Public Enemies (51 page)

Saturday evening passed quietly, but by Sunday morning Nan had had enough. She had taken her sister aside and talked about calling the authorities. That morning she wrote a note to her brother-in-law, Henry Voss, and slipped it into a pack of cigarettes. “Henry,” it read, “You can go to Rhinelander and call as planned. Not one word to anyone about it. Tell them to line up the highways. There will be more here tomorrow and don’t let anyone know where you are going or why. We want to be protected by them as best as they can. Tell them that.”
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Around ten Dillinger handed Wanatka $500 in cash and told him the gang would be leaving the next morning, Monday. A little later Lloyd LaPorte, the fishing guide, appeared in the barroom. Nan noticed Dillinger and Nelson to one side, listening. “Gee,” LaPorte said, “I left my cigarettes at home. You got a pack, Nan?” Nan handed her brother the pack with the note in it. He strolled back to his car and drove to Birchwood Lodge, where Henry Voss read the note. The telephone was a party line, and neither man trusted it. They headed south, toward the town of Rhinelander, where they planned to call the FBI.

 

 

Purvis was reading papers in his Chicago apartment around one, enjoying a rare day off, when his manservant, President, brought him the phone. It was the U.S. Marshal’s office in Chicago, relaying an urgent message from someone named Henry Voss in northern Wisconsin. Purvis dialed the number he was given and found himself talking to Voss. “The man you want most is up here,” Voss said, cryptically.

“You mean Dillinger?”

Voss wouldn’t say. Purvis pressed, thinking he might be a kook, but finally Voss admitted it: yes, he said, Dillinger and four other men were holed up at the Little Bohemia Lodge at Manitowish. Purvis asked where the nearest airport was. Here in Rhinelander, Voss said, fifty miles south of the lodge. Purvis told Voss to meet him there at six. For identification he was to wear a handkerchief around his neck.

Purvis dialed Washington and briefed Hoover, who agreed that the call sounded authentic. Hoover ordered Purvis to round up every available agent and head immediately to Rhinelander. Purvis phoned St. Paul and relayed Hoover’s orders to Hugh Clegg, who set about doing the same. Both offices erupted into scenes of barely controlled chaos; the atmosphere was martial, kinetic, aviators scrambling madly for the runway. Phone calls ricocheted between agents grabbing catnaps at their homes; several leaped into cars half-dressed, tires squealing as they headed for the office. Purvis arrived at the office buttoning his shirt and tightening his tie. In both cities men unlocked their weapons lockers and hauled out every piece of heavy equipment they had, including machine guns and tear-gas guns.

In St. Paul, Clegg arranged a thirty-five-cent-per-mile charter from Northwest Airways. He would take Inspector Rorer and three agents and fly north; Werner Hanni and three others, who admitted their fear of flying, threw the tear-gas guns into a car and drove. In Chicago, Purvis chartered two planes and chose eleven men to fill them. Rhinelander was a three-hour flight. It took an hour just to get everyone to Municipal Airport. As they piled into the planes, Purvis noticed the pilot had only a road map to guide them. He crossed his fingers.

 

 

As that Sunday afternoon wore on, the men of the Dillinger Gang began to grow restless. Everyone sensed it; something wasn’t right. There were too many people coming and going, too many people who had seen them. That night there would be dozens more: Wanatka was having one of his dollar-a-plate dinners. Dillinger had the cars stowed out of sight in the lodge’s garage. At one point Van Meter asked Wanatka if he knew a place to which they could move, somewhere more private. A local man came into the barroom after lunch, planted himself at a stool, and began to drink; once or twice he tried to collar Hamilton to drink with him.

This was too much for Dillinger. Around four he told Wanatka there had been a change in plans. The group would be leaving that night, as soon as Pat Reilly returned from St. Paul. He asked Wanatka to serve them an early dinner, steaks with garlic.

Nan Wanatka was nervously preparing the meal when her sister Ruth appeared at the kitchen door. She started to say that her husband had driven to Rhinelander to call the FBI when Nan shushed her. “We bought so much meat for the weekend,” Nan said, glancing toward the barroom where the gang was eating. “Won’t you take some?” She motioned for her sister to join her in the meat locker. “They’re leaving as soon as Reilly gets back!” she hissed.
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When her sister left, Nan stepped through the kitchen door and poured herself another drink from the bar. Her husband was stunned. “Nan, are you drinking?” he asked. She started to respond when her eyes met Nelson’s. Nan swallowed. Emil tried to smile. Nelson said nothing, but he could tell they were up to something. Nan turned and returned to the kitchen. Nelson started after her, then apparently thought better of it, taking a seat by his wife instead.

