But the Bremers were not the Chamber of Commerce men they appeared, as the FBI would learn. Their interests, like William Hamm’s, were intertwined with those of St. Paul’s underworld. The family brewery supplied “near beer” to many of St. Paul’s gangland gathering places, including Harry Sawyer’s tavern. In fact, according to an affidavit Sawyer’s wife, Gladys, later gave the FBI, the Bremers secretly sold real beer to Sawyer’s tavern from 1926 to 1932, which Sawyer bootlegged throughout Minnesota. Gladys Sawyer said the relationship went one step further; she claimed the Bremers actually owned the Green Lantern.

  What the Bremers did to anger the underworld is unknown, but they did something. Edward Bremer’s bank handled Harry Sawyer’s finances as well as those of other St. Paul bootleggers, and according to FBI reports, Bremer had helped Sawyer fence stolen bonds, including, it was alleged, bonds Harvey Bailey stole from the Denver Mint in 1922. No doubt the dispute between Sawyer and Edward Bremer was financial. But Bremer’s thorny personality may also have been a factor. As an FBI memo noted, “Bremer is very much disliked not only by his family but generally; he has an uncontrollable [sic] temper, is very selfish and inconsiderate and has few friends.”

  That frosty morning, after years of living in his father’s shadow, Edward Bremer was about to become famous. A minute after dropping his daughter at her school, he pulled up to a stop sign at the corner of Goodrich and Lexington Parkway. As he did, Shotgun George Ziegler pulled his car into the intersection, blocking Bremer’s way. Karpis stopped a second car behind Bremer’s, boxing him in.

  Dock Barker and Volney Davis jumped out. Dock opened Bremer’s door and pointed his pistol at the young heir. “Don’t move or I’ll kill you.”

  Bremer panicked. He tried to throw the car into gear but Dock cracked him across the forehead with the pistol. Bremer attempted to escape out the passenger door, but Davis opened it first and joined Dock in hammering Bremer with his pistol. Bremer kicked open the door but Davis slammed it shut on his knee. The struggle took only a moment, but by the time Bremer surrendered, blood was streaming from a gash in his scalp. Karpis watched the tussle and fretted. “If a squad car pulls up,” he mumbled, “we’re going to have a hell of a lot of trouble here.”

  Finally Dock managed to shove Bremer down onto the front floorboard. Davis attempted to start the car, but nothing happened.

  “No monkey business, start the car,” Dock ordered Bremer.

  Wiping the blood from his eyes, Bremer leaned up and pushed a button to start the car. As the car eased forward, Dock pushed a pair of goggles over Bremer’s head, its eyes taped so Bremer couldn’t see. No one had noticed the kidnapping; there was no pursuit. The little procession drove several miles into the countryside and pulled over to the side of the road. As he had done with Hamm, George Ziegler thrust two ransom notes forward for Bremer to sign. The young heir complained he was in great pain from the gash on his head and a wrenched knee. Karpis told him it was his own fault for struggling. “Well,” Bremer said, “I got excited.”

  While Karpis took Bremer and drove south toward Chicago, Ziegler and Fred Barker took the ransom notes into St. Paul. Two hours after the kidnapping, Walter W. Magee, a contractor and a close friend of the Bremer family, took a phone call from a man who called himself “McKee.” “Hello,” McKee said. “We’ve snatched your friend Ed Bremer. We want two hundred grand.”

  “McKee” said Bremer’s car would be found beneath a water tower on Edgecumbe Road. He said Magee would find a note with instructions beneath a staircase outside his office, then hung up. Magee walked outside and found the note. It read: You are hereby declared in on a very desperate undertaking. Don’t try to cross us. Your future and B’s are the important issue. Follow these instructions to the letter. Police have never helped in such a spot and wont this time either. You better take care of the payoff first and let them do the detecting later. Because the police usually butt in your friend isn’t none too comfortable now so don’t delay the payment.

  We demand $200,000.

  Payment must be made in 5 and 10 dolar bills—no new money—no consegutive numbers—large variety of issues.

  Place the money in two large suit box catons big enough to hold the full amount and tie with heavy cord.

  No contact will be made until you notify us that you are ready to pay as we direct.

