Omaha

Omaha is presented as the destination of Dick and Perry Smith’s journey when they accept a ride from Mr. Bell, a traveling salesman nearing the end of a work trip. The city gives the pair’s account a plausible purpose—finding employment—while the concealed plan behind the ride makes that ordinary destination part of a murder setup.

A Destination on the Road

Late in the afternoon, Mr. Bell was about a hundred miles from Omaha, where the large meat-packing company he worked for was headquartered. Tired and hoping for company to keep him awake, he stopped for two hitchhikers despite a company rule against picking them up. The pair had been traveling for three days, hitchhiking from California through Nevada and Wyoming into Nebraska, and Mr. Bell was the first prosperous-seeming lone traveler to offer them a lift.

The Work-Seeking Story

Dick told Mr. Bell that Omaha was where the two men were headed and that they hoped to find work. He described himself as a skilled car painter and mechanic accustomed to earning good money, then explained that they had been in Mexico intending to live there but had found the wages inadequate. The account made their journey sound like a search for work, and Mr. Bell responded by talking about his own honeymoon in Cuernavaca and the difficulty of traveling with five children.

The Destination Concealed by the Plan

Perry Smith understood the encounter differently. He regarded Dick’s talk, including his boasting about Mexico, as incongruous because the pair intended to kill Mr. Bell, take his car and money, and leave his body in a concealed prairie grave. Their stated journey to Omaha thus served as cover for a planned robbery and killing. In a later scene, the pair are back in Kansas City after racing there through the night in a stolen Chevrolet; the supplied narrative does not show them reaching Omaha.