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From Highway 12 Chase turned east onto Highway 22, a two-lane blacktop that wound through dense woods into Chicago’s northern suburbs. They turned south when they hit Waukegan Road, where by one account they stopped at the Techny monastery. Nelson, who remained lucid throughout the drive, was looking for his old friend Father Coughlin. After driving south into the suburb of Wilmette, they found his sister’s house at 1115 Mohawk. The house, which stills stands, was a large two-story brick home with a tree-ringed rear driveway.

According to Father Coughlin, he was sitting in his sister’s home about four-forty-five when the back doorbell rang. A maid answered and called for him. It was Helen. She said “Jimmy” had been shot and needed help. Father Coughlin shrugged into his overcoat, threw on a hat, and followed her to the garage, where Chase had parked. Inside the garage Chase was supporting Nelson, who leaned against the car.

Coughlin said they couldn’t stay; his sister was due home from her bridge game at any moment. “He’s dying,” Helen pled. “He’s got to go someplace where he can lie down.” Coughlin said he would take them someplace safe; they could follow him in his car. “You wouldn’t fool with us, would you Father?” Chase asked.

Coughlin helped load Nelson into the front seat. Nelson could barely speak. He whispered in the priest’s ear, “Hello.”

Father Coughlin drove his car, and Chase followed. The priest later told agents he didn’t know where he would go. It didn’t matter. After following Coughlin for several minutes, Nelson suspected treachery. “Lose him; I think he’s wrong,” Nelson said. “Turn around and go the other way.” When Father Coughlin lost sight of Nelson’s car, he drove back to his sister’s and called the FBI office at 6:15. Agents were at his home within the hour.

On Hoover’s go-ahead, FBI agents began raiding all of Nelson’s gangland contacts that night. Three hustled into Cernocky’s roadhouse at Fox River Grove. Agent Ryan led two squads of Chicago police in raids on Clarey Lieder’s garage and home, taking Lieder into custody. Two more agents, accompanied by four squads of Chicago police, stormed into Jimmie Murray’s home, his parents’ home, and the Rain-Bo Inn; there was no sign of Murray. They also raided the home of Nelson’s sister on South Marshfield Avenue. Another group of ten agents descended on Murray’s cottage in the town of Wauconda. There was no sign of Nelson.

As the raids progressed that night, Cowley was wheeled out of surgery. Doctors said his condition “was, of course, serious, but that he had a chance to pull through if peritonitis did not set in,” Hoover told Cowley’s brother Joe.24 In fact, Hoover confided to an aide, the doctors gave Cowley a 1-in-25 chance of making it through the night .25

Characteristically, even as Cowley lay dying, Hoover was preoccupied with publicity. It was Purvis—again. Hoover couldn’t understand it; it was as if reporters were a drug Purvis couldn’t kick. He had remained at the hospital and actually given an interview to a Chicago American reporter as they watched the unconscious Cowley in a hospital bed, his wife, Lavon, and her two little boys beside him.

“If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get Baby Face Nelson—dead or alive,” Purvis whispered to the reporter, Elgar Brown. “Nelson ought to know he hasn’t a chance at eventual escape . . . We aren’t particular whether we get him alive or dead.”26

Hoover was beside himself. He cast about for anyone to rid him of Purvis. His deputies, Hugh Clegg and Pop Nathan, were delivering speeches in Pittsburgh and Tuscon, respectively, and Hoover ordered both to Chicago. Hoover wanted Purvis out of the hospital and away from any reporters; he told Clegg to “impress upon Mr. Purvis the necessity of staying away from the office and from any public place.”27 Clegg suggested that Purvis could work in a back room at the FBI office; Hoover refused even that. Within days word would leak to the American that Purvis “is incapacitated by overwork and is on sick leave . . . Insiders do not expect him to return