The end of the night (24 page)

As soon as word was received that the vehicle was on the pike, an all-points alarm was sent, and the nearest vehicles were diverted to the priority target. During the twenty miles and twenty minutes it took the target vehicle to reach the Valley Forge area, the pattern of the stalk had been established. An unmarked vehicle containing two officers had caught up at high speed, slowed, and drifted close enough to confirm the identification, and had then dropped inconspicuously back into position four hundred yards behind the Mercury. A standard patrol car followed approximately a mile behind the unmarked car. As quickly as possible other patrol cars were stationed at the exists ahead, one at each exit, each one in contact with the unmarked car tailing the target vehicle.

The procedure to be followed should the target vehicle attempt to leave the turnpike had been established. It would move over to the exit lane. The unmarked car would increase speed so as to exit immediately behind it. The patrol car a mile back would be alerted and would increase speed also, so as to exit as close as possible without creating alarm. The patrol car waiting outside the gates would be alerted. As soon as the target car had committed itself to one particular exit, the waiting car would move across the front of it and block it. The attendant would drop to the floor of the booth. The unmarked car would block any attempt to back away. The rear car would plug traffic at the exit ramp to keep the pubUc away from the party.

Though it was not anticipated that the target vehicle would leave the pike until much later, this eventuahty had to be covered with great care.

Pursuers and pursued rolled at a steady sixty miles an hour through the hot late afternoon toward the shadows of dusk gathering far to the east. Other vehicles moved steadily along with them, vacationers, salesmen, people heading for an evening in Philadelphia. A few cars caught up with them and

moved slowly by, made cautious by the patrol car to the rear which they had recently edged by, eyes flicking back and forth from the highway to the speedometer.

At Central Control men watched the big electric map and talked in low tones. It was particularly important that there should be no news break. The Mercury had a radio. So far the lid had been kept on. And any news break which hinted at what was going on would bring a thousand idiots in their cars onto the pike, hoping to see blood.

The tanned young man is driving. Eyeglasses is in front beside him. Hernandez and the girl are in back. The girl seems to be asleep. It is a four-door vehicle.

The group of men made an executive decision. They checked with the New Jersey Turnpike. The interchange between pikes was an inefiBcient and potentially dangerous place to try to take them. The same tail car would follow. The Jersey people said they would be all ready and waiting by the time the guest arrived. The tail car was informed.

At 6:35 the target vehicle transferred at the interchange to the New Jersey Turnpike. The remote tail dropped off and a new patrol car picked up its function. It contained three officers, and heavier armament.

The break came at 7:18 when the Mercury slowed, moved over to the exit lane and entered the service area. With the unmarked tail car a hundred feet behind, it moved past the parking lot and the Howard Johnson's to the banks of gas pumps.

The tail car reported. Control said, "Can you take them there?"

"It isn't too good. Lots of cars at the pumps. Kids running around, but . . . hold it! The driver got out and the one with glasses is behind the wheel. The one who got out is pointing over toward the waiting area beyond the pumps. Looks like they'll park it here. Now it looks good."

"You got Car 33 with you, and we can back you up with 17 in . . . four minutes, and 28 in six minutes,"

"Put 17 down there ahead on the grass, ready to plug access back onto the pike just in case. We'll take the driver right now."

Kirby Stassen went first to the men's room, from there to the cigarette machine, from there to the crowded order counter

for take-outs where, when his turn came, he ordered four hamburgers and four coffees to go. When they were ready, the girl put them on the cardboard tray and put it on the counter. As Stassen reached out with both hands to pick it up, a big hand reached from the left and another from the right, and the cuffs snapped down snugly, with metallic efficiency, onto his wrists. He tensed for a moment, looking neither to left nor to right, staring incredulously at his wrists, then let all the air out of his lungs in a long, gentle sigh. The men who held the ends of the two sets of cuffs yanked his arms down to his sides. The few people who saw it gasped and murmured.

They walked him to the manager's office, searched him roughly and thoroughly, handcuffed his wrists behind him and left him there under the cold eye of an enormous trooper in uniform.