Nan had just walked into the kitchen when she saw Pat Reilly drive up to the lodge; beside him in the car sat Pat Cherrington. Dillinger and the others, busy with their steaks, didn’t see them. Reilly seemed unsure what to do. There were no cars in the driveway—Dillinger had hidden them in the garage—and Reilly was worried that the gang had fled. As Nan Wanatka watched, he turned and drove away.
¹⁸

 

 

Hugh Clegg’s five-man party reached Rhinelander first; its plane touched down a few minutes past five. On the runway Clegg was met by George LaPorte and Henry Voss. A crowd was forming, attracted by the airplane, so Clegg drew the two men into a glade beside the runway. Clegg produced photos of all the Dillinger Gang’s members. The only one Voss could identify was flat-nosed Tommy Carroll. But they were mobsters, he was sure of that.

Voss drew a rough sketch of Little Bohemia, its outbuildings and grounds. There was no way to escape across the lake behind the lodge, he emphasized to Clegg; there was no boat, and the water remained partially frozen. There was only a thin gravelly beach between the lodge and the lake. The Wanatkas had even formulated an attack plan. The gang appeared ready to depart the next morning. The family and staff would hide in the cellar at 4:00 A.M., just before daybreak. It was then that the FBI had to attack. Clegg was impressed with Voss’s enthusiasm.

First they needed cars. Voss drove Clegg into Rhinelander to a Ford dealership, where Clegg spoke to the manager. He explained that they were federal agents and needed to rent three cars. The manager said he had no license to rent cars, and only had one old coupe to spare anyway. He asked Clegg if he was raiding bootleggers in the area, because if he was, he could forget the whole thing; if word got around he was helping such a raid, the man said, half his business would disappear. When Clegg said he wasn’t after bootleggers, the manager asked if he was after Dillinger. Clegg said they needed the cars, and fast. The manager said it would take an hour or two.

As they talked, Clegg saw a plane coming in low over the trees: Purvis had arrived. They met at the airport. Purvis was a little shaken by a rough landing—his plane had actually spun around twice on touchdown—but they were ready to go. It was a fifty-mile drive to Little Bohemia but they had plenty of time, which they needed. While they waited for the cars, Purvis decided to send Agent Ray Suran ahead with Henry Voss to Manitowish to reconnoiter. Suran jumped in Voss’s car and headed north, but on the outskirts of Rhinelander they ran into Voss’s wife, Ruth, who had come to alert them: Dillinger was leaving tonight, she said, after dinner. They had to move fast.

This changed everything. They returned to the airport. Purvis turned to see Henry Voss running toward him, yelling, “Mr. Purvis! Mr. Purvis!” When Voss explained the change in Dillinger’s plans, Purvis and Clegg decided to move immediately. By then the cars were ready, and Purvis persuaded a seventeen-year-old boy to lend them his coupe, giving them five in all. At 7:15 the FBI caravan headed toward Little Bohemia.

As the lights of Rhinelander winked out behind them, the roads turned bad. They were unpaved, muddy from the spring thaw and riddled with potholes. The FBI cars bumped and slid north until one, then another, careened into a ditch. There was no time to push them out. Quickly the eight agents in these cars grabbed their guns and climbed onto the running boards of the remaining three. As temperatures dropped into the thirties, numbing their hands and faces, they struggled to hold on. Purvis kept an eye on his wristwatch. It was going to be close.

 

 

The FBI cars rumbled into the driveway of Henry Voss’s sprawling Birchwood Lodge, a mile down Route 51 from Little Bohemia, just before nine. Inside, Voss discovered Nan Wanatka and her daughter; they had sneaked out in anticipation of the raid. She said Dillinger was still at the lodge, or had been a half hour earlier, and urged Clegg to move fast; the gang was leaving any minute. Clegg decided to head to Little Bohemia and devise a plan of attack once they surveyed the ground. He told the men to extinguish their cigarettes and check their guns.

