By Reason of Insanity (77 page)

“That’s what worries me,” said Dimitri gruffly. “He might try to kill you.”

“I don’t think so. He’ll want to explain, to have me set the record straight. I’m no personal threat to him,”

“Neither were the women.”

“Evidently he thought so.”

“Still does,” Grimes pointed out.

Dimitri studied his nails for a moment. There was really nothing he could do about it; the paper was already out. He would try to protect the damn fool of course, but anything that happened was his own fault. His own stupid fault. Who did he think he was? Superman?

“You’ll have a bodyguard,” said the inspector. “Round the clock.”

Kenton shook his head vigorously. “No bodyguard, that’s out. I don’t want him scared off.”

“A tail, then.”

“Just so I don’t see them.”

“Is there anything else you would like?” Dimitri asked with exaggerated politeness. “Anything we might’ve missed?”

Kenton glanced over at Fred Grimes, then returned his gaze to Alex Dimitri. He smiled pleasantly but his manner was determined. “If I do flush him out, I want your word that your men will not immediately kill him.”

“What makes you think they would?”

The reporter shrugged. “In every city the police have vowed to kill him on sight. New York is no different. I understand the feeling. A wounded animal like that is too dangerous to live.”

“Then why do you want him kept alive?” asked the inspector suspiciously.

“Right now he’s the biggest story around. I’ve worked hard to get near him and I want everything he has to say. That’s my job.”

After another examination of his nails Dimitri agreed. “If it’s at all possible,” he added swiftly.

There were no further demands.

“You think it’ll be soon?”

“Tuesday’s the fourth,” said Kenton by way of an answer.

“What’s December fourth?”

“Five months since Bishop’s escape. He might want to celebrate.’

They didn’t understand.

“Five months,” said Kenton softly, “completes the pentagram. In mystical lore once the holy pentagram is sealed after a series of sacrificial killings, any further discovery is impossible. After Tuesday, don’t you see, Thomas Bishop will be free forever.”

There was a strained silence.

Finally somebody cleared his throat. Dimitri: “You’re not serious.”

“Why not?” said Kenton with a defensive shrug. “In matters of great madness anything’s possible. You seem to forget that in many ancient cultures madness was synonymous with magic. Even today in some South American groups, demented people are considered the true magicians of the tribe. They are thought to possess a ‘special understanding’ of things hidden to others.”

“But Bishop?” The voice was incredulous.

“Don’t you think he has magic? His hideous desires, his sexual sadism, his sheer invisibility. All are far beyond the normal range. What is magic but a supernatural power over natural forces? Bishop’s absolute madness gives him this kind of absolute power. And if that isn’t real magic, what is?”

Nobody answered him.

“God forgive us,” intoned Kenton slowly, “but the Thomas Bishops have become the true magicians of our tribe.”

AT 7:30 that evening, washing down a hamburger with lemon soda at a Broadway stand, his blond hair framing a face marred by an ugly scar, Kenton’s magician came to a sudden realization concerning what he must do. Of course, that was it! He continued to stare at the three women in the corner booth, obviously good friends. They had given him the answer. A superstitious man, he regarded that as a sign.

AN HOUR later the early-bird editions were on the streets. Both morning papers mentioned Adam Kenton’s latest startling revelation about Chess Man. In the News an editorial demanded a review of the whole insanity-defense issue.
The New York Times
was content to report the possibility that Thomas Bishop might not be the son of Caryl Chessman, as had been generally believed. With copies of both papers under his arm Bishop checked into another seedy hotel, this time in the high eighties off Broadway. Again he received no undue notice as he paid for one night, careful to show only a few dollars.

In his room he intended to read of himself and then make the final preparations for his plan. The section he needed from the Manhattan Yellow Pages was already in his bag, filched from a phone booth. He also had a few pads and some pencils. The rest he would get in the morning.

Meanwhile he simply had to control his mounting excitement. He would soon show Adam Kenton and all of New York that he was indeed who he claimed to be, the son of his almighty father, come down from the heavens to rout his enemies.

