I need to make this very clear, that we picked up the boy and his grandfather before the Clutter murders, not after. But even that is nowhere near everything I have to tell.
About a hundred more miles down the road Granddad was coughing pretty hard and when I looked at him in the rearview mirror I could see he was pastier than before. We had been driving for a couple of hours and the kid said he had to “take a piss.” I pulled over to the side of the road and we all got out and relieved ourselves except for Granddad. When the kid buttoned his old dungarees he looked across the land and said he saw a glittering that looked like a pile of bottles. Perry said we had enough, and I was ready to drive on too but the kid insisted. He laughed and said picking up those bottles was kind of an addiction, once you started you could not stop. He got Granddad out of the car and said come on you help. There was an old sack that we had used for some of the bottles on the floor in the back seat, but they did not take the sack.
I could not see what good Granddad would do to pick up bottles, he was not even walking too well. The kid supported him with an arm over his shoulder and they weaved like a couple of drunks. Perry and I watched them go far off the road. I remember our conversation during this time. I said I had not noticed before, watching him from behind, there’s something different about that kid.
Perry watched but did not say anything.
I asked Perry can you see the bottles he’s talking about? Can you see the glitter?
Perry said yes, I think I can, Dick.
The two kept stumbling over the uneven ground until they were a good one hundred yards away. They looked kind of small but we could still see them. I expected them to start bending over, like they were picking up bottles, but they did not.
I looked on the back seat and said to Perry that they did not take the sack with them, but Perry did not answer.
I watched the kid take Granddad’s arm off his shoulder, and sit him down on the ground. He turned around and he waved at us, watching him. Then he started to walk back to the car.
I asked what do you think that kid is doing?
Perry said he had no idea.
I started up the car. Something gave me the “heebie jeebies” about that kid before now, and the feeling was getting worse.
Perry put out his hand to stop me from putting the car in gear. He said wait for the kid.
I said why? Why are we waiting for him? I said we should get as far away from him as fast as we can.
Perry said we’re a hundred miles from nowhere, we could not just leave him here.
Well, my mouth dropped open at that one. Perry did not seem to get that he was saying we could not do to the kid what the kid was doing to his grandfather. Perry just stared at me with his eyes wide and a little smile. His eyes glittered like the bottles in sunlight. I did not think I could talk any sense into Perry, so I tried getting him to view the business end of the deal. I was spitting mad but I tried to keep calm like Perry was.
I said I did not put in for three of us, Honey. I called him Honey not because I am queer, but because I always knew he was and he liked me to call him that. It made it easier to get him to do things my way. Plus he was always saying he thought I liked little girls which is untrue. Calling him Honey got back at him a little. Anyways, I said ten thousand split three ways isn’t much worth the drive to Holcomb.
Perry said that poor kid, what else can he do? He’s got nowhere to go, no one but us. Now that his grandfather is gone, that kid is all alone. It’s like we’re his family.
I said do you hear what you’re saying Perry? That poor kid is alone because he’s killing his own grand-dad.
Perry said he isn’t actually killing him, Dick. You can see that yourself.
I said he left him in that field to die, that’s even worse.
Perry said Dick, that man was pretty sick. He’ll probably be dead before evening.
I said you can’t know that.
Perry said sure, I can, Dick. Some things you just can sense. I got a strong feeling about this.
The way Perry kept saying my name, Dick this and Dick that, all the time keeping his voice easy, it did not take a mind-reader to see he was digging in his heels on this. I felt myself fidgeting in my seat and he just sat there cool as a cucumber. Perry Smith was the real killer, I thought. Cold blooded and all. And I could tell he knew it. If I turned Perry loose with this boy, what would I do then? And what if the two of them decided to leave me in the dust (or dump me somewhere the way he dumped his own grandfather!) and go get the Clutter money themselves. I tried once more.
How do we know we can trust him to keep a secret, I said.
Perry shoved his thumb out to the field where the old man sat. That’s the proof right there, Perry said. If he can trust us knowing that, we can trust him with a simple robbery.
If you ever read what that writer writes about us, you’ll probably be led to believe that Perry Smith is some poor soul who had a rough childhood with a mother who ran away, and who got badly wounded in the military so he was half crippled and in pain all the time. I heard it all myself on our drives across the country. I can practically hear the two of them, him and Capote, sobbing on each other’s shoulder and it makes me want to “puke.” I bet Perry will say I was the really bad one, someone who was raised in a happy family and just has one of those evil, criminal minds. That is what he will say. I am saying that is a goddamn lie, please forgive my language.
So the boy climbed into the back seat of the car as if nothing had happened and said okay, let’s go, and Perry said, kind of jokey, what, no bottles?
They’s all broken, the boy said. He started to hum this tune, slowly. At the end of some lines he would make a popping sound with his lips. Perry said he recognized the tune but did not know the name. The kid said his mother always used to hum it to him when she was alive.
