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him out, I suppose he feels she will so continue, and goes right ahead to his next difficulty.” Indeed, far from feeling shamefaced, Arch complained that the authorities in Alabama had something against him, and in hurt, petulant tones he threatened to leave the state, perhaps even the country.
    When they are forced to, people who have depended on others are often able not only to manage but to thrive. Such was the case with Lillie Mae, who was belatedly learning that she could take care of herself. She was well regarded by her employers, and by the middle of June she had been promoted to branch manager, at a salary of thirty-two dollars a week. Though much of that was sent home to Monroeville to cover Truman’s expenses, she still was able to scrape by in New York. She was clever, as well as attractive, and if she had steadfastly pursued a career, she might well have succeeded. But her basic goal was what it had always been: home, security, and a place in society. Sometime that winter or spring, not long after she had arrived, she discovered—or rediscovered—the man who was to give her all three.
    His name was Joseph Garcia Capote, and he was another of the Latins she favored. His father, a colonel in the Spanish army, had arrived in Cuba in 1894, when it was a Spanish colony, and had fought against Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders at the Battle of San Juan Hill. He became a landowner, returned to Barcelona to marry, and then came back to Cuba to raise three boys, of whom Joe was the oldest, in solid middle-class comfort. Educated at the University of Havana, Joe left for New Orleans in 1924, when he was twenty-four, to look for a job in the United States. It was in New Orleans, during the summer of 1925, that he met Lillie Mae in the lobby of the Monteleone hotel.
    Captivated by her vivacity and beauty, he instantly fell in love with her, just as Arch had done. She liked him because his accent reminded her of her absent lover, the jealous Central American. They had dinner together and they may even have made love; but if they did have an affair, it did not last long. She already had one lover, not to mention a husband and a baby, and Joe was not in a financial position to stay around. Unable to find work in New Orleans, he transferred his job hunt to New York, where he soon married a secretary in one of the offices he visited. He corresponded with Lillie Mae even so, and it is possible that he encouraged her, and perhaps even gave her money, to come North. However it was arranged, they did meet in New York, picking up their romance where they had left it in New Orleans.
    They had both matured in the five intervening years. When they had first met, she was just twenty, still a wild and unsettled girl, and he was a youth himself, uncertain what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go. When they saw each other the second time, she was twenty-six and somewhat chastened by experience; he was an aspiring young executive with a promising future on Wall Street. For four years, while he was working as a shipping clerk during the day, he had spent his nights studying accounting and business administration at New York University, and by 1931 he was earning a comfortable income as the office manager of an old and respected textile-brokerage firm, Taylor, Clapp and Beall.
    Lillie Mae could not have fallen in love with a drudge, and Joe was a lively man with a sense of humor and fun, who enjoyed spending money even more than making it. He liked having a good time; he appreciated fine food and wine; he dressed well, in the conservative way of Wall Street; and he was fastidious in his personal habits. “I never saw a man who was any cleaner than Joe Capote,” said Lillie Mae’s brother Seabon. “He would take a bath in the morning before he went to his office, then take another one and put on clean underwear and a clean shirt before he would have his dinner.” Short, round, and bespectacled, with dark, slicked-back hair, he