Minutes later the FBI caravan, headlights off, inched through the darkness up Route 51, passing several well-lit homes, until it reached the mouth of Little Bohemia’s two-hundred-yard driveway. The confidence level among the men could not have been high. No one dwelled on the fact the FBI had never attempted a raid of this scale, that agents hadn’t been trained for massed gunfights, that few in the raiding party had ever fired a gun in anger. Everyone knew the FBI’s abysmal record in gunfights. Three times in the preceding six months agents had managed to engage armed outlaws: The fiasco leading to Verne Miller’s escape in Chicago at Halloween; Dillinger’s escape in St. Paul; and the ambush of Wilbur Underhill. Only the latter produced an arrest, and only after Underhill had escaped from a house the FBI had surrounded. Nor, as the cars swung into the driveway, did anyone need to be reminded it was the fourth time in twenty-three days agents had been within a baseball’s toss of Dillinger without capturing him.

It was pitch dark as the three cars turned up the muddy driveway into the tunnel of tall pines. There was no moon. The only sound was the wind, whistling through the branches above. Patches of snow and dirty ice lay amid fallen leaves and underbrush. Ahead, the back porch of Little Bohemia was bathed in the light of a single bulb. It glinted off the rear fenders of a row of parked cars. For several moments Purvis, riding in the second car, thought conditions were perfect. If Dillinger was still in the lodge, they had achieved complete surprise. While still well back in the trees, Clegg stopped the lead car and stepped out into the driveway. Purvis stopped behind him.

Then, just as agents opened their car doors, dogs began barking. No one had mentioned anything about dogs. As he stepped into the driveway, Purvis glanced at the lodge and saw four or five men appear on the porch. As he watched, three of the men hustled into a Chevrolet coupe. His heart sank. This was the worst way a raid could begin: dogs barking, an alarm raised, gang members hustling for a getaway car.

In the years since that frigid night in Wisconsin, those involved have gone to great lengths to explain their actions. John Toland, who interviewed several agents who were at Little Bohemia, wrote in 1963 that Clegg “mapped out an attack” that afternoon at Rhinelander. In fact, as FBI files make clear, there was never any plan other than a vague idea that the inn would be surrounded. Inspector Rorer told Hoover afterward that they “had been unable to make plans because of the lack of time, but expected to do so upon their arrival.”
^19
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Worse, though Assistant Director Clegg was the senior agent on the ground that night, there was considerable confusion who was in charge. At various times Clegg, Purvis, and Inspector Rorer all issued orders.
²⁰

As the men on Little Bohemia’s porch scrambled into a Chevrolet coupe, Inspector Rorer, whose capture of Machine Gun Kelly gave him a certain authority, snapped at Purvis: “Hurry! Hurry!” Hoping to encircle the lodge, Purvis told him to take two men and head into the woods on the left. Clegg told other men to head into the trees at their right. As they spoke the Chevrolet’s headlights flashed on. Music could be heard, eerily wafting through the chill night air. The car began to back up toward them. Suddenly the driver threw it into forward and made a sharp U-turn, the Chevrolet’s headlights swinging around toward where Clegg and Purvis stood frozen in the driveway.

There was no time to concoct a plan; there was barely time to think. Instinctively—no one seems to have shouted an order—Clegg and Purvis, along with an agent named Carter Baum, jogged toward the car, guns drawn. As the car veered toward them, Purvis and Clegg yelled, “Police! Stop! Federal agents!” Other agents—scrambling into the black woods—joined the chorus of shouts: “Stop the car! Federal agents!” The car surged forward. Two men appeared on the inn’s porch and began yelling; in the din no one could hear their words.

The car wouldn’t stop; as Purvis and Clegg moved up the driveway, it was heading straight for them. “Fire!” both Purvis and Clegg shouted. Shots rang out all across the clearing. Purvis’s submachine gun jammed, but Agent Baum raked the car with his own tommy gun. Glass shattered; tires exploded. The car sagged to a stop.

Just then a shadowy figure darted out of a cottage from the right side corner of the inn. The figure fired a pistol at Purvis—bullets struck the ground at his feet—then disappeared into the woods at the right. In the confusion no one gave chase.

All this occurred in barely ten seconds, by the later estimate of Inspector Rorer. As the firing began, Rorer and two agents, T. G. Melvin and Lew Nichols, fast-walked into the trees toward the left side of the lodge. As they walked, Rorer told the two agents to keep space between them. Just as he spoke Rorer rounded the side of the lodge, where he glimpsed the shadow of a man preparing to jump from a second-floor window.