Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

- Howard.

They think Charlie Clayton's back in the country.

Betty, get me Mrs. Charles Clayton, New Orleans.

Mr. Davis will give you the number.

- How do we know she's still in New Orleans?

- Captain Stewart called yet?

- We've gotta begin someplace.

- What makes you think I'd remember the number?

- Not yet, you never forgot anything in your life,

particularly Charlie Clayton.

(phone ringing)

City desk.

- T-O one, five-one-two-three.

- Hello, Tommy.

It's the DA.

Yeah.

- City desk.

Yes, he's here, just a minute.

Mark, it's Captain Stewart.

It's about Charlie Clayton.

- I'll be right with him.

- He'll be here in just a minute.

- Yeah Tommy, I put Howard Davis on it.

He's on the other line trying to get through New Orleans.

Glad to coordinate with you.

Sure thing.

We'll keep in touch.

Morning, captain.

Yeah.

The boys are right here.

You bet.

Take these officers back in the morgue

and tell Warner to break open the file on Charlie Clayton.

Before your time?

- Captain figured the best way to brief us

let us read through the file

just in case Clayton shows in Dallas.

- What's the what?

- Tell her I'm Sergeant...

No, operator, Howard Davis.

Mrs. Clayton?

You remember me.

Hello?

Hello?

No, operator, thank you.

She remembers.

- What'd we ever do to her?

- The worst injury, Mark.

We printed the truth about her husband.

- The daughter.

- Can't we leave her out of this?

- I'll put Lee on it.

- I listened to that kid cry,

Mark, when they arrested Clayton.

Later, when he skipped out and got away

to Brazil I listened some more.

Sometimes when it's quiet, I can still hear it.

- Very touching, and precisely why I want her found.

If Clayton had any genuine tenderness toward anyone,

it was toward, what was her name?

- Bonnie.

- So if he really came back, he'll surely try to see her.

Now brief Lee and turn him loose.

- No, I'm a good little puppy.

I'll go outside like I'm supposed to.

But let it be recorded that once,

just once, I barked in protest.

Betty, tell transportation to get me a seat

on the first plane to New Orleans.

- Federal officers have just taken Clayton

into custody in New Orleans as he stepped

from a plane from Mexico City

disguised in sunglasses and a... vernous?

- [Office Worker] Hey, Mark,

here's another one, San Francisco.

Oh, wait a minute, now they just grabbed a guy in Boston.

And he looks just like Clayton, too.

Divide and confuse, that's Clayton alright.

No doubt about it.

Either he's back or he's about

to sneak behind the smokescreen.

But why?

Why would he take a chance?

Maybe he remembered a couple

of million bucks he left behind.

Who needs two million when he's got forty?

No, whatever his reason for coming back, it's not money.

(uplifting music)

- I told you not to let them get between us and the girl.

Now look.

- I didn't see them, not til they were passing.

That little car, it went swoosh.

- Stop alongside them.

May we be of some help?

- That's alright, she's just out of gas.

- I think it's more serious.

For some time on the highway, she was just ahead of us.

We saw a trail from her car as though there were a leak.

- [Man] Well that's an understatement.

- It could be a lot worse, it's only eleven.

I'm not expected til five.

- Well we can push this thing into a gas station,

have it fixed in no time.

- I will be happy to drive you.

- Oh, it's no trouble, we're going that way anyway.

- Wouldn't it be better for the young lady

to come with my sister and me?

- If they don't mind, I might just as well

let them push me to the station.

- You'll go to my car.

You'll sit in the front next to Elena, who'll drive.

You'll sit in front, too.

You on the floor in the back, under my feet.

You two made the mistake of stopping,

but it needn't be a fatal mistake.

You could give me what I ask, complete obedience.

(speaking a foreign language)

Now.

(jazzy music playing)

(speaking in a foreign language)

Have you ever been shot?

I have.

A most enlightening experience for a man,

providing he can recover.

