In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [106]
"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