The Love You Make (67 page)

After graduating from high school, Chapman enrolled at the DeKalb Community College for a short time and then dropped out. He went to work at the YMCA camp for a while, until a friend told him of an available full-time job at the YMCA in Beirut, Lebanon. Chapman saved enough money for his airfare by washing cars and bagging groceries, and by June of 1975 he was off. Chapman wasn’t in Lebanon two weeks, when a fierce civil war started, and he had to be evacuated with other Americans. He taped the sound of gunfire on a cassette recorder before he left and played the tape over and over again for his friends back in Atlanta.

It was later that year that he fell in love, with a pretty girl with long dark hair named Jessica Blankenship. It was a thoroughly unrequited relationship, and Chapman went to all sorts of extremes to impress her, including having “Happy Birthday Jessica” spelled out on the marquee of the local Holiday Inn. He even enrolled at Covenant College, a strict, Presbyterian school, to impress her. His dream was that they would become Christian missionaries together and go off to some exotic place to live. But Covenant College was too hard for him, and when he dropped out Jessica saw him as a failure. A job at the Fort Chafee Vietnam refugee placement center in Arkansas buoyed his spirits temporarily, but when that was over, in December of 1975, he was lost.

In 1977 he moved to Hawaii, where his mother had moved after divorcing his father. Shortly after his arrival, he attached a pipe to the exhaust of a car, fed it to the interior, and tried to kill himself. He was found in time and was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment at the Castle Memorial Hospital, but he was soon released. He later worked at the local Y and in the print shop at Castle Memorial. In 1979, with some money his father gave him, he took a trip around the world and visited various YMCAs in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Paris, and London. Upon returning to Hawaii in June of 1979, he married Gloria Abe, a Japanese woman four years his senior who had booked his world tour for him at a local travel agency. Although he held only a four-dollar-an-hour job as a security guard, he managed to bankroll enough money to collect lithographs. His first was a Salvador Dali called
Lincoln in Dalivision,
which Chapman purchased for five thousand dollars. He later traded that in for a Norman Rockwell litho, entitled
Triple Self-Portrait.

By this time something had transformed Chapman into an overweight, irrascible young man. He was curt and snubbed coworkers and developed a sudden interest in firearms and guns. At home he became testy with his wife, refusing to let her listen to the radio or read a newspaper. Scientology became a favorite hate for him, which he saw as a type of brainwashing. His security job was across the street from a Scientology headquarters, and every day someone would call them and whisper into the phone, “Bang, bang, you’re dead.” He was also once seen wearing an identification tag at work with the name John Lennon written on a tape and placed over his own. But there was nothing Mark David Chapman had said or done that would have led anyone to believe he was going to kill John Lennon.

Sometime in October, Chapman read the latest issue of Esquire magazine, the one with John as the cover story. The article, a piece of nonjournalism in search of a subject who had refused to be interviewed or cooperate, portrayed Lennon as “a forty-year-old businessman who watches a lot of television, who’s got $150 million ($250 million according to the Fortune 400), a son whom he dotes on, and a wife who intercepts his phone calls.” John had sold out. “That phony,” Chapman thought.

On October 27, Chapman went into J&S Sales, Ltd in Honolulu and purchased a Charter Arms .38-special revolver. He had applied for a gun permit earlier that month for his job as a security guard and had no problem obtaining the gun.

In November Chapman made a pilgrimage to Atlanta, Georgia, to see his father and friends. Then he went to New York. He spent a few days at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue, before checking into the Hotel Olcott, not far from the Dakota. Chapman allegedly later told a minister that during this period he was wrestling with “good” and “evil” spirits. Evidently the good spirits won out, for the time being, because Chapman suddenly boarded a plan for Atlanta, staying there only a few days before he went home to Hawaii. Finally, Mark headed for New York for a second time on December 5. His total journey at this point had taken him 17,000 miles.

The first night he checked into the Sixty-third Street YMCA, just nine blocks south of the Dakota, and then into the Sheraton Centre Hotel at Fifty-second Street and Seventh Avenue. The next day he took up vigil in front of the Dakota. He carried with him some cassettes of Beatles songs, a copy of J. D. Salinger’s
Catcher in the Rye,
and his .38 revolver. Chapman was not noticed in the changing guard of fans who often waited outside the Dakota, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lauren Bacall or Gilda Radner on their way in or out.

Monday, December 8, was an unusually warm winter’s day in New York, the perfect day for waiting in front of the Dakota and celebrity watching. No one is quite certain how long Mark Chapman was there that day. When John and Yoko left for the Record Plant at five P.M. John’s limousine was at the curb, instead of inside the entrance gates of the Dakota, and as he strode to his car, Chapman thrust a copy of the new album,
Double Fantasy,
into his hands. John obligingly stopped and signed the cover for him, “John Lennon, 1980.” Another fan ran up and snapped a picture. Mark Chapman was ecstatic as John and Yoko got into the limousine and rode off. “Did I have my hat on or off?” Chapman asked excitedly. “I wanted to have it off. Boy, they’ll never believe this back in Hawaii.”

John and Yoko returned to the Dakota at 10:50 P.M. in the limousine, John carrying the “Walking on Thin Ice” tapes. The tall security gates were still open, but again the limousine pulled to the curb, and John had to walk from the sidewalk. Yoko preceded him into the entranceway. Just as they passed into the dark recesses of the archway, John heard a voice call to him, “Mr. Lennon?”

John turned, myopically peering into the darkness. Five feet away, Mark Chapman was already in combat stance. Before John could speak, Chapman fired five shots into him.

