Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [263]
Winstead, realizing this could take forever, dropped by to see a deputy sheriff he knew in Elkhorn. Winstead described the town Backman remembered. It had an inn, two small lakes, and an iron bridge. He also described a man named “Eddie” she recalled meeting. Luck was with them: without hesitation the deputy identified the resort town of Lake Geneva, where there was a character named Eddie Duffy who ran errands for the Lake Como Inn—an inn agents had inspected the previous summer after finding one of its pillow cases in Tommy Carroll’s luggage.
Winstead took Backman and drove to Lake Geneva. She immediately recognized the town, pointing out a tavern where she had eaten breakfast, then leading Winstead to a lakeside cottage where they had visited the man named Eddie. As luck would have it, Backman spotted Eddie Duffy on the street an hour later. She was certain the slender twenty-six-year-old was the “Eddie” she had met before.
On Friday, November 2, after putting Backman on a return flight to San Francisco, Winstead returned to Lake Geneva and confronted Duffy in his room at the Gargoyle Hotel. Duffy, described in Winstead’s subsequent report as “very nervous,” claimed he knew nothing about Nelson. He admitted he knew John Chase, but only as a guest at the Lake Como Inn. He insisted the agents talk to the inn’s owner, Hobart Hermanson. Duffy acted as Hermanson’s errand boy, driving a beer truck.
Cowley approached Hermanson directly. On Sunday night, November 4, Hermanson voluntarily appeared at the Chicago office for questioning. Confronted with the possibility of an indictment for harboring Nelson, Hermanson admitted everything, confirming Nelson’s visit to his home as well as the gangster’s plans to return to Lake Geneva for the winter. The next day Cowley, along with Winstead and Agent Ed Hollis, drove to Lake Geneva to inspect Hermanson’s home. Hermanson volunteered to let agents stay in a nearby cottage. Cowley chose Hermanson’s house itself. By the end of the week Winstead and two agents were camped out in a second-floor bedroom. If Nelson returned to Lake Geneva for the winter, they would be waiting.
All that October, Nelson remained in a drafty cabin at Wally Hot Springs, Nevada. By early November he was getting antsy. The nights were growing cold, and there was no heat. Money was running low, and he was increasingly irritable. Nelson rarely left the camp. He knew FBI agents were combing Reno for him, but so far he had no indication they had expanded their search outside the city.ej One night in the desert, the mechanic Frank Cochran mentioned he had seen an FBI car that day.
“It was all dirty and muddy,” he said. “Looks like they been out visiting all the auto camps and traveling all the dirt roads in this part of the state.”
Cochran’s remark was the nudge Nelson needed to return east. They filled the back of the pickup with five-gallon cans of gasoline and covered them with a tarpaulin. In mid-November they left. Nelson drove the Hudson, Fatso Negri the truck. Outside Durango, Colorado, the Hudson’s transmission gave out. They took it to a garage, where a mechanic said parts would have to be ordered. Nelson wanted to abandon the car, but Negri volunteered to stay and bring it to Chicago once it was repaired. Nelson agreed. He took Helen and Chase and drove east in the truck.
Nelson reached the Chicago suburbs several nights later. As always, his hometown held everything he needed and everything he feared. Nelson trusted no more than a handful of men in Chicago; everyone else was a potential stool pigeon. The FBI was only one of his worries. As far as he knew, the Syndicate still