In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [113]
"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 I 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