Horrific images of destruction flashed across his disordered mind and he calmly accepted them all as reasonable and natural.

IT WAS 9:30 before Inspector Alex Dimitri finally got home to Queens. He didn’t like Sunday work, and lately it seemed he had been doing a lot of it. His wife didn’t much care for it either. Traditional people, they believed Sunday was supposed to be spent with one’s family in relaxation. As it happened, the eldest daughter worked in Manhattan and lived in a hotel for women, another was engaged and the third away at college, so Dimitri hardly ever got to see them anymore. But much of the blame was his, for they were often around on weekends. There was one son, also in college.

As he settled down in his favorite chair with the evening newspaper, the father again wished his children hadn’t grown up so fast. He missed the years when there was always youthful noise in the house, and he and his wife Evelyn would often talk of those days. For the hundredth time he silently vowed to stop all the Sunday and late-night work and stay home more with his own.

Just as soon as he cleaned up the Chess Man thing. Just that, and he’d have plenty of time.

AT TEN o’clock Adam Kenton stormed out of Doris Quinn’s fashionable apartment on East 77th Street. They had quarreled over his affection for her, or rather the lack of it. She had wanted more than he was prepared to give—an old story to Kenton. Over the years he had been with many women, most of whom sooner or later presented him with escalating demands. When he suggested that everything for him was temporary and held no meaning beyond the moment, women invariably became hurt, angry, resentful. He couldn’t understand it. Having no sense of permanency, he distrusted all declarations of undying love or eternal allegiance. They seemed foolish and insincere to him. But most of all he disliked anyone who couldn’t enjoy the pleasures of the moment, who always sought assurances for the next hour or the next day or the rest of life itself. He had no such guarantees to give.

In truth, he didn’t himself know what the next moment would bring to his existence. That he had no emotional life was obvious even to him but he didn’t know how to change the condition, since he felt nothing for people. Nor did he particularly want to change. His satisfaction came from power, from being around it, involved with it. Women, largely powerless, didn’t normally enter that consideration. They gave him no satisfaction beyond their company when needed. For him they were essentially harmless creatures of little consequence in the scheme of things.

He couldn’t understand how Chess Man could go around wanting to kill them, wasting all his energy and purpose in seeking their destruction. His view of women, thought Kenton, was hopelessly distorted.

IN RYE the streets were generally deserted by 11 P.M. For most of its residents, hardworking and affluent, Sunday night was a time to gather strength for the workweek ahead. For John Perrone on this late-night evening it was also a time of deep foreboding. Try as he would he couldn’t shake the conviction that irreconcilable tragedy was imminent. It had to do with Adam Kenton’s plan to snare the demented killer, or at least establish some communication with him. But it would lead instead to acts of madness. Madness!

The managing editor had good reason to trust his present sense of doom. Many times such intuitive feelings had been proved correct. Though not overly superstitious or even religious, he had been reluctantly forced by fact to accept the phenomenon of precognition—if not in specific detail, then at least in outline. A practical man, willing to use every tool, Perrone wasn’t about to deny his own experience. Oftentimes such feelings worked and that was all he needed to know.

At the moment he also needed something to take his mind off the foreboding, something violent and visceral and gory that would ultimately lull him to sleep. in
TV Guide
he found two possibilities,
The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre
and the Eleven O’Clock Evening News. He chose the news.

BY 11:30 Kenton had downed six or seven Scotch-and-waters and felt reasonably relaxed. He weaved out of the English pub near Doris Quinn’s house and piled into a cab. Some twenty minutes later he was in his rooms at the St. Moritz. Another few minutes and he was ready for bed, his mind dulled by drink.

Further uptown a young man in a cheap hotel left his room to use the pay phone in the hall for the tenth time.

Kenton was struggling with the covers when he heard the first ring. He grumbled and decided not to answer. At the fourth insistent ring he let out a curse and grabbed for the instrument.

“Who’s that?” he yelled into the mouthpiece. And immediately burped.

No one answered him.

