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This actually occurred at an apartment Sage had rented at 2838 North Clark Street.

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Not, as legend has it, a red dress.

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The call had come from inside the Biograph, where the manager believed the mysterious men lurking outside were about to rob the theater.

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In his 1936 book, American Agent, Purvis claimed he yelled, “Stick ’em up, Johnny, we have you surrounded.” In numerous newspaper interviews and memos he authored on that night, this is the only time Purvis made such a claim. It is not substantiated by any other interviews or memos authored by any other agent present that night. It’s tempting to suggest Purvis concocted the claim to offset occasional sentiment that the FBI’s killing of Dillinger amounted to an assassination.

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For decades, no one in the FBI would confirm which agent fired the bullets that killed Dillinger. Inside the Bureau, however, there was little doubt. “Upon my inquiry,” Hoover wrote in a memo the next day, July 23, “Mr. Purvis stated there is no question but that Mr. Winstead fired the fatal shots . . . Mr. Purvis said that nobody knows it was Winstead who actually killed Dillinger.” In fact, Winstead, Purvis, and other agents made a pact among themselves never to disclose who fired the fatal bullets.

Not until 1970 did Winstead break his silence. In an interview with the FBI agents’ alumni newsletter, The Grapevine, he said, “I knew right away it was Dillinger . . . Polly knew something was up. She grabbed Dillinger by the shirt. He whirled around and reached for his right front pocket. He started running sideways toward the alley. When a guy like Dillinger reaches for his pocket, you don’t ask questions. Or read a warrant from the U.S. attorney. Clarence and I fired about the same time. The first shot hit him. He started spinning like a top. When the shooting started he was about six feet from the alley. After Dillinger whirled around he fell face down in the entrance to the alley. He never did get to the alley. I was the first to reach him. I leaned down. He mumbled some words that I couldn’t understand. That was the end. Mel Purvis took a .380 automatic out of his hand. It was loaded and he had an extra clip of bullets in his pocket.”

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Dillinger’s autopsy report was misplaced after his death. It was eventually found in 1984, in a paper sack at the Cook County Medical Examiner. Interestingly, it said the autopsy found evidence that Dillinger had suffered from “rheumatic heart disease.”

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Born in 1906, Daniel P. Sullivan joined the FBI after graduating from Georgetown University Law School in 1932. After leaving the Bureau in 1942, he became executive director of the Crime Commission of Greater Miami for thirty years.

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In later years FBI agents gossiped that the ill-fated Probasco had struck a fire escape during his long fall, beheading him.

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It was the same Ed Guinane who had supervised the Halloween stakeout of Verne Miller in Chicago.

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This trip, and others like it, spawned a new nickname for the Dillinger Squad, “The Flying Squad.” In time it would become known simply as the Special Squad.

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Karpis’s new friends weren’t limited to criminals. He would later claim to have dined with Joseph Keenan, the Justice Department attorney who prosecuted Machine Gun Kelly and Roger Touhy. In interviews recorded years later, Karpis said the introduction was made by one of Keenan’s high school class-mates, a Cleveland detective named Frank Noonan. Karpis claimed that he masqueraded as a gambler and that Keenan had no idea who he really was. During their dinner Keenan boasted of “putting Harvey Bailey away” even though everyone in the FBI knew he wasn’t guilty of the Urschel kidnapping. The story is impossible to confirm, and although Karpis would seem too smart to take such a risk, there is circumstantial evidence to back it up. The FBI would later investigate Noonan for harboring Karpis. And according to FBI files, Keenan was in Cleveland during the week of July 20, 1934.

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If Karpis