hurt us again. And afraid because he thinks we won’t forgive
him. Like we always have. I And will. You have children, Mr. Nye?»
He nodded.
«Then you know how it is.»
«One thing more. Have you any idea, any at all, where your son might have gone?»
«Open a map,» said Mr. Hickock, «Point your finger — maybe that’s it.»
It was late afternoon, and the driver of the car, a middle-aged traveling salesman who shall here
be known as Mr. Bell, was tired. He longed to stop for a short nap. However, he was only a
hundred miles from his destination — Omaha; Nebraska, the headquarters of the large meat
packing company for which he worked. A company rule forbade its salesmen to pick up
hitchhikers, but Mr. Bell often disobeyed it, particularly if he was bored and drowsy, so when he
saw the two young men standing by the side of the road, he immediately braked his car.
They looked to him like «O.K. boys.» The taller of the two, a wiry type with dirty-blond, crew-cut
hair, had an engaging grin and a polite manner, and his partner, the «runty» one, holding a
harmonica in his right hand and, in his left, a swollen straw suit-case, seemed «nice enough,» shy
but amiable. In any event, Mr. Bell, entirely unaware of his guests’ intentions, which included
throttling him with a belt and leaving him, robbed of his car, his money, and his life, concealed in
a prairie grave, was glad to have company, somebody to talk to and keep him awake until he
arrived at Omaha.
He introduced himself, then asked them their names. The affable young man with whom he was
sharing the front seat said his name was Dick. «And that’s Perry,» he said, winking at Perry, who
was seated directly behind the driver. «I can ride you boys as far as Omaha.»
Dick said, «Thank you, sir. Omaha’s where we were headed. Hoped we might find some work.»
What kind of work were they hunting? The salesman thought perhaps he could help.
Dick said, «I’m a first-class car painter. Mechanic, too. I’m used to making real money. My buddy
and me, we just been down in old Mexico. Our idea was, we wanted to live there. But hell, they
won’t pay any wages. Nothing a white man could live off. «Ah, Mexico. Mr. Bell explained that he
had honeymooned in Cuernavaca. «We always wanted to go back. But it’s hard to move around
when you’ve got five kids.»
Perry, as he later recalled, thought, Five kids — well, too bad. And listening to Dick’s conceited chatter, hearing him start to describe his Mexican «amorous conquests,» he thought how «queer»
it was, «egomaniacal.» Imagine going all out to impress a man you were going to kill, a man who
wouldn’t be alive ten minutes from now — not if the plan he and Dick had devised went smoothly.
And why shouldn’t it? The setup was ideal — exactly what they had been looking for during the
three days it had taken them to hitchhike from California to Nevada and across Nevada and
Wyoming into Nebraska. Until now, however, a suitable victim had eluded them. Mr. Bell was the
first prosperous-seeming solitary traveler to offer them a lift. Their other hosts had been either
truck drivers or soldiers — and, once, a pair of Negro prize fighters driving a lavender Cadillac. But
Mr. Bell was perfect. Perry felt inside a pocket of the leather windbreaker he was wearing. The
pocket bulged with a bottle of Bayer aspirin and with a jagged, fist-size rock wrapped in a yellow
cotton cowboy hand-kerchief. He unfastened his belt, a Navajo belt, silver-buckled and studded
with turquoise beads; he took it off, flexed it, placed it across his knees. He waited. He watched
the Nebraska prairie rolling by, and fooled with his harmonica — made up a tune and played it and
waited for Dick to pronounce the agreed-upon signal: «Hey, Perry, pass me a match.» Whereupon
Dick was supposed to seize the steering wheel, while Perry, wielding his hand-kerchief-wrapped
rock, belabored the salesman’s head — «opened it up.» Later, along some quiet side road, use
would be made of the belt with the sky-blue beads.
Meanwhile, Dick and the condemned man were trading dirty jokes. Their laughter irritated Perry;
he especially disliked Mr. Bell’s outbursts — hearty barks that sounded very much like the laughter
of Tex John Smith, Perry’s father. The memory of his father’s laughter increased his tension; his
head hurt, his knees ached. He chewed three aspirin and swallowed them dry. Jesus! He thought
he might vomit, or faint; he felt certain he would if Dick delayed «the party» much longer. The light
was dimming, the road was straight, with neither house nor human being in view — nothing but
land winter-stripped and as somber as sheet iron. Now was the time, now. He stared at Dick, as
though to communicate this realization, and a few small signs — a twitching eyelid, a mustache of
sweat drops — told him that Dick had already reached the same conclusion.
