In Cold Blood (27 page)

Perry said, “You could be wrong. And if you are, it means The Corner.” Neither one had ever before referred to the ultimate penalty in the State of Kansas—the gallows, or death in The Corner, as the inmates of Kansas State Penitentiary have named the shed that houses the equipment required to hang a man.

Dick said, “The comedian. You kill me.” He struck a match,
intending to smoke a cigarette, but something seen by the light of the flaring match brought him to his feet and carried him across the barn to a cow stall. A car was parked inside the stall, a black-and-white two-door 1956 Chevrolet. The key was in the ignition.

DEWEY WAS DETERMINED TO CONCEAL from “the civilian population” any knowledge of a major break in the Clutter case—so determined that he decided to take into his confidence Garden City’s two professional town criers: Bill Brown, editor of the Garden City
Telegram
, and Robert Wells, manager of the local radio station, KIUL. In outlining the situation, Dewey emphasized his reasons for considering secrecy of the first importance: “Remember, there’s a possibility these men are innocent.”

It was a possibility too valid to dismiss. The informer, Floyd Wells, might easily have invented his story; such tale-telling was not infrequently undertaken by prisoners who hoped to win favor or attract official notice. But even if the man’s every word was gospel, Dewey and his colleagues had not yet unearthed one bit of solid supporting evidence—“courtroom evidence.” What had they discovered that could not be interpreted as plausible, though exceptional, coincidence? Just because Smith had traveled to Kansas to visit his friend Hickock, and just because Hickock possessed a gun of the caliber used to commit the crime, and just because the suspects had arranged a false alibi to account for their whereabouts the night of November 14, they were not necessarily mass murderers. “But we’re pretty sure this is it. We all think so. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have set up a seventeen-state alarm, from Arkansas to Oregon. But keep in mind: It could be years before we catch them. They may have separated. Or left the country. There’s a chance they’ve gone to Alaska—not hard to get lost in Alaska. The longer they’re free, the less of a case we’ll
have. Frankly, as matters stand, we don’t have much of a case anyhow. We could nab those sonsabitches tomorrow, and never be able to prove spit.”

Dewey did not exaggerate. Except for two sets of boot prints, one bearing a diamond pattern and the other a Cat’s Paw design, the slayers had left not a single clue. Since they seemed to take such care, they had undoubtedly got rid of the boots long ago. And the radio, too—assuming that it was they who had stolen it, which was something Dewey still hesitated to do, for it appeared to him “ludicrously inconsistent” with the magnitude of the crime and the manifest cunning of the criminals, and “inconceivable” that these men had entered a house expecting to find a money-filled safe, and then, not finding it, had thought it expedient to slaughter the family for perhaps a few dollars and a small portable radio. “Without a confession, we’ll never get a conviction,” he said. “That’s my opinion. And that’s why we can’t be too cautious. They think they’ve got away with it. Well, we don’t want them to know any different. The safer they feel, the sooner we’ll grab them.”

But secrets are an unusual commodity in a town the size of Garden City. Anyone visiting the sheriff’s office, three under-furnished, overcrowded rooms on the third floor of the county courthouse, could detect an odd, almost sinister atmosphere. The hurry-scurry, the angry hum of recent weeks had departed; a quivering stillness now permeated the premises. Mrs. Richardson, the office secretary and a very down-to-earth person, had acquired overnight a dainty lot of whispery, tiptoe mannerisms, and the men she served, the sheriff and his staff, Dewey and the imported team of K.B.I. agents, crept about conversing in hushed tones. It was as though, like huntsmen hiding in a forest, they were afraid that any abrupt sound or movement would warn away approaching beasts.

People talked. The Trail Room of the Warren Hotel, a coffee shop that Garden City businessmen treat as though it were a private club, was a murmuring cave of speculation and rumor. An eminent citizen, so one heard, was on the point of arrest. Or it was now known that the crime was the work of killers hired by enemies
of the Kansas Wheat Growers’ Association, a progressive organization in which Mr. Clutter had played a large role. Of the many stories circulating, the most nearly accurate was contributed by a prominent car dealer (who refused to disclose its source): “Seems there was a man who worked for Herb way back yonder around ’47 or ’48. Ordinary ranch hand. Seems he went to prison, state prison, and while he was there he got to thinking what a rich man Herb was. So about a month ago, when they let him loose, the first thing he did was come on out here to rob and kill those people.”

