«Whatever it is, it ain’t
nothing big-big. Couldn’t be. I never saw the man yet I couldn’t gauge his shoe size. This one, be
only a punk. Little punk tried to sweet-talk me out of paying rent the last week he was here.» She
chuckled, presumably at the absurdity of such an ambition.
The detective asked how much Smith’s room had cost. «Regular rate. Nine bucks a week. Plus a
fifty-cent key deposit. Strictly cash. Strictly in advance.»
«While he was here, what did he do with himself? Does he have any friends?» Nye asked.
«You think I keep an eye on every crawly that comes in here?» the landlady retorted. «Bums.
Punks. I’m not interested. I got a daughter married big-big.» Then she said, «No, he doesn’t have
any friends. Least, I never noticed him run around with anybody special. This last time he was
here, he spent most every day tinkering with his car. Had it parked out front there. An old Ford.
Looked like it was made before he was born. He gave it a paint job. Painted the top part black
and the rest silver. Then he wrote ‘For Sale’ on the windshield. One day I heard a sucker stop and
offer him forty bucks — that’s forty more than it was worth. But he allowed he couldn’t take less
than ninety. Said he needed the money for a bus ticket. Just before he left I heard some colored
man bought it.»
«He said he needed the money for a bus ticket. But you don’t know where it was he wanted to
go?»
She pursed her lips, hung a cigarette between them, but her eyes stayed on Nye. «Play fair. Any
money on the table? A reward?» She waited for an answer; when none arrived, she seemed to
weigh the probabilities and decide in favor of proceeding. «Because I got the impression wherever
he was going he didn’t mean to stay long. That he meant to cut back here. Sorta been expecting
him to turn up any day.» She nodded toward the interior of the establishment. «Come along, and I’ll show you why.»
Stairs. Gray halls. Nye sniffed the odors, separating one from another: lavatory disinfectant,
alcohol, dead cigars. Beyond one door, a drunken tenant wailed and sang in the firm grip of either
gladness or grief. «Boil down, Dutch! Turn it off or out you go!» the woman yelled. «Here,» she said
to Nye, leading him into a darkened storage room. She switched on a light. «Over there. That box.
He asked would I keep it till he came back.»
It was a cardboard box, unwrapped but tied with cord. A declaration, a warning somewhat in the
spirit of an Egyptian curse, was crayoned across the top: «Beware! Property of Perry E. Smith!
Beware!» Nye undid the cord; the knot, he was unhappy to see, was not the same as the half
hitch that the killers had used when binding the Clutter family. He parted the flaps. A cockroach
emerged, and the landlady stepped on it, squashing it under the heel of her gold leather sandal.
«Hey!» she said as he carefully extracted and slowly examined Smith’s possessions. «The sneak.
That’s my towel.» In addition to the towel, the meticulous Nye listed in his notebook: «One dirty
pillow, ‘Souvenir of Honolulu’; one pink baby blanket; one pair khaki trousers; one aluminum pan
with pancake turner.» Other oddments included a scrapbook thick with photographs clipped from
physical-culture magazines (sweaty studies of weight-lifting weight-lifters) and, inside a shoebox,
a collection of medicines: rinses and powders employed to combat trench mouth, and also a
mystifying amount of aspirin — at least a dozen containers, several of them empty. «Junk,» the
landlady said. «Nothing but trash.» True, it was valueless stuff even to a clue-hungry detective.
Still, Nye was glad to have seen it; each item — the palliatives for sore gums, the greasy Honolulu
pillow — gave him a clearer impression of the owner and his lonely, mean life.
The next day in Reno, preparing his official notes, Nye wrote: «At 9:00 a.m. the reporting agent
contacted Mr. Bill Driscoll, chief criminal investigator, Sheriff’s Office, Washoe County, Reno,
Nevada. After being briefed on the circumstances of this case, Mr. Driscoll was supplied with
photographs, fingerprints and warrants for Hickock and Smith. Stops were placed in the files on
both these individuals as well as the automobile. At 10:30a.m. the reporting agent contacted Sgt.
Abe Feroah, Detective Division, Police Department, Reno, Nevada. Sgt. Feroah and the reporting
agent checked the police files. Neither the name of Smith or Hickock was reflected in the felon
registration file. A check of the pawnshop-ticket files failed to reflect any information about the
missing radio. A permanent stop was placed in these files in the event the radio is pawned in
Reno. The detective handling the pawnshop detail took photographs of Smith and Hickock to
each of the pawnshops in town and also made a personal check of each shop for the radio.
