By Reason of Insanity (38 page)

“What can you make when there is?”

She shrugged her blond head. “Depends who it’s for. Anywhere from ten an hour.” Her eyes searched his. “Why do you ask?”

He smiled warmly, a boyish grin of good feeling and good intentions. “I don’t know anybody here. It’d be worth it to me.” He paused. “Would you model for me?” he added softly.

“What kind of art you into?”

“None,” he answered matter-of-factly. “I don’t know anything about it.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it, caught by surprise like that.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” Her giggles sounded musical.

He nodded his head in agreement. “I can afford to be,” he roared in delight. “I got plenty of money.”

In a local shop they bought two thick steaks, the best filet cut, and twenty dollars worth of other foodstuffs. She promised to cook for him. Her two-room apartment was small and incredibly messy but she laughed it off. She was in good spirits. And why not? Her money was just about gone and here was food for a week plus who knows how much money in the hand. Fifty dollars? Maybe even a hundred. She would let him stay all night, her mind was made up to that. She would fix him a great meal and then take off all her clothes and model for him. The thought made her smile. He knew nothing about art, so her modeling would be simply standing there in different poses while the bulge in his pants got bigger. In a way that was a waste because she really had a good model’s body, even though her thighs were a bit heavy and her belly was inching up. She swore once again that she would do something about that starting tomorrow.

Meanwhile she would pose for him and he would get all hot, and then they would go to bed and maybe she’d get hot too and they’d have a good time, and in the morning she would have some money to live a little longer. She wondered if he would want to see her other times while he was in town. That would be good for her. Thinking about it, she resolved to treat him extra nice. Really something special.

The meal was very good; he told her it was the best he’d eaten in a long while. They ate slowly and drank red wine out of cardboard coffee cups but he just sipped his. She rolled two joints of marijuana and gave him one. He refused it, told her he took no drugs. He didn’t tell her he was a moral man who was horrified by all the evil around him. He sat there grimly watching her get high, a pleasant smile on his face.

Afterward she sat him on an artist’s stool and slowly undressed for him. He watched her carefully, noting every part. He had seen enough females by now to appreciate her firm, youthful body. Suddenly he felt an excitement within himself and he hated her for it. As she stood nude before him he saw that she was a natural blonde, and an idea slowly worked its way into his disordered mind.

On the eighth day of Bishop’s stay in Chicago the headlines screamed murder for the second time. A brutal, fiendish killing of a young woman in the Old Town section. The papers again wrote of the California killer, though again no initials were carved on the corpse. What the reporters didn’t write, what they couldn’t print, was the condition of the body. Even the medical examiner could not credit what his eyes were seeing.

Within hours a rumor was spreading throughout official Chicago that the madman would be shot on sight. Shot at least a dozen times to make sure, and perhaps even made to disappear. No Chicago police officer was heard saying it, no one spoke of it, but it was tacitly understood that Vincent Mungo would not be left alive to be judged insane and sent to an institution from which he could one day again escape and continue his dreadful carnage. If caught—when caught—he would never even reach the police station. That much was certain. Chicago would take care of its own.

On the ninth day Bishop returned to the large post office and asked for the contents of his mail box. He told the busy clerk he had left the key at home. For identification he showed the driver’s permit. In a moment he walked out with four pieces of mail, one of them Jay Cooper’s new license. Another was a note from a friend visiting in Europe, and two were advertisements which he discarded. At the license bureau he paid the fee and had the card stamped. It was taking a chance asking for Cooper’s mail but worth it. Had the clerk known Cooper, he would have said he was a friend who had been asked to pick up the mail while the other was out of town for a few days. The key was really left at home but he hadn’t wanted to go all the way back or to be hassled over who he was so he just said he was Cooper. No harm done. And he would have walked away, promising to return with the key. In reality he knew that people with post office boxes seldom knew the clerks. They wanted to be inconspicuous, their movements unobserved, their mail unnoticed. Which was usually why they paid for boxes instead of getting free delivery at home.