On the floor, please, face down.

- Now we only have a token force on the highways,

the depot, and the bus terminals.

Clayton always traveled by air, so...

- So this time, he'll hire an ambulance

and come in with a siren.

- We had the boy escort you in time, Howard.

- Somebody owes me a drink.

I'd already fastened my seatbelt

and given the hostess my order.

- Why go all the way to New Orleans

when she's on her way here to Dallas?

- Why Dallas? What's here for her?

- A Holy Trinity convent out on Oak Lawn.

- But she's not a Catholic, Clayton never

went to church in his life.

- The Bureau got it straight from Bonnie's mother.

Mark, you cover Love Field.

Jack, you got Fort Worth.

Now, mind you, not even Clayton's got the gall

to land right out in the open like that,

but we can't take the risk that he mightn't do just that.

Now my money's on this theory.

He'll fly in from Mexico in a private plane,

and that mean's we really got our work cut out for us.

Every landing strip in this county's got to be covered.

- Many times I'd have given everything for just this moment,

this first breath.

Oh, on the way, drive through the middle of town, will ya?

- Why take a chance like that, Mr. Clayton?

I wanna walk in the streets again,

I wanna feel people around me, people I haven't bought.

We'll give it five minutes, just five minutes.

- The next turn-off, park in back.

- Five to twelve.

At twelve sharp, the northwest corner opposite the library.

- Somebody sure planned it this way.

That hole in her gas tank's

a clean puncher, done with a tool.

- He's organized, that Clayton is.

- Tod Stiles, Buz Murdock.

Plenty of ID on them in the car cabin,

but where do they come in?

- Go through every bag, maybe there'll be some pictures.

- How do you like that?

Clayton drove in.

He probably came across at Juarez

before we alerted the border patrol.

- That last interview, when he was

still in jail waiting trial, I asked him,

"How come, Mr. Clayton?

"How come you had to plunder corporations instead of build?"

Know what he said?

- Russ, hurry up with that casting.

- "When I was a kid," he said,

"I never got turned loose in a melon patch.

"I never ate my fill."

- Captain, no sign of her at Holy Trinity.

- And there won't be, okay.

Oh, Ed, call my wife, tell her she'll

have to pick out that wallpaper herself.

- [Ed] Yes sir.

- Well now where you going?

- Try to get inside Charlie Clayton.

- I'll take it.

- One of those double-thick jobs, solid as a wall.

- It's all over your face,

who's behind this and what it's all about.

- Couldn't be, just couldn't be.

- What couldn't be?

- I'm sorry you have to be involved.

- I'd like to set fire to those drapes.

- Who are you, and why do they want you?

- It's my father.

- What kind of a father puts a gun on his own daughter?

- When you're a child, everything around you shines.

Clocks are homes for birds who

come out and celebrate each quarter hour.

Fathers are kings.

Brush your hair, kiss your sleeping eyes.

But then one day you cross a boundary

and suddenly you see things as they are.

Fathers fall from pedestals.

Clocks shake out each hour like terriers with rats,

and you know your own father is less than the dream.

- That's alright, cause

maybe you had no right dreaming in the first place,

but now, when you find out that

he's far worse than simply normal,

that he's bad,

that he's corrupt,

and evil, and...

Why does he always have to hurt people?

Why must he always destroy?

- What do you know what his life has been?

What he's gone through?

He loves you.

He's risking his last chance for happiness for you.

- Poor Elena.

- Do you think of me as a cheap toy of your father's,

and my brother as a gunman?

(speaking a foreign language)

- It's wearing thin, Antonio,

I mean that gesture of hand going down with the gun.

Magic doesn't reach me anymore.

You know, you could make a guy just mad enough

to just call your bluff.

- This makes only a small noise, like hands clapping.

It's possible some people may hear the shot,

but they'll shrug.

Who fires a gun in so circumspect a place as this?

- [Bonnie] Stop it!

