Public Enemies_ America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI - Bryan Burrough [278]
The kitchen light went off, throwing the back porch into deep shadow. The agents waited several long moments. There was the sound of a door closing. Then came what one agent would later describe as “soft noises” on the back stairs. In the darkness Agents White and Barber saw the outline of a man step carefully down the outside stairs. When he reached the bottom, White saw the rifle in his hands.
“Stop!” White yelled.
The man raised his gun and fired. The bullet struck the fence in front of the two agents and ricocheted into a brick wall. White fired, six shots in all, and the man in the shadows fired again, and again. Agent Barber raised his gas gun and fired a shell into an apartment window. Tear gas hissed inside. The agents heard what sounded like a body hitting the pavement. A second later, another group of agents racing up the side of the building saw a man in silhouette, staggering into an adjacent vacant lot. “Halt!” someone yelled.
The man turned and fell. Agent John T. McLaughlin was the first to reach him. He was bleeding heavily from gunshot wounds in his head and chest. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, but not a good one; at least one bullet had blasted right through it.
“Are you Alvin Karpis?” McLaughlin demanded.
“No,” the bleeding man mumbled. “Russell Gibson.”
It was over. In minutes agents stormed the empty apartment. Gibson was loaded into a Bureau car and taken to the American Hospital on Irving Park Boulevard. Doctors in the emergency room summoned a surgeon. A bullet had entered Gibson’s back and blown through his stomach. He didn’t have long. Two agents peppered Gibson with questions. Did he know the Barkers? Karpis? Volney Davis? Gibson shook his head. The doctor told Gibson he was on the verge of death. He urged him to answer the agents’ questions.
Just before dying at 1:40 A.M., Russell Gibson rasped his last recorded words: “Tell you nothing.”4
By Wednesday morning, January 9, Dock Barker was locked away at the Bankers Building. Several newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, carried unattributed comments from police castigating the FBI for failing to notify them of the raids. Hoover blew up. “Well if they cleaned up their own dirty mess and ran out of town this underworld mouthpiece, The Chicago Tribune, the Federal Govt wouldn’t have to do so much work in Chicago,” he scrawled on a memo. “There must be a good reason why most criminals gravitate to Chicago.”
But it was what the papers didn’t say that excited Earl Connelley. While all carried news of the shoot-out at Pine Grove Avenue, none had learned of Dock Barker’s capture. That gave Connelley’s men an opportunity: maybe, just maybe, they could persuade Dock to divulge the rest of the gang’s whereabouts before the others learned he was in custody. His capture wouldn’t stay a secret long, Connelley suspected. That afternoon a reporter called to inquire about a rumor that another suspect was in custody. An agent named Mickey Ladd denied it. But from Connelley all the way up to Hoover, the FBI realized it was in a race against time. They gave Dock a code name, “Number Five,” to ensure that no one would hear his name mentioned in the office. For the plan to work, however, Dock had to talk, and for the moment he wasn’t.
“Mr. Nathan stated that Barker is a tough one and is not going to talk,” an aide memoed Hoover Tuesday night. “They are going to work in shifts during the night.”
By the next morning, Dock had still said nothing. As the hours wore on, Hoover grew convinced that Chicago wasn’t working hard enough. One of his top men, Ed Tamm, told Connelley to use “vigorous physical efforts” to break Dock.5 Just what those efforts were, the FBI never disclosed. But in later years one agent, Ray Suran, reportedly bragged that he had broken two telephone books over Dock’s head. Whatever tactics agents employed, Barker still wouldn’t talk.
Bryan Bolton was no Dock Barker. Connelley’s men initially had no idea