“I had it out with Jimmy,” Van Meter said. “I told him I wasn’t going to pay him any twenty-five hundred dollars. I never did care a hell of a lot for that guy anyway.”

  “He was always complaining about you, too,” Dillinger said.

  “We had it pretty heavy there for a while,” Van Meter said. “I thought we were going to draw guns on each other.”

  “Forget it, Van,” Dillinger said. “We’re through with Nelson, anyway. He’s outta the gang.”

  “I suppose that’s good,” Van Meter said. As he left, he told Dillinger, “Don’t forget about the ‘soup.’”

  As they drove back into Chicago, Dillinger told O’Leary about their next job. It was to be a train robbery. In fact, it had been proposed by Nelson’s pal Jimmy Murray, who ten years earlier had masterminded the Newton Brothers’ Roundout robbery. Murray was claiming that this train too would be carrying millions.

  “It’ll be one of the biggest jobs in the world,” Dillinger enthused. “Just me and Van. We’re not cutting anybody else in on this. We’ve got it spotted, we’ve been watching it for weeks, we know all its stops. We need the ‘soup’”—nitroglycerin—“to blow the door of the mail car. We know how much money it will be carrying, and it’s plenty. We’ll have enough to last us the rest of our lives, and right after it’s over we’re lamming it out of the country.”

  Van Meter’s tightfistedness forced Dillinger to take yet another meeting with O’Leary two days later, on Saturday, July 14. Their surgical assistant, Harold Cassidy, was pestering Van Meter to be paid for tending him after the South Bend robbery. Dillinger, O’Leary, and Cassidy met that afternoon in a park at the corner of Kedzie and North avenues. Dillinger slid Cassidy $500, saying it was from Van Meter. In all likelihood it wasn’t. It was just Dillinger’s way of defusing a bad situation; the last thing he needed was someone feeling unsatisfied.

  Dillinger spent Sunday with Polly Hamilton. At one point, while she and a girlfriend went bicycle riding, Dillinger spent several hours watching Steve Chiolek play softball. When she returned, Hamilton found Dillinger buying bottles of beer for both teams. He seemed without a care in the world. By nightfall they were back at the North Halsted apartment. The next morning they woke to find the newspapers reporting a vicious gunfight northwest of the city. It was Nelson.

  Monday, July 16 2:00 A.M.

  That night Nelson held a meeting of “his” gang on a wooded side road deep in the northwest suburbs. Johnny Chase and Fatso Negri arrived first, followed by Jack Perkins. They parked their black Fords, turned off the headlights, and got out to talk. Helen sat in Nelson’s car, reading a magazine by flashlight.

  The men were deep in conversation around two o’clock when a pair of state troopers, Fred McAllister and Gilbert Cross, passed by the entrance to the road, heading home after long days on duty. McAllister spotted the three darkened cars back in the woods and decided to investigate. He turned into the dirt lane, stopped, and got out. Four men were standing in a ditch beside the cars.

  “What’s the trouble here?” McAllister asked.

  “No trouble at all,” a voice answered.

  Then there came a burst of gunfire, almost certainly from Nelson’s submachine gun. McAllister was struck in the right shoulder and fell, but most of the bullets raked the squad car, hitting Officer Cross six times. He managed to open a door and roll into the ditch. The two troopers lay bleeding as the men leaped into the cars and drove off. McAllister, after emptying his pistol at the fleeing cars, was able to drive them to a hospital. Both he and Cross survived.3

  The shootings were front-page news in Chicago the next day, and all the articles speculated that Dillinger was involved. Agent Arthur McLawhon was dispatched to the Des Plaines hospital to interview one of the wounded troopers. He showed him photographs of Helen Gillis and Marie Conforti, but he could identify neither. The trooper assured McLawhon the shootings were the work of a band of bootleggers tending a 2,000-gallon illegal still that troopers found inside a barn about 250 yards from the site of the shooting. After talking to several other officers, McLawhon wrote Sam Cowley that “they were quite positive that the Dillinger Gang were not involved in any way.”4