The kid started up the humming and popping again and that was when he caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. I tell you, I was afraid to turn around and afraid not to turn around, the way you are when you know there’s a mean dog behind you. Will you set it off if you pretend to ignore it? Will you set it off if you turn around and let it know you know it’s there? I didn’t turn around, but finally put the car in gear and headed on. It is true there were bottles out in that field. I can still picture them glittering like a pond in the sunlight, and that old man sitting among them, dazed like he still did not understand what was happening, and looking like he was treading water.
You know where this is going. When we got to Emporia where I wanted to get some supplies for the job, I again said this is where we drop off the kid. And the kid said, you know you missed the turn for Tulsa a while back there. I know because we came through it. Where are you really going? He refused to get out of the car and Perry refused to come with me if he did. Perry seemed to be enjoying the whole thing. I even thought maybe that this was Perry’s way of avoiding doing the job altogether. But I kept on. I picked up some duct tape that we would need at a shop and we headed on.
Now I did not know what would happen. With about a hundred miles left to go before we would reach the Clutter place, we stopped in Great Bend for dinner. It was a good meal with steak and all, because we had all the money we collected from the bottles. Perry started to talk. He told the boy about how he and I were in prison at the same time, and how I had come to him with a story I had heard from another prisoner.
Tell him, Perry said. You tell it.
You shut the fuck up, Perry, I said.
Perry would not shut up. He told the boy how I was in for grand larceny and Perry was in at the same time for something I cannot now remember. Perry told the kid the same story he had told me, where he had killed a man in Las Vegas with a bicycle chain. He watched the kid as he told the story, as if he was looking to see how the kid would react. Kid leaves his grandfather to die in the elements, what did Perry expect? The kid did not look shocked. The kid hardly looked interested. But he did look at Perry with more interest than he
looked at me, and I started to wonder who was heading this operation anyway.
Anyways, whoever is reading this knows about the robbery from the news and our trial, but in brief here is what Perry told the boy without me being able to stop him. A prisoner named Floyd Wells had told me all about this family by the name of Clutter who was well to do and lived on a ranch just outside Holcomb, Kansas. This was not far from where we were in prison the first time, in Lansing. Floyd Wells said that he had worked for Clutter seasonally, along with a lot of other men, and that Clutter paid them in cash. He said Clutter always had money in a safe in his office which was on the first floor of their two story house.
The boy asked who was “they.”
I said it was Mr. Clutter, Mrs. Clutter, and a teenage son and daughter, according to Wells. There was an older daughter who did not live at home any more.
The boy said then it’s a good thing there are three of us.
Perry said that was so.
The boy asked how Wells knew about the safe.
I said Wells told me he had seen the safe, and the money in it.
The boy asked how much money.
I had sort of given up hope of being able to extricate ourselves from this little weasel boy, and started to answer ten grand, but Perry, who was sitting in the booth next to him, winked at me and said five thousand dollars. In a second I loved Perry again for at least doing this, for lying about the money so the boy’s take would be less than two thousand and Perry and I could split the rest between us. It made me very happy, which I think Perry meant to do, so there would not be bad feelings among us going in. It’s better to feel this way when you have to work together.
Forty–four
Not wanting to appear too eager, Beaufort went over to the DiForenza house the morning after Brigid left for Florida. Of course she must have discovered something about Beaufort’s connection to Smith and Hickock and to the Walker case or she wouldn’t have gone there. Likely she didn’t know all, but if Meadows had happened to describe the small old man he’d talked to before Yanchak got him … if Brigid had connected that man to Beaufort … if she had found out something from that abbot at the monastery about him visiting … but then she would have called Carlo and warned him, wouldn’t she?
Beaufort took his car this time, no worries about the license being checked, parked in the front drive, walked up the front walk, and rang the doorbell. The surveillance camera was new, and the motion detector lights went on, showing that she expected to be gone that night and didn’t trust her husband to activate them. The woman wasn’t totally stupid, but he wasn’t worried about being caught on film. By the time she saw it he would have found what he was looking for, and then he and Carlo would both disappear without a trace, Carlo to be disposed of once he was over the border where that kind of thing happened more easily.
He doffed his cap at the camera.
No one was coming. He rang the doorbell again, and that was when he noticed there was no chimey sound from inside the way there had been on his previous visit. He rapped on the screen door instead. The impact reverberated through him and set off the dogs inside.
Carlo pulled open the main door but left the screen shut, and, presumably, locked. He seemed uncomfortable. No, it was more distraught. “Well, hello, Jerry,” Carlo said. “Sorry, I was watching the news. Really upset that Brigid was with that poor man just minutes before he was shot.”
“That’s terrible,” Beaufort said, casting around in his mind for the thing that would open the door. Finally went with “Could I come in?”
“I was actually, just…” Carlo might have said any number of things. Going to walk the dogs. On his way to a dental appointment. But Carlo was not a good liar, at least not off the cuff, at least when his mind was so preoccupied with his wife’s safety. His “just” trailed off in the style of an evangelical minister who has run out of prayer ideas and is trying to fill the gap.
