Public Enemies (67 page)

They went over the plan in the event Dillinger appeared. Five men were selected to make up the party that would physically apprehend him. Purvis was to lead this group. His two best gunmen, Charles Winstead and Clarence Hurt, would assist. Two East Chicago cops, Glen Stretch and Peter Sopsic, would complete the group. Purvis said he would stand outside the box office—at whichever theater Dillinger appeared—and keep watch. When Dillinger appeared, he would give the signal to move in by lighting a cigar. If Dillinger should elude these five men, Purvis said, the rest of the agents should do as they saw fit.

“What type of guns shall we take?” someone asked.

“Your pistols only,” Purvis said.

When the meeting broke up, Purvis took Agent Ralph Brown and drove to the Biograph. Cowley stayed behind to coordinate; Purvis promised to phone every five minutes. Zarkovich and Agent Winstead were sent to the Marbro. Sage’s inability to pinpoint a theater meant they wouldn’t be able to assemble in force until after Dillinger appeared—
if
he appeared. They would have to take him when the movie let out.

Purvis and Brown pulled up in front of the Biograph at 7:37. Brown stood by the car while Purvis walked up to the box office. The movie that night was
Manhattan Melodrama,
a gangster film starring Clark Gable and William Powell. The next showing was at 8:30. Purvis returned to the car and slid in next to Brown.

It was hot. Sitting in the car, shifting nervously in his seat, Purvis yearned to swing his gaze up and down the street, but was afraid he might be noticed; instead he willed himself to sit still, scanning those passing beside him on the sidewalk.
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By 8:15 people had already begun filing into the theater. Every five minutes, Brown jogged to a bar down the street and used a pay phone to check in with Cowley.

If Sage had done as she promised and left her apartment at eight, Dillinger would appear at any moment. Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. There was no sign of Dillinger. Across town at the Marbro, Winstead and Zarkovich stood uneasily in front of the theater, waiting, watching. In Washington, Hoover sat in the library of his home, fielding updates every few minutes from Cowley. Between calls, Cowley paced. Out in the bullpen, agents checked and rechecked their weapons. No one had much to say.

Something was wrong. Purvis could feel it. By 8:25 he was beginning to feel the whole weekend had been wasted: another sweaty night, another deluded informant, another long week ahead. This was stupid. They never should have trusted the East Chicago police.

Then, at 8:36, Purvis glanced to his side and saw two women and a man walk by on the sidewalk. To his amazement, he realized that it was Ana Sage, a girl who had to be Polly Hamilton—and John Dillinger. Sage was wearing the orange skirt and tilted white hat, just as Zarkovich said she would. Dillinger wore a straw boater. Ralph Brown saw them, too. The moment the three passed, Brown got out of the car and trotted off to call Cowley. As he did, Dillinger walked up to the ticket booth and slid the girl behind the glass several bills. Stunned that he was finally laying eyes on the man he had sought so long, Purvis studied Dillinger in profile, the gray slacks, the clean white shirt, the dark glasses. He wore no jacket; that was good. It meant he had one gun at most. And he was alone. No Nelson, no Van Meter.

It was happening. As Purvis watched from the car twenty feet away, Dillinger bought his tickets and guided the women into the theater. Inside it was crowded, but Dillinger found two seats in the third row; Sage took a seat alone in the back. Dillinger snuggled up to Hamilton and in a stage whisper asked for a kiss; she obliged. Later she would say Dillinger was unusually amorous that evening.

Outside, Purvis stepped from the car, walked to the ticket booth, and purchased a ticket of his own. He shuffled in with the crowd. Inside the theater, Purvis scanned the seats. The place was jammed. If he could find three seats behind Dillinger’s, he thought, maybe they could grab him during the show. Purvis walked down one aisle, then another. He couldn’t see more than a handful of empty seats. He couldn’t see Dillinger. They would have to take him when he left.

Purvis returned to the car. Brown said Cowley’s men were on their way. The two agents began to get nervous. What if Dillinger left before the others arrived? What if he sensed something awry and left early? They would have to take him themselves. Purvis studied his watch. He got out and talked to the girl selling tickets. She said the movie lasted ninety-four minutes. With newsreels and trailers, it would let out in two hours and four minutes. If he stayed for the entire movie, Dillinger should exit the theater around 10:35.

