By Reason of Insanity

by Shane Stevens

  She had herself a deal. He would see her the following day, Saturday, in Sacramento. With the money.

  He immediately rang Fred Grimes, told him that ten thousand was needed by nightfall. All hundreds. Laundered twice if possible. Grimes said he’d try his best.

  At four o’clock Kenton gave George Homer his dictaphone tapes to study over the weekend. Maybe Homer could spot something he had missed.

  Mel Brown reported none of the mail-drop names matched anything on his lists. Which meant each of them would have to be investigated separately. Kenton agreed. He hadn’t really expected Chess Man to use his own name in New York since he seemed to like other identities, such as the Daniel Long one. Still, it had been worth a try.

  John Perrone came down personally to apologize. He had talked to Martin Dunlop and then to James Mackenzie himself He didn’t intend that his writers be hounded by their own magazine. Though it wasn’t mentioned, Kenton visualized the battle that must have taken place. Perrone was a fighter when it came to his staff, and he usually won. This time was no exception. The telephone tap would be removed immediately, and so would the tail.

  Kenton thanked him.

  “You must be up to something for Klemp to go after you like that,” said a curious Perrone.

  “Just my job.”

  “Getting close?”

  “Closer, I think. Might have a story on a politician along the way. You interested?”

  “Is he news?”

  Kenton glanced at his editor. “He’s big news now, and he’ll be even more news afterward.”

  Perrone grimaced. “You got any big news on Mungo yet?”

  “Everything except where he is and who he is,” Kenton replied. “By the way, you ever hear of the Western Holding Company?”

  Perrone shook his head. Never heard of it.

  At 4:50 Fred Grimes called back. No good on the money until morning. About ten o’clock.

  Could he bring it to the St. Moritz? It was important.

  He would.

  Before leaving the office Kenton opened the safe and took out the $2,700 from Grimes’ most recent deposit. He put the money in his pocket, not even glancing at the mound of papers inside. Most of them were about Vincent Mungo. Or Caryl Chessman or Senator Stoner or the Newstime big shots or the New York cops.

  One piece of paper, near the bottom, was about a man named Thomas Bishop. It came from the Los Angeles Times and gave the background of the mental patient killed by Vincent Mungo in his July 4 escape from Willows State Hospital. The brief notice included the facts of Bishop’s father’s death in a robbery attempt when the boy was three, and the mother’s resumption of her maiden name of Bishop, which she used for the boy as well. It did not, however, mention that the boy had killed his mother when he was ten. That information was sealed by court order because he was a minor at the time. The mother was listed simply as dead. For his own part, Kenton hadn’t really read the tear sheet, since it concerned a man whom he also had listed as dead.

  On the way home he again rang a local number. The merchandise he ordered was to be delivered to the St. Moritz on Monday morning. Not over the weekend. On Monday morning at nine.

  Saturday at 10:30 A.M. he put ten thousand dollars in his jacket pocket and took a cab to Kennedy, where he boarded a noon flight to San Francisco. He left no word of his plans at the hotel. A little past four that afternoon, California time, he knocked on Gloria Kind’s apartment door in Sacramento. For the next hour he listened to a tape of Jonathan Stoner. It was worth the ten thousand, at least for his purposes.

  Later he flew down to Los Angeles and made some calls and saw a few people. He stayed at Ding’s house overnight. The next day he took an early flight back to New York, sleeping most of the way.

  In New York again, Kenton bought a Sunday Times and read it in the cab going home. He didn’t notice the date. It was November 4.

  Thomas William Bishop had been free exactly four months.

  To police officials across the nation it was more like four years.

  To a score of women it was forever.

  And the score kept going up.

