Трумен Капоте - In Cold Blood

Mrs. Hartman sighed. She hoped Myrt was wrong. And Mrs. Helm, said, "What I hope is, I hope they keep 'em locked up good. I won't feel easy knowing they're in our vicinity."

"Oh, I don't think you got to worry, ma'am," said the young farmer. "Right now those boys are a lot more scared of us than we are of them."

On an Arizona highway, a two-car caravan is flashing across sagebrush country - the mesa country of hawks and rattlesnakes and towering red rocks. Dewey is driving the lead car, Perry Smith sits beside him, and Duntz is sitting in the back seat. Smith is handcuffed, and the handcuffs are attached to a security belt by a short length of chain - an arrangement so restricting his movements that he cannot smoke unaided. When he wants a cigarette, Dewey must light it for him and place it between his lips, a task that the detective finds "repellent," for it seems such an intimate action - the kind of thing he'd done while he was courting his wife.

On the whole, the prisoner ignores his guardians and their sporadic attempts to goad him by repeating parts of Hickock's hour-long tape-recorded confession: "He says he tried to stop you, Perry. But says he couldn't. Says he was scared you'd shoot him too," and "Yes, sir, Perry. It's all your fault. Hickock himself, he says he wouldn't harm the fleas on a dog." None of this - outwardly, at any rate - agitates Smith. He continues to contemplate the scenery, to read Burma-Shave doggerel, and to count the carcasses of shotgunned coyotes festooning ranch fences.

Dewey, not anticipating any exceptional response, says, "Hickock tells us you're a natural-born killer. Says it doesn't bother you a bit. Says one time out there in Las Vegas you went after a colored man with a bicycle chain. Whipped him to death. For fun."

To Dewey's surprise, the prisoner gasps. He twists around in his seat until he can see, through the rear window, the motorcade's second car, see inside it: "The tough boy!" Turning back, he stares at the dark streak of desert highway. "I thought it was a stunt. I didn't believe you. That Dick let fly. The tough boy! Oh, a real brass boy. Wouldn't harm the fleas on a dog. Just run over the dog." He spits. "I never killed any nigger." Duntz agrees with him; having studied the files on unsolved Las Vegas homicides, he knows Smith to be innocent of this particular deed. "I never killed any niggers. But he thought so. I always knew if we ever got caught, if Dick ever really let fly, dropped his guts all over the goddam floor - I knew he'd tell about the nigger." He spits again. "So Dick was afraid of me? That's amusing. I'm very amused. What he don't know is, I almost did shoot him."

Dewey lights two cigarettes, one for himself, one for the prisoner. "Tell us about it, Perry."

Smith smokes with closed eyes, and explains, "I'm thinking. I want to remember this just the way it was." He pauses for quite a while. "Well, it all started with a letter I got while I was out in Buhl, Idaho. That was September or October. The letter was from Dick, and he said he was on to a cinch. The perfect score. I didn't answer him, but he wrote again, urging me to come back to Kansas and go partners with him. He never said what kind of score it was. Just that it was a 'sure-fire cinch.' Now, as it happened, I had another reason for wanting to be in Kansas around about that time. A personal matter I'd just as soon keep to myself ? t's got nothing to do with this deal. Only that otherwise I wouldn't have gone back there. But I did. And Dick met me at the bus station in Kansas City. We drove out to the farm, his parents' place. But they didn't want me there. I'm very sensitive; I usually know what people are feeling.

"Like you." He means Dewey, but does not look at him. "You hate handing me a butt. That's your business. I don't blame you.. Any more than I blamed Dick's mother. The fact is, she's a very sweet person. But she knew what I was - a friend from The Walls and she didn't want me in her house. Christ, I was glad to get out, go to a hotel. Dick took me to a hotel in Olathe. We bought some beer and carried it up to the room, and that's when Dick outlined what he had in mind. He said after I'd left Lansing he celled with someone who'd once worked for a wealthy wheat grower out in western Kansas. Mr. Clutter. Dick drew me a diagram of the Clutter house. He knew where everything was - doors, halls, bedrooms. He said one of the ground-floor rooms was used as an office, and in the office there was a safe - a wall safe. He said Mr. Clutter needed it because he always kept on hand large sums of cash. Never less than ten thousand dollars. The plan was to rob the safe, and if we were seen - well, whoever saw us would have to go. Dick must have said it a million times: 'No witnesses.'"

Dewey says, "How many of these witnesses did he think there might be? I mean, how many people did he expect to find in the Clutter house?"

"That's what I wanted to know. But he wasn't sure. At least four. Probably six. And it was possible the family might have guests. He thought we ought to be ready to handle up to a dozen."

Dewey groans, Duntz whistles, and Smith, smiling wanly, adds, "Me, too. Seemed to me that was a little off. Twelve people. But Dick said it was a cinch. He said, 'We're gonna go in there and splatter those walls with hair.' The mood I was in, I let myself be carried along. But also - I'll be honest - I had faith in Dick; he struck me as being very practical, the masculine type, and I wanted the money as much as he did. I wanted to get it and go to Mexico. But I hoped we could do it without violence. Seemed to me we could if we wore masks. We argued about it. On the way out there, out to Holcomb, I wanted to stop and buy some black silk stockings to wear over our heads. But Dick felt that even with a stocking he could still be identified. Because of his bad eye. All the same, when we got to Emporia - "

Duntz says, "Hold on, Perry. You're jumping ahead. Go back to Olathe. What time did you leave there?" - "One. One-thirty. We left just after lunch and drove to Emporia. Where we bought some rubber gloves and a roll of cord. The knife and shotgun, the shells - Dick had brought all that from home. But he didn't want to look for black stockings. It got to be quite an argument. Somewhere on the outskirts of Emporia, we passed a Catholic hospital, and I persuaded him to stop and go inside and try and buy some black stockings from the nuns. I knew nuns wear them. But he only made believe. Came out and said they wouldn't sell him any. I was sure he hadn't even asked, and he confessed it; he said it was a puky idea - the nuns would've thought he was crazy. So we didn't stop again till Great Bend. That's where we bought the tape. Had dinner there, a big dinner. It put me to sleep. When I woke up, we were just coming into Garden City. Seemed like a real dead-dog town. We stopped for gas at a filling station - "

Dewey asks if he remembers which one.

"Believe it was a Phillips 66."

"What time was this?"

"Around midnight. Dick said it was seven miles more to Holcomb. All the rest of the way, he kept talking to himself, saying this ought to be here and that ought to be there - according to the instructions he'd memorized. I hardly realized it when we went, through Holcomb, it was such a little settlement. We crossed a railroad track. Suddenly Dick said, 'This is it, this has to be it.' It was the entrance to a private road, lined with trees. We slowed down and turned off the lights. Didn't need them. Account of the moon. There wasn't nothing else up there - not a cloud, nothing. Just that full moon. It was like broad day, and when we started up the road, Dick said, 'Look at this spread! The barns! That house! Don't tell me this guy ain't loaded.' But I didn't like the setup, the, atmosphere; it was sort of too impressive. We parked in the shadows of a tree. While we were sitting there, a light came on - not In the main house but a house maybe a hundred yards to the left. Dick said it was the hired man's house; he knew because of the diagram. But he said it was a damn sight nearer the Clutter house than it was supposed to be. Then the light went off. Mr. Dewey - the witness you mentioned. Is that who you meant - the hired man?"