Capote (52 page)

Perry and Dick also wondered and worried about how they would appear in Truman’s book. One concern was practical. Their appeals rested on their claim that the Clutter murders had not been planned, and they were afraid that Truman would tell a different story—as, indeed, he did. Another was, in a sense, esthetic. They did not want to be remembered as psychopathic killers. “My concern is that the info, you have collected is accurate, correct, and not perverted by the relator to his or her purpose for any ulterior motive,” Perry said in one letter. “What is the purpose of the book?” he asked in another. Truman danced around the subject, pretending, until the day they were executed, that he was barely half-done and, in fact, might never finish.

When they discovered his title—which said, in three words, that they had planned the murders—Truman lied and informed them they were wrong. But they knew better, and Perry indignantly told him so: “I’ve been told that the book is to be coming off the press and to be sold after our executions. And that book
IS
entitled ‘
IN COLD BLOOD
.’ Whose fibbing?? Someone is, that’s apparent. Frankly, ‘In Cold Blood’ is shocking to the conscience alone.” Truman continued his fibs, and with an unhappy sigh, Perry wrote Donald Cullivan, “Sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe.” Dick was no less concerned, telling him that any suggestion of premeditation “has me extremely disturbed because, as I have repeatedly informed you, there was
no
discussion at
any
time to harm the Clutters.” In a nine-page letter, Dick laid all the blame on Perry.

As 1963 passed, and then 1964, their hopes drained away, slowly at first, then faster and faster, like bathwater swirling down a drain. They watched while another inmate, whose last appeal had been turned down, was taken away for a ride on the “Big Swing.” Perry dispassionately described the aftermath. “After we heard the trap door sprung, it was quite awhile there after [eighteen minutes, in fact] that he was lowered to the ground, layed on a stretcher & carried out in a hearse.” With his usual thoroughness, he looked up the medical definition of death by hanging and sent it to Truman: “Death by hanging produced by asphyxia suspending respiration by compressing the larynx, by apoplexy pressing upon the veins & preventing return of blood from the head, by fracture of the cervical vertebrae…”

Dick began to complain that he could not sleep at night, and Perry wrote less frequently, confessing in February, 1965, that he had been “pretty well depressed & broken in spirit lately.” His once precise handwriting had become a scrawl. “My Dear Friend,” he said, “what a pair we are? Yes what a pair of poor wretched creatures we are!” Left tantalizingly unclear was who the other half of his pair was, Truman or Dick. On January 27, 1965, came a new execution date, February 18. “Well, the fat’s in the fire!” said Dick. He was only slightly premature. They received another stay of execution—their fifth—and then, as Perry wrote Truman, a new date was set: “April 14 you know is the date to drop thru the trap door—in case you haven’t been apprised.”

F
OR
the better part of two years Truman’s life was in a state of suspended animation. He could not finish his book until he had an ending, but neither could he put it aside and go on to something else. Although he was no longer consumed with putting words on paper, his work continued in dozens of nagging chores, not least of which was the composition of two letters a week, the maximum permitted, to Perry and Dick. “The writing of the book wasn’t as difficult as living with it all the time,” he said. “The whole damn thing, day by day by day by day. It was
just
excruciating, so anxiety-making, so wearing, so debilitating, and so… sad.”

His frustration was made worse by his knowledge that, lying in front of him, missing only thirty or forty pages, was the best-seller that would alter his life irrevocably, that would make him rich and bring him what he coveted above all else: recognition as one of the foremost writers in America—indeed, the world. At that point such a conviction was a matter of fact, not opinion; the success of
In Cold Blood
was as predictable as the future movements of the planets. All those who had read the first three-quarters—and there was a large number of such people—confessed to being mesmerized. Everybody in the publishing world knew about his new work, and so did many others, all across the country. It was mentioned frequently in syndicated columns; in 1962
Newsweek
had even run a story, complete with a picture of the author, on “the overwhelmingly factual book he has been working on for more than two years.”

Such publicity could not have been purchased, particularly for a book that had yet to be completed.
In Cold Blood
had been touched by a magic wand. At both Random House and
The New Yorker
, where all copies were locked in Mr. Shawn’s office, there was the thrill of anticipation, the excitement that comes with the possession of a sure thing. But nothing—nothing at all—could happen until the courts had at last decided the fates of the two Clutter killers.