  You place an ad in the Minneapolis Tribune as soon as you have the money ready. Under personal colum (We are ready Alice)

  You will then receive your final instructions. Be prepared to leave at a minutes notice to make the payoff.

  Dont attempt to stall or outsmart us. Dont try to bargain. Don’t plead poverty we know how much they have in their banks. Don’t try to communecate with us we’ll do the directing.

  Threats arent necessary—you just do your part—we guarantee to do ours.

  Magee phoned Bremer’s office, thinking it might be a prank. He wasn’t there. Magee then called the brewery and left a message for Adolph Bremer to meet him at the Ryan Hotel. The St. Paul police chief was notified, and at 11:05 he phoned Werner Hanni, the St. Paul SAC. Hanni walked straight to the hotel and found the Bremers talking with the chief, who had brought along the head of the kidnap squad, Tom Brown, who remained in league with the Barkers. Brown’s presence meant the gang would know every move the police made.

  The meeting was businesslike; Adolph Bremer was not the kind of man who panicked easily. He took Walter Magee to look for his son’s car, and they found it after a half-hour’s search. The front seat was streaked with blood, and Magee told Bremer not to approach. Magee had the car taken to a car wash, where the blood was removed—along with any fingerprints the gang might have left. Other members of the family, meanwhile, arranged for the “Alice” advertisement to run in the Tribune.

  Night had fallen when Karpis drove up to the safe house in Bensenville, the same house where William Hamm had been kept seven months before. One of Ziegler’s pals was waiting in the kitchen. They guided Bremer into a bedroom and sat him facing a boarded window.

  They guarded him in shifts. Around eleven Karpis stuck his head in the kitchen, where Ziegler’s friend, Harold Alderton, was listening to the radio. “Heard anything yet?” Karpis asked.

  “Oh Christ, yeah,” Alderton said. “This thing is going to be hot as hell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They think this guy’s dead. They found his car and it’s full of blood, and according to the radio, they think he’s been killed.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” Karpis said. “This is going to be real bad.”

  St. Paul, Minnesota Saturday, January 20

  For two days members of the Bremer family paced Adolph Bremer’s stone mansion across from the Schmidt Brewery, waiting anxiously for news from the kidnappers. The “Alice” ad had run Thursday morning; there had been no response. News of the kidnapping had leaked to the newspapers, and Thursday night Bremer had given a statement to reporters, promising the kidnappers that his family had no plans to cooperate in any police investigations. “We want to get Eddie back home safe,” he said. FBI agents were posted at both Bremer homes.

  Werner Hanni, the St. Paul SAC, tapped eighteen separate phone lines at the brewery and the Bremer homes. Hanni was so busy, in fact, he forgot to keep headquarters updated despite Hoover’s repeated admonishments. “It appears that it is necessary for me to rely upon the press for information concerning important cases being investigated by the Division under my supervision,” Hoover wrote Hanni after reading in the Washington Post of the blood found in Bremer’s car. “With such explicit, definite and repeated instructions it is difficult for me to understand why you neglected, in a case of such significance as the present one, to fully advise me.” Hoover’s anger, stoked by pressure from the White House, grew through the weekend when Hanni failed to forward some paperwork. “Phone and tell him I want these at once and to stop quibbling and procrastinating,” Hoover scrawled on one memo.

  The family was deluged with phone calls and letters, many of them supportive, others from cranks. A postcard received that Friday stated that Edward Bremer had been killed and buried near the town of Anoka, Minnesota. Then, around six Saturday morning, H. T. Nippert, the Bremer family doctor, was in bed at his St. Paul home when he heard a crash downstairs. Thinking it was a fallen dish, he went back to sleep. An hour later, while he was shaving, his phone rang. “Go to the vestibule,” said a voice. “See what you can find.”

  Downstairs Nippert discovered a bottle that had been thrown through his plate-glass front door. Beneath the door was an envelope containing three letters. One, written by Edward Bremer, directed him to take the other two to Adolph Bremer. Dr. Nippert drove to the Bremer mansion and disappeared with Bremer into the library. Neither man said a word to the FBI agent standing in the foyer, Edward Notesteen. Notesteen asked what was going on. He was told Adolph Bremer had suffered a mild heart attack. But ninety minutes later, when the elder Bremer emerged from the library, he seemed in perfect health.