Annoyed, he repeated the question. Even louder this time.

A voice politely asked if he was Adam Kenton.

“Yes!”

“Mr. Kenton? I’ve been trying to reach you all evening. My name is Thomas Bishop. I have been reading the things you’ve written about me and my father …”

THOUGH TRAINED AS a reporter, with ten years on the firing line of instant emergencies and a young lifetime of quick decisions and fast movement, all Kenton could remember of the brief one-sided conversation was that he would be hearing from Chess Man again very soon. And so would the rest of the world.

Six minutes later a lonely lion in the nearby Central Park Zoo roared a midnight challenge and it was December 3.

Twentyfour

BISHOP LEFT his hotel room before eight o’clock in the morning. He had much to do in the next few hours and an early start was vital. After a quick breakfast he boarded a crosstown bus on 86th Street, which took him through Central Park to the East Side. He transferred at Lexington Avenue to one going downtown and got off at 64th Street. On the next corner was his first stop, the Barbizon Hotel for women. Fixing his face in a wide smile of good fellowship, he entered the lobby and turned left to the front desk.

His cousin was coming in from California for a few months and he wanted her to stay at a safe place like the Barbizon, what with all the terrible things happening in the city nowadays. She insisted on an upper floor, for a view. How high—.

The desk clerk was most helpful, pointing out that the building rose twenty stories, though residence rooms were available only on the first eighteen floors. Yes, there was a swimming pool of course. Also a health club and sun terraces. And for maximum security, all elevators were attended at all hours. His cousin would find it quite safe and most convenient.

Another half dozen quick questions told Bishop everything he needed to know. He thanked the man and walked back through the busy lobby to the street where he rejoined the working throng.

In his room the previous evening he had found three midtown hotels listed in the Yellow Pages as being exclusively for women. There were undoubtedly others in the city, he had told himself at the time, but he wanted something centrally located, something that would receive wide public attention. That was important. He intended to create a sensation and he expected everyone to be made aware of it. He would show them a vision of hell itself so that all might know his true identity. Like his father, he was a god among men. His divine mission would never end. Nor would he.

A few minutes’ walk down Lexington Avenue brought him to the Ashley at 61st near Park Avenue. Fourteen floors of women. He smiled and asked questions of the kindly clerk.

Four blocks farther down was the last such stop, the Allerton House at 57th and Lexington. Seventeen stories, a small lobby brightly lit and easily crowded. Bishop didn’t stay long.

Afterward he picked up some telegram forms at a Western Union office.

By 10 A.M. he was back on the West Side. In a discount clothing chain he bought a cloth coat and print dress, a button-down sweater, two brightly colored scarves, and a pair each of women’s gloves, shoes and stockings. They were for his sister, too sick to go out. The cashier, knowing the area, chewed her gum and took his money. Next door he selected some makeup—lipstick, eye shadow and liner, rouge and powder. Also a hair brush and a pair of cheap gold earrings. The clerk looked at the scar on his cheek and turned away.

The last thing he bought on the way home was a full blond wig.

In his room again, Bishop carefully made himself into a woman. He shaved his legs and put on the stockings, then walked around in the wide-heeled shoes to get used to them. He slipped into the dress, finally managing to zip up the back. The sweater went over the dress. Trying on the cloth coat, he was satisfied that it covered the dress length. The scarves would lend a bit of color to his intentionally subdued outfit.

Next he sat at the sink with the cracked mirror and applied the eye makeup, after washing his face of the scar and giving himself an extra-close shave. Then some coloring on his cheeks with the rouge, a fine layer of powder to smooth over any facial roughness, and a generous smear of lipstick, which he expertly drew on his full lips. Lastly came the blond wig, fitting tightly over his own hair brushed smooth and swept straight back. Earrings completed the startling transformation.

Afterward Bishop examined himself scrupulously in the mirror. He was pleased with his new appearance. In a quick walk across a cavernous lobby to an elevator, he would fool unconcerned eyes. Especially if the lobby were dimly lit. Which it was.

He had already made his choice of hotels.