Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [270]
To replace Cowley, Hoover brought in Earl Connelley, the taciturn Cincinnati SAC who had overseen the Indiana theater of the Dillinger hunt. Connelley found morale in the old Dillinger Squad—now known as the Flying Squad—low. The men were on their last legs. Three were now dead. No one wanted to be next. A few agents were sending out feelers to hometown law firms, hoping for a new, safer job.
That morning Connelley convened a staff meeting to go over leads on the Barkers. Since the gang fled Cleveland in September, there had been no sign of them, but the Cleveland raids had shaken loose a torrent of information on the gang, much of it from the Barker women. Cowley left behind dozens of promising tips. They were close. Connelley could feel it. In late September they had missed capturing Ma Barker by only a week; agents had raided her apartment on South Shore Drive after learning her address from Shotgun George Ziegler’s widow, who had suffered a nervous breakdown and washed up in a Chicago sanatorium.
Just before his death, Cowley’s hottest tip had come in Miami, where on November 16 a car Karpis had registered under an alias in Ohio was suddenly reregistered in Florida. Cowley and three of his best men flew down to investigate. Together they found the car and quickly deduced that the man driving it was not Karpis. His name was Duke Randall. He was a gofer at the El Commodoro, a hotel Miami police characterized as “a joint for racketeers and undesirables.” Cowley decided to keep Randall under surveillance. Three weeks later, two agents were still living in the hotel, waiting and watching.
Havana, Cuba
That same Monday, as Connelley and his men moved into their new offices, an agent named Loyde E. Kingman arrived in Havana.en In his pocket he carried photos of Willie Harrison, the Barker Gang gofer whose passion for horse racing had spurred Cowley to have his photo posted at every racetrack between New Orleans and Miami. That day Kingman showed Harrison’s photo to officials of the International Racing Association, who agreed to circulate it at the Cuban tracks. The rest of the week Kingman planned to check the expatriate hangouts, Sloppy Joe’s Bar, Donovan’s Bar, the Eden Concert Night Club, the Habana-Madrid Jai Alai Fronton. At the end of the day, Kingman trudged to the Parkview Hotel and took his place in line at the front desk.
A man in front of him lingered, talking with the clerk.
“Excuse me sir,” Kingman finally said. “Would you allow me to register?”
The man turned.
“No,” said Alvin Karpis. “Not at all.”2
Karpis had told no one, not even Fred Barker, of his plans to hide in Cuba. After dividing up the ransom money in Chicago that night in September, he had confided only that he could be reached through the El Commodoro in Miami. Karpis and the pregnant Delores Delaney had driven two hundred miles that first night, staying over in a drafty tourist camp in southern Indiana. They reached Birmingham, Alabama, the following evening. They hit the Atlantic Coast just as a tropical storm struck, the high winds jostling their Ford. Just past Fort Pierce the skies cleared. It was a warm night. Karpis allowed himself to relax. Delaney threw her head out the window, luxuriating in the tropical breezes, marveling at the palm trees. Karpis didn’t see the squad car until its lights filled his rearview mirror. He was doing eighty-five.
Karpis pulled over. He watched a trooper in rain gear approach his car. “Are you in a big hurry?” the trooper asked.
“Well, not necessarily,” Karpis said. “I’m trying to get down to Miami.”
“You’re going pretty fast.”
Karpis said he didn’t think Florida had a speed limit yet.
“Well,” the trooper said. “If you’re going too fast, we can get you on a charge of reckless driving. When you’re going eighty-five, ninety miles an hour on a night like this,