So Truman watched and waited and went on, as best he could, with the normal business of living. Following his return from the Midwest in 1963, he and Jack went out to Long Island, to the same beach house in Bridgehampton they had shared with Oliver Smith six years before. “The house is divine, and I am working on my
endless
task,” Truman wrote Cecil in July. “But I am very restless—waiting for final developments in Kansas. It’s all so maddening.” Two months later he added: “I am in a really appalling state of tension and anxiety. Perry and Dick have an appeal for a
New Trial
pending in Federal Court: if they should get it (a new trial) I will have a complete breakdown of some sort.” Although they were not granted a new trial, the appeals continued, and in November, still tense and anxious, Truman made yet another trip to Kansas.

He went first to California to visit Cecil, who was designing the sets and costumes for the movie version of
My Fair Lady.
They met in San Francisco, where Cecil was eager to introduce him to his new, thirty-year-old lover, who was everything that Cecil had ever desired. He was tall, blond and athletic; he had been a member of one of the American teams at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. An art historian who was studying and lecturing at Berkeley, he was also far better educated than Cecil himself; he had attended both Harvard and Princeton, where his roommate had been his lover and where belly-rubbing was so common that it was named “First Year Princeton.” By some miracle, this handsome all-American was as enthralled by Cecil as Cecil was by him. To Cecil’s gratification, Truman heartily endorsed their May-December romance, telling him that his athlete was “adorable, intelligent, appreciative, very fond of you, an important addition to your life.” Glowing in the reflected praise, Cecil added, “Felt very proud of my choice, who today seemed more delightfully gay & intelligent than ever.”

If Truman showed any of the tension he had referred to in his letters, it was not noticed by Cecil, who was caught up not only in his love affair, but also in a running feud with George Cukor, the director of
My Fair Lady.
During the following days in Los Angeles, Cecil was once again impressed by Truman’s ability to instantly take command. “He was completely at home on the [studio] lot here,” Cecil observed. “He was effusively received by the hypocrite Cukor & confided in by Rex [Harrison], who says that he likes working with Audrey [Hepburn], as she has such discipline, but she possesses no fire. Liz Taylor for all her slatterliness does possess this quality.”

After his California holiday, Truman dutifully went to Kansas, where he saw friends in Garden City and spent perhaps an hour and a half each with Perry and Dick in Lansing. “I had so much to say & discuss with you and so little time to say it in,” complained Perry a few days later. “It seemed as though we no sooner greeted each other, had a few brief words and here I was, back in my limbo again, feeling as though I was cheated of something and a little confused and disappointed.”

Truman associated Verbier with hard work and isolation, and in December, 1963, he let Jack go there by himself while he drove to Florida to stay with rich friends, the Gardner Cowleses in Miami Beach—Cowles owned
Look
magazine—and the Guinnesses in Palm Beach. He took Donald Windham with him to the Cowleses’, where he received a phone call telling him that Perry and Dick had won another appeal. Donald was witness to his depression and sudden nervousness, which manifested itself as a twitch in his cheek, a compulsive blink, and a darting, snakelike movement of his tongue. “I really have been feeling very low—almost bitter,” Truman confessed to the Deweys. “It’s all absolutely beyond belief. My God! Why don’t they just turn them loose and be done with it…. Well, there’s nothing to be done—except try to get through another year of this totally absurd and unnecessary torture.”

Jack lent his support from a distance. “Go on with your work, it’s a miracle of writing,” he said. “That’s what you must keep before you, day in, day out, waking and sleeping—your story.” But Truman’s restlessness sent his imagination off in a dozen different directions. He considered buying a house in Westchester, for example, not far from the Cerfs; but he quickly gave up the notion when Jack wrote back: “No, I want to be at least within bicycling-distance of water. Salt water!” He then said that he would like to spend the summer in Spain again. Jack sent a second veto, advising him to stay in America, close to his story. In the end, they again rented a house on Long Island, where Truman at last bought a piece of American real estate, a small house in Sagaponack, just east of Bridgehampton.

