By Reason of Insanity (65 page)

KENTON SPENT most of the morning in meetings. At 9:30 he played the Stoner tape for his managing editor, then told him what he knew of Stoner’s activities. Perrone agreed there was enough for a story pulling the California senator off his high-flying pedestal. But he wanted to talk it over with the editor-in-chief, probably the next day. Could he have the tape and Kenton’s notes? They would be returned of course.

Kenton graciously consented. Why not? Trusting no one, remembering the Nixon tapes, he had made a duplicate at Ding’s house in Los Angeles on the previous Sunday. The duplicate tape was in the St. Moritz safe. And should a sudden earthquake swallow up his notes, he could rewrite them from memory.

He did not tell Perrone about the duplicate. He did, however, suggest that only the two of them should know of the existence of the Stoner tape for the moment. And Dunlop of course. Which made four, including Patrick Henderson.

“Can he be trusted?” asked Kenton.

“About as much,” said John Perrone, “as a cobra around your neck.”

THROUGHOUT MANHATTAN a dozen private detectives were beginning a complete screening of young white males who had rented space in local mail drops during the initial week of Chess Man’s arrival in the city. There were twenty-seven names, five more than the original twenty-two. For each of them records would be checked, neighbors questioned. Whatever it took, however it was done, the needed information would be secured.

DURING THE afternoon Kenton was mostly on the phone to California. To contacts in Red Bluff, sending them to the nearby country town of Justin, where they would seek people who had known Thomas Bishop and his mother. To Justin itself, talking with the editor of the local weekly newspaper, from whom he wanted copies of any mention of the mother’s death in 1958. To Dr. Poole at Willows State Hospital, asking him to help assemble a drawing of Thomas Bishop from memory. And to an expert sketch artist in San Francisco, who would go to Willows to put together the drawing.

The contacts from Red Bluff, two stringers who knew their way around, were told to find out exactly how the mother died, where she was buried, what happened to her son, who got the family possessions. Anything and everything they could. They were to talk to a hundred people if they had to. If there were a hundred people in the town.

The newspaper editor was most cordial. He had heard of Adam Kenton, and of course he was thrilled to be able to help out
Newstime
magazine. Unfortunately he had not been around in 1958. That was old Mr. Pryor, the original editor, long gone now. He had taken over the paper in 1963. But he would do his best to find the death notice. Did Kenton have a date?

He did not. All he knew was that the boy was ten at the time and he had been born on April 30. So the editor should look from May 1 right through to the end of the year. The name was Bishop. Mother’s name Sara, the boy Thomas.

Kenton also would have wanted any mention of the Bishops during their years in Justin but he knew better than to ask for such a thing. The paper’s past was not on microfilm, nor did it have an index. It was not, after all,
The New York Times
.

At Willows, Dr. Poole was agreeable to the idea of a composite sketch of Thomas Bishop and felt certain that he could come close to reality, provided the artist followed his directions. But permission would first have to be secured from the administration. Kenton talked to Dr. Mason, Willows’ director, who immediately gave his approval. In doing so he did, however, make a mental note to call the police lieutenant from Hillside.

In San Francisco the sketch artist would leave for Willows in the morning and would hopefully have the drawing on the way to New York by nightfall.

By 4 P.M. Kenton felt he had done all he could with California. He called Fred Grimes. The private detectives were to get a picture of each of the twenty-two men they were investigating, a recent picture. Nothing more than six months old, even if they had to take the photographs themselves.

Grimes said it was up to twenty-seven now.

Then twenty-seven. But he wanted a clear photo of each man. That was vital.

He counted the money left in the safe, about a thousand dollars. He looked through the Mungo papers for anything he might’ve missed on Bishop. He put all the secret financial reports and income-tax returns together in a separate envelope. He did the same for John Perrone’s confidential list of information spies.

