by Shawn Inmon
Mckenzie laughed a little and nodded. “Yep. Just like the guy that sang the ‘put flowers in your hair’ song in the sixties. You can bet your ass my buddies gave me some shit about that.”
“I’ll bet,” Joe said. “Probably doesn’t happen so much anymore, does it? He hasn’t had a hit in a long time.”
“That’s one of those songs that seems to stick in people’s minds, though, for some reason. Woulda been a lot cooler if my name was Jim Morrison or something.”
“Good point.” Joe looked Mckenzie up and down. He was thin, but more wiry than underfed. Up close and talking to him, he revised his estimate on his age. Probably mid-thirties. Maybe even a few years older. “Well, nice talking with ya. See ya around.”
“See ya around, buddy,” Scott said and headed off in a different direction.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
December 8th dawned clear and warmer than it had been. Joe clicked on the television in his room and the local weatherman was predicting only scattered clouds and a high in the upper-fifties.
That’ll be better. If I’m going to spend all day hanging around the Dakota, it will be nice not to freeze while I’m doing it.
Joe had lain in the narrow bed for almost eight hours, but had barely slept. He’d had crazy dreams during those few catnaps he did catch, including one where the man with the gun had turned the gun on Joe first, then shot John Lennon while Joe lay dying.
Sitting in his house in Middle Falls, the whole exercise in stopping the killer had been academic. Now that he had seen the place where the murder had taken place, even met the man with the gun, it felt all-too real. Even at this late date, he still had no real, concrete plan as to how he would stop it. He didn’t have a weapon of any kind, and he didn’t want to buy one. Using violence to stop an act of violence against one of the strongest proponents of peace felt jarring and wrong.
That left him only two weapons—his knowledge that the attack was coming, and his wits.
Joe returned to the same coffee shop he had eaten in the day before and once again ordered steak and eggs. He played the whole situation over and over in his mind. He walked the same route he had the day before. As he passed the men’s store with the fancy umbrellas, the fussy clerk was adjusting the tie on the mannequin in the window. Joe saluted him and tipped him a wink. The fussy man rolled his eyes.
He crossed Central Park West and walked into Central Park proper. He wanted to see the carousel that featured so prominently in The Catcher in the Rye, the book that the killer would claim inspired him. Central Park is a big place, and Joe easily got lost. He found himself in the middle of a large playground. On a Monday in December, it was as deserted as anywhere in the city. A few nannies pushed strollers along the path and only a few children screamed and laughed and played on the playground equipment.
Finally, Joe asked one of the nannies where the carousel was, and she looked at him like he might be simple. She pointed at a path directly behind her. Sure enough, Joe found the carousel straight down that path. He could hear it before he saw it—the tinkling, music-box notes carried throughout that section of the park.
To Joe’s eye, it looked like any older carousel. Horses go up, horses go down. I guess it’s cool because it’s right in the middle of one of the largest urban areas in the US. Beyond that, it looks like any ride you might find in an old amusement park.
He turned to backtrack the way he had come when a solitary figure sitting on a bench caught his eye. It was him. He was wearing the same dark coat and had his hands stuffed deep into its pockets. His face was once again a complete blank. Joe moved to put the carousel between him and the gunman, then faded down the path he had come.
Don’t want to set any alarm bells off for him, put him on guard. This is going to be tough enough to pull off.
Joe hurried back through the park to the street and back to the main entrance of The Dakota. Even though the weather was much improved, the crowds outside the building were much smaller. A function, no doubt, of it being a work day.
Joe remembered that on this Monday, the famous photographer Annie Liebowitz had gone to John and Yoko’s apartment. While there, she had taken one of the most iconic photos ever taken of the pair—John, naked, curled in a semi-fetal position around Yoko. They had said Liebowitz had captured their relationship perfectly in that single shot.
People constantly strolled in and out of the building. Any of them could be Annie Liebowitz or her assistants, if she even has assistants. Who knows? I really should have paid better attention to things. One thing I do know, I wouldn’t recognize Annie Liebowitz if she stopped and asked me what time it was.
Joe stood at the corner of the vestibule, peering in and wondering what it would be like to have your every move cause so much excitement, when he heard a ripple of noise behind him. He turned and looked straight into the face of John Lennon.
He snuck up behind me! He was just walking around the city like it was safe.
Lennon was stopped, chatting with a small group of people and signing an autograph. His hair looked shorter, as though he had just come from having it cut. He gently broke away from the crowd with a wave and brushed directly past Joe.
“Sorry, mate,” Lennon said to Joe.
“It’s okay, John,” Joe answered, and those were all the words he could get out. He had wondered a hundred times if he might get to see and talk to him, and in a blink, the opportunity had come and gone.
Joe was so star struck he couldn’t move. The arm that Lennon had touched as he brushed by tingled a little at the memory.
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES later, the killer-to-be had also walked from the carousel to The Dakota and walked directly up to Joe.
“Seen him?”
“Yes. He just walked in.”
“No!” The man set his lips in a thin line, anger vivid on his face. “I just wanted to go look at the ducks and the carousel.” He held out an old paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye. “It’s in this book. I just wanted to see it again, one last time.”