When Nanette Koslov came clacking out of the women's room in her slacks and high heels, hips swinging loosely, sullen hair bouncing against the nape of her neck, two large men moved in from the side and grabbed her, each one clamping one hand on her wrist and the other on her upper arm. Her scream silenced all the clatter. With her eyes gone mad, with foam at the comers of her mouth, she bucked and spasmed with such strength that the two strong men could barely hold her, and one of them, twisted off balance, went down to one knee. But they gained control, and half ran her into the private office. They held her arms straight out while the dining-room hostess, agreeable to this extra duty, searched her, found the knife, placed it on the corner of the desk. Nanette Koslov was still taut, waiting, savage as an animal, so they cuffed her by wrists and ankles to a heavy office chair.

Hernandez and Golden waited in the car. It was too far away from the main building for them to have heard Nan's animal screamings. The long minutes passed. Golden got out of the car and stared toward the building. The dying sun glinted orange against the lenses of his glasses. He shrugged and started toward the building at a half trot. A man who had been stooped low, came angling out from behind a parked car at a dead run. Before joining the State Police he'd had three pro seasons with the Steelers. It was like hitting a rag doll with a hurtling sack of bricks. Golden went out and stayed out for twenty minutes. The glasses skittered forty feet across the asphalt without breaking. When the ex-defensive

guard was halfway to his target, a man who had crawled mto position suddenly rose up and filled the open window beside Hernandez with his big shoulders, his face wearing an expression of hard joy, rock-steady hand aiming the barrel of the .38 at'the center of Hernandez' face.

"Just move a little bit," the officer pleaded in a half-whisper. "Move a finger, an eyeball. Move anything.**

Hernandez sat like a statue. A man opened the other door and got in. The wrists were so large the handcuffs were set at the last notch. After they got him out of the car, lumbering, docile, dazed, they found, wedged into the seat, a .45 Colt automatic pistol, army issue, with a full clip and a round in the chamber. It later proved to have been in the glove compartment of the stolen vehicle.

They were loaded in patrol cars and taken off the turnpike, jailed on suspicion of murder, printed, photographed, identified, given prison issue denim, and locked in isolation cells.

The finding of Helen Wister had been on the radio and television newscasts since seven. That story was vastly fattened by news of the capture released in time to hit the nine o'clock news.

The Stassens would have had the news before nine, had they been home. They were at a large cocktail and buffet dinner party. At nine they were just beginning to eat. Somebody turned on the television set. It was ignored imtil somebody yelled, "Hey! Listen to this!"

They listened. Ernie Stassen had a five-martini edge. She put her plate down with great care and went over and turned the set off, and turned and looked at all the other guests. She wore a curious smile. The room was very silent. "That's all nonsense, of course," she said in a high, flat voice. She laughed like a windup machine. "It's a ridiculous mistake." Walter got his wife by the arm and got her out of there. All the way out she talked about the mistake in her high, wild voice. When they got home the reporters were there, waiting for them, and it had just started to rain.

Millions heard the news and were gratified the four had been taken. Thousands realized they had been on the turnpikes at the same time. They told their friends, and had a sense of having participated in something historic. After the detailed account was pubHshed, hundreds upon hundreds changed their stories, a little bit at a time, until at last they

were able to convince others as well as themselves that they had seen it all, that they had been in grave danger, that they had held themselves in readiness to assist if there had been any slip. Every big news story creates throngs of imaginary heroes.

At Bassett, Nebraska, reporters did not arrive at the Koslov farm until the following morning. Anton Koslov in his muddy barking accent had one statement to make. His daughter, Nanette, was dead. She had been dead long time. No more talk about Nanette. Go away.

One San Francisco reporter, familiar with the nether world where Nanette had lived, dug up a few anecdotes about her which he cleaned up enough to be usable, and tracked down some eight-by-ten glossies from her days of offhand modeling. One of those pictures, after the addition, by air brush, of halter and shorts, became the picture most often reproduced across the country.