  Notesteen noticed an air of anxiety that seemed somehow different from concern for a son’s safety. During several quiet talks with family members, he learned that what worried Adolph Bremer most was the amount of the ransom. Because of flagging investments, he was cash-poor at the moment; if forced to pay the entire $200,000, one family member confided, the Bremers might lose the brewery. Weeks later the FBI would learn that Adolph Bremer suspected the kidnapping had been arranged by the chairman of another St. Paul bank in an effort to cripple and take over Edward Bremer’s First Commercial Bank.

  The ransom payment was uppermost in Adolph Bremer’s mind Saturday afternoon when he paid a visit to Minnesota governor Floyd Olson. That morning’s note directed the family to place four blue NRA eagle stickers in Walter Magee’s office windows when the ransom was ready to be paid. Bremer was candid with Olson about his finances, and the governor suggested displaying half a sticker, as a message to the kidnappers that the family sought to negotiate the ransom amount. Late that afternoon Magee posted the half-stickers.

  The next day, Sunday, the FBI’s second-in-command, Pop Nathan, met with Adolph Bremer and his financial advisers, a pair of New York bankers. Bremer asked Nathan whether he felt the kidnappers would accept only $50,000, which one of the bankers declared was an “outside figure.” Nathan, who still knew nothing of the notes delivered by Dr. Nippert, said negotiations hadn’t led to reduced ransoms in other cases. He emphasized that the Bureau would remain in the background until the ransom was paid, but that once Bremer was released, it would expect the family’s full cooperation.

  Monday morning another letter arrived at the Bremer mansion. It had been left outside the office of a local coal company executive.

  If you can wait O.K. with us. Your people shot a lot of curves trying to get somebody killed then the copper’s will be heroes but Eddie will be the marteer. The copper’s think that’s great but Eddie don’t.

  Were done taking the draws and you can go fuck yourself now. From now on you make the contact. Better not try it till you pull off every coppers, newspaper and radio station. From now on you get the silent treatment until you rech us someway yourself. Better not wait too long.

  The note left Adolph Bremer confused. Contact the kidnappers? How? He was incensed at the St. Paul police. Too many details were leaking to the newspapers, which angered his son’s captors, and he suspected someone in the department. He decided it was time to come clean with the FBI. He sent for Pop Nathan. When Nathan arrived at the mansion at three, Bremer took him into his mahogany-paneled library and briefed him on the notes from the kidnappers. Bremer handed all the notes to Nathan, who wrapped them in cellophane, took them to the Bureau’s downtown office, and air-mailed them to Washington.

  A half hour later, Nathan was handed a copy of the afternoon St. Paul Daily News; he was stunned to see that the lead article contained full details of the ransom notes. Nathan phoned the police chief, Dahill, and told him to meet him at his hotel room. Somewhere there was a leak, and a bad one, Nathan said. Dahill said he had no doubt who it was: Detective Tom Brown. And then Dahill went one step further. “It is my belief,” he told Nathan, “that Tom Brown ‘cased’ both the Hamm and the Bremer kidnappings.”6

  At the safe house outside Chicago, tensions were rising. Unlike the stoic William Hamm, Ed Bremer was a complainer: he was cold, his head hurt, his knee hurt. It made Karpis tired. All day Bremer sat in front of a boarded window, the taped goggles over his eyes. The Hamm job had lasted four days, and Karpis couldn’t fathom why things were dragging on. At one point he asked Bremer.

  “Well, I’d have to know how much money you’re asking for first,” Bremer said.

  “I ain’t having anything to do with that,” Karpis said. “It shouldn’t be too much trouble getting the money, don’t you think?”

  “It depends on how much.”

  “Goddamn, your family’s the richest in the Northwest, what do you mean, ‘depends on how much’? How much money is in that bank?”

  “Sometimes we have twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars in there,” Bremer said. “That’s at the peak of the business month.”

  “Supposing we were to turn you loose,” Karpis said. “Would you go in and get this money and bring it back for us?”