These pawnshops made an identification of Smith as being familiar, but were unable to furnish
any further information.»
Thus the morning. That afternoon Nye set forth in search of Tex John Smith. But at his first stop,
the post office, a clerk at a General Delivery window told him he need look no farther not in
Nevada — for «the individual» had left there the previous August and now lived in the vicinity of
Circle City, Alaska. That, anyway, was where his mail was being forwarded.
«Gosh! Now, there’s a tall order,» said the clerk in response to Nye’s request for a description of
the elder Smith. «The guy’s out of a book. He calls himself the Lone Wolf. A lot of his mail comes
addressed that way — the Lone Wolf. He doesn’t receive many letters, no, but bales of catalogues
and advertising pamphlets. You’d be surprised the number of people send away for that stuff just to get some mail, must be. How old? I’d say sixty. Dresses Western — cowboy boots and a big
ten-gallon hat. He told me he used to be with the rodeo. I’ve talked to him quite a bit. He’s been in
here almost every day the last few years. Once in a while he’d disappear, stay away a month or
so — always claimed he’d been off prospecting. One day last August a young man came here to
the window. He said he was looking for his father, Tex John Smith, and did I know where he
could find him. He didn’t look much like his dad; the Wolf is so thin-lipped and Irish, and this boy
looked almost pure Indian — hair black as boot polish, with eyes to match. But next morning in
walks the Wolf and confirms it; he told me his son had just got out of the Army and that they were
going to Alaska. He’s an old Alaska hand. I think he once owned a hotel there, or some kind of
hunting lodge. He said he expected to be gone about two years. Nope, never seen him since, him
or his boy.»
The Johnson family were recent arrivals in their San Francisco community — a middle-class,
middle-income real-estate development high in the hills north of the city. On the afternoon of December 18, 1959, young Mrs. Johnson was expecting guests; three women of the
neighborhood were coming by for coffee and cake and perhaps a game of cards. The hostess
was tense; it would be the first time she had entertained in her new home. Now, while she was
listening for the doorbell, she made a final tour, pausing to dispose of a speck of lint or alter an
arrangement of Christmas poinsettias. The house, like the others on the slanting hillside street,
was a conventional suburban ranch house, pleasant and common place. Mrs. Johnson loved it;
she was in love with the redwood paneling, the wall-to-wall carpeting, the picture windows fore
and aft, the view that the rear window provided — hills, a valley, then sky and ocean. And she was
proud of the small back garden; her husband — by profession an insurance salesman, by
inclination a carpenter — had built around it a white picket fence, and inside it a house for the
family dog, and a sand-box and swings for the children. At the moment, all four — dog, two little
boys, and a girl — were playing there under a mild sky; she hoped they would be happy in the
garden until the guests had gone. When the doorbell sounded and Mrs. Johnson went to the
door, she was wearing what she considered her most becoming dress, a yellow knit that hugged
her figure and heightened the pale-tea shine of her Cherokee coloring and the blackness of her
feather-bobbed hair. She opened the door, prepared to admit three neighbors; instead, she
discovered two strangers — men who tipped their hats and flipped open badge-studded billfolds.
«Mrs. Johnson?» one of them said. «My name is Nye. This is Inspector Guthrie. We’re attached to
the San Francisco police, and we’ve just received an inquiry from Kansas concerning your
brother, Perry Edward Smith. It seems he hasn’t been reporting to his parole officer, and we
wondered if you could tell us anything of his present whereabouts.»
Mrs. Johnson was not distressed — and definitely not surprised to learn that the police were once
more interested in her brother’s activities. What did upset her was the prospect of having guests
arrive to find her being questioned by detectives. She said, «No. Nothing. I haven’t seen Perry in
four years.»
«This is a serious matter, Mrs. Johnson,» Nye said. «We’d like to talk it over.»
Having surrendered, having asked them in and offered them coffee (which was accepted), Mrs.
Johnson said, «I haven’t seen Perry in four years. Or heard from him since he was paroled. Last
summer, when he came out of prison, he visited my father in Reno. In a letter, my father told me
he was returning to Atlanta and taking Perry with him. Then he wrote again, I think in September,
and he was very angry. He