worked during the days. When Probasco promised she was a great cook, Dillinger said she could stay.4 Afterward, Probasco showed Dillinger the front bedroom, pointing out the fold-out couch where the outlaws could bed down. Dillinger said it was fine. And then he went to sleep.
Monday, May 28
Art O’Leary brought the two doctors to Probasco’s house the following night. They edged into the front bedroom and looked around; Probasco had laid out a cot for the surgery. The man who was to lay his scalpel on Dillinger’s face was a tall, thin German named Wilhelm Loeser, who went by the alias “Ralph Robiend.” Loeser was already known to the FBI; the Bureau’s Oklahoma City office, looking for the doctor in an unrelated case, had alerted Chicago to watch for him that spring. The fifty-eight-year-old Loeser, a self-important type who had immigrated to America at the age of twelve, had studied medicine at the University of Kansas and Northwestern University. In the mid-1920s, he made his living selling illegal drugs out of his Chicago pharmacy; arrested and sentenced to a three-year term in Leavenworth in 1931, he obtained parole and promptly skipped it, fleeing to Mexico when it appeared he might be rearrested. Piquett was his attorney. When Loeser slipped back into Chicago as “Ralph Robiend” in early 1934, Piquett hired him to perform cosmetic surgery on a con man named William Elmer Meade.
Loeser’s assistant that night was a jittery thirty-two-year-old alcoholic named Harold Cassidy. He was Art O’Leary’s cousin. Seven years out of the University of Illinois medical school, the cash-strapped Cassidy had an ex-wife who was forever pestering him for alimony; Piquett was his lawyer, too. In his North Side office, located above one of Al Capone’s old speakeasies, Cassidy performed illegal abortions and anything else to make money. He had assisted Loeser in the earlier surgery and was to receive $600 for his work on Dillinger.
Standing in Jimmy Probasco’s front bedroom, Dillinger told Loeser what he wanted