Purvis grew more anxious as the minutes ticked by. Not for another twenty minutes did Purvis spy the first agents taking positions on the street around him. He and Brown exchanged relieved glances. When Cowley arrived, he and Purvis spoke in low tones, discussing how to position the men. They put the two East Chicago cops, Stretch and Sopsic, on the sidewalk north of the theater entrance. When Charles Winstead arrived from the Marbro, he and Clarence Hurt took positions on the south side, the direction Dillinger would take if he returned to Sage’s apartment. Cowley fanned the other men in pairs up and down the street. The Biograph had two side exits and one in the rear. The side exits opened into an alley that could be used as a shortcut to Sage’s apartment. Cowley put four men in the alley.

By 9:30 everyone was in place. Standing in a doorway beside the box office with Agents Winstead and Hurt, Purvis bit the end off his cigar and chewed it. His throat was parched, but he couldn’t go for a drink of water. When he stood in one place, he realized his knees were trembling. Ten o’clock came and went. No one left the theater.

Tension rose as the end of the movie neared. All along the street agents shifted their weight, keeping their eyes down, trying to look inconspicuous. It didn’t work. Suddenly, at 10:20, two sedans pulled into the alley beside the theater. Several men jumped out, guns in their hands. One of the men leveled a sawed-off shotgun.

“Police!” one of the men yelled. “Put up your hands!”

One of the agents, E. J. Conroy, flipped out his badge. Each of the three other FBI men did the same. “Federal agents,” Conroy said. Conroy explained they were on a stakeout. When one of the cops asked who they were after, Conroy refused to say. One of the officers explained they were responding to a report of suspicious men hanging around the theater. The cop asked if they could help. Conroy said no and asked the cops to leave. Grudgingly, they piled back into their squad cars and drove off.

Ten minutes passed: 10:30. The movie would be letting out any moment. Just then another car drove up in front of the theater. Two men got out. One stepped across the street and approached Agent Jerry Campbell, while the other accosted the two East Chicago cops, Stretch and Sopsic. They turned out to be plainclothes Chicago detectives, responding to the same call.
^dp
Campbell and the East Chicago men tried to shoo them off, but they were suspicious and insisted on lingering.

The two detectives were still asking questions five minutes later when the first people began filing out of the theater. Purvis tensed. Leaving Hurt and Winstead in the doorway, he stepped to the box office, into the path of the exiting patrons. The cigar in his mouth was shaking. More people came out, forming a crowd on the sidewalk around him. Purvis noted the women and children. He tried to remain calm.

Then, at 10:40, there he was: Dillinger, shuffling out with the crowd, Polly Hamilton holding his left arm, Ana Sage inching forward on her left. Purvis strained to look nonchalant. Dillinger was barely five feet from him; with one step, he could reach out and touch his arm. Purvis glanced at Dillinger and for the briefest moment their eyes met. For a fleeting second Purvis thought he had been recognized.

But Dillinger dropped his eyes and moved forward. As he did, Purvis took out a matchbook, struck a match, and lit the cigar. Dillinger stepped to his left, guiding the women south, the way they had come, toward Hurt and Winstead. In the doorway twenty feet down the sidewalk, both agents saw the signal. Hurt whispered to Winstead, “That’s Dillinger, with the straw hat and the glasses.”

Directly across the street, Jerry Campbell saw Dillinger at the same time. “There they go,” he said to another agent. Both men edged south down the sidewalk, moving parallel to Dillinger.

Of all the agents outside of the Biograph that night, only a handful reacted to Purvis’s signal. According to FBI memos, in fact, no more than a half-dozen agents saw it. He was too far away and surrounded by too many people. Cowley, standing further down the block, did not see Purvis light the cigar. Nor did the two East Chicago cops, standing barely twenty feet north of Purvis; as Purvis watched, amazed, they continued talking with the curious Chicago detectives. Across the street, Martin Zarkovich recognized Dillinger himself. He began walking toward the East Chicago cops, hoping to rouse them.

Purvis was unsure what to do. He took a step or two to follow Dillinger. Then he took out a second match and once again applied it to the cigar, hoping to draw the attention of more agents. He couldn’t tell whether Winstead, Hurt, or anyone else knew what was happening. In frustration he mouthed the words, “Damn it! Come on!”

