The Apartment
John Dillinger saved my life, 68 years after his death by firing squad in a federal ambush outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. J. Edgar Hoover had designated Dillinger public enemy No. 1 and ordered him shot on sight after the gangster humiliated the pug-faced Hoover by calmly machine-gunning his way past the Feds outside Apartment 303 of Lincoln Court in St. Paul, Minn. These days, I'm living in that hideout.
Granted, my girlfriend's name is on the lease. And she's not particularly comfortable with my channeling an infamous previous tenant, who vacated via tommy gun without giving notice. 'The only reason you want to go out with me is so you can live in John Dillinger's apartment,' she told me once. But even Rachel can't deny the draw of a man who robbed more banks and stole more cash in a year than Jesse James did in 16. In 1934, moments after Dillinger was made a ghost outside the Biograph, onlookers dipped handkerchiefs into his blood for a memento of the leading antihero of the Great Depression.
Personally, I didn't even have a minor depression to explain why I needed to believe in Dillinger. In 1998, I was sandwiched by two bikes while in-line skating, fractured my leg in four spots, had orthopedic surgery, felt infectious osteomyelitis creep into my bones and spent the next half a year on my back. Anchored to my bed not by depression but by my quickly atrophying body, I gave up and lived on credit cards and cigarettes for two years. Luckily, I didn't end up, as warned, walking like Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo in 'Midnight Cowboy.' But unable to work, play or enjoy the comforts of kin for so long, I hid out from friends and family. 'It's like you just stopped,' said my last girlfriend; I numbly replied, 'You're right,' helped gather her belongings and held the door open.
It was the agreeable Midwestern thing to do, what we call Minnesota Nice. Now, having found Rachel, who doesn't mind a spiritless middle-aged slacker hanging around, I have become obsessed with the gangster who ate in the same room where we play Yahtzee. Dillinger, born and bred in Indiana, was a Midwestern robber; he even refused to take cash from farmers waiting to make deposits inside banks he knocked off.
Apartment 303 is much the same as it was that March morning when Dillinger and his moll, Evelyn (Billie) Frechette, were talking in the bedroom when the Feds knocked. One morning, I unhooked the chain and re-enacted the scene for Rachel. I used an unconvincing Fred Flintstone bellow for the G-man, a pathetic Betty Boop squeal for Billie and an imitation of Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee in 'The Petrified Forest' for Dillinger. It was a characterization Bogie based entirely on Dillinger, right down to the gangster's jutting elbows.
When the agent asked for Carl Hellman, Billie replied, 'Who?' She'd forgotten their aliases. Meanwhile, I had forgotten that I was wearing only my Bullwinkle boxer shorts. Outside, another sightseeing bus had stopped outside our living-room window. Dozens of tourists were watching my improvised skit. I tried to think what Dillinger would have done. Affecting his level-headedness, I remembered what he told Billie when she told him guns were waiting a few feet away: 'Grab some clothes . . . let's get out of here.' I repeated his line, dived headfirst across the floor like Pete Rose into home plate, slid into my jeans, then escaped down the back stairs.
Next day, I bought Rachel a red plastic tommy gun that shot water 40 feet. The point was to wait for a tour bus, then spray the grounds like the humane Dillinger, who shot high when he poked his machine gun out the apartment door.
His best lessons, however, came in a letter to his sister Audrey. 'I am sending Emmett my wooden gun and I want him to always keep it,' he wrote, referring to the pistol he'd carved, covered with shoe polish and used to force his way out of an 'escape proof' jail. It was Dillinger's most Houdini-like act, and he knew his friend would understand its sui generis magic. 'When you feel blue, all you have to do is look at the gun.'
He never lost hope even when half the country was looking to kill him. And here I had given up for good, as if my immovable body shriveling up was a portent of the inferno. He finished the letter wishfully: 'Give my love to all and I hope I can see you soon. . . . Lots of love from Johnnie.' Within days, Dillinger shot his way out our front door.
And by New Year's 2003, I was eating cake at an aunt's 80th birthday, chawing with family I'd avoided since the end of the previous millennium. 'Where have you been?' they all asked. I didn't answer; I just laughed, my elbows as high as Duke Mantee's. That day, I bought leftover holiday cards. 'Give my love to all and I hope I can see you soon, ' I wrote on each one. They are bound to the friends I disappeared from, though my girlfriend won't let me sign them 'Johnnie.'
LIVES Neal Karlen is the author, most recently, of 'Slouching Towards Fargo.'