But seven miles westward, in the village of Holcomb, not a hint was heard of impending sensations, one reason being that for some while the Clutter tragedy had been a banned topic at both of the community’s principal gossip-dispensaries—the post office and Hartman’s Café. “Myself, I don’t want to hear another word,” said Mrs. Hartman. “I told them, We can’t go on like this. Distrusting everybody, scaring each other to death. What I say is, if you want to talk about it, stay out of my place.” Myrt Clare took quite as strong a stand. “Folks come in here to buy a nickel’s worth of postage and think they can spend the next three hours and thirty-three minutes turning the Clutters inside out. Pickin’ the wings off other people. Rattlesnakes, that’s all they are. I don’t have the time to listen. I’m in business—I’m a representative of the government of the United States. Anyway, it’s morbid. Al Dewey and those hot-shot cops from Topeka and Kansas City—supposed to be sharp as turpentine. But I don’t know a soul who still thinks they’ve got hell’s chance of catching the one done it. So I say the sane thing to do is shut up. You live until you die, and it doesn’t matter
how
you go; dead’s dead. So why carry on like a sackful of sick cats just because Herb Clutter got his throat cut? Anyway, it’s morbid. Polly Stringer, from over at the schoolhouse? Polly Stringer was in here this morning. She said it’s only now, after over a month, only now those kids are beginning to quiet down. Which made me think: What if they
do
arrest somebody? If they do, it’s bound to be somebody everybody knows. And that would fan the fire for sure, get the pot boiling just when it had started to cool off. Ask me, we’ve had enough excitement.”

IT WAS EARLY, NOT YET nine, and Perry was the first customer at the Washateria, a self-service laundry. He opened his fat straw suitcase, extracted a wad of briefs and socks and shirts (some his, some Dick’s), tossed them into a washer, and fed the machine a lead slug—one of many bought in Mexico.

Perry was well acquainted with the workings of such emporiums, having often patronized them, and happily, since usually he found it “so relaxing” to sit quietly and watch clothes get clean. Not today. He was too apprehensive. Despite his warnings, Dick had won out. Here they were, back in Kansas City—dead broke, to boot, and driving a stolen car! All night they had raced the Iowa Chevrolet through thick rain, stopping twice to siphon gas, both times from vehicles parked on the empty streets of small sleeping towns. (This was Perry’s job, one at which he judged himself “absolutely tops. Just a short piece of rubber hose, that’s my cross-country credit card.”) On reaching Kansas City at sunrise, the travelers had gone first to the airport, where in the men’s lavatory they washed and shaved and brushed their teeth; two hours later, after a nap in the airport lounge, they returned to the city. It was then that Dick had dropped his partner at the Washateria, promising to come back for him within the hour.

When the laundry was clean and dry, Perry repacked the suitcase. It was past ten. Dick, supposedly off somewhere “hanging paper,” was overdue. He sat down to wait, choosing a bench on which, an arm’s length away, a woman’s purse rested—tempting him to snake his hand around inside it. But the appearance of its owner, the burliest of several women now employing the establishment’s facilities, deterred him. Once, when he was a running-wild child in San Francisco, he and a “Chink kid” (Tommy Chan? Tommy Lee?) had worked together as a “purse-snatching team.” It amused Perry—cheered him up—to remember some of their escapades. “Like one time we sneaked up on an old lady, really old, and Tommy grabbed her handbag, but she wouldn’t let go, she was a regular tiger. The harder he tugged one way, the harder she tugged the other. Then she saw me, and said, ‘Help
me! Help me!’ and I said, ‘Hell, lady, I’m helping
him!
’—and bopped her good. Put her on the pavement. Ninety cents was all we got—I remember exactly. We went to a Chink restaurant and ate ourselves under the table.”

Things hadn’t changed much. Perry was twenty-odd years older and a hundred pounds heavier, and yet his material situation had improved not at all. He was still (and wasn’t it incredible, a person of his intelligence, his talents?) an urchin dependent, so to say, on stolen coins.

A clock on the wall kept catching his eye. At half past ten he began to worry; by eleven his legs were pulsing with pain, which was always, with him, a sign of approaching panic—“bubbles in my blood.” He ate an aspirin, and tried to blot out—blur, at least—the brilliantly vivid cavalcade gliding across his mind, a procession of dire visions: Dick in the hands of the law, perhaps arrested while writing a phony check, or for committing a minor traffic violation (and found to be driving a “hot” car). Very likely, at this very instant Dick sat trapped inside a circle of red-necked detectives. And they weren’t discussing trivialities—bad checks or stolen automobiles. Murder, that was the topic, for somehow the connection that Dick had been so certain no one could make had been made. And right
now
a carload of Kansas City police were on their way to the Washateria.

