By Reason of Insanity (40 page)

“But nothing can be done,” protested the aide, “without using all the resources of the company. What’s needed is a major campaign under a central command that can have spotters everywhere and be fed continuous information—”

“And become public knowledge a half hour later.” He swung the chair back to face Henderson. “The orders were clear and absolute. No publicity.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do.”

“Nothing that would attract attention,” corrected Dunlop. “Which isn’t exactly the same as doing nothing.”

BISHOP HAD remained with the corpse all night. He did not sleep but sat silent by the window watching the passing landscape, the girl’s still body beside him on the bed. He felt a power within him as he gazed out at the dark and deserted countryside. Sleep was death, and all the silent towns were filled with the dead. Only he was alive to witness the utter desolation. Only he had the power.

In the morning he put the corpse in the tiny bathroom. She had been strangled so that no blood would get on the sheets. When the porter buzzed the compartment to ask if he could make the bed, Bishop ducked into the bathroom and locked the door. In an excellent girlish voice he shouted out a yes through two closed doors. He turned on the water tap as the porter entered, to let him know the occupant was using the bathroom. When the porter left Bishop thanked him, again in the girlish voice. Afterward he locked the compartment door and stretched the girl’s body across the red flower-patterned seat. He placed the white hand towels underneath the body and pulled down the shade. Then he took out his knife.

JOHN PERRONE and senior editor Fred Grimes, the
Newstime
crime specialist, met with Dunlop at noon. A big company task force was out because of the need for complete secrecy. Private detectives were out because of the possibility of being compromised. What they needed was someone in the company with the instincts of a detective and the abilities of a reporter. A man who knew the company operation and could use it to investigate and track down Vincent Mungo.

One man.

Martin Dunlop rubbed the bridge of his nose, looked over at his wall paintings. From Central Park down the breadth of Manhattan to the Battery all seemed peaceful. In the dim background the Statue of Liberty promised hope.

He turned to his managing editor.

“Who,” he asked softly, “is the best investigative reporter on the magazine?”

John Perrone glanced at Fred Grimes. They seemed to agree without a word being spoken.

“The best investigative reporter in the whole damn company,” Perrone announced grandly, “is one of my own senior writers, Adam Kenton.”

“And he already owns the story,” said Grimes.

“Where is he now?”

“In the L.A. bureau.”

“Get him,” said editor-in-chief Dunlop. “I want him in my office tomorrow morning.”

THE TRAIN ground into Grand Central at 1:30 P.M., an hour late. Bishop threw the bloody towels in the toilet bowl and stuffed the body on the seat. In blood he wrote “C.C.” on the mirror. Opening the compartment door a crack, he listened for a moment. There was no one in the aisle. He quickly slipped out.

All was confusion as people left the train.

When he got to his seat he picked up the flight bag and slung it onto his left shoulder. From under his jacket he removed the zippered money case and held it in his right hand as he walked through the car and off the train.

On the long walk down the platform to the track gate Bishop smiled happily. He had given New York a present to announce his arrival. The King of California was in the Empire State.

He had a feeling it was where he belonged.

At the end of the platform he passed through a marble maze and suddenly he was in the hub of Grand Central terminal. To him it looked like a science-fiction city, with millions of people running back and forth. He was struck with awe. It was more beautiful than anything he had ever imagined.

He pushed his legs forward and slowly entered the maelstrom. Far ahead was the biggest clock he had ever seen. He walked toward it and was soon lost in the crowd.

The date was October 15, 1973.

Remember it.

In the official lexicon of the New York City Police Department, it eventually came to be known as Bloody Monday.