- You think I was gonna keep going?

Just wanna make Antonio work for his money, that's all.

- A poor joke.

I was about to kill you.

- [Buz] Oh relax, will you?

It's just a little game we play before lunch

called American Roulette, lots of laughs.

- Move back.

- Okay, so, you know I'll do it somewhere else.

- [Antonio] Stay away from the window.

Over there, with your friend.

(speaking a foreign language)

- Hello, operator, we're sorry to trouble you.

We've decided not to make that call, thank you.

(knocking)

- Yes?

- [Clayton] This is the farmer, sowing the corn.

That kept the cock that crowed in the morn,

that waked the priest...

All shaven and shorn.

- They stopped to help her before we could.

I had to bring them.

- Married the man all tattered and torn,

kissed the maiden, all forlorn,

milked the cow with the crumpled horn.

Bonnie, have you forgotten the words?

That tossed the dog...

- That worried the cat...

- That killed the rat...

- That ate the malt...

- [Together] That lay in the house that Jack built.

- What you're looking for, Captain,

is a late model Fleetwood, either a '61 or a '62.

- Lights.

Muary, let me ask you,

what would stop somebody from using

those same tires on some other model?

- Nothing actually, except that people usually

drive the same tires that come with the car.

- Charlie Clayton's not usual people.

What's so funny?

- I just thought, Captain, that looking for a Fleetwood

in Dallas is like looking for

a special piece of hay in a haystack.

- You know, you coulda stood there

all month without saying that?

Anybody heard from Howard Davis?

Thanks, Maury.

Well okay boys, let's start pitching hay.

- Remember Bonnie, I said I'd buy you

your own real Barb stallion?

Well, you should see it.

It's got a good mouth, great heart,

he's got papers that go back to the eighth century,

with a little help from

the same fellas that do my passports.

He's yours, Bonnie.

I'll have him shipped up to you the moment I get back.

Just one present, after all this time?

I sent a lot of things, you know that.

I guess she didn't want any of them,

not for herself, not for you.

I know things have been tough for both of you.

- Mother got a raise last month.

She's making 78 dollars a week now.

- I know, I keep in touch.

- Papa, when are you gonna say what you came here to say?

- Pour the coffee, will you?

- You know why I'm selling my car this afternoon, don't you?

- Why does anybody sell anything?

You need the money.

- Yes, I need the money.

111 dollars, to be exact.

Specified dowry, my dowry,

so I can become a postulant and study to be a nun.

- Up in the Amazon, I've got a big land project going.

You know how we clear the jungle?

We out wait it.

We just cut the roots and stand back

and let time take care of the rest of it.

Even the biggest tree, the tallest and strongest,

dies by itself, if you give it enough time.

Oh, Bonnie, come along with me now.

Come along right this minute,

just take my hand and come away with me.

- When Mama was away at work,

while I was alone,

I used to try and remember

how it felt to have your hand hold mine,

but no matter how hard I tried,

I couldn't remember.

I just couldn't.

- About becoming a nun, Bonnie,

don't you think I understand that you're doing it for me,

because you feel guilty for something that I've done,

so this is how you pay off the crowd, for me.

Forget it, in another week they'll forget the gesture.

Oh, it's a magnificent one, I'll have to hand you that,

but I'm not gonna let you throw yourself away for me,

that I won't permit.

- Mr. Clayton,

this is something between you and your daughter,

wouldn't it be better to discuss it privately?

- Do you suppose I'd let you leave here

while I'm still in the room?

- You're a real believer, aren't you?

- Devout, of the one true faith,

things as they are.

Give me ten minutes head start,

and then you and Elena leave.

- Them?

- You two still bathed in sentiment?

Well while you are, do Bonnie another favor, will you?

For the cab.

Help her sell the car.

- Charles,

Charles, I don't want to leave you.

It's alright, I'll be alright.

Don't go through any red lights.