Kenton wondered about the information spies, especially such high-placed people as cabinet officials and judges and senators. What made them do it? They signed a pact with the enemy, they violated the trust placed in them. In the search for truth, itself just another form of power, the battle was always between those who made it and those who made it public. Between the players and the observers. The population, the audience, was both the hostages and the spoils of war. A newsman’s job was to get the facts out, to be the observer who transmitted reality, truth, to the public. There was no morality, only objectivity. The players could not be objective because they were involved, they had vested interests. Only the observers, those on the periphery of power, could objectively report what was happening. And thus become themselves part of the power.

This essentially was what the news game was all about. It had nothing to do with the public’s so-called right to know. Nobody had an empirical right to know anything. Whatever was told to someone was a gift or a curse, but either way had nothing to do with any inalienable right to know. That the public knew anything at all was merely a by-product of the eternal struggle between the players and the observers, the protons and electrons, mutually attracting and repelling. There was only one real arena of action and it was the center ring. Faces might change but the sides were constant. And spies with interchangeable masks merely muddied up the clear-cut struggle. They were tolerated but not particularly liked by either side. When they were discovered, their usefulness to their acknowledged side was at an end. They were powerless.

Kenton felt no sorrow when such spies were found out, most especially when it was a newsman who had gone over to the enemy. It was the same as if he had let Senator Stoner go for money, or given up on Chess Man out of pity.

No, he would never do that. He would never lose his power.

TOWARD THE end of the workday James Mackenzie received a call from Washington, D.C. An acquaintance, though not a friend, and a man of some influence. They talked for ten minutes.

Afterward Martin Dunlop was asked up to the chairman’s twentyfifth-floor office.

JOHN PERRONE spent a bad night. Not only did he have the problem of the Stoner article but now the whole Ripper Reference project was being shut down. Martin Dunlop had said only that the wrong people in Washington had found out about it. What he meant, as Perrone well knew, was that pressure had been exerted to return the magazine to its traditional political sympathies. Mackenzie had of course refused. Which left him no alternative to scrapping the private search for Vincent Mungo.

Perrone understood the reasoning and even the necessity for such a move, though he didn’t agree with the decision. What worried him was Adam Kenton’s reaction. Kenton was not only the best investigative reporter on the magazine, he was also a fanatic about anything he went after. Perrone himself had thought the Mungo idea great and had wanted Kenton for the job because he was the best. He also wanted him out of California and Senator Stoner’s hair.

Stoner was Perrone’s image of a good politician in theory if not in practice. Though overly ambitious, he stood for the old-line traditional American virtues that had made the country strong. Self-reliance and rugged individualism and a religious cohesiveness within the family. These were the virtues the magazine had always extolled. Along with Stoner, Perrone believed that an increasingly strong centralist government was bringing the country to economic and social ruin. He looked for men like Stoner to support, men who preached the rock-ribbed Republican canon of limited government and freemarket capitalism. In an age of dreary socialist rhetoric, where last year’s liberal became this year’s conservative, and where leftist labels stretched to infinity, such men were increasingly hard to find.

There was also a personal interest of sorts in Perrone’s view of Stoner. In his own earlier days the managing editor had been greatly influenced and even materially aided by the Rintelcanes of Washington, a powerful western family of money and Republican sentiment. One of their daughters was married to Senator Stoner, a plain woman he himself had once thought about seriously.

Now Perrone supposed he would have to give the okay for the Stoner piece. His reporter had enough to call for an investigation, and if
Newstime
didn’t publish it he’d go elsewhere. Stoner was just too greedy and too dumb. An investigation would probably nail his career; certainly it would take him out of any national consideration. Perrone felt sorry for the in-laws and most especially for the wife. At least he would do his best to keep out the sexual stuff. She deserved better than that.

But what about the Ripper Reference? How would Kenton take that?

THE CALL from the managing editor’s office came at 9:30 while Kenton was dictating some thoughts he had put together overnight on Thomas Bishop’s psychology. With an annoyed air he turned off the machine and went upstairs. His boss was waiting for him, alone and in a somber mood. Something was wrong, and Kenton quickly guessed that it concerned a certain California senator whose wife’s parents were good friends of the man seated behind the desk.

