Melvin Purvis here, making amends.  Well, that’s a matter of opinion; I could just be setting things straight, clearing up misunderstandings, not saying sorry for any of it.  I just thought that maybe by visiting your grave this one time, it might show you that I respected you.

Can you here me?  Hope so, otherwise I’m just rambling on to nothing and no one.  

I’m not a man who enjoys or takes pleasure in death.  I never have, never will.  However, I’ve never really had a problem with it either, suspects and criminals die all the time--either from our guns or the electric chair.

But yours, Mr. Dillinger, it did sting a bit.  Enough to make my eyes water and my throat close up as I walked away from that theater.  I had to walk away right after it was done, you know, nothing personal.

Well, maybe it was.  You see, I’m a normal guy.  One who enjoys the simple joys and satisfactions that life can offer, but you had to make everything so damn complicated.

You couldn’t leave me alone, could you?  You got into my head, even before I met you.  You were so confident, so headstrong and arrogant, so very sure of yourself and your success.

You were like me.  See, that was what really got me, Dillinger.  I often imagine how it would have been if our roles had been switched, but then, would we have made all that history together?

Nah, I suppose not.  You had your bank jobs, your jailbreaks, and Billie...  And I, well, I guess you could say I had you to chase.  That’s what hurts too; I won’t have that chase anymore.  I no longer have a road to run down with you at the end of it, so what’s to do?

All the lives lost, all the pain, surely I was not the only one who felt it, John Dillinger.  Hell, I know the feelings only went one-way from my end, but you at least must have noticed them.

Dammit, it’s still hard to think about.  After we shot you down, you were no longer John Dillinger.  Just a stiff, a corpse, with not a scrap left of the man I knew.  Maybe that’s why I didn’t cry until later, much later, when it hit me that you were really gone, and that we, that is to say I, was your downfall.

See what I mean?  I was a man who knew what he wanted, I had dreams and ambitions; my feelings about anything were absolute and easy to figure out.  Now look at what you’ve done, I’ve never stopped questioning and second-guessing myself since.

You know that I still have it, the gun that did it.  I don’t reckon it matters to you about the others that shot you down, but it may have shocked you that I was there.  Maybe not, I am a cop, Johnny-boy.  The tip off, the signal, it wasn’t really me.  I was the one who performed it, but I don’t consider it to be me who did those things.

The real me, the one that cared about you in such a, well, such an unusual way wouldn’t have wanted it like this.  It was my duty though, but it hurts so that this gun has started looking more and more friendly when there’s nothing else to ponder.

I don’t know what we had, what kind of connection it was, but I’m glad it was there.  It’s something to look back on, to smile at.  

I thought about going to see Billie, as she’s the only one I guess I could ever talk to about this, but without you there neither of us would be complete enough for such contact.  I know you loved her, looked at her with a longing that you’ve never shown me, but that’s all done and finished, and I don’t begrudge you for any of it.

Thank you, public enemy number one.  I’ll see you in time, however you may measure it now.