  Nineteen

  IN HIS studio apartment Bishop bound the girl tightly to the swivel chair. She was a blonde, very pretty, and she had a lovely mouth that photographed well. He had been at it for an hour on this Sunday evening and was just finishing up his second roll of film. The one on Saturday was not nearly as good or as pretty, and a single roll had been enough for her. Except for the pictures he had shot afterward, of course, while she was struggling. He knew those were the best even though he couldn’t see them. After this he planned on using actual film only for that kind. And maybe a few pictures once he had done his real work.

  He focused now on her face as he told her to look fearful. Yes, indeed, she had a fine mouth, and he would be feeling its warmth soon. Very soon.

  Three females in four days, all of them young and able to bear children. He had finally found the fountain of youth. It was in the field of photography. And it would keep him young forever.

  IN ANOTHER part of town Senator Stoner was also focusing on the beautiful face of a young woman. Sitting across from her at a tiny table in the Palm Court of the Plaza, he studied her features much as a connoisseur of wine would savor the bouquet. Before too long he expected to have her in bed where he could kiss that sensual mouth and bite the hardened nipples and spread the firm thighs for frantic acceptance of his gift to her. Which was only fitting and proper, as the senator saw it. He had done his work well and deserved a bit of sport. Almost a week in Washington, relieved only by a helpful young thing from the Senate office staff. Then New York and interviews and news shows and finally Meet the Press that very morning. He was a smash of course. Direct and sincere and honest as the day was long. Except the days were getting shorter as he reached November.

  At some point his companion looked at him and smiled warmly. While it wasn’t exactly the look of love, it surely seemed to Stoner to suggest the sigh of sex. He quickly searched for the waitress. In the morning he would certainly have to thank the political hack who had set it up for him.

  As they waited on the steps for a cab to his hotel, the senator hoped that she would be as good as his mistress. He really missed her loving ways. And ways of loving.

  AT JUST about the time that Senator Stoner was giving a lesson in political thrust, his former mistress was packing her three-piece matched luggage set for an extended vacation in the Islands. For years she had wanted to visit Hawaii, perhaps live there a while. Now she had the opportunity. She would put the most expensive furniture in storage in San Francisco, the rest would be left in the apartment. The rent for November hadn’t been paid yet so she could save that three hundred dollars. Her mink coat would be stored, the recording equipment and the car sold. All in San Francisco. With sixty thousand dollars she could buy anything she needed.

  It seemed to her like a good time to leave Sacramento. Especially before the senator got back. She had about four days, which was more than enough.

  AS THE rains came down in the wet New York night, Adam Kenton finished his late-hour meal in the hotel dining area and went upstairs to his rooms. It had been a long and tiring weekend, and Monday morning would come around all too soon.

  He had much to think about. In his mind he listed them by name: Chess Man, Senator Stoner, Otto Klemp, Carl Pandel, the Western Holding Company, John Perrone, Martin Dunlop. That was just for starters. He was sure there were others, there were always others, including some he didn’t even know about yet. Life always did that to him. To everybody, he supposed.

  In the back of his mind was a nagging suspicion that all the names were somehow linked together. It was crazy of course. They were not connected in any way; Senator Stoner, for example, surely had nothing to do with Chess Man. How could he?

  Yet Kenton, for all his newsman cynicism, had a strong mystical side to his nature and believed, at least viscerally, in a centralist universe where most things that
happened on the human scale were interrelated. A kind of great chain of being. The trick was finding the connecting strands. Usually they were buried too deep to be found or linked too tenuously to be seen. Which made life the jumbled mess it was ordinarily, at least on the surface. But they were there, and it was up to him to find them. And to follow them until all the pieces were connected and the picture was complete.

  In his bedroom he sat on a Danish loveseat and smoked a cigarette, his mind turning back to Friday morning and something Mel Brown had told him about Vincent Mungo’s final institutional friend. Thomas Bishop was dead but, still, it was a bizarre coincidence. Or else a Byzantine connection. His job was to discover which, and to fit it into the scheme of things.