  And so it went. Cowley was spending much of his time on Nelson. Agents picked up his mechanic friend, Clarey Lieder, but released him when Lieder said he hadn’t seen Nelson in years. The FBI’s most intriguing new lead surfaced on Monday, July 9. Several days earlier the Bureau had secured an informant inside Louis Piquett’s office; the informant’s name is blacked out in FBI files.dm Whoever it was, he or she suggested agents follow Piquett that day. When they did, they saw Piquett engage in a street-corner argument with an unidentified man. When the two parted, the agents followed the stranger, trailing him to a two-story house in Oak Park. The next day a check with the landlord revealed that the man was the mysterious “Ralph Robiend”—Wilhelm Loeser, Dillinger’s surgeon. An agent rented an apartment next door to Loeser’s building and settled in to watch him.5

  In hindsight, Homer Van Meter was right: Dillinger was a fool to be living so openly. By that third week of July, a dozen different people knew of his stays with Jimmy Probasco or Ana Sage, and Dillinger’s carefree new life-style constituted a bet that not one of them would be tempted by the $15,000 reward for turning him in. Given the realities of the Depression, it was a bet he could only lose. During the week of July 16, while Dillinger continued cavorting with Polly Hamilton and studying the train robbery, there were hints of no fewer than three separate conspiracies to betray him.

  According to FBI records, the first involved Wilhelm Loeser. Loeser feared he would be returned to prison if his surgery on Dillinger became known. But he was too weak a man to turn himself in. Instead, in an apparent effort to cushion the blow should he be arrested, he sent two anonymous letters to the FBI. The first, mailed earlier that summer, detailed work Piquett had paid him to do in an unrelated case; there is no suggestion in FBI files this tip was acted upon. A second letter described the work Loeser did on Dillinger. Loeser, however, did not mail this letter until Monday, July 23, at which point it would have no bearing on Dillinger’s fate.

  Art O’Leary became aware of a second, more worrisome, potential betrayal that Tuesday, July 17, when he swung by Probasco’s house to pick up a rifle and a radio Dillinger had left there. After swearing him to secrecy, Probasco told him that Piquett had come to him with a proposal to turn in Dillinger. Further, Probasco insisted that Piquett proposed to have O’Leary murdered, thus eliminating the only man who could contradict whatever tangled yarn they concocted for the FBI.6

  O’Leary left Probasco’s home badly shaken. That evening at six he kept a meeting with Dillinger in the park at Kedzie and North. Dillinger was sitting on a large white rock when O’Leary drove up. He rose and walked to the car, sliding into the front seat.

  “Hello, Art,” he said. “Have you seen Probasco?”

  “I was up there this afternoon.”

  “Did he tell you about Piquett?”

  So Dillinger knew.

  “Yes,” O’Leary said. “But I don’t believe any of that bunk.”

  “Well,” Dillinger said. “I believe it.”

  “Oh, don’t pay any attention to Probasco. You know he’s drunk practically all the time. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “Well . . . ,” Dillinger said, “Van Meter has also been warning me against him. He said he’s been talking surrender too much.”

  Dillinger stared off into the distance for several moments. “Art, I want you to get out of town,” he finally said. “Take your family and go on up to the north woods or some place.”

  “What do you think you’re going to do?”

  “I’m going up to Piquett’s office and leave him my card.”

  “You’re crazy, Johnnie,” O’Leary said. “You can’t get away with anything like that. Anyway, Lou isn’t going to double-cross you. He isn’t that kind [of person].”

  “I’m telling you to get out of town for a week,” Dillinger said, “and then I’ll get in touch with you. How soon can you go?”

  “I can leave tonight, I suppose.”

  “That’s fine,” Dillinger said. “How are you fixed for money?”

  “I’ve got enough.”

  Dillinger flipped open his billfold. He handed O’Leary $500.

  “That’ll take care of you for a while.”

  And then Dillinger got out of the car and disappeared into the park. Afterward O’Leary drove back to his house, gathered his family, and drove to northern Wisconsin. Later he claimed Dillinger had telephoned Piquett in his absence. According to O’Leary, Dillinger told Piquett he wanted to discuss a surrender. The two men set a date, Monday, July 23, to discuss it.7 It was a meeting Dillinger would never make. There was a third conspiracy afoot, and this one was real.