Ten feet down the sidewalk, Dillinger and the two women were inching forward in a knot of six or seven people. As the crowd loosened and Dillinger lengthened his stride, Purvis walked after them. As he did, Dillinger and the women strode past the doorway where Winstead and Hurt stood. When the trio passed, Hurt stepped behind them, crossing the sidewalk, and turned to follow. Agent Ed Hollis, who stood in the gutter beside the FBI car, was right beside him. Dillinger glanced to his right, at Hollis. Winstead took a step forward. Dillinger half-turned and looked straight into Winstead’s face.

He knew it then. Standing across the street, a rookie agent named Jack Welles noticed that Dillinger “appeared to realize that he was trapped; there was a tense look on his face.” For years afterward the agents on the sidewalk would remember those next few seconds as if in slow motion. Turning forward, Dillinger appeared to lean into a crouch. At the same time, he slid his hand into his pants pocket, reaching for his .38. Behind him, Winstead pulled his .45. Hurt and Hollis drew their guns as well.

Dillinger broke from the women and took a step or two forward, as if to run for the alley that opened ten feet in front of him. He never had a chance. No one yelled “Halt” or “Stop” or identified themselves as FBI agents.
^dq
It happened in a split second: The moment he saw Dillinger reach for his gun, Winstead fired his .45 three times; the sudden retort startled bystanders all around. Hurt fired twice, Hollis once. Four bullets struck Dillinger. Two grazed him. A third struck him in the side. But a fourth bullet hit Dillinger in the back of the neck, smashing a vertebra, severing his spinal cord and tearing through his brain before exiting through his right eye.
^dr

Dillinger pitched forward, bumped into a woman in front of him, then staggered a step or two before falling face first to the pavement at the entrance to the alley. Winstead was the first to reach him. Purvis hustled up and grabbed the pistol from Dillinger’s hand. The rookie, Jack Welles, ran up in time to see Dillinger’s lips moving.
¹⁴
Someone said, “Don’t move,” but Dillinger lay still. He was dead.

Pandemonium erupted. Women ran screaming. A Chicago woman named Etta Natalsky was hopping about, shouting, “I’m shot!” She had been hit in the leg by a ricochet, as had a housemaid named Theresa Paulus, who was struck in the knee; she lay beside the alley, blood staining her dress. Neither woman was hurt seriously. When they realized the shooting had stopped, a number of people stepped forward to stare at the body. A circle formed, men craning their necks to get a glimpse. A dozen FBI agents ran up, urging the crowd to move back.

Within moments the name began surging through the crowd:
Dillinger. They got Dillinger.
An ambulance was called. Two cars of police rolled up, responding to a call of shots fired, and their occupants pushed back the crowd. Attendants arrived and lifted the body into an ambulance and took it to Alexian Brothers Hospital, where it was laid on the front lawn until a coroner came out and pronounced Dillinger dead. The body was then taken to the Cook County Morgue.
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A mystery that bedeviled Dillinger enthusiasts for years was the disposition of $1,200 in cash Dillinger carried at the time he was shot. Agent Dan Sullivan found the money. According to a story that Sullivan told the FBI alumni newsletter in 1978, he was one of two agents who accompanied Dillinger’s body to the morgue. When the ambulance arrived a crowd formed, and at one point two men identifying themselves as Chicago detectives stepped forward. As Sullivan recalled, “One of them asked if that was really Dillinger in the wagon and when I said it was, he asked if they could climb inside and look at the body. They came out a minute later and left. When we got inside the morgue and they started stripping the body, they found something like fifty-seven cents on him. I sat there bug-eyed.”
^dt
The actual figure was $7.70—a five-dollar bill, two singles, and seventy cents in change.

When word of the shooting hit the radio, hundreds of Chicagoans descended on the Biograph. Crowds thronged the alley’s entrance until nearly dawn. All that remained to be seen was a pool of Dillinger’s blood. Even that didn’t last long, as dozens of men and women pressed their handkerchiefs into it, taking home gruesome souvenirs to show their families. The bloodlust wasn’t limited to the crowds. The next morning a man showed up at the Bankers Building to offer Purvis cash for the shirt he had worn; it contained a drop of Dillinger’s blood.

Late that night a reporter brought news of his son’s death to John Dillinger, Sr. He collapsed into a chair at his farmhouse. “Is it really true?” he asked. “Are you sure there is no mistake?” Told there wasn’t, the elder Dillinger said, “Well, John is dead. At last it has happened—the thing I have prayed and prayed would not happen. I want the body brought back here. I’m so sick I can hardly talk.”
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