In several score cellar apartments, cold-water flats and cofifee houses, the acquaintances of Sander Golden gathered and marveled at his unexpected notoriety. They said it wasn't like him. They said he was a mild and amusing type, a no-talent type with an erratic intelligence.

One freckled httle poet with red handlebar mustachios did remember a time in New Orleans when Sandy Golden had been less than mild. "He was splitting a back alley pad on Bourbon, way over, with Seffani, the bongo man that killed himself a year ago, remember? and one night they're like dead, man, and Seffani's chick, a large one with runty little brown teeth she felt were killing her career, she strips them clean of bread and goes has her teeth capped pearly white, so a month later she's in Kibby's back room, loaded with horse up to here, snoring a storm, and Sandy went out, came back with phers from someplace and he uncapped that big chick. That Golden could come out mean, man. Bear it in mind."

The story had been sagging. The papers had been fighting to keep it alive. And suddenly they were rich. They'd had their fun with Hernandez, and now they had three new identities to pry apart. New backgrounds to search. They had a Rich Boy— Only Son, and they had a green-eyed Refugee—Ex-Model, and they had an honest-to-God Beatnik who was the Brains of the Wolf Pack Rampage.

They kept it dancing for a week, and then it finally died, falling off the bottom of page 16. But it wasn't death. Only a

coma. The trial would play big, bigger than all that had gone before. When the trial came along, they were all ready. And it fed an estimated one million dollars into the economy of the city of Monroe.

TWELVE

DEATH HOUSE DIARY

I HAVE TORN UP too much of this. I became too mystic and esoteric. So I had to tear it up and I have lost too much time.

It is going to happen TOMORROW. That's the biggest word in the world. It's hung on the back wall of my mind, flashing off and on. I didn't sleep at all last night. If I can manage it, I'll stay awake all night tonight too. I sense exhaustion may have certain morale benefits.

The human brain, facing extinction, is an illogical organism. It goes around and around the cage, checking every crack and corner. It refuses on some very primitive level to accept that fact that TOMORROW it is going to be turned off like a light in the attic. It is really and truly going to happen. Nothing can stop it. I must endure a brief ceremonial procession, seat myself in the ugly throne, suffer a few mechanical ministrations, then brace and wait for that special usage of what Mr. Franklin gathered on his kite string. Manmade hghtning this time, focused for maximum efficiency. At times I can think of it as though I were going to be an obser\'er, calm and curious about it all. The next moment I remember it will be Me, invaluable, irreplaceable Me, and the sour edge of nausea pushes upward into my throat. I flex my right hand and study it with great care. It is a wonderful, intricate tool, strong, flexible, healthy, self-mending. It has another fifty years of use in it. It seems an inconceivable madness, a grotesque waste, to turn it into cold, dead meat. My eyes move with oiled ease, focusing with an instantaneous precision. What is their guilt, that they should be glazed into eternal stillness?

Flaccid within the trousers of prison twill lies the reproduc-

tive sack, obscurely comic, no further anxious labors to perform. The sperm lie sleeping in hidden warmth, remote from any egg, unaware of the imminence of their death and mine. Where is their guilt? Who can tell that one of them might not have created greatness?

In some more sensible world all this innocence will be saved. There will be a table, I expect, and cleverly directed streams of electrons, and careful technicians at work. Guilt, identity, memory—all these will be destroyed. But the blameless body will be saved, and a new identity, a new memory, built into the brain. It will be a kind of death of course, but without all this clumsiness, which is like burning down a house where sickness has occurred,

I am very aware of another thing—and I suppose this is a very ordinary thing for all those condemned—and that is a kind of yearning for the things I will never do, a yearning with overtones of nostalgia. It is as though I can remember what it is Uke to be old and watch moonlight, and to hold children on my lap, and kiss the wife I have never met. It is a sadness in me. I want to apologize to her—I want to explain it to the children. I'm sorry. I'm never coming down the track of time to you. I was stopped along the way.

Yesterday I tore up page upon page of asinine generalizations about the condition of man. I know nothing about the condition of man. I know they are going to kill me TOMORROW.