And yet when Dick next spoke, it was only to launch another joke. «Here’s a riddle. The riddle is:
What’s the similarity between a trip to the bathroom and a trip to the cemetery?» He grinned.
«Give up?»
«Give up.»
«When you gotta go, you gotta go!»
Mr. Bell barked.
«Hey, Perry, pass me a match.»
But just as Perry raised his hand, and the rock was on the verge of descent, something
extraordinary occurred — what Perry later called «a goddam miracle.» The miracle was the sudden
appearance of a third hitchhiker, a Negro soldier, for whom the charitable salesman stopped.
«Say, that’s pretty cute,» he said as his savior ran toward the car. «When you gotta go, you gotta
go!»
December 16, 1959, Las Vegas, Nevada. Age and weather had removed the first letter and the
last — an R and an S — thereby coining a somewhat ominous word: OOM. The word, faintly present
upon a sun-warped sign, seemed
appropriate to the place it publicized, which was, as Harold Nye wrote in his official K.B.I. report,
«run-down and shabby, the lowest type of hotel or rooming house.» The report continued: «Until a
few years ago (according to information supplied by the Las Vegas police), it was one of the
biggest cathouses in the West. Then fire destroyed the main building, and the remaining portion
was converted into a cheap-rent rooming house.» The «lobby» was unfurnished, except for a
cactus plant six feet tall and a make shift reception desk; it was also uninhabited. The detective
clapped his hands. Eventually, a voice, female, but not very feminine, shouted, «I’m coming,» but
it was five minutes before the woman appeared. She wore a soiled housecoat and high-heeled
gold leather sandals. Curlers pinioned her thinning yellowish hair. Her face was broad, muscular,
rouged, powdered. She was carrying a can of Miller High Life beer; she smelled of beer and
tobacco and recently applied nail varnish. She was seventy-four years old, but in Nye’s opinion,
«looked younger — maybe ten minutes younger.» She stared at him, his trim brown suit, his brown
snap brim hat. When he displayed his badge, she was amused; her lips parted, and Nye
glimpsed two rows of fake teeth. «Uh-huh. That’s what I figured,» she said. «O.K. Let’s hear it. «He handed her a photograph of Richard Hickock. «Know him?»
A negative grunt.
«Or him?»
She said, «Uh-huh. He’s stayed here a coupla times. But he’s not here now. Checked out over a
month ago. You wanna see the register?»
Nye leaned against the desk and watched the landlady’s long and lacquered fingernails search a
page of pencil-scribbled names. Las Vegas was the first of three places that his employers
wished him to visit. Each had been chosen because of its connection with the history of Perry
Smith. The two others were Reno, where it was thought that Smith’s father lived, and San
Francisco, the home of Smith’s sister, who shall here be known as Mrs. Frederic Johnson.
Though Nye planned to interview these relatives, and anyone else who might have knowledge of
the suspect’s where-abouts, his main objective was to obtain the aid of the local law agencies. On
arriving in Las Vegas, for example, he had discussed the Clutter case with Lieutenant B. J.
Handlon, Chief of the Detective Division of the Las Vegas Police Department. The lieutenant had
then written a memorandum ordering all police personnel to be on the alert for Hickock and
Smith: «Wanted in Kansas for parole violation, and said to be driving a 1949 Chevrolet bearing
Kansas license JO-58269. These men are probably armed and should be considered
dangerous.» Also, Handlon had assigned a detective to help Nye «case the pawnbrokers»; as he
said, there was «always a pack of them in any gambling town.» Together, Nye and the Las Vegas
detective had checked every pawn ticket issued during the past month. Specifically, Nye hoped to
find a Zenith portable radio believed to have been stolen from the Clutter house on the night of
the crime, but he had no luck with that. One broker, though, remembered Smith («He’s been in
and out of here going on a good ten years»), and was able to produce a ticket for a bearskin rug
pawned during the first week in November. It was from this ticket that Nye had obtained the
address of the rooming house.
«Registered October thirtieth,» the landlady said. «Pulled out November eleventh.» Nye glanced at
Smith’s signature. The ornateness of it, the mannered swoops and swirls, surprised him — a
reaction that the landlady apparently divined, for she said, «Uh-huh. And you oughta hear him
talk. Big, long words coming at you in this kinda lispy, whispery voice. Quite a personality. What
you got against him — a nice little punk like that?»
«Parole violation.»
«Uh-huh. Came all the way from Kansas on a parole case. Well, I’m just a dizzy blonde. I believe
you. But I wouldn’t tell that tale to any brunettes.» She raised the beer can, emptied it, then
thoughtfully rolled the empty can between her veined and freckled hands.