By Reason of Insanity (76 page)

Fifteen minutes later the story was settled. It would make the late finals, meaning the Sunday-morning editions. “Chess Man Not Son of Chessman.” Who said so?
Newstime
expert Adam Kenton, who had been tracking the killer for months and knew more about him than anyone else. Which wasn’t hard since no one really knew anything about him, though some people once thought they did.

Now only he knew it all. Except where the man was and what he would do next.

THE BIG land cruiser rolled into the Port Authority bus terminal at 9:30, right on schedule. In the rear of the bus Bishop stared out the window until most of the passengers were gone. Good to be back? He wasn’t sure. In a way New York had everything he needed but now there was danger as well. Adam Kenton had bulled his way through Vincent Mungo and through Jay Cooper and through Thomas Brewster. The man was an absolute bloodhound.

Bishop finally sauntered out of the silent bus and across the lobby crowded with weekend travelers.

There was only one way to beat a bloodhound and every fox knew it. He was doing it right now.

Doubling back.

THE CALL from Fred Grimes came at 10:45. He had just heard from one of his mob sources that a man bearing a resemblance to Bishop’s description had been seen in the Port Authority terminal earlier in the evening. The spotter just noted the general likeness and thought nothing more about it since the man’s hair was dark rather than light and he wore a goatee. And of course a great many men fit the category of medium height and build.

On a whim the spotter checked the bus the young man had been seen leaving moments before.

“Guess where it came from,” Grimes whispered.

“Only one place it could be,” answered Kenton. “Miami.”

By the time the man had raced after the suspect he was swallowed up in the crowd.

BISHOP HAD decided that the safest place for him would be the Upper West Side, where he had stayed on his first night in New York. There were seemingly hundreds of small hotels in the area, many of them run-down and accustomed to renting rooms by the hour with no attention paid to the occupants. He rode the subway uptown and got off at 96th and Broadway. The streets were a Saturday night fever of Latin music and great masses of peoples all apparently bent on having a good time.

In a drugstore he bought a bottle of the lightest blond hair dye and a cream rinse, a razor and shaving soap, some small cotton balls and a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses with delicate frames. He also picked up a ten-dollar vinyl travel bag into which he put his purchases. At a nearby discount outlet he paid for a tiny portable radio and some extra batteries. These went into the black bag too. Soon afterward he got a room for the night in a grubby little hotel off Broadway in the nineties. The place was murky and cheap and he signed some fictitious name. No one cared.

Upstairs he listened to music as he set about altering his appearance once again. He assumed that by now the police would conclude he had dyed his hair. The natural choice would be black, Or he might be remembered from the Miami bus station as a young man with dark hair who had bought a ticket to New York City on the night of that killing. Or even by the driver or other passengers. A man with dark hair and a goatee. That would have to go too. Along with the thick glasses. All of it, everything.

First he washed his hair in the small sink behind the door. A cracked mirror hung above the sink and he kept looking at his progress in the dim light of the one ceiling bulb. It took several washings to rinse out the dark coloring, even with the chemical preparation. While his hair dried he shaved off his goatee. Eventually he applied the bleaching mixture, following directions carefully so it would be as light a blond as possible.

He again was wearing his New York clothes, chiefly the suede leather jacket and the heavy workboots with the rubber soles and heels. He now had only a pair of corduroy pants, which he found adequate for the weather, and a wool shirt. Everything else, including the Florida clothes he had bought, had been left in his room in Miami. But not his hunter’s cap. That had come with him and was resting on the hook that held his jacket.

Sometime near midnight he wrapped a towel around his head and went to sleep. He couldn’t go out and he had no television. He didn’t know what else to do.

AT ABOUT that time Inspector Dimitri was in his command post at the precinct, surrounded by members of the special task force. He had been personally told of the man spotted in the bus terminal, a voice on the phone giving him the information. He knew of course about the mob helping in the search, though he wasn’t aware of any of the arrangements. He also knew there was a contract on Chess Man. Obviously the mob had missed him this time, and to show good faith they were letting the police in on their discovery.