But, no, he was imagining too much. Dick would never do that—“spill his guts.” Think of how often he had heard him say, “They can beat me blind, I’ll never tell them anything.” Of course, Dick was a “blowhard”; his toughness, as Perry had come to know, existed solely in situations where he unarguably had the upper hand. Suddenly, gratefully, he thought of a less desperate reason for Dick’s prolonged absence. He’d gone to visit his parents. A risky thing to do, but Dick was “devoted” to them, or claimed to be, and last night during the long rainy ride he had told Perry, “I’d sure like to see my folks. They wouldn’t mention it. I mean, they wouldn’t tell the parole officer—do anything to get us into trouble. Only I’m ashamed to. I’m afraid of what my mother would say. About the checks. And going off like we did. But I wish I could call them, hear how they are.” However, that was
not possible, for the Hickock home was without a telephone; otherwise, Perry would have rung up to see if Dick was there.

Another few minutes, and he was again convinced that Dick was under arrest. His leg pains flared up, flashed through his body, and the laundry odors, the steamy stench, all at once sickened him, picked him up and propelled him out the door. He stood at the curb retching like “a drunk with the dry heaves.” Kansas City! Hadn’t he known Kansas City was bad luck, and
begged
Dick to keep away? Now, maybe now, Dick was sorry he hadn’t listened. And he wondered: But what about me, “with a dime or two and a bunch of lead slugs in my pocket”? Where could he go? Who would help him? Bobo? Fat chance!? But her husband might. If Fred Johnson had followed his own inclination, he would have guaranteed employment for Perry after he left prison, thus helping him obtain a parole. But Bobo wouldn’t permit it; she had said it would only lead to trouble, and possibly danger. Then she had written to Perry to tell him precisely that. One fine day he’d pay her back, have a little fun—talk to her, advertise his abilities, spell out in detail the things he was capable of doing to people like her, respectable people, safe and smug people, exactly like Bobo. Yes, let her know just how dangerous he could be, and watch her eyes. Surely that was worth a trip to Denver? Which was what he’d do—go to Denver and visit the Johnsons. Fred Johnson would stake him to a new start in life; he’d have to, if he wanted ever to be rid of him.

Then Dick came up to him at the curb. “Hey, Perry,” he said. “You sick?”

The sound of Dick’s voice was like an injection of some potent narcotic, a drug that, invading his veins, produced a delirium of colliding sensations: tension and relief, fury and affection. He advanced toward Dick with clenched fists. “You sonofabitch,” he said.

Dick grinned, and said, “Come on. We’re eating again.”

But explanations were in order—apologies, too—and over a bowl of chili at the Kansas City hash house that Dick liked best, the Eagle Buffet, Dick supplied them. “I’m sorry, honey. I knew you’d get the bends. Think I’d tangled with a bull. But I was
having such a run of luck it seemed like I ought to let it ride.” He explained that after leaving Perry he had gone to the Markl Buick Company, the firm that had once employed him, hoping to find a set of license plates to substitute for the hazardous Iowa plates on the abducted Chevrolet. “Nobody saw me come or go. Markl used to do a considerable wrecked-car trade. Sure enough, out back there was a smashed-up De Soto with Kansas tags.” And where were they now? “On our buggy, pal.”

Having made the switch, Dick had dropped the Iowa plates in a municipal reservoir. Then he’d stopped at a filling station where a friend worked, a former high-school classmate named Steve, and persuaded Steve to cash a check for fifty dollars, which was something he’d not done before—“rob a buddy.” Well, he’d never see Steve again. He was “cutting out” of Kansas City tonight, this time really forever. So why not fleece a few old friends? With that in mind, he’d called on another ex-classmate, a drugstore clerk. The take was thereby increased to seventy-five dollars. “Now, this afternoon, we’ll roll that up to a couple hundred. I’ve made a list of places to hit. Six or seven, starting right here,” he said, meaning the Eagle Buffet, where everybody—the bartender and waiters—knew and liked him, and called him Pickles (in honor of his favorite food). “Then Florida, here we come. How about it, honey? Didn’t I promise you we’d spend Christmas in Miami? Just like all the millionaires?”