Now the real Jay Cooper would never know about a duplicate driver’s license, nor would he miss a few advertising brochures. And mail from Europe was always being lost. It had been a clean job and the fake Jay Cooper, the fake Vincent Mungo, the fake Thomas Bishop felt so elated he started Lb cry. In his hotel room the real Thomas Chessman lay down to rest and wondered why he hadn’t been given his true name at birth. He had no way of knowing that on the birth certificate he was really listed as Thomas Owens.

That evening he went to the Playboy Club to celebrate his conquest of Chicago. He walked past the square bar into a large dining room, where he was seated in an alcove facing a buffet table. A bunny in purple served him. Her name was Sunny and she smiled warmly. He kept looking at her mouth and she kept wetting her lips. When she brought him a second beer he gave her a twenty-dollar tip and she became even warmer. He told her he was tired and she got him a plate of food from the buffet. He thought that was very nice. When he left he tipped her again. She smiled and asked where he was from and he smiled and told her New York. Her tongue darted out again and he told her she had nice lips.

On the way home he stopped in another place and had a few more beers. Next to him a black girl was drinking a martini. She wore a white blouse and gray pants and looked bored. He sat staring into his beer and thinking of Sunny. People were dancing to rock music on a small stage set at one end of the room. Strobe lights played over them.

“Do you dance?”

He turned to her. She smiled at him but her smile wasn’t as warm as Sunny’s. She wore glasses.

He shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said politely. “But I like to watch.”

“This place is creepy,” grumbled the girl. “They don’t like single women sitting at the bar. And you can’t dance unless you’re a couple at a table.”

“I never learned how,” he said after a moment. “I’m from New York,” he added by way of explanation.

“You in on business?”

“Just looking around.” He went back to his beer. “This is a tough town.”

“Same as anywhere, I guess.”

“A little more here.”

She glanced his way. “Depends what you want,”

“In New York if you spread the money around, the girls come to you. Know what I mean?”

“Same thing here once you learn the game.”

“I don’t play games. Got no time for that. I like to show a little money and buy what I want.”

“That’s a good way all right.”

A pause.

“Where you staying?”

He turned back to her, studied her lips. They never moved. “I’m at the Playboy,” he said finally.

She frowned. “They keep a close watch over there.”

“If a girl’s dressed, she just goes in the elevator. Who’s gonna stop her?”

“They do sometimes. From what I hear.”

“So then they call up and the guy says he’s expecting company. He paid for the room so it’s nobody’s business what he does. See what I mean?”

“That’s right.”

He finished his beer and picked up his change, leaving a dollar tip. “I’ll be in room 830 later on. If you’re in town for the night, stop over.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.”

He stood up to leave and she touched his arm. Her smile was hidden now.

“I’m not cheap,” she announced in a business voice.

He looked at her but couldn’t see her eyes through the thick glasses.

“Neither am I,” he answered and walked away.

Outside he breathed in the cool night air. The moon was silvery and riding high in the sky. Thinking about the girl, he laughed to himself all the way home. She’d be at the Playboy and up to room 830 if she had to fight her way through tigers. He had given her a smell of money and made it seem like he was an easy mark.

He wouldn’t be there, but somebody else probably would be when she knocked on the door long after midnight. He hoped it’d be a woman. Would serve her right. Serve ‘em both right.

The hell with them all. He giggled. That girl would never know how lucky she was that he wouldn’t be there to greet her. Lucky for her he was too tired to be at his work. He corrected himself. His father’s work. Well, by now it was the work of both of them. Yes, very definitely it was now the firm of Chessman and Son.

He was still snickering when he got to his room.

