Arts The Cops “I Can’t Stay Focused” Tour Blog, Installment 2
Thursday, March 16th
We arrive in Austin at 4:30am after a 16-hour drive from Tucson. That show left us with near-fatal hangovers induced by a raucous night at Club Congressa wonderful place, but dangerous. It’s a club/hotel where infamous bank robber John Dillinger and his gang were supposedly nabbed by authorities after a fire in the hotel forced them out. They kindly offer us complimentary rooms, which naturally encourages us to misbehave. The bill includes fellow Pacific North Westerners Pink Mountaintops, with whom we make fast friends and enjoy endless drinks throughout the late night together.
We also meet a colorful and drunken fellow in Tucson. The nameless dude is from Sequim, Washington, sells Kirby vacuums for a living and was very excited to see a band from Seattle. He buys several rounds of drinks for us and also manages to steal a CD from our merch table, which we eventually sign.
The morning comes too early, but we buck up and shove off to Austin. Long drives can warp your senses. We do our best to pass time, stopping at numerous truck stops that sell $200 dream catchers and tickets to see “the Thing.” Apparently “the Thing” is a mysterious little shack behind a gas station where you pay a dollar to get in and witness some inexplicable phenomena or entity. We choose to save our money for beer. We have a chance run-in with Earlimart at a gas station in the vast desert. The anticipation for Austin is high and we push on through a foggy, deer-filled night. The scent of the van is questionable.
That's far out that you stayed at the Congress Hotel. Did you stay in room 329? That's where two of Dillinger's gang stayed. Dillinger's gang wasn't actually captured there, though.
During late January 1934, Dillinger's gang: Charles Makley, Russell Clark, Harry Pierpont, and Dillinger (along with their girlfriends) were cooling it in Tuscon after a bank robbery in Chicago where Dillinger machine gunned a police officer to death.
The Tuscon police made the FBI and all the beleagured cops of the midwest look ridiculous by cooly and calmly nabbing the four men and their three female companions (without firing a shot) in four separate arrests around town in a matter of hours.
The gang had actually been hanging out and partying in town for several days—2 of them, Makley and Clark, staying at the Congress Hotel.
The Congress figured into the gang's capture this way: There was a fire in the hotel. After evacuating, Makley and Clark realized they had left their guns back in the hotel room. A startled fireman, a guy named William Benedict, found the pair propping up a ladder against a third floor window. Makley and Clark explained that they were trying to rescue their luggage. Benedict ran upstairs, smashed in room 329 and retrieved a heavy fabric box for them. (Inside the box, unbeknownst to Benedict—a set of submachine guns.)
Makley, introducing himself as "Mr. Davies," tipped and thanked Benedict.
Three days later, Benedict recognized "Davies's" face while leafing thru a True Detective magazine. It was Dillinger gang member Charles Makley.
He contacted the police. The police called the Congress Hotel and learned that "Mr. Davies" had had his stuff moved to another address. Following that lead, the cops sprung into action, and were quickly able to arrest the gang at a few different spots all over town...inlcuding nabbing Makley at the address where the Congress told the police they had been instructed to ship the luggage.