found in the Clutter house. The boots were in a box of stuff the boys picked up at the post office just before the curtain fell. Like I told Al Dewey, suppose the squeeze had come five minutes sooner!
“Even so, our case was very shaky—nothing that couldn’t be pulled apart. But I remember, while we were waiting in the corridor—I remember being feverish and nervous as hell, but confident. We all were; we felt we were on the edge of the truth. My job, mine and Church’s, was to pressure it out of Hickock. Smith belonged to Al and Old Man Duntz. At that time I hadn’t seen the suspects—just examined their possessions and arranged the extradition waivers. I’d never laid eyes on Hickock until he was brought down to the interrogation room. I’d imagined a bigger guy. Brawnier. Not some skinny kid. He was twenty-eight, but he looked like a kid. Hungry—right down to the bone. He was wearing a blue shirt and suntans and white socks and black shoes. We shook hands; his hand was drier than mine. Clean, polite, nice voice, good diction, a pretty decent-looking fellow, with a very disarming smile—and in the beginning he smiled quite a lot.
“I said, ‘Mr. Hickock, my name is Harold Nye, and this other gentleman is Mr. Roy Church. We’re Special Agents of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and we’ve come here to discuss your parole violation. Of course, you’re under no obligation to answer our questions, and anything you say may be used against you in evidence. You’re entitled to a lawyer at all times. We’ll use no force, no threats, and we’ll make you no promises.’ He was calm as could be.”
“I know the form,” Dick said. “I’ve been questioned before.”
“Now, Mr. Hickock—“
“Dick.”
“Dick, we want to talk to you about your activities since your parole. To our knowledge, you’ve gone on at least two big check sprees in the Kansas City area.”
“Uh-huh. Hung out quite a few.”
“Could you give us a list?”
The prisoner, evidently proud of his one authentic gift, a brilliant memory, recited the names and addresses of twenty Kansas City stores, cafes, and garages, and recalled, accurately, the “purchase” made at each and the amount of the check passed.
“I’m curious, Dick. Why do these people accept your checks? I’d like to know the secret.”
“The secret is: People are dumb.”
Roy Church said, “Fine, Dick. Very funny. But just for the moment let’s forget these checks.” Though he sounds as if his throat were lined with hog bristle, and has hands so hardened that he can punch stone walls (his favorite stunt, in fact), persons have been known to mistake Church for a kindly little man, some-body’s bald- headed, pink-cheeked uncle. “Dick,” he said, “suppose you tell us something about your family background.”
The prisoner reminisced. Once, when he was nine or ten, his father had fallen ill. “It was rabbit fever,” and the illness lasted many months, during which the family had depended upon church assistance and the charity of neighbors—“otherwise we would’ve starved.” That episode aside, his childhood had been O.K. “We never had much money, but we were never really down-and-out,” Hickock said. “We always had clean clothes and something to eat. My dad was strict, though. He wasn’t happy unless he had me doing chores. But we got along O.K.—no serious arguments. My parents never argued, either. I can’t recall a single quarrel. She’s wonderful, my mother. Dad’s a good guy, too. I’d say they did the best for me they could.” School? Well, he felt he might have been more than an average student if he had contributed to books a fraction of the time he’d “wasted” on sports. “Baseball. Football. I made all the teams. After high school I could have gone to college on a football scholarship. I wanted to study engineering, but even with a scholarship, deals like that cost plenty. I don’t know, it seemed safer to get a job.”
Before his twenty-first birthday Hickock had worked as a railway trackman, an ambulance driver, a car painter, and a garage mechanic; he’d also married a girl sixteen years old. “Carol. Her father was a minister. He was dead against me. Said I was a full-time nobody. He made all the trouble he could. But I was nuts about Carol. Still am. There’s a real princess. Only—see, we had three kids. Boys. And we were too young to have three kids. Maybe if we hadn’t got so deep into debt. If I could’ve earned extra money. I tried.”
He tried gambling, and started forging checks and experimenting with other forms of theft. In 1958 he was convicted of house burglary in a Johnson County court and sentenced to five years in Kansas State Penitentiary. But by then Carol had departed and he’d taken as a bride another girl aged sixteen. “Mean as hell. Her and her whole family. She divorced me while I was inside. I’m not complaining. Last August, when I left The Walls, I figured I had every chance to start new. I got a job in Olathe, lived with my family, and stayed home nights. I was doing swell —“
“Until November twentieth,” said Nye, and Hickock seemed not to understand him. “The day you stopped doing swell and started hanging paper. Why?”
Hickock sighed, and said, “That would make a book.” Then, smoking a cigarette borrowed from Nye and lighted by the courteous Church, he said, “Perry—my buddy Perry Smith—was paroled in the spring. Later on, when I came out, he sent me a letter, Postmarked Idaho. He wrote reminding me of this deal we used to talk over. About Mexico. The idea was we would go to Acapulco, one of them places, buy a fishing boat, and run it ourselves—take tourists deep-sea fishing.”
Nye said, “This boat. How did you plan to pay for it?”
“I’m coming to that,” Hickock said. “See, Perry wrote me he had a sister living in Fort Scott. And she was holding some heavy change for him. Several thousand dollars. Money his dad owed him from the sale of some property up in Alaska. He said he was coming to Kansas to get the dough.”
“And the two of you would use it to buy a boat.”
“Correct.”
“But it didn’t work out that way.”
“What happened was, Perry showed up maybe a month later. I met him at the bus station in Kansas City —“
“When?” said Church. “The day of the week.”
“A Thursday.”
“And when did you go to Fort Scott?”
“Saturday.”
“November fourteenth.”
Hickock’s eyes flashed with surprise. One could see that he was asking himself why Church should be so certain of the date; and hurriedly—for it was too soon to stir suspicions—the detective said, “What time did you leave for Fort Scott?”
“That afternoon. We did some work on my car, and had a bowl of chili at the West Side Cafe. It must have been around three.”
“Around three. Was Perry Smith’s sister expecting you?”
“No. Because, see, Perry lost her address. And she didn’t have a telephone.”
“Then how did you expect to find her?”
“By inquiring at the post office.”
“Did you?”
“Perry did. They said she’d moved away. To Oregon, they thought. But she hadn’t left any forwarding address.”
“Must have been quite a blow. After you’d been counting on a big piece of money like that.”
Hickock agreed. “Because—well, we’d definitely decided to go to Mexico. Otherwise, I never would’ve cashed them checks. But I hoped… Now listen to me; I’m telling the truth. I thought once we got to Mexico and began making money, then I’d be able to pay them off. The checks.”
Nye took over. “One minute, Dick.” Nye is a short, short-tempered man who has difficulty moderating his aggressive vigor, his talent for language both sharp and outspoken. “I’d like to hear a little more about the trip to Fort Scott,” he said, soft-pedaling. “When you found Smith’s sister no longer there, what did you do then?”
“Walked around. Had a beer. Drove back.”
“You mean you went home?”
“No. To Kansas City. We stopped at the Zesto Drive-in. Ate hamburgers. We tried Cherry Row.”
Neither Nye nor Church was familiar with Cherry Row.