No matter. Only the information counted. Was it reliable? Dimitri thought it fit the facts pretty well. And Kenton had said Chess Man would return to New York, didn’t he? Which was right before he said Chess Man hadn’t left at all. Still, if that was really their man in Miami, and if he had really killed the woman there, it made good sense to get out right away. Miami was no New York—far from it. There weren’t a million holes for him to drop into, or crawl out of, whenever he felt in a killing mood.

Alex Dimitri believed Chess Man was back in New York and had been seen.

“It looks like he’s back in town,” he told his men. “This time we won’t miss him, I don’t care how many names he’s using. According to our information”—he didn’t say from where—”he now has dark hair and a goatee. Which should help us, since he doesn’t know he was seen, Forget light hair, forget beards. Tell all your contacts what we’re looking for. That’s it.”

He turned to Captain Olson, his second-in-command, “We’ll keep his new look quiet as long as we can. Even a few days might be enough to flush him out.”

AT 10:30 Sunday morning Bishop went out for a breakfast of a cheese omelette, toast and coffee. It was a sunny day of little wind, and the young man in the warm jacket walked several extra blocks just for the exercise. He felt alive again in the deadening anonymity of New York.

His hair was now a whitish blond that seemed a good match for his fair skin and smooth face. Two weeks in the Florida sunshine had produced no appreciable tan since he had kept himself covered most of the time. When he checked in the mirror before leaving he was well pleased with the different appearance he had created. Wearing his new delicately framed sunglasses, he bore little resemblance to the dark man with the goatee.

He could think ofonly one further refinement to complete his changeover. On the way home he bought an eye pencil with which to give himself a noticeable scar running down a cheek along the mouth lines to the jawbone. His description, as he well knew, contained no mention of facial scars.

He also picked up a copy of the
Sunday News
.

JOHN PERRONE liked to play tennis on Sunday mornings at his home in Rye, unless he was nursing a hangover from a Saturday night party. This was one of those Sundays, and so he stayed in bed reading the papers instead. First the
Times
, as befitted the managing editor of a top newsweekly. By 11:30 he was starting on the News. He never got past page 3.

THERE IT was staring him in the face. A headline saying he was not Caryl Chessman’s son. He never was and never could be Chessman’s son because Caryl Chessman had been impotent.

Impotent!

Bishop was beyond anger. They were trying to take away his very reason for living. Make a mockery of his father, a liar of his mother. Trying to make people believe his real father was a common thief, a nobody. A man who did nothing with his life. A man no one cared about, no one missed. They were saying he was nothing because his father was nothing.

They?

Who were they?

Adam Kenton.

Bishop read the interview again. Caryl Chessman had been impotent and therefore couldn’t have raped Sara Bishop. She had made up the story for reasons of her own. Perhaps she was going mad herself, there were indications of that. She had the boy by Harry Owens, and after he was killed in Los Angeles she moved north. Eventually the boy went mad as well. But Chessman had nothing to do with any of it, not with the mother or the boy. He never even knew they existed. Nor did they know of him until Sara Bishop got it into her head that she had been raped by Chessman, which she apparently told the boy at some point. But he was really the son of Harry Owens and all his killing was in vain. What was more, he knew it.

Lies! Lies!

Bishop threw the paper aside. He was shocked by the accusations regarding his mother. She had loved him dearly and would never lie to him. He was Caryl Chessman’s son and always would be.

Even worse was the statement that he was acting falsely. Bishop felt hurt and insulted. Over the past weeks he had developed a certain respect for the
Newstime
investigative reporter. Now he saw how foolish he had been to think that any newsman could treat him fairly. They were jealous of him, all of them, envious because he was doing the impossible. Adam Kenton was as bad as the rest of them. Worse! He knew more so he should know better.

Bishop lay on the bed like a stone, unmoving, his eyes closed, his mind locked in confused thought. He’d show Kenton. He’d show them all. What did they know? He was his father’s son. He was the demon hunter.

He would give them a sign by which they might know him. Something they would remember forever.