On the tenth day Bishop left Chicago. There were those who would later say that he left the city in ruins. He had killed two women, but the miasma of fear that surrounded each incalculable destruction lingered long after his departure. While it was never reported officially, details of what had been done to the two women soon became common knowledge, and eventually the two became ten and the ten stretched endlessly. For years afterward mothers would use the Chicago fiend as an example of warning to wayward daughters, and men would swear they were nearby or next door or even in the same room when the madman stalked his victims.

On that last day Bishop arose early.

After breakfast he walked along the beach front on Lake Shore Drive for the last time. He was sorry to be leaving and he hoped someday to return. Chicago was his kind of town. But it was time to go.

At noon he checked out of his hotel and walked south on State Street, past Heald Square and the Chicago River, all the way down to Jackson Boulevard, then turned west to Union Station. He had decided to take the train to New York since all the bus terminals were being closely watched. Though he was in no danger, carelessness could always be harmful. He didn’t intend to be careless. The previous day he had bought a coach seat for New York leaving Chicago at 2:30 P.M. Now it was almost time.

Union Station looked like a giant bank vault to him, all hollow and cavernous and full of empty space. In one corner by a flight of imitation-marble stairs was a church directory listing eleven different services. Christian Science was first. He thought that added a nice homey touch to the cold room. Past the rows of empty benches he continued to the shopping area in front of the track gates. He bought a paper and some magazines. Across the aisle he ordered a frozen chocolate shake at a candy-colored stand. He asked for water but they didn’t seem to know what it was or where to get it. They told him to try Coca-Cola.

When the gates opened he filed past the quiet man who carefully eyed the crowd. The coaches were in the rear of the train and first class toward the front, with the dining car and bar car in between. He wished he could have had a first-class roomette where he’d be by himself, but that was too conspicuous. Porters always remembered the people in first class. Nobody looked at those in coach.

He found his seat and put the flight bag on the floor. The zippered money case he kept close by his side. His seat companion was a college student from Maine who liked to talk. In due time Bishop made up a whole history for himself as they talked along.

During the first few hours he went through the magazines and newspaper. The weekend section of the paper had a long article on the Mungo case. There were many factual errors and, even worse, the author had made Vincent Mungo into a raving lunatic. Bishop didn’t think he raved and he obviously was not a lunatic. Nor was Vincent Mungo really Caryl Chessman’s son, not
really
. He had just made it seem that way so no suspicion would fall on him since he was legally dead. He didn’t know where they got the idea that Mungo really was Chessman’s son.
He
was.

He thought about writing a letter to the newspaper in which he would correct all the errors. Except for his real identity of course. But he soon saw how dangerous that would be. He was a star now, and stars had to put up with anything people wrote about them. That was part of the price of being a star, even an unknown one. You had to suffer in silence. He was very good at that, at silent suffering. He had been doing it all his life. He forgot about writing and went back to reading.

Eventually he walked through a few of the cars. Almost all the seats were filled. The trip would take about twenty-one hours along the scenic Lake Shore route through upper New York state to Albany, and then down to New York City. Dinner would be served until nine o’clock, the bar open till midnight. After that it would be bedtime for those who could sleep in a chair. Bishop again wished he had a bedroom of his own,

At eight o’clock he entered the dining car and was seated with an elderly couple who liked to drink even more than they liked to eat. They didn’t talk much except to complain about the food and the service. The liquor apparently was passable. After dinner they headed for the bar car. A few minutes later a young woman was seated across from him. She was thin and fair-skinned and had mousy brown hair and looked very timid. He smiled at her and made some introductory comments and soon they were talking as people do at a dinner table. She was a librarian in Omaha, Nebraska, doing some traveling on a three-week vacation. She had never been to New York. From there she was going to Florida and would then fly home.

He hadn’t seen her when he walked through the coaches. She said she had a bedroom because she couldn’t sleep sitting up. He nodded understandingly; he had trouble sleeping that way himself. Toward the end of the meal he asked if she’d like to have a drink in the bar car. Perhaps later, she said, if she didn’t fall asleep first. He told her he’d be there about eleven if she cared to join him.