Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [274]
Larson called Earl Connelley in Chicago. Two agents, Sam McKee and the little poet Jim Metcalfe, walked up to the Hotel Morrison’s front desk an hour later. There were no Kuhlmanns or Ranlows registered at the hotel. But in Room 3121 there was a Mrs. A. R. Esser. They checked her phone records. All the calls were to Toledo.
A half-dozen agents kept the lobby under surveillance all that day. At 7:15, the two women came downstairs and announced they were checking out. Connelley stood by, watching. The women returned upstairs and a half hour later emerged from the elevators, a bellman carrying their luggage. With them was a short, heavyset man wearing a derby hat. The agents took note; they hadn’t seen him before.
Outside all three suspects filed into a Ford coupe. Agent Ray Suran followed in a Bureau car as the Ford swung out onto Lake Shore Drive and headed north, then turned left into a side street. The car stopped in front of one apartment building, then another, each time one of the women scurrying out to check something, as if looking for an address. The procession pulled onto Broadway and then to Melrose, where Suran’s car got caught in traffic. In frustration he watched as the two women who were their best leads on the Barker Gang drove out of sight.
It took four days to find them again. Armed with its license plate number, agents tracked the car to a local dealership, where a salesman identified a photo of Dock Barker’s friend Russell Gibson as the man who had bought the car. Meanwhile, a check of phone calls the women made from the Hotel Morrison led to the Hotel Commonwealth on Pine Grove Avenue. The room they called was occupied by a man named John Borcia, who the manager described as five-six, heavyset, and typically wearing a dark overcoat and derby hat. It matched the description of the man at the Morrison.
Hoover approved a tap on Borcia’s phone. Agents traced one of his calls to a North Side apartment house where, four days later, they spotted Mildred Kuhlmann on the sidewalk, her arms full of Christmas packages. Two of Connelley’s men tailed her into a neighborhood of luxury apartment buildings off Lake Shore Drive. As they watched, Kuhlmann disappeared into the Surf Lane Apartments. The next day agents found the name A.R. ESSER on Apartment G-1; it was the false name Kuhlmann had used at the Hotel Morrison. The manager said “Mrs. Esser” had rented her apartment two weeks earlier. For several days, he added, “Mr. Esser” had lived there, too, but he was now traveling. Downtown, Connelley was willing to bet “Mr. Esser” was Dock Barker.
Connelley arranged to rent a surveillance apartment at the Surf Lane and sat back to wait for “Mr. Esser” to return. Agents followed Kuhlmann through her routines, leaving her apartment most afternoons and returning after nightfall, always alone. One day they followed one of her visitors to a building at 3912 Pine Grove Avenue. Connelley rented yet another surveillance flat, installed a set of agents, and sat back and waited for the Barkers.
The day Karpis boarded the steamer in Havana, December 5, the waves were unusually high and he got seasick. At Key West he boarded a train for Miami, where he found Delores waiting at the station as they planned. With her, to his surprise, was the gang’s gofer, Willie Harrison. Harrison drove them into Miami and briefed Karpis on the gang’s whereabouts. Freddie and Ma were living in a house on Lake Weir in Central Florida. Another gang member, Harry Campbell, had driven to Oklahoma and reunited with his teenage girlfriend Wynona Burdette. They were at Lake Weir, too. Karpis