by Jack Martin
The Hudson Essex was a light car with a powerful engine. It barreled along the road from South Bend to Chicago, passing everything in sight. At the wheel sat John Herbert Dillinger, America’s most famous bank robber. A tall, darkly handsome man of about thirty he was usually in a good mood, except when someone failed to give the “g” in his last name a hard, Germanic pronunciation. He was not in a good mood now, pushing the Hudson six-cylinder engine for all that it was worth, putting as much distance as possible between the car and the Merchants’ National Bank of South Bend.
“Slow down, John,” grunted the small man who sat beside Dillinger, clutching a Thompson submachine gun. “We’ve left the local bulls far behind. All you’re doing now is attracting the attention of motorcycle cops.” The speaker was Lester Gillis, known as Baby Face Nelson because of his youthful features and small stature. Despite his humorous alias, he was a sociopath who loved killing, especially policemen. In this, he differed from Dillinger, who viewed a killing during a robbery as a sign of bad planning.
“You stupid little bastard!” snarled Dillinger, not even deigning to glance at Nelson. “The cop walked in expecting nothing, didn’t even try to pull his piece. You could have held him at bay with the Tommy gun. Now every cop between Philly and Denver will be after us.”
“Don’t get all pious on me, John. You got no trouble with killing. I’ve seen you do it.”
“Only when money is at stake, you stupid Mick. Greasing that bull won’t bring us a penny.”
“I hate cops and G-men,” snarled Nelson. “I’ll gun down every last one of the bastards I can. I’ll never forget what they did to me in the Chicago lockup!”
“Yeah, right. That cop you left bleeding on the floor of the bank is the one that raped you,” muttered Dillinger sarcastically over the roar of the engine. He was an intelligent man who bitterly resented that his father’s poverty had placed college out of reach, and that the Depression had taken away any prospect of a good job. He reflected on how he had dreamed as a teenager of being an engineer or architect. Dillinger frowned slightly as he realized he could not seem to recall how his petty crime thefts as a kid had led him to this time and place. He shook his head as if to clear it, then made his decision.
Dillinger saw that he was on a long, straight stretch of road, with no sign of cars in either direction. He pulled off the pavement onto a grassy shoulder, stopping the car, but keeping the engine running.
“Hey, what the….” said Nelson, who realized that somehow, Dillinger had produced a .380 Colt automatic and was holding it to his head.
“No sudden moves,” Dillinger said quietly. With his left hand, Dillinger deftly plucked Nelson’s pistol from under his coat, and tossed it out the open driver’s side window. Then he took the heavy Tommy gun from Nelson’s grasp. Nelson did not resist, although his face had turned nearly purple with rage. Clumsily, Dillinger shoved the chopper out of the window, where it clattered metallically on the edge of the pavement.
“Now, this is where you get out, Nelson. The witnesses at the bank will surely have recognized a mean little shrimp like you. All the bulls in two states will be looking for you, and I’m not going to be there when they find you.”
Nelson finally spoke. “So you’re going to stiff me of my share and leave me defenseless when the cops come! You Goddamn, lousy—”
“GET OUT OF THE CAR!” Nelson had never heard the soft-voiced Dillinger shout before. He scrambled for the handle, found it, and half fell out of the Essex. Never taking his eyes off Nelson, Dillinger reached into the back seat and brought a bulging valise into the front. Unlatching it, he began throwing bundles of currency at the feet of an astonished Nelson. Finally, he stopped.
“That’s about fifteen grand. I’m leaving that with you, along with the guns I threw out the other side. That should give you a chance.” Dillinger reached over and slammed the passenger door shut. Slipping his automatic into his shoulder holster, he gunned the engine and put the car back on the pavement. As Dillinger rapidly sent the car through second and into third gear, Nelson ran to the Thompson, picked it up, worked the bolt, and took aim at the rapidly disappearing vehicle. With a snarl of disappointment, he lowered the weapon. Dillinger was already over a hundred yards away, well beyond the range of the Thompson’s .45 caliber round.
