Hickock said, “You kiddin’? Every cop in Kansas knows it. “When the detectives again pleaded ignorance, he explained that it was a stretch of park where one encountered “hustlers mostly,” adding, “but plenty of amateurs, too. Nurses. Secretaries. I’ve had a lot of luck there.”
“And this particular evening. Have any luck?”
“The bad kind. We ended up with a pair of rollers.”
“Named?”
“Mildred. The other one, Perry’s girl, I think she was called Joan.”
“Describe them.”
“Maybe they were sisters. Both blond. Plump. I’m not too clear about it. See, we’d bought a bottle of ready-mix Orange Blossoms—that’s orange pop and vodka—and I was getting stiff. We gave the girls a few drinks and drove them out to Fun Haven. I imagine you gentlemen never heard of Fun Haven?”
They hadn’t.
Hickock grinned and shrugged. “It’s on the Blue Ridge Road. Eight miles south of Kansas City. A combination night-club-motel. You pay ten bucks for the key to a cabin.”
Continuing, he described the cabin in which he claimed that the foursome had stayed the night: twin beds, an old Coca-Cola calendar, a radio that wouldn’t play unless the customer deposited a quarter. His poise, his explicitness, the assured presentation of verifiable detail impressed Nye—though, of course, the boy was lying. Well, wasn’t he? Whether because of flu and fever or an abrupt lessening in the warmth of his confidence, Nye exuded an icy sweat.
“Next morning we woke up to find they’d rolled us and beat it,” said Hickock. “Didn’t get much off me. But Perry lost his wallet, with forty or fifty dollars.”
“What did you do about it?”
“There wasn’t nothing to do.”
“You could’ve notified the police.”
“Aw, come on. Quit it. Notify the police. For your information, a guy on parole’s not allowed to booze. Or associate with another Old Grad—“
“All right, Dick. It’s Sunday. The fifteenth of November. Tell us what you did that day from the moment you checked out of Fun Haven.”
“Well, we ate breakfast at a truck stop near Happy Hill. Then we drove to Olathe, and I dropped Perry off at the hotel where he was living. I’d say that was around eleven. Afterward, I went home and had dinner with the family. Same as every Sunday-Watched TV—a basketball game, or maybe it was football. I was pretty tired.”
“When did you next see Perry Smith?”
“Monday. He came by where I worked. Bob Sands’ Body Shop.”
“And what did you talk about? Mexico?”
“Well, we still liked the idea, even if we hadn’t got hold of the money to do all we had in mind—put ourselves in business down there. But we wanted to go, and it seemed worth the risk.”
“Worth another stretch in Lansing?”
“That didn’t figure. See, we never intended coming Stateside again.”
Nye, who had been jotting notes in a notebook, said, “On the day following the check spree—that would be the twenty-first—you and your friend Smith disappeared. Now, Dick, please out-line your movements between then and the time of your arrest here in Las Vegas. Just a rough idea.” Hickock whistled and rolled his eyes. “Wow!” he said, and then, then, summoning his talent for something very like total recall, he began an account of the long ride—the approximately ten thousand miles he and Smith had covered in the past six weeks. He talked for an hour and twenty-five minutes—from two-fifty to four-fifteen—and told, while Nye attempted to list them, of highways and hotels, motels, rivers, towns, and cities, a chorus of entwining names: Apache, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Santillo, San Luis Potosi, Acapulco, San Diego, Dallas, Omaha, Sweetwater, Stillwater, Tenville Junction, Tallahassee, Needles, Miami, Hotel Nuevo Waldorf, Somerset Hotel, Hotel Simone, Arrowhead Motel, Cherokee Motel, and many, many more. He gave them the name of the man in Mexico to whom he’d sold his own old 1949 Chevrolet, and confessed that he had stolen a newer model in Iowa. He described persons he and his partner had met: a Mexican widow, rich and sexy; Otto, a German “millionaire”; a “swish” pair of Negro prizefighters driving a “swish” lavender Cadillac; the blind proprietor of a Florida rattlesnake farm; a dying old man and his grandson; and others. And when he had finished he sat with folded arms and a pleased smile, as though waiting to be commended for the humor, the clarity, and the candor of his traveler’s tale.
But Nye, in pursuit of the narrative, raced his pen, and Church, lazily slamming a shut hand against an open palm, said nothing—until suddenly he said. “I guess you know why we’re here.”
Hickock’s mouth straightened—his posture, too.
“I guess you realize we wouldn’t have come all the way to Nevada just to chat with a couple of two-bit check chiselers.”
Nye had closed the notebook. He, too, stared at the prisoner, and observed that a cluster of veins had appeared in his left temple.
“Would we, Dick?”
“What?”
“Come this far to talk about a bunch of checks.”
“I can’t think of any other reason.”
Nye drew a dagger on the cover of his notebook. While doing so, he said, “Tell me, Dick. Have you ever heard of the Clutter murder case?” Whereupon, he later wrote in a formal report of the interview, “Suspect underwent an intense visible reaction. He turned gray. His eyes twitched.”
Hickock said, “Whoa, now. Hold on here. I’m no goddam killer.”
“The question asked,” Church reminded him, “was whether you’d heard of the Clutter murders.”
“I may have read something,” Hickock said.
“A vicious crime. Vicious. Cowardly.”
“And almost perfect,” Nye said. “But you made two mistakes, Dick. One was, you left a witness. A living witness. Who’ll testify in court. Who’ll stand in the witness box and tell a jury how Richard Hickock and Perry Smith bound and gagged and slaughtered four helpless people.”
Hickock’s face reddened with returning color. “Living witness! There can’t be!”
“Because you thought you’d got rid of everyone?”
“I said whoa! There ain’t anybody can connect me with any goddam murder. Checks. A little petty thievery. But I’m no goddam killer.”
“Then why,” Nye asked hotly, “have you been lying to us?”
“I’ve been telling you the goddam truth.”
“Now and then. Not always. For instance, what about Saturday afternoon, November fourteenth? You say you drove to Fort Scott.”
“Yes.”
“And when you got there you went to the post office.”
“Yes.”
“To obtain the address of Perry Smith’s sister.”
“That’s right.”
Nye rose. He walked around to the rear of Hickock’s chair, and placing his hands on the back of the chair, leaned down as though to whisper in the prisoner’s ear. “Perry Smith has no sister living in Fort Scott,” he said. “He never has had. And on Saturday afternoons the Fort Scott post office happens to be closed.” Then he said, “Think it over, Dick. That’s all for now. We’ll talk to you later.”
After Hickock’s dismissal, Nye and Church crossed the corridor, and looking through the one-way observation window set in the door of the interrogation room, watched the questioning of Perry Smith—a scene visible though not audible. Nye, who was seeing Smith for the first time, was fascinated by his feet—by the fact that his legs were so short that his feet, as small as a child’s, couldn’t quite make the floor. Smith’s head—the stiff Indian hair, the Irish-Indian blending of dark skip and pert, impish features—reminded him of the suspect’s pretty sister, the nice Mrs. Johnson. But this chunky, misshapen child-man was not pretty; the pink end of his tongue darted forth, flickering like the tongue of a lizard. He was smoking a cigarette, and from the evenness of his exhalations Nye deduced that he was still a “virgin”—that is, still uninformed about the real purpose of the