About a hundred yards from the ocean, the house had a high-ceilinged living room and a tiny bedroom downstairs; upstairs, reached by a spiral staircase, were two or three more rabbit-warren bedrooms. Jack hated the place immediately, believing, probably rightly, that they both would go mad in such a small space. He said nothing, but Truman undoubtedly read his face: not long after, he also bought the house next door. He would live in the first house, he said, and Jack would live in the second.

Thus they had found the ideal arrangement: they were within hailing distance, but they could not see each other through the trees and shrubs. Truman’s house was just right for him. He removed walls upstairs, giving his little house a more spacious feeling. Jack’s house was just right for him, an old-fashioned gingerbread cottage, with one large room downstairs and another one upstairs. He was so pleased, in fact, that, hat in hand—an unusual gesture for him—he asked Truman for title to his own house: he was forty-nine and, standing on his own ground at last, he yearned for the security of actual ownership. “I never asked Truman for anything,” he said. “I never asked him for favors. But I did ask him for my house, and he gave me the deeds for both of them in a butterfly box. He said that it was too much trouble to separate titles, so I could have them both in my name. I have never seen anybody else in my life do anything as generous as that.”

In October, 1964, Truman went back to Kansas, taking with him Sandy Campbell—Donald Windham’s lover—who was a fact checker at
The New Yorker
, assigned, at Truman’s request, to check the accuracy of
In Cold Blood.
They first flew to Denver, where Truman had arranged a party for some of his Garden City friends, most notably the Deweys, and Mary Louise Aswell, who had left
Harper’s Bazaar
in the fifties for a new life in New Mexico. The Deweys, Sandy noted in his diary, were almost like parents to Truman: he called Alvin Pappy, and Alvin had nicknamed him Coach. They then drove east to Garden City, where Sandy verified such things as dates and distances. Sandy said that he had worked with many
New Yorker
writers, including A. J. Liebling, Richard Rovere and Lillian Ross, but Truman was the most accurate. It was the opinion of Mary Louise that Truman most treasured, however, and he anxiously awaited her verdict on the first three-quarters of his book. He was profoundly pleased by her response. “That you really liked my book was so touching, and such a
reward.
I sort of dreaded your reading it—because I knew that if I was fooling myself, and had made a real mistake (about the artistic possibilities of reportage) you wouldn’t have been able to lie (successfully).”

Just before Christmas, Truman spoke, as he had before, at the Poetry Center of Manhattan’s Ninety-second Street Y.M.H.A. The program said he would read from
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
But some, suspecting that he would surprise them with
In Cold Blood
instead, arrived with more than the usual eagerness, like movie fans hoping for the sneak preview of a long-anticipated film. They were not disappointed.
Newsweek
, which sent a reporter, said that the effect he created was like that of “a fabulist of the old order, weaving a spell with voice and word, making one hear, see, feel,
sense.
What he shaped was a whole landscape and the fateful people in it.”

Perry’s and Dick’s numerous appeals not only caused him depression and anxiety. They presented him with an insoluble moral dilemma. He desperately wanted his book to be published. But publication almost certainly meant the painful deaths of two men who regarded him as their friend and benefactor, two men whom he had helped, counseled, and, in Perry’s case, tutored. “It wasn’t a question of my
liking
Dick and Perry,” he carefully explained to an interviewer. “That’s like saying, ‘Do you like yourself?’ What mattered was that I
knew
them, as well as I know myself.”

His entire future awaited their walk to the Big Swing, and his comments to his friends, which indicated his real feelings, ran like a grim counterpoint to the consoling comments he was making to Perry and Dick. Perry was of course unhappy when the Supreme Court refused in January, 1965, to hear their latest appeal. But where he saw a black cloud, Truman saw a ray of sunshine. “As you may have heard,” he told Mary Louise, “the Supreme Court denied the appeals (this for the
third
damn time), so maybe something will soon happen one way or another. I’ve been disappointed so many times I hardly dare hope. But keep your fingers crossed.” To Cecil he added: “I’m finishing the last pages of my book—I
must
be rid of it regardless of what happens. I hardly give a fuck anymore
what
happens. My sanity is at stake—and that is no mere idle phrase. Oh the hell with it. I shouldn’t write such gloomy crap—even to someone as close to me as you.”