“You changed your mind on Stoner,” said the reporter gruffly. “You’re not going to print it.”

John Perrone sighed, wishing life were so simple. He suspected Kenton knew of his relationship with Stoner’s in-laws and wondered if he should act offended by the remark.

“Don’t be presumptuous,” he finally said. “I already told you there’s enough for a good story. Providing Martin goes for it.”

“But will you recommend it?”

“I always recommend whatever I believe in,” snapped Perrone, stung by the implication.

Kenton smiled. “Nothing personal, John. I know you’re the best in the business, always were.” He sat down, crossed his legs as he stretched them. “So what’s up?”

Perrone told him.

Kenton just sat there, his legs still crossed, the smile still on his face. A paranoid personality, suspicious of everyone and everything, he expected constant treachery and deceit. Often satisfied, he was seldom surprised. He thus tried to prepare as best he could for the power plays of others.

Perrone watched him for some moments, the smile, the posture, the eyes. Finally he could contain himself no longer.

“Well?”

The voice in answer was flat, lifeless.

“It’s a mistake.”

Perrone had somehow expected more.

“A mistake?” He frowned. “Is that all you can say?”

“It’s a mistake that will have to be corrected.”

“How?”

“It will be done,” said the flat voice.

“But how? Mackenzie himself gave the order.”

“Then he will himself change it.”

“I doubt that,” said the managing editor. “For what it’s worth, I think it was the wrong decision, but I told you what he’s up against.”

There was no longer a smile on Kenton’s face. His eyes blazed and he sat very erect and tensed.

“I know who Chess Man is,” he suddenly blurted out, “and he’s not Vincent Mungo.” He stood up. “I also know how to get to him.”

A speechless Perrone heard him ask for a meeting in the afternoon with James Mackenzie and Martin Dunlop. Preferably in Mackenzie’s office.

On his way out Kenton decided it was time he used some of that unlimited power he was supposed to have in the company.

AFTER LUNCH Bishop went uptown to pick up his passport. It was waiting for him. A slim green booklet, very official-looking, with his name and birthplace and picture. Even the seal of the United States. He was Thomas Wayne Brewster. It said so right in the book, an official document of the United States government. And good anywhere in the world. Except Cuba, North Korea and North Vietnam. Bishop had no intention of going to those three countries. At least until he had taken care of the women in the rest of the world.

Home again, he prepared himself for a six o’clock photography session. As always, he would be meeting the model in some local restaurant, a copy of
True Detective
in hand.

THE MEETING in Mackenzie’s office was set for three. Before that hour Kenton saw Otto Klemp privately, His message was brief and very much to the point. If Klemp didn’t agree to continue the Ripper Reference, Mackenzie would be told that he was a clandestine contributor to, and a longtime backer of, the American Nazi Party. If Mackenzie wasn’t interested, the newspapers would be. And that, said Kenton, was known as blackmail.

He also mentioned the Western Holding Company to Martin Dunlop, again privately.

At the three o’clock session he told the group that he knew the madman’s name and history, and would soon have a picture of him or at least a drawing. He was also close to locating his prey.

Mackenzie wanted to know how close and was told perhaps a week, maybe only a matter of days.

No one else was aware of his knowledge, Kenton asserted, so there could be no charge of interfering with police business or withholding information. Not yet anyway. They still had a good chance at the story of the year.

Mackenzie wasn’t convinced. The pressure would get worse. If the police got wind of anything they would be around like flies. So would the mayor’s office. Yet the newspaperman in him cried out to get the story.

What did the others think?

John Perrone felt right from the start that it could be done and should be done.

Martin Dunlop thought they should continue. A story like that was worth a limited risk.

Otto Klemp sat silent a long moment, gazing thoughtfully at Kenton, who stared back at him with eyes unwavering.