- Papa, aren't you gonna say goodbye?

- Honey, I've just begun to fight.

(radio playing music)

- [Radio Announcer] Here's a late bulletin

on Charles Clayton.

Bonnie Clayton, his 20 year-old daughter,

missing since morning, walked into police headquarters

at three o'clock this afternoon.

With her were two out-of-town friends,

Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock,

whose car was found with hers

near Parkersville this morning.

The trio has been closeted with city police

and sheriff's deputies for the last hour.

(bell ringing)

- Where may we talk?

- The convent's next door, Mr. Clayton.

- You know who I am?

- The photograph in the afternoon paper

didn't do you justice,

particularly with your hand half over your face.

- When they shot that picture,

I kept trying to tell them they were shooting my bad side.

We all have one, wouldn't you say?

- I expected you sooner.

My office, Mr. Clayton, not a trap.

Sit down please, Mr. Clayton.

- If you don't mind, I'll stand.

All my life, Mother, people have failed

to see what I really am.

They say I've accepted alienation

from all human contact except

the feel of a man's financial pulse.

They say I'm predatory, destructive.

Actually, I'm less of a financier, more of a speleologist.

I explore the caves in the people I meet,

the dark caverns of human behavior.

Now, if ever in the descent into these secret passages

if I had ever found as much light and inner beauty

as I found darkness and ugliness,

I might have got confused and lost my way

as so many people have who believe in the goodness of man,

but trip after trip, person after person,

without exception, Mother, I have always found

that hideous little monster crouching

in the ultimate closet of everybody I've met,

just waiting to be freed.

That's my only crime, opening closet doors.

That's why I'm exiled,

because I see the truth about us all,

because I'm not deceived by images.

Now I tell you all this because I think it's important

that you know about this envelope.

Would you open it, please?

- How much money have you put in here, Mr. Clayton?

- One hundred thousand dollars.

- Yes, I should say that you've been quite busy

opening closets and letting things out.

- She'll be here at any moment.

Tell her the facts, Mother, tell her that purity exists

for one reason only, as a target.

Tell her not to waste her life, tell her to go home.

- You've been underground a long time,

haven't you, Mr. Clayton?

- What's one girl to you?

There'll be others.

This is my daughter, my only daughter,

and I don't want her throwing her life away.

- Christ didn't say, "Go be a nun,"

he said, "Come, follow me."

He doesn't force his invitation on anyone.

He accepts volunteers only.

Is it possible, Mr. Clayton, that you might be wrong?

That, here and there, human beings do exist

who have tamed that little creature in their secret closets?

Who have dared to trot them out on a leash

and expose them to love and giving and doing?

- Words, Mother, words.

- Becoming a nun isn't like joining a club.

You don't just sign up and you're in.

It takes years, Mr. Clayton.

Wonderfully hard, chastening, fulfilling years.

It takes a generous woman, not a self-pitying

or self-retreating woman, the way so many people think.

The happiness that comes in religious life

must spring from within

and must be fed by the love of Christ.

It can only be led by girls who hunger

for something more than material things.

Who have been able to hear that faintest of all sounds,

the whisperings of eternal wisdom.

Girls who can hope, hope magnificently,

against all doubt, against all reason,

against a force as strong as yours, Mr. Clayton,

and still be able to seek the miracle.

Your daughter is such a girl.

Do you think that anything that I could say,

or anything that you could say,

could change her mind, once she's been called?

- Called?

Who calls?

Some angelic voice, some flashing light from the heavens,

some unidentified source of power?

No, Mother, this is the world, 1962.

I'll tell you why she's signing on your dotted line,

because of me, because she is me, my other side,

and she figures that she's got to try and make up

by putting in what I've taken out.

- We call that atonement.

- I don't care what you call it, I say it's waste.

(knocking)

- The novice mistress said you wanted to see me,

Mother, before I go upstairs to change.