ADAM KENTON

Eleven

HE WAS a loner who liked a woman when he needed one and never really thought about them the rest of the time. Whatever tender feelings he may once have had for women in general were lost in the backwash of a disastrous early marriage, but Adam Kenton didn’t notice anything missing. He lived out of suitcases and knew bellhops and bartenders by their first names in a hundred tank towns across the country. His work often kept him on the move and for him one city was the same as another, all of them corrupt and full of men with murderous intent. He was fascinated by power, and since men held all of it these were the people he frequented. Suspicious of everybody, trusting no one, he saw monsters everywhere, ready to pounce on the unwary. Politicians, bankers, businessmen, revolutionaries, public servants of every stripe, merchants of every persuasion, all were greedily stealing whatever they could. Government or private industry made no difference, they all had their fingers in the pie. His job was to find them out. In darkened corridors or crowded rooms, on empty street corners or busy boulevards, through mountains of paper and miles of records he searched, sought, questioned, demanded, threatened, cajoled and wheedled his way to facts and figures that could help in the pursuit of his prey. An air of quiet desperation often accompanied such movements, and over the years this kind of furtive solitary activity had made its mark on the patterns of Kenton’s mind. He had no real friends. In his disordered view the stale smell of corruption seeped through everything and everybody, and though his puny efforts had met with some small success he soon came to realize that the quest for incorruptibility was futile and perhaps even dangerously corrupt in itself. Yet he persevered though his personal life was empty, his human existence meaningless, and his twice-a-week sweat socks all had holes in them.

Of average height, wiry in body and loosely coordinated, Kenton yet gave the appearance of grim purpose and determination. It was mostly his eyes, which could instantly open wide in mock belief or close to narrow slits to indicate suspicion and distrust, as well as accommodate all shades of disbelief in between. His face, heavily lined, also told of his singleness of mind, at least to those able to read it properly. The lips were thin, the nose sculptured, the cheeks hollowed and high. With his face closed and eyes narrowed he presented a formidable force indeed to those from whom he sought something. Very often it was enough to get him what he wanted.

Most recently working out of the Los Angeles bureau, he was now suddenly being recalled to New York. The Telex message had given no reason, not a word beyond the imperatives of the move. Nor had the call from the executive editor been any more helpful except for the assurance that all would be explained upon his arrival. Eminently suspicious, his immediate thought was that he had been getting too close to the power structure in his articles on the irrigation scandal. Or was it the searching look he was giving California State Senator Stoner? Or maybe even his investigation of illegal Mexican immigrants. Whatever the story, he was close to something and somebody was beginning to hurt. So he was being reassigned. He trusted his own company no more than any other and often had fantasies of digging into Newstime operations at the highest levels. But what troubled him most at the moment was the name of Martin Dunlop on the Telex message. He had never met the august editor-in-chief. Only his boss, John Perrone, spoke to Dunlop. And Dunlop spoke only to God, who in this case was called James Mackenzie. Yet here he was, recalled on Dunlop’s direct orders. He frowned at the thought of what it could mean.

Past groups of sleepy travelers and impatient personnel he picked his way out of the TWA terminal and into a yellow cab. He was going on a special assignment, that much was certain. Feeling a rush of anticipation, he lay back and closed his eyes to the late night gloom that surrounded the fleeing cab on its headlong flight into the midst of Manhattan.

On the front seat next to the driver an early-bird edition of the
Daily News
screamed murder in Grand Central Station. A young woman’s body, gutted like an animal’s, had been found on an in-bound train at 4:40 Monday afternoon. The train, the Lake Shore Limited, had arrived at 1:30 from Chicago. The savage murder was believed to be the work of the California madman Vincent Mungo.

Kenton had written several pieces about Mungo of course, including the recent story that had been such a success. What he didn’t yet know, as New York slipped into Tuesday morning, was that Mungo had struck again. Or that he would be asked,
ordered
, to go after the story of the year. Long afterward he would be heard to say more than once that had he known what lay ahead of him at that moment …

By eleven o’clock Tuesday morning Adam Kenton knew why he had been summoned to New York and what was expected of him. He had been given the Rockefeller Institute profile to read and had then listened to Martin Dunlop and John Perrone discuss the project at length. As they briefed him, his eyes grew smaller until only pinpoints of light remained. He was to track down Vincent Mungo for the glory, and benefit, of the magazine and the company. He would conduct what amounted essentially to a one-man operation, headquartered in an unmarked office on the seventh floor, away from prying eyes. Everything he needed would be given him. He would have virtually all the resources of the company at his command. His authority would be unquestioned, the funds unlimited. Only time was in short supply; if he didn’t get to Mungo before the police did, the entire effort would be wasted and the project labeled a failure. Naturally nobody wanted that.