  Apparently Thomas Bishop’s father had been killed in a robbery attempt when the boy was three, killed by another member of the gang named Don Solis. The very same Don Solis who was with Caryl Chessman on San Quentin’s death row and who helped Senator Stoner so much by revealing Chessman’s alleged confession. The same Don Solis who received a mysterious bankroll when released from prison, and a recent money offer from a tabloid for a feature on his prison relationship with Chessman. But Solis had refused, according to Mel Brown’s information. The reason was unknown.

  Brown himself had missed the Bishop-Solis connection the first time around, since the father was named Harry Owens. Bishop was the mother’s maiden name, which she evidently used for the boy as well as herself All of which meant something or nothing but Kenton had to know either way. For his part, he hadn’t paid much attention to anything concerning Thomas Bishop in the material he had read because the man was dead. He was seeking a live villain, not a dead victim.

  On Friday he had been too busy with important things to call Amos Finch, who mentioned Bishop in their phone conversation. He had called that morning from Los Angeles but Finch was out or not answering. He would try again in the morning from his own office. Because of the name change, it was possible that Harry Owens had not been the father. Then who? Caryl Chessman? Was the mother raped by Chessman? Her name wasn’t on the list of women who claimed Chessman as their attacker. But maybe she hadn’t reported it. Many women suffer in silence.

  What did it matter anyway? The man was dead.

  Most probably the widowed mother was so angry with Owens for the shame he had caused her that she resumed her maiden name after he was killed. Women do that all the time. Then she found it easier to use that name for the boy too. Very common.

  But he had to know for sure. He would just check out where and when Thomas Bishop was born, and the name on the birth certificate. Might even ask Finch for the phone number of the California cop who had once believed Bishop to be the maniac. That should do it.

  At the moment he was mostly interested in why Don Solis had refused money to talk about Caryl Chessman, especially after he had talked publicly about him, presumably for nothing. Was that just a coincidence, now that Chessman and the deadly Vincent Mungo seemed tied together?

  He also wondered whether Solis knew that the madman’s first victim was the son of the man he had killed. Was that just a coincidence too? And where had the original bankroll come from? Kenton suspected that he might have to talk to Mr. Don Solis sooner or later.

  He finished his cigarette and changed into his pajamas. It was after eleven already and the morning was coming up fast. The bed felt good and he stretched luxuriously before turning on his side. The last thing he remembered thinking about was Thomas Bishop, who had been approximately the same age as Vincent Mungo. And Mungo’s one friend in the institution just before the escape. Before Mungo killed him. But why was he there at all? What did he do to be put away like that …

  CARL HANSUN crushed the empty pack and flung it angrily away. Here it was just after nine o’clock and he had already finished his smokes for the day. And he still had a couple of hours before bed. It wasn’t fair. There was a time he could have smoked all he wanted but he didn’t have the price of a pack. Now he could afford a million cartons of Camels, enough to light up a city, and he wasn’t supposed to smoke at all. But he did it anyway, against his doctor’s orders. A pack a day. More than that and the doctor wouldn’t be responsible.

  And now the whole pack was gone and the day wasn’t over yet. Some big shot he was!

  He sank heavily into the oversized easy chair, collecting his thoughts. It wasn’t really the smoking that had him upset, that was just a minor irritation. What it was—he felt his stomach muscles tighten, the anger rising in him again, and he fought to bring it under control—it was his longtime good friend and former associate Don Solis who had his insides in knots, his blood boiling. The miserable bastard had prepared an account of their association going all the way back to the robbery twenty-one years earlier. Including the Stoner episode, and even his new name and location and everything. The miserable bastard! He never should’ve bankrolled Solis when the ungrateful prick came out of prison.

  And what did Solis do with the account when he finished? He gave it to that other longtime good friend and former associate Johnny Messick. Another ungrateful prick!

  He tried to calm down. Anger would do nothing. Only a cool, logical mind could be trusted to figure out the next step. All he knew at the moment was that something had to be done and the next move was up to him.