Ana Cumpanas sat at the desk in the small bedroom that served as her office, frowning over her ledger. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. America was supposed to be the richest country on Earth. Men always wanted women, and would pay as much as they could afford for them. In America, that would be more than anywhere else, at least if she provided a quality product. And she did provide a quality product. Her girls were attractive, healthy, and free of obvious signs of disease. Furthermore, she made sure that her girls were at least superficially educated and fluent. As an experienced madam, she understood that the best paying customers often wanted company as much as sex, and she did her best to provide both.
No, this small, somewhat shabby apartment building on Chicago’s busy Halsted Street should have been a gold mine. It was not. Times were hard, and the number of men who could afford Cumpanas’ prices had declined steeply. Then there were the leeches, Nitti’s Italian bastards who demanded “protection money,” and even worse, the so-called law—policemen and aldermen—who demanded “consideration” for her violation of the anti-prostitution laws. Many of them were more than willing to tolerate, even enjoy, her establishment most of the time. But on the first day of each month, they would show up, shocked to find vice in their pure city of Chicago and demand money to salve their shattered nerves. Since she paid her whores better than most brothel owners, this left surprisingly little for her at the end of the month.
She shook out her long black hair then stood up from the desk and stretched, revealing a tall, lithe figure. She then took a pack of Camels from the desk, shook out one to place in her mouth, and lit it with a gold-plated lighter. Breathing deeply, she expelled the smoke through her nostrils and strolled over to the window and looked through the curtain. Hearing a commotion directly below her, she looked down at the sidewalk outside the front entrance to her apartment building. She was stunned to see Gino, her massive, if dim-witted bouncer, arguing with a beefy man in an ill-fitting suit and a straw boater. The stranger pulled a revolver with his right hand, and with his left, he produced some sort of badge. It took Gino a moment to process the situation before he nodded and led the stranger through the door.
Cumpanas felt her heart lurch with panic. She strode quickly over to her desk and crushed the cigarette out in an ashtray. She then grabbed her ledger full of incriminating information and, after a moment’s thought, ran to the window, opened it, and slid the ledger onto the eight-inch brick ledge that circled the building. She believed—no, hoped—that even a bull doing a thorough search of the room would not think to open the window and examine the ledge. Just as she quietly closed the window, she heard a knock at the door. Working to control her breath, she strode to the middle of the room, smoothing her hair and bright orange dress before calling out, “Yes?”
The door was violently kicked open, and the stranger lumbered in, revolver now holstered but clearly visible, a smile creasing his flabby face. Behind him, the bovine Gino was stuttering, “Mrs. Cumpanas, I tried to tell him you don’t see no people this time of morning.”
“That’s all right, Gino,” she replied in a throaty voice redolent of Eastern Europe. “Go downstairs and watch the front door.”
The bouncer half-saluted, turned, and walked out of sight, his heavy tread fading away.
In a cold voice she said to the newcomer, “Who are you, and what is your business with me?”
“Top of the morning to you, Miss Ana Sage,” replied the big man in a voice shaded with an Irish lilt. “Or rather, should I say, Mrs. Ana Cumpanas, the name under which you entered this fine country of ours? I’m Patrick Burke of the immigration service.”
The cold organ that was her heart seemed t
o skip a beat. “Immigration?”
“Oh, bless me yes, Mrs. Cumpanas.”
“I don’t know what you could want with me. I received my naturalization papers four years ago.”
“You did indeed, lass, you did indeed,” replied Burke in a friendly voice. “Ah, you see, you identified yourself as Ana Sage, a person who I fear does not exist. Instead, a little bird has told us that you really are Ana Cumpanas.” He whipped a dog-eared notebook out of a side pocket and consulted a page towards the middle. “Ana Cumpanas. Born in eastern part of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1889.” He glanced up at her and smiled. “May I say you carry your forty-four years well?” He turned his attention back to his notebook. “You have a police record with the Kingdom of Roumania. Arrested in 1923 for prostitution, procuring, and—bless my soul—theft and moral turpitude. Escaped custody by seducing a guard—what a bad girl we’ve been.” The man continued. “Then obtained a falsified passport and immigration visa to enter our fine, upstanding country. Tsk. Tsk.”