- Yes, Bonnie, I thought that,

perhaps now that I understand about some of the things

that have happened to you today,

that you might want a chance to reconsider.

- Oh, Mother, this is Tod Stiles,

Buz Murdock, Mother Teresa.

- Mother.

- Reconsider what, Mother?

- Why don't I let your father talk?

- Honey,

I don't want any candles lit for me.

I don't need any prayers, I have no apologies to make

to anyone for anything I've ever done,

no sorrow, no guilt, no remorse, nothing.

Except I wish I could've taken you

away with me eight years ago.

But if I could live my life over again,

I wouldn't start operating at nine,

I'd begin in the cradle and get in all those good

early years before they begin to suspect you.

Now, could you possibly be

as good as I can be bad?

How can one little girl who hardly weighs 100 pounds,

who's only one year out of her teens

balance me

and tip the scales?

Don't do it, honey, don't put yourself on a block for me.

I couldn't stand it, honey, I honestly could not stand it.

- I always loved you, Papa,

no matter what they said,

I always loved you,

I never stopped.

But I never loved you more than I do right this minute,

because you don't know what you're saying.

All you're saying is that you love me, too,

enough to have come back,

enough to make sure I was alright.

You're saying you want me to be happy,

and that you'll fight anything,

the police, my church,

just to make sure I'm happy.

Believe me, Papa,

I didn't come here to atone for you.

I came for myself.

I'm not giving up anything,

I'm getting.

- Maybe what it is, I've always gone for sure things,

and you're going for a long-shot.

Who knows?

Maybe you'll end up outweighing me after all?

I hope so, darling,

I really do hope so.

Goodbye, Bonnie.

- God keep you, Papa.

- Mr. Clayton.

You've forgotten something.

- I didn't forget anything.

That's a wedding present for my daughter.

- Goodbye, Bonnie.

- Thank you.

- Go call the police, and don't ever get sentimental again

about anyone who runs from sirens.

Every criminal acquits himself before he's judged,

every violator considers himself excused by circumstance.

Don't you acquit him, don't you excuse him.

- I don't see a phone booth around here.

- I don't think I have any change anyway.

You?

- No.

- Well I guess we'll just have to drive into town

and tell the police in person.

- I told you we shouldn't have left him.

- Five to five.

- No wonder the police never thought

about the lake as a landing strip, too smooth for take-off.

A hull can't break free

from the surface tension without a little help.

Those boys can really stir up a lake, huh?

Antonio and Elena Madragarra, two 'r's, right?

(speaking a foreign language)

- Still hunting, eh, Davis?

- I never take more than the legal limit.

- Hurry, get in.

Put that thing away.

Get in.

Lots of scattered clouds, night coming on.

I'd say the odds are pretty good.

How'd the day go?

- You never quit, do ya?

- Follow your instincts, you keep going, what else is there?

- Isn't that the truth?

- Any statement for the press?

- Tell them it's been a busy day.

No,

tell them it's a day I'll remember as long as I live.

- Police headquarters, please.

- License number.

- Three-D-One-Two

One...

Six?

- Six.

- Laundry truck, huh?

- Yeah.

- Eddy, get in here, new lead on Clayton.

Yeah?

Oh, so you finally decided to check in, huh?

Did ya figure out where he's hiding?

A what?

A seaplane?

On Lake Dallas? Impossible.

It's what?

Flying away.

Look, which direction?

What do you mean you can't see?

- Yes, Captain?

- Okay, so I was wrong.

Sergeant, get me Carswell Airbase, rush, rush it.

- How'd that go, the thing that he said to her

when he first came in today?

- "That married the man all tattered and torn,

"That kissed the maiden, all forlorn."

- Yeah, but he wasn't was he?

Tattered, I mean, and if it's one thing she wasn't,

she wasn't forlorn.

(jazzy music)

- [Announcer] This has been a screen gems

film presentation from Columbia Pictures,

Herbert B. Leonard, Executive Producer.