  The San Diego number that Solis had called through his hotel switchboard was traced to a house on Valley Road. The house was owned by John Messick, who lived there with his latest tramp. That meant Messick had the envelope. Who else would Solis trust more than Johnny? Hansun shrugged. Sure, they were tight in L.A. long before he came on the scene. Messick would hold it gladly, figuring he wouldn’t even know they were in touch. And he didn’t, not until the phone call.

  Now it all was clear.

  The way Solis had it planned, his insurance was the letter in the hands of somebody unknown to Hansun. As for Messick, he figured he was safe as long as Hansun didn’t know he was wise to the Idaho identity and location. An obvious act of hostility by both men against someone who had bankrolled them when they were down and out.

  Carl Hansun got so mad at the thought he reached into a table drawer and pulled out a pack of Camels and broke it open. In a moment smoke was pouring out of him. He sat stonily still and fumed for a long time. He had helped both of them and all he had asked in return from Solis was a small favor having to do with Senator Stoner. From Messick he hadn’t even asked anything in thirteen years. He had proved himself a friend and expected the same from them.

  Instead they had consorted to betray him. To put his position and even his freedom in jeopardy. Don had returned the favor, all the while planning to stick a knife in his back. And Johnny had twisted it. They were equally guilty.

  He had to get the letter and destroy it. It wasn’t just the old robbery rap; he might even beat that since it was so long ago. But Stoner was a big man now, and getting bigger, and he had a piece of Stoner. It wouldn’t do to have the senator investigated like they were doing to Nixon. He might be the next governor or United States senator. After that, who could say? And he owned a piece of the man!

  Nor could he allow his past to interfere with his complex business activities. He was Carl Pandel and he controlled a half dozen companies. He was one of the state’s leading citizens, admired and respected by some very powerful men. He was a man of power himself Whatever else might happen, that position was not to be disturbed.

  He would have to get the letter.

  Which still left Don Solis and Johnny Messick.

  He would do something about that too.

  Which would leave only him.

  He checked his watch. His loving wife would soon be home from her Sunday-night hospital committee meeting. He missed her whenever she was away, no matter how brief a time it was. When she came home they would play a little cards or watch TV or just talk. After all these years they still liked to talk to each other, still had much to say.

  He ground out the cigarette and
put the pack back in the drawer. He wouldn’t smoke anymore before bed. No use staying angry. Business matters always came up that had to be taken care of, no more and no less. He would take care of them, as he always did.

  He walked into the kitchen and got himself a glass of grapefruit juice. Then he sat on the porch and waited for his wife.

  THE OBJECT of Carl Hansun’s anger also intended to go to bed shortly, and not alone either. For sixteen years Don Solis had lived without women, and after five years of freedom he was still trying to make up for lost time. They were there to be used, like tissues or plastic bags, and he intended to use as many as possible. The more the merrier and the younger the better. Young teenage girls were the best of all, to his way of thinking. They were still full of the juice of life.

  At the moment one of them was in his hotel room, sharing a pint of bourbon. She was sixteen, a runaway from a small town near Fresno, and she lived down the hall with a young man who had picked her up on the road. He was away on ajob and she was bored.

  Solis had seen the two of them in the hall a number of times and little by little had caught her eye. He seemed to have the right rhythm for very young girls of a certain type, who found him slightly menacing and therefore a challenge. The first time he saw her alone in the hail he started a conversation. It wasn’t overly subtle but it was effective. She giggled and sighed and rolled her eyes and was thrown off balance. He had sized her up correctly. After that it was easy.

  Now he watched her as she took a long pull on the bourbon, her huge breasts thrust forward in obscene fashion. When she finished smacking her lips he kissed her, placing his hand firmly on a breast. She moaned in acknowledgment and drew tighter. By the time he had inched her to the bed her hand was on his penis. He opened her blouse and she did the rest as his eyes widened in anticipation. She had a roller-coaster body and he had his ticket right in his pants. He would ride her as long as the park was open.