Free I Am Scout by Charles J. Shields Page A

doesn’t make any difference to me if the case is ever solved or not.” 4
    Dewey’s face darkened, and Nelle sensed immediately that Truman had just torpedoed the mission. In fact, privately Dewey had been worrying for three weeks about the trail growing cold, and the dread of defeat was starting to gnaw at him. 5
    Anger suddenly got the better of him. “I’d like to see your press card, Mr. Cappuchi,” he snapped. 6
    Truman let the mispronunciation pass, seeing that they were off on the wrong foot. “I don’t have one,” he said mildly.
    The get-to-know-you meeting had turned into a showdown. Deciding it was best to leave, Nelle rose. Both men got to their feet. Dewey bid them a stiff good-bye and, after they had gone, returned to his work.
    â€œFrom then on,” Alvin Dewey said later, “he and his friend joined the news people at every conference. They were quiet, attentive, asked few questions, and, as far as I could tell, caused no commotion. I did hear they were hard at work, interviewing everyone, people said … in Holcomb, up and down Garden City’s Main Street, in farm homes, in the coffee-drinking places, in the schools, everywhere.… Once Miss Lee broke the ice, I was told, Capote could get people to talking about the subject closest to their hearts, themselves.” 7
    *   *   *
    Nelle had accompanied Truman to Kansas as his salaried “assistant researchist”—a term he invented for her. Their assignment was to take a six-inch news item in the New York Times about the murder of the farm family in Holcomb, just a pinprick on the map, and find the humanity buried beneath the crime. They would have to find out everything about the family—Herb and Bonnie Clutter, and their children, teenagers Nancy and Kenyon—so the Clutters would be real. Truman wanted to accomplish all this without the benefit of taking notes or tape-recording during interviews. He was convinced that people were more guarded when they could see they were going on the record. He would just talk to people instead, conduct interviews as conversations.
    Nelle’s job was to listen and observe subtleties that Truman might be too busy to notice. Then they would return to the hotel and separately write down everything they could recall. Nelle’s gift for creating character sketches turned out to complement Truman’s ability to get people to open up. Many times over the next month, Truman’s jottings would end with “See NL’s notes,” to remind himself to use her insights later.
    If they drew a blank about a fact or a remark, they would prod each other’s memories. In instances when key information was missing or unclear, they would have to go back and visit a person a second or a third time. “Together we would get it right,” Nelle said. 8
    *   *   *
    Ironically, one of the biggest obstacles to getting good interviews was Truman himself. From the beginning, he just didn’t go over very well with people. “Nelle looked like normal folk, she was just a fantastic lady,” said Harold Nye, one of the principal KBI detectives running down leads on the Clutter case, “but Truman was an absolute flake.” 9 Mr. Nye, who at one point went five days and nights without sleep during the week after the murders, had no patience for snoopers from the big city.
    Neither did postmistress Myrtle T. Clare. “Capote came walking around here real uppity and superior-like and acting so strange that I think people was scared of him. He was real foreign-like, and nobody would open their doors for him, afraid he’d knock them in the head.” 10
    â€œI thought Capote was queero,” said Gerald Van Vleet, Clutter’s business partner. “He was nosy as hell and very, very rude. He came out to my farm on a few occasions to talk to me, and I tried to avoid him.” 11

    Perry Smith