JOHN PERRONE finally got Adam Kenton at 1:15 at the hotel. He had been calling for hours, where had Kenton gone? For a walk in Central Park. On Sunday morning? It’s the best time, the park is empty, the air is clear. Besides, it’s afternoon. Perrone should try it sometime, get out there and commune with nature. Anyway, what was on his mind?

Plenty. And it all had to do with the interview in the
News
.

“What was the idea?”

“What idea?”

“Saying Chessman was impotent. You were the one who first reported that the lunatic was his son, for chrissake.”

“I reported that the lunatic thought he was Chessman’s son. There’s a big difference, you know.”

“Not that much once the police found out it could be true.”

“I don’t believe any of it myself.”

“Why not?”

“Take Vincent Mungo. His mother said she was raped, told her family. And it supposedly happened in the time and place that Chessman was operating. So now the police say he did it. But there’s no real proof she was raped. No police report at the time, no doctor’s examination. Just her word. It could as easily have been a lover who left when she got pregnant.”

“And Thomas Bishop?”

“All we have is Sara Bishop’s writing years later. No dates, no specifics. Maybe she imagined the whole thing, or made it up for some reason, If you read her words carefully, it begins to sound like a romantic fantasy in an otherwise dreary existence.”

John Perrone was perplexed. “How could you have written about Chessman’s son if the man was impotent? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t think he was impotent.”

“Then why say it?”

“Because I need something to get Bishop so angry he’ll have to show himself, something that will make him take chances.” Kenton lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’ve run out of miracles, don’t you see?”

The managing editor saw, “If Bishop does start coming apart,” he said, his voice equally low, “you know who he’ll be coming after.”

“Of course,” said Kenton. “That’s exactly what I’m counting on.”

THE IMPROMPTU meeting in the inspector’s office began at four o’clock. He wasn’t in the best of moods as he stared at the
Newstime
reporter and Fred Grimes, who Kenton had insisted be present.

“Do you have any idea of the danger,” asked Dimitri gravely, “any idea at all?” His eyes rested on Grimes for a moment. “And you, Fred, I’m surprised you let him do this. You know what could happen.”

“Fred knew nothing about it,” said Kenton matter-of-factly. “I told him after you called me.”

“Then what’s he doing here?”

“Let’s say he’s representing the
Newstime
management. I wanted all of us to be clear on what I’m trying to do so there’d be no misunderstanding. It’s obvious we can’t get to Bishop again through his identities, like we did with Jay Cooper and Thomas Brewster. I’m sure he’s not using mail drops or getting mail wherever he’s living. It’s too dangerous now, and he doesn’t need it anymore. I think he has enough new names for a while, probably from the cities he was in before New York. Or maybe from Miami.”

“We’re still not sure he was there.”

“I’m sure. But it’s not worth asking Miami police to check all missing wallets for weeks back. There’d be hundreds of them. The same goes for all the big towns he’s been in.”

“If he had other papers when he came here, why’d he get the Brewster ID right away?”

“Because all the others were out-of-state, far away. He needed something local that wouldn’t cause suspicion, that would make him a member of the community, so to speak. Remember, you were looking for somebody from California. The only way he could’ve got a local ID was from someone he met in another state who lived here. But apparently he wasn’t that lucky, so he had to get one fast.”

Dimitri grunted. It made sense.

“When we got to Brewster, Bishop ran out of time. He couldn’t get another local since the mail was too dangerous, so he had to fall back on the ones from other cities. Or maybe he had none and that’s why he went to Miami.”

“Or maybe,” said Grimes in reflection, “he was getting papers on other local names the same time as Brewster.”

“That too,” conceded Kenton.

“So he’s got other names now,” growled Dimitri. “What’s that have to do with the interview you gave about Chessman not being his father?”

“Everything. With his new identities there’s no way we can get to him, so I’m trying to make him come to us. To me, He’s too smart to be caught in a police trap but I have no connection with the police. To him I’m probably just a nosy reporter who’s been writing about him for a long time. He read that first piece about Chessman back in July and probably everything since. When he reads what I say now he’ll find a way to me. His anger will make him do it.”