Beaufort pulled off his cap and said the only thing that would likely make this sucker open the door to him. The one thing Carlo could not resist. “I want to make my confession,” he said.
Forty–five
Sitting there in the synagogue, engrossed in this document that felt like some ancient parchment holding long-lost mysteries, I had let the time slip by. When I glanced at my watch I saw I had less than half an hour to get to the airport. I put the pages back into the envelope as quickly as I could without damaging them, and hustled my way into the parking lot, empty except for my rental car.
I made it to the airport, was happy to find no line ahead of me where I ditched the car, and dashed into the terminal. At first glance I thought it was just a busy morning. A very busy morning. The line at check-in was one hundred strong. A kiosk was open, but when I tried to print my boarding pass I got a message that said check with attendant.
Never a good sign.
I got in the line with everyone else, now wondering whether I would miss my plane or whether there was simply no plane to miss. I asked the person in front of me what was going on, some poor mom with two small children in tow.
“Didn’t you hear?” she asked while waving like a two-armed octopus to maintain some control of the kids. “There’ve been freakin’ blizzards in the north since early morning. All over the Northeast and Midwest. Flights are canceled. Like five thousand of them.”
“Mommy, what’s freakin’?” the bigger of the two asked.
“It’s insane,” she answered, “and stop licking your brother’s hair.”
At any other time I would have dreaded being in the same row as these people, but today that was the least of my problems. I had a connection through Dallas where it wasn’t snowing, but that didn’t make a difference. Only one of a herd of cattle hemmed in on both sides by a strap and other cattle in front and back of me, by the time I got to the agent the flight had not taken off. Delayed two hours, she said.
Powerless, I stepped away from the counter and let those behind me surge hopelessly forward.
With plenty of time to kill, I went through the TSA PreCheck line and on to the new concourse assigned to the flight that might leave in two hours, though one can always assume that’s just a sop they’re throwing you to keep you quiet. There was a Cinnabon, beckoning me. I never get one of those monster pastries unless it’s a moment like this, when I’m needing carb comfort of a most excellent kind. With a large coffee.
I sat down at the gate that showed Tampa to Dallas in two hours, and called Carlo. No one answered, but I wasn’t concerned. I left a message telling him it was a good thing I’d driven myself to the airport so he didn’t have to stay on top of flight times. I also told him I had a surprise for him, but didn’t go into details. For one thing, this was probably more exciting for me than it was for him, and for another thing, it would have taken too long to explain before the message machine shut off.
Someone once said, if you’re being screwed and there’s nothing you can do about it, you might as well lie back and enjoy it. Now, I think whoever said that should have his testicles removed and shoved into his ass, because I’ve know too many women who’ve been screwed when there was nothing they could do about it, and enjoyment doesn’t enter into it. But I can agree with anyone who says when you’re trapped at an airport, eat an entire Cinnabon. When I finished it, I stopped into a nearby restroom to wash my fingers so I wouldn’t get sticky on what I was coming to think of as Hickock’s confession.
Forty–six
Despite Beaufort’s requesting a priest, Carlo had still hesitated opening the door.
“Jerry,” he said, “I’m not in that line of work anymore. Haven’t been for decades. How about I get you in touch with Father Elias Manwaring. You remember meeting him once at the coffee shop inside Bashas’?”
“I don’t want to talk to someone I don’t know. I just want to talk to you.”
Carlo still hesitated. That wasn’t like him. Beaufort thought he must know something. So he put aside the ruse. “Carlo, I know why Br
igid went to Florida. She’s looking for information about me, from another time when I did some bad things. And you know, all she had to do is ask and I would have told her. That’s what I want to tell you about.”
Carlo finally turned the lock in the security door and opened it. Beaufort stepped inside and took a deep breath.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Carlo asked, apparently noticing Beaufort’s stress and thinking it was about his confessing his misdeeds.
“Got any bourbon?”
“My goodness, this must be a dark secret indeed.” Carlo moved comfortably to a cupboard next to the stove, opened the door, and pulled out a sliding tray with a half-dozen bottles on it. If he remembered, the priest didn’t remind Jerry that he said he didn’t drink. “Let’s see, gin, Scotch, vodka, Brigid is the vodka drinker … here’s an old bottle of Jim Beam from when she tried to make bourbon balls last Christmas.” He held up the bottle and grimaced as if remembering that the bourbon balls weren’t all that good.
“That’ll do,” Beaufort said. “Join me?”
“I don’t mean to be a stick-in-the-mud, but it’s a little early for me. I’ll have a glass of tonic.”
Carlo poured generously, got his tonic over ice, and the two sat down, Carlo in a wing-backed chair next to his desk, and Beaufort at the end of the couch nearest him.
“I’m really sorry I worried you,” Beaufort started. “I guess I should have said something before now.”
We Were Killers Once Page 23