  Bremer got excited when Karpis talked this way. He suggested several schemes to raise money; at one point, to Karpis’s dismay, he named a wealthy St. Paul railroad executive he felt could be kidnapped. In an effort to bond with his captors, Bremer was candid about his own dealings with the underworld. He talked openly about how he had fenced Harvey Bailey’s stolen bonds. At one point, he asked Karpis whether he knew Harry Sawyer or his partner, Jack Peifer. Karpis said no.

  “Well,” Bremer said, “they run the town and if you find out who they are, then you’ll find out who I am. You just ask them about me and how many times I’ve handled hot bonds for them. I’m a good guy. If you guys had come to me first instead of kidnapping me, you’d have made more money by kidnapping somebody else that I told you about.”

  “Well, let’s wait and see first if we get that $25,000 you’re talking about,” Karpis said. “Maybe we’ll get forty.”

  Bremer became glum. “I don’t think they can pay that much.”

  One night Freddie and George Ziegler arrived unannounced from St. Paul. They were tired and frustrated. They had seen the eagle stickers split in two, and concluded that the Bremers wanted to pay only half the ransom. “I don’t know what the hell to tell you,” Ziegler said. “That town is so hot, every time we try to get a note to them people, the G beats us to it. Every time we try to phone and tell them where there’s a note, the G’s listening in. They just don’t want to make the payoff, they don’t want anything. Did you hear what Roosevelt had to say?”

  “The president?” Karpis asked.

  In a radio address, Roosevelt had termed the Bremer kidnapping “an attack on all we hold dear.” “Yeah,” Ziegler said, “he brought it up about Bremer being a friend of his and that he would see to it that this crime wasn’t going to go unpunished. This is the hottest goddamn thing since the Lindbergh kidnapping.”

  “Well, what do you think about them paying the money, or turning him loose without any money?”

  “No, no, no,” Ziegler said. “We’d never be any hotter than we are right now, whether we get the money or not. Don’t tell them other guys I said this, but we’re gonna be in big trouble after this is over with. This might even turn out worse if we have to kill the guy.”

  As the days passed, Karpis grew steadily more depressed. At best he was a babysitter with a machine gun. At worst he would be an assassin. This, he thought, was not why he became a thief.

  Tucson, Arizona, a sun-baked desert city of thirty thousand people, was about as far from the Dillinger Gang’s Midwestern roots as they were likely to get. After the long drive from St. Louis, Dillinger arrived that Sunday a changed man, the hubris he had displayed in East Chicago knocked from his personality as if by a punch. The shoot-out on the sidewalk that day taught him a lesson, to take fewer chances, to live more quietly; there would be no more nights machine-gunning the moon.

  Dillinger and Billie found the others already enjoying the city’s tequila-fueled nightclubs and whorehouses.be Russell Clark was staying with Charles Makley at the city’s premier place of lodging, the Congress Hotel. Makley had hooked up with a torch singer, and everyone was having a grand time. Dillinger and Billie checked into a tourist court on South Sixth Street, registering as “Mr. and Mrs. Frank Sullivan” of Green Bay, Wisconsin. A few hours later Pete Pierpont and Mary Kinder drove in as well, after several days visiting family around Albuquerque.

  To the men of the Dillinger gang, whose lives to that point had been confined to Midwestern farms and jail cells, Tucson seemed like another planet. Men wore cowboy hats and boots. Mariachi music floated through the evening air. There were mountains and cacti and rattlesnakes; downtown, there were hitching posts on the sidewalks. It was like visiting the set of a Western; Chicago seemed a world away.

  It was intoxicating, and it made them careless. On his first afternoon driving the streets, Pierpont inexplicably stopped to chat with a pair of policemen. He introduced himself as a Florida vacationer, then pointed out a car and told the officers he thought he was being followed. One of the cops chatted with Pierpont while the other followed the strange car. Pierpont proudly showed him his new Buick’s appointments, the speedometer, the power steering. They talked about the desert weather, getting so friendly Pierpont volunteered the name of the place he was staying. When the second officer returned he said the other car was harmless. With a wave and a thank-you, Pierpont drove off. All in all, it was a perfectly idiotic thing to do.