“But I am now an American citizen.”
“Well, that’s the pity of the thing, Mrs. Cumpanas. No one of low moral character may be admitted to this country. You concealed your low moral character, and as a result, your citizenship was obtained by fraud. It can be revoked for that reason, and your sweet self can be returned to the welcoming arms of Roumania.”
Cumpanas was genuinely shocked. “But … but … I have been in this country now for over ten years! Why do you raise all this now?”
The smile left Burke’s face. “Now that be the pity of the matter. You could say that there are many more deserving of deportation that yourself, and Patrick Burke wouldn’t call you a liar. But when an alderman in this fine and honest city of Chicago levies an accusation with my superiors, and they give me my orders, now I ask you, what am I to do?” His face turned dark, angry. “I have heard, Mrs. Cumpanas, that you refused to increase your bribes to the said alderman, who then decided to peach on you to Uncle Sam. If things ran as Patrick Burke would have them, he’d be the one thrown out of the country, not your lovely self. Sad to say, things never have been run as Patrick Burke would have it, and probably never will.”
Cumpanas was proud and seldom begged. This was one of those few times she would beg.
“Please … I would have paid him if I had the money, but I do not. Don’t send me back to Roumania. You have no idea what it’s like. The Iron Guard under that bastard Antonescu takes what they want from whoever they want, kills at random—Jews, Gypsies, or anyone who doesn’t worship Antonescu or that bastard in Germany. Please.”
Burke looked genuinely sorrowful. “Far be it for an Irishman to deny that the world is a hard place. The sad fact is that me, and my superiors, have no choice against the kind of political pressure being brought.” He reached into his inner coat pocket, removed a paper, and threw it down on her desk. “This is a summons to appear in our offices in ten days’ time for your hearing. Please be sure to show up. And don’t be thinking of leaving town. You won’t get far, and I’ll be very unhappy if you put me to the trouble of tracking you down.”
Burke nodded and tipped his hat to Cumpanas. Then he left the room, closing the door behind him. Ana Cumpanas stared at the document on her desk as if it were a poisonous snake.
It was 2:00 in the morning, and Cumpanas was still tossing in her bed, unable to sleep. But it was not the occasional noises from the rooms of her whores that kept her wide awake. After all, she had trained them to be relatively decorous in their behavior with the customers. No, it was the thought—and fear—of being sent back to Roumania—the Roumania that Antonescu and the Iron Guard were busily turning into an approximation of Hell on Earth. Her body was telling her to run. Her mind was telling her that she didn’t have the money to run, or for that matter, get very far if she did. Filled with terror of deportation to Roumania, she gazed wide-eyed at the ceiling, even in the total darkness of the room.
Sighing, she decided to give up on sleep. Turning on the lamp on the table beside her bed, she sat up, swung her legs around, and slipped on her slippers. She grabbed a pack of Camels she kept next to the lamp, shook out a cigarette, ignited it, and took several deep drags in rapid succession. Suddenly, there was a slight rapping on her window, which startled her and she dropped her cigarette. Quickly, she ground it out with her heel. Then she grabbed a snub-nosed revolver from the nightstand and carefully approached the window. She lightly slid the edge of the curtain aside and peered through the glass. She nearly cried with relief. Throwing her gun onto the bed, she unlatched the window and carefully drew it up. A soft-sided valise was thrown into the room and was immediately followed by an athletic man who crouched, his feet on the sill and then fell forward, catching himself on his hands, balancing his body upright. The acrobatic visitor walked on his hands about the room, then with a smooth spring, landed upright on his feet. Cumpanas giggled.
“John, you stupid bastard! I could’ve shot you!”
A grinning John Dillinger folded her into his arms and planted a deep, lingering kiss on her lips. Then he said, “Ana, you’re such a bad shot, I figured the risk was worth it.”
Cumpanas stood back and looked at him seriously. “It’s not that I’m not glad to see you, but what brings you hear now, at this time? And why through the window?”