Yoko heard the shots and spun around. At first she didn’t realize John had been hit, because he kept walking toward her. Then he fell to his knees and she saw the blood. “I’m shot!” John cried to her as he went down on his face on the floor of the Dakota security office.

The Dakota doorman, a burly, bearded, twenty-seven-year-old named Jay Hastings, dashed around from behind the desk to where John lay, blood pouring from his mouth, gaping wounds in his chest. Yoko cradled John’s head while Hastings stripped off his blue uniform jacket and placed it over him. John was only semi-conscious, and when he tried to talk, he gurgled and vomited fleshy matter.

While the police were called, Hastings ran outside to search for the gunman, but he didn’t have far to look. Chapman was calmly standing in front of the Dakota, reading from his copy of
Catcher in the Rye.
He had dropped the gun after the shooting. “Do you know what you just did?” Hastings asked him.

“I just shot John Lennon,” Chapman said quietly.

Yoko screamed hysterically until the police arrived. The first at the scene was Patrolman Anthony Palma. Against Yoko’s wishes, he turned John onto his back. “Red is all I saw,” Palma said. “The guy is dying. Let’s get him out of here.” By then a police cruiser had arrived, and Palma and Officer James Moran carried John to the backseat. They took off for Roosevelt Hospital with their sirens blaring. Yoko followed in a second police car, repeating over and over, “It’s not true, tell me it’s not true!”

On the way to the hospital, Officer Moran looked down at John Lennon in his lap and couldn’t believe it. “Do you know who you are?” Moran whispered to him. John moaned and nodded his head. It was his last gesture. By the time they reached the emergency room of Roosevelt Hospital, over 80 percent of John’s blood volume had been lost from seven massive wounds in his neck and shoulder. They raced him into the emergency area, and several surgeons and nurses worked on him feverishly for half an hour. According to Dr. Stephen Lynn, the hospital’s director of emergency services, “It wasn’t possible to resuscitate him by any means.”

When Dr. Lynn went out into the waiting room, Yoko asked frantically, “Where is my husband? I want to be with my husband! He would want me to be with him!”

“We have very bad news,” Dr. Lynn told her. “Unfortunately, in spite of massive efforts, your husband is dead. There was no suffering at the end.”

“Are you saying he is sleeping?” Yoko sobbed.

She was back at the Dakota shortly after midnight. Alone.

She called three people that night. She called Julian, who had lost the father he had never known; she called Aunt Mimi, who lost the little boy she once pretended was her own; and she called Paul, who lost the chance to redeem part of his soul.

On December 10 the following letter appeared in newspapers around the world. It was from Yoko and Sean.

I told Sean what happened. I showed him the picture of his father on the cover of the paper and explained the situation. I took Sean to the spot where John lay after he was shot. Sean wanted to know why the person shot John if he liked John. I explained that he was probably a confused person. Sean said we should find out if he was confused or if he really had meant to kill John. I said that was up to the court. He asked what court—a tennis court or a basketball court? That’s how Sean used to talk with his father. They were buddies. John would have been proud of Sean if he had heard this. Sean cried later. He also said “Now Daddy is part of God. I guess when you die you become much more bigger because you’re part of everything.”

Yoko still lives at the Dakota, though many of her friends imagine it would be too painful to pass every day the spot where John was killed. Indomitable and determined, she leads a busy, productive life. Often, she returns to the studio to work on old tapes she made with John, or to record new songs herself. A few months after John’s death she began an unlikely friendship with a young man named Sam Habitoy, a sometimes antique dealer and interior decorator. For a time rumors were rampant that Yoko would marry Habitoy, or that they were already married, but Yoko denies all this. She has a full-time job living with John’s memory, and no man will ever replace him, in any way.

John’s shadow, his very presence, is inescapable wherever she goes. Indeed, she speaks of John all the time, always in the present tense, as if he’s just in the other room, about to knock on the door. She is publicly very philosophical about his death. When asked why all the psychics and astrologers hadn’t warned them about the night of December 8 under the archway of the Dakota, she says they had. Not that specific date, perhaps, but that John always had bad luck in his future. Some fates, she says, cannot be changed.

The following constitutes an extension of the copyright page:

 

“The End” (page v) John Lennon & Paul McCartney© 1969 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“I’m a Loser” (page 152) John Lennon & Paul McCartney© 1964 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Help!” (pages 157 and 158) John Lennon & Paul McCartney© 1965 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“In My Lifc” (page 182) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1965 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Lucy in the Sk
^y
with Diamonds” (page 219) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1967 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“A Day in the Life” (pages 224 and 339) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1967 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“With a Little Help from My Friends” (page 224) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1967 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Hey Jude” (page 275) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1968 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Cold Turkey” (page 331) John Lennon © 1969 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Mother” (page 421) John Lennon © 1971 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Working Class Hero” (page 342) John Lennon © 1970 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“God” (page 338) John Lennon © 1971 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“I Am the Walrus” (pages 213 and 343) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1967 Northern Songs Ltd. All rights for the U.S.A., Mexico and the Philippines controlled by Comet Music Corp. c/o ATV Music Corp. Used by permission. All rights reserved. “Too Many People” (pages 351 and 353) Paul McCartney © 1971 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“How Do You Sleep” (page 351) John Lennon © 1971 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Imagine” (page 351) John Lennon © 1971 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“She Said She Said” (page 172) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1966 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“I’ll Cry Instead” (page 143) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1964 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“She’s Leaving Home” (page 162) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1967 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” (page 224) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1967 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“All You Need Is Love” (page 230) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1967 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“The Ballad of John and Yoko” (pages 326-327) John Lennon & Paul McCartney © 1969 Northern Songs Ltd.
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“Mind Games” (page 386) John Lennon © 1973 Lennon Music/ATV Music Corp.