“Leaving town, then?”
“Not until I see John Lennon. That’s why I came all the way here.”
“Right. Of course.” Again, Joe felt trapped being so close to him, but didn’t want to be too far away on this day, either. He said, “Excuse me,” and moved away, while the man was left talking to himself.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
At noon, Joe noticed the assassin-to-be talking to another man. It was a relief to have him focused on someone else, but nonetheless, Joe stood not far away, where he could keep an eye on him. If things played out the same way, John and Yoko would emerge from the Dakota in the late afternoon and climb into a limousine to go to the recording studio.
There was no way to know if events were going to unfold the same way they had in his first life until it happened, though, so Joe stayed vigilant. He watched the two men talking on the sidewalk and noticed that the second man had a professional-looking camera around his neck.
Bingo. That’s gotta be the guy who took the photo of John signing the copy of Double Fantasy with the crazy gunman in the background, smiling that simpering, stupid smile. One of the creepiest photos ever taken. Can’t remember the photographer’s name, though.
Joe did his best to blend into the woodwork and watch events unfold. At 12:30, a van pulled up in front of The Dakota and unloaded a small crew and a few boxes of equipment onto the sidewalk. As they walked by Joe, he saw, “Property of KRKO” written on the side.
By the time 2:30 rolled around, nothing of any note had happened in several hours. The photographer who had been talking to the man Joe was sure had a gun tucked into his pocket had managed to extricate himself and was talking with another group of people. All was quiet at the Dakota.
The steak and eggs Joe had eaten for breakfast seemed like a long-distant dream, and he was feeling a more and more urgent call of nature. He momentarily abandoned his post and jogged down the street to a small delicatessen he had seen the day before
. He ordered a corned beef sandwich, which turned out to be as big as his head, and used their rest room. He passed on getting anything to drink. He had no idea when he would have another chance to escape to use the bathroom.
He carried his brown bag back to the Dakota. The entire scene was just as he left it. He picked a strategic spot and sat down cross-legged on the sidewalk. He unwrapped the sandwich from its wax paper and tucked into it. He managed to get through half of it before he had to admit defeat.
He noticed that the crowd of people the photographer had been talking to had drifted away, and he was now standing, waiting patiently, by himself. A few feet away, Joe also noticed the man he had talked to in the park the day before.
What was his name, again? Scott Mckenzie, like the singer, that’s right.
Joe approached Mckenzie and said, “Hey, man. I just got a sandwich down at the deli and could only eat half of it. You want the other half?”
The man looked at Joe with suspicion, then noticed his birthmark and remembered him. “Oh, hey. Whatsamatter, you don’t want it?”
“I did my best, but I could only get through half of it. I don’t have anywhere to store it, so I’m either gonna have to give it away or throw it away. I hate to throw a good sandwich away.”
“I’m not turning down a free sandwich. Where’d you get it? Steinman’s?”
“Yeah, that was the name of the place. Just down the street there.”
“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what kind?”
“Corned beef.”
“Oh, man, brother. I had one of their corned beefs last week. I had the same problem—couldn’t eat the whole thing. I ended up giving half to some homeless guy sleeping on newspapers on a park bench.”
Joe looked at Mckenzie more closely. Unkempt hair, wrinkled pants, same green army jacket he’d had on the day before. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that you might be a homeless guy yourself, is it? Which is all the more reason why I’m happy to give you half of this sandwich.
Joe handed over the brown bag and Scott accepted it like an extra present on Christmas morning. Five minutes later, the sandwich was gone and Scott had smoothed out both the waxed paper and the paper bag, folded them several times, and stuck them in the deep pocket of his jacket.
This guy could be carrying, too. It’s so weird to think that famous people are walking in and out of here every day, absolutely anybody can just come and hang out, and there’s no security at all.
“Hey, if it’s rude to ask, just tell me to shut up, but what’s your story, Scott? What are you doing hanging out here in front of the Dakota for two days in December.”
“Not rude at all. What’s my story? A full telling of that probably requires more time than we have here, even if we stay several more days. The truncated version is that I grew up in Evansville, Indiana, and got unlucky when my birthday was the first number pulled for the draft. I took a tour of exotic Asian locations on Uncle Sam’s dollar. After I got my ass shot off in Kompong Speu, they shipped what was left of me home and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. If you look close, you can still see the cracks.”
Joe started to look for the cracks, but realized he was speaking metaphorically.
“Since I’ve been back, I’ve just been wandering. I get disability checks sent to my sister back in Indiana, and she deposits them for me. I live pretty simply. When I want to go somewhere, I stick out my thumb and off I go.”
“And you decided to come to New York City in December.”
“I never told you I was smart. I could have enrolled in college and maybe found a deferment, too, but I never did. I think I might get on a bus and head south for the winter after today.”
“How long have you been living like that?”
“I got wounded in ‘70. Spent a year in the hospital, and it’s 1980. So, nine years, I guess, depending on how you calculate time. And so, Joe Hart, turnabout is fair