Dillinger himself turned serious. “I’m hot, Ana. That bloodthirsty bastard Nelson machine-gunned a bull when it wasn’t necessary. Can’t count on buying protection from our boys in blue. No matter how much they’re on the take, you know how they feel about cop-killers.”
“Where’s Nelson now?” Cumpanas said, uneasiness in her voice. She did not know the word “psychopath,” but she knew one when she saw one, and she had seen the diminutive Nelson.
“Dumped him on the road, with guns and half the swag. If he were smart, that would allow him to lay low, maybe get out the country. But I don’t expect him to be smart. He may even try to track me down. That’s why I need someone I can trust to stay with.”
“Honey, I hate to tell you this, but you aren’t safe here. The Feds are on me, said they’d deport me.”
The normally cheerful Dillinger frowned. “The hell you say! You’ve got your citizenship papers and everything.”
“They say they have proof I lied on my citizenship application.”
“How’d they get that, after all these years?”
“I’m not sure, but I can make a guess. The others running fancy houses in this burg know I get more than my share of the best paying customers. They’d like me out of competition, so they did a little digging. Wouldn’t have been hard. Whores, even my whores, don’t keep secrets very well. Anyway, they’ve given me an order to appear at a hearing next week.”
The expression on Dillinger’s face turned thoughtful. “I still think I’m safer here for the time being. The Feds won’t be busting down your doors, so long as you show up to the hearing. Those things always take time.” He gestured at the bulging valise. “See that? It’s got $45,000 inside. I’ve got another job coming up that’ll double that. Then you and me’ll get some fake papers, and we’re over the border into Canada. Lots of nice places to go from there. You and me, baby.”
Cumpanas smirked. “‘Just you and me, Johnnie?’ You never struck me as a one-woman guy.”
Dillinger smiled. “Maybe it’s time for me to settle down. Could do a lot worse than you.”
Cumpanas laughed. “Yeah, you sure could baby.” She folded her arms around the handsome gangster and kissed him hard.
In mere moments, they were on the bed with a pile of clothes scattered on the floor around them.
Special Agent Melvin Purvis stood at the entrance to the St. Peter Catholic Cemetery in Skokie, smoking a Camel, watching two of his agents and the county coroner huddle over a still form. A short, intense man, he took a last drag on his cigarette, crushed it underfoot, and walked over to the group.
“Well boys, is it Nelson?” he said with a Deep South Carol
inian accent.
“It’s him, boss,” replied one of the agents. “A little hard to tell at first. A slug took him in the face, which must have also been skinned up by his being dumped from a moving car. Still, there’s no doubt.”
Purvis turned his attention to the doctor from the coroner’s office. “The bullet to the head do it for him?”
The doctor remained hunched over the body and did not look up. “Couldn’t say, Mr. Purvis. So far, I count at least a dozen bullet wounds. And the hell of it is, judging by the bleeding, none of them killed him immediately. Going by the rigor, he died about four hours ago.”
“No sign of Dillinger?” asked Purvis moodily.
“No sir,” responded the other agent. “There were plenty of witnesses to the shootout at the motel. All agree there was just Nelson and a woman, probably his wife.”
“And our two men?”
The agent could not look Purvis in the eye. “One is dead, the other’s dying. No chance he’ll pull through, according to the docs. At least they died killing Nelson.”
Purvis grunted. Two more letters to write. Goddamnit. Two more widows, two more sets of fatherless children. He could literally feel his blood pressure rise as he thought of all the death and grief Nelson and Dillinger had inflicted. Over forty murders to their credit—civilians, local police, G-men. True, most of them had been Nelson’s, but Dillinger had contributed his share. And the goddamn newspapers were making heroes out of the mad-dog killers! This was always the way with the public not directly victimized by such parasites. Purvis strongly suspected that if you dug back far enough, you would find Robin Hood to be a murderous whoremaster and the Sheriff of Nottingham a selfless protector of the public.
Purvis walked over to the body and, to everyone’s surprise, kicked it viciously in the head. “Bates,” he snarled at one of his men, “find the nearest telephone and get on the line to the Chicago office. Nelson’s bitch-of-a-wife won’t be able to get far. Take her alive, and find out the places Dillinger might hide out.”