  Saturday, July 21

  It was another hectic Saturday on the nineteenth floor of the Bankers Building. Cowley and a group of agents were busy running down tips the old yegg Eddie Bentz’s brother had given them on Dillinger; none led anywhere. Matt Leach, meanwhile, had dredged up an informant who said Dillinger was in Culver, Indiana, preparing to rob a bank there. Reporters picked up on it and were pelting everyone with calls.

  Purvis was in his office a few minutes after four o’clock when a call came in from Captain Timothy O’Neil of the East Chicago police. Purvis knew O’Neil, but not well. The sergeant said he and one of his men, a detective named Martin Zarkovich, had “real” information on Dillinger’s whereabouts. He wanted to meet right away.

  Purvis met them outside the Bankers Building a little after six. Together the three men drove to the Great Northern Hotel, taking the elevator up to Room 712, where Cowley was staying. In Cowley’s room, Zarkovich did most of the talking. He said he had an informant, a woman he had known for years, whose girlfriend was dating Dillinger. The three were going to a movie on the North Side the next night, Sunday. The informant was prepared to tell the FBI which theater they would be attending. The Bureau, Zarkovich said, could handle it from there. All O’Neil and Zarkovich wanted, they said, was the $15,000 reward.

  Before he cut any deals, Cowley said he wanted to meet the informant. Zarkovich said it had already been arranged; Sage had agreed to meet them that night. A bit later the four men left the room and walked downstairs. Outside, Purvis and Zarkovich got into one car, Cowley and O’Neil into a second. With Zarkovich leading they drove into the North Side, and a half hour later parked across from the Children’s Memorial Hospital at 707 West Fullerton Street.

  It was a sweltering night, the temperature in the low nineties; Chicago was in the midst of a record-setting heat wave. Out at the lake beaches, hundreds of people were still thronged, trying to catch a breeze. On the stoops and corners of the North Side, mothers fanned themselves with newspapers and children begged for ice cream. At about nine-thirty, as the four men sat in their cars waiting, Ana Sage appeared on the sidewalk beside them. She walked past, surveying the situation. After a minute she returned and got into Purvis’s car. They drove east, toward the lake, eventually pulling up in a secluded spot overlooking the water. Cowley remained in O’Neil’s car behind them.

  Sage demanded Purvis show proof he was an FBI agent. Purvis took out his badge. Satisfied, Sage said she was prepared to tell everything she knew. She wanted only one thing: to stay in America. She asked if the FBI could make her deportation proceedings go away. Purvis said he had limited authority in such matters, but promised that if Sage helped apprehend Dillinger, he would do everything he could to help her.

  It was enough for Sage. The following week she repeated the story she told Purvis for an FBI stenographer. At the very least she dissembled; she said only that Dillinger visited her apartment to see Hamilton, denying he actually lived there. “He did stay at my house while Polly was ill as a result of an automobile wreck about two weeks, and then only stayed there till about daylight, five or six o’clock in the morning,” Sage said in her statement.8

  According to Sage, who would always deny arranging to hide Dillinger, she first met him when Polly Hamilton brought him to her apartment in June, introducing him as Jimmy Lawrence.dn “He kept his head down but I looked at him and got a glimpse of his profile and immediately recognized him as Dillinger,” Sage said. “I told him immediately that his name might be Jimmy Lawrence, but he was John Dillinger. I made the remark in front of Polly and I called Polly out in the bathroom and told her that her boyfriend was John Dillinger. I told Polly that I was going to make that man, meaning Jimmy Lawrence, admit that he was Dillinger or he could leave.”

  This account is unlikely on its face, and it contradicts everything Polly Hamilton later said about her unknowing courtship with Dillinger; in all likelihood both Sage and Hamilton were lying. In any event, Sage said she then returned to her living room and confronted Dillinger again. Again, she said, he denied he was Dillinger.

  “I told him to wait a minute,” Sage went on, “and I went out in the other room and got several pictures which appeared in the newspapers and showed them to him and told him then that if he was John Dillinger he would have a gun on him and if he had no gun he was not Dillinger. He did have a gun in his pocket.”

