Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [204]
“A general would put me completely out, wouldn’t it?” Dillinger asked.
“Yes, it would.”
“Are you going to be here, Art?” Dillinger asked O’Leary.
“I’ll stay if you want me, Johnnie,” O’Leary said.
“I want you to stay.”
Loeser asked what Dillinger had eaten that day. Only a grapefruit and some toast for breakfast, Dillinger said. It wasn’t true. Dillinger, in fact, had a full meal just an hour earlier, but he was anxious to get started. While Loeser washed his hands in a bathroom, Dillinger stripped off his shirt and lay on the cot. After assembling his things, Cassidy leaned over him, placed a towel over his face, and began dripping ether onto it.
“You there, Art?” Dillinger asked.
“I’m right with you, Johnnie,” O’Leary said.
After a minute or two Dillinger was still semiconscious. Frustrated, Cassidy emptied an entire can of ether onto the towel. Suddenly, he noticed a change in Dillinger’s complexion. He seemed to be turning blue. His breathing stopped. Cassidy panicked, backing up against the wall. “What is it?” O’Leary asked.
“He’s not breathing!” Cassidy yelped.
Dillinger’s food intake was causing a reaction to the anesthesia. Loeser darted into the room and furiously began pumping Dillinger’s chest. Behind him Probasco appeared in the doorway, a panic-stricken look on his face. “My God he’s dead!” he shouted. “Oh my God!”
As O’Leary opened a window to vent the ether fumes, Loeser continued pumping Dillinger’s chest. Finally, after a few more tense minutes, he began breathing. O’Leary and Probasco exchanged sighs of relief. They had no doubt what Van Meter and Nelson would do to them had Dillinger died; no one would believe they hadn’t betrayed him.
Once Dillinger was stabilized, Loeser leaned over his face and began. It was slow going. Dillinger vomited several times during the surgery and bled heavily, staining the cot. Loeser cleaned away the vomit and blood and pressed on. He first removed three facial moles. He then gave Dillinger a facelift, making slits beneath each of the outlaw’s ears, then pulling back the skin to eliminate wrinkles. With skin from the cheek incisions, he filled Dillinger’s chin dimple. Then he sutured the wounds and bandaged them. When he was finished, Dillinger looked like a bloody mummy. In an hour he came to.
He was very groggy. O’Leary explained that he had almost died. Dillinger managed a tiny laugh. “It might just as well have been now as some other time,” he said.
Dillinger remained in the small bedroom, recuperating, for two days. On Thursday, May 31, Cassidy visited and took off the bandages. Dillinger stared at himself in a mirror. The telltale chin dimple was gone, as were the moles. He smiled. He looked like a new man.
All that May Hoover brooded on the disastrous course the War on Crime had taken. Little Bohemia had made the Bureau a national laughingstock. Dillinger had vanished. So had the Barkers. The mystery of the Kansas City Massacre remained unsolved, and there hadn’t been a reliable sighting of Pretty Boy Floyd in months. The Bureau received—and deserved—no credit for the killings of Bonnie and Clyde. Frank Hamer gave an interview saying he would hunt down Dillinger if the FBI asked. Hoover’s position was obvious: over my dead body.
Little Bohemia made several things clear to Hoover. More than anything it demonstrated how unprepared his men were for gunfights. Despite months of crash training, the College Boys remained hopeless with guns and utterly lost in anything approaching a combat situation. Hoover was determined that the next time the FBI shot it out with Dillinger, they would be ready. That meant one thing: bringing in the Cowboys. Hoover had Pop Nathan canvas the Southwestern bureaus in search of men with firearms skills. Several fit the bill, and that May they began trickling into Chicago.
Among the first to arrive was thirty-eight-year-old Charles Winstead, the craggy Texan who had chased Machine Gun Kelly and Bonnie