There was, unfortunately, one small catch.

The entire operation had to be conducted in total secrecy. No one outside the company would know of the search. That was on direct order of James Llewellyn Mackenzie himself. Even within the Newstime organization only a few top people would know of the existence of such a project. There would be no reports written or files kept. Nothing would be on paper. All communications from the field would be shredded each evening. Inquirers would be told only that Kenton was gathering material for another cover story on Vincent Mungo.

That was it.

Just a simple clandestine operation involving dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people in the field who could be told nothing. Searching for a man who had eluded the combined efforts of federal authorities and the police of a dozen states and cities across the entire length of the country.. And working without benefit of any time schedule, since the whole thing could blow up at any time with Mungo’s capture by police.

Added to which were no clues to Mungo’s latest identity. And no witnesses to his present appearance. At least none alive.

As each of these desperate facts sifted into his consciousness, Kenton wondered if the three men in the room realized what an impossible assignment they had handed him. Surely they must see that there was no chance of success, barring a miracle.

Of the few things in which he still believed, miracles was not one.

Several times during the briefing he wanted to ask what idiot had dreamed up the idea of a magazine searching secretly for a mass murderer. Besides being insane, it sounded damned illegal! But his reporter’s instincts warned him that the answer was already right there in the room.

Something suddenly stuck in his suspicious mind. California Senator Jonathan Stoner was now riding his own crest to national prominence. He didn’t need Vincent Mungo any longer; at best Mungo was an embarrassment, at worst a political liability. The sooner Mungo was killed off the better it would be for Stoner. The one thing the senator didn’t need at this point was adverse publicity.

Kenton silently vowed to learn what he could of Stoner’s activities, past and present, just in case that was part of the reason he was now in New York. He did not intend to be sidetracked from a story by anyone, and most certainly not by his own people.

“… and you’ll start immediately. Set things up as quickly as you can. You’ll have whatever you need.”

Dunlop was speaking and Kenton found himself nodding in agreement, much against his will.

“Everything will be routed through Grimes here. He’ll be your liaison in the company.” The editor-in-chief turned to the leather couch. “Fred, you know the ropes in this kind of operation. See that things run smoothly.” He looked around. “Anything else?”

“Just one thing,” said John Perrone. “If we want this kept secret, I suggest we adopt a code name. Something only we know about.”

“Good idea.”

Fred Grimes’ brow wrinkled in thought. “It all started with the Rockefeller Institute profile on Mungo.”

“Mungo shouldn’t be mentioned.”

“But the report can. Adam’s supposed to be doing a story on Mungo.”

“Fred’s right,” said Perrone. “It’s the perfect cover.”

“What is?”

“The Rockefeller Institute Profile: R.I.P.”

“R.I.P. Ripper,” cried Grimes. “The Ripper—”

“The Ripper Reference,” said Perrone quietly.

Dunlop pursed his lips, then nodded. “It’ll do.” He turned to Kenton. “Use it on all communiques to the field. That’s it then.”

He reached for some papers on his desk. The meeting was over.

As the trio reached the door Martin Dunlop called out.

“Mr. Kenton, allow me now to offer my personal congratulations on the swift success of your mission. I know I speak for Mr. Mackenzie when I say the company is deeply indebted to you.”

John Perrone and Fred Grimes exchanged quick glances on the way out.

The sly son of a bitch, Kenton muttered savagely to himself. He’s fixed it so I can’t fail or I’m through. And if I do somehow pull off the impossible, he’ll wind up with all the credit, sure as shit. Either way I lose. The sly son of a bitch.