  According to Sage, the matter was left unresolved. It was not until the next night, she claimed, that Dillinger admitted to Hamilton who he really was. As Sage told it, Hamilton didn’t care if he was Dillinger or not; she loved him. Sage didn’t. She told Purvis she began thinking of ways to alert the police. If so, it took her several weeks to summon the courage. From all available evidence, it was not until July 13 or 14 that she made an effort to betray Dillinger. What Sage didn’t tell Purvis was that on July 12 she had received a letter from the U.S. immigration service. In it she was informed that her appeals to remain in America had been denied. A warrant was issued for her deportation. Almost certainly it was this letter that spurred Sage’s betrayal.9

  At first, Sage said, she was unsure how to proceed. Initially she was inclined to approach her immigration attorney. She said she arranged a meeting, then backed out, unsure whether she could trust him. It was then, she claimed, she thought of Martin Zarkovich. “I called Martin Zarkovich and talked to him in a casual conversation and told him I wanted to talk to him sometime about something,” Sage said. Zarkovich promised to telephone on Sunday, July 15, the day Dillinger watched Sage’s son playing softball.

  According to Sage, and this too contradicts Polly Hamilton’s statements, she kept Hamilton informed of her talks with Zarkovich. “I told Polly that Martin was coming to see me and Polly said not to tell John,” Sage said. “[She said] to tell Martin anything to keep him from coming to the house, and to meet him somewhere else.”

  In any event, it didn’t matter; according to Sage, Zarkovich didn’t call that Sunday. Two nights later, on Tuesday, July 17, the evening he told Art O’Leary to take a vacation, Dillinger left Chicago. According to Sage, Dillinger said he was driving to Wisconsin on business and would return in two or three days. The next morning, Wednesday, July 18, Sage again telephoned Zarkovich. He said he would visit her apartment the next day, Thursday, and did, arriving at 3:00. According to Sage’s account, it was only then that she explained that Hamilton was dating Dillinger, who was scheduled to return the next day. “I told him that I would call him on Saturday and let him know definitely if John Dillinger had returned to Chicago and if he hadn’t, if Polly had heard from him and knew where he was located,” Sage said.

  Friday morning Dillinger returned from his trip. In all likelihood he had been off with Van Meter, studying details of his train robbery; that same day, in fact, the two outlaws swung by Jimmy Murray’s Rain-Bo Inn, where they found Fatso Negri and told him to arrange a meeting with Nelson the next night. According to Sage, Dillinger spent the rest of the day playing cards with Hamilton. The next morning, Saturday, he went with Hamilton, Steve Chiolek, and two girls to the beach. The moment he left, Sage said, she telephoned Zarkovich and gave him the go-ahead to bring in the FBI.

  Sitting in Purvis’s car, Ana Sage said she expected to attend a movie the following evening with Dillinger and Hamilton. They would probably go to the Marbro Theatre, on West Madison Street. As soon as she knew for certain, Sage said, she would telephone the FBI; Purvis gave her his private number, Andover 2330. Sage said she would wear an orange dress to help the agents spot her on the street.

  It took only a few days for the FBI to poke substantial holes in Ana Sage’s story. If Purvis, sitting in the car beside the lake, had any doubts, he kept them to himself. All he wanted was Dillinger, and Ana Sage was handing him to them on a plate.

  The night Ana Sage cut her deal with Purvis, Dillinger drove out to the northwest suburbs to discuss the train robbery with Nelson; if he really was planning to exclude Nelson, he hadn’t told him. Nelson was enthusiastic about the job, and would remain so the rest of his life. As before, only Fatso Negri would ever give details of the meeting, and those were scant. Negri said he arrived late to find Nelson, Dillinger, and Jimmy Murray waiting impatiently for Van Meter. Nelson was cursing. At one point, as they stood waiting for Van Meter, it was mentioned that Negri wanted to return to California.

  Nelson said it was fine with him. But Dillinger objected. “He knows too much,” Dillinger said, smiling as he turned to Negri. “Why not stay here and play ball? We’ll make a lot of money. Then you can go home and go about your business, and no one will find you. You’ll have some real dough in your pockets. I heard Johnny say your folks are poor. You can smother them in money when we’re finished. You can do that, can’t you, Fats?”

  “Sure,” Negri said, “I can stay.”

  When another hour passed with no sign of Van Meter, they decided to call it a night. As they left, Nelson’s last words to Dillinger were a suggestion that he find Van Meter and “kick his skinny ass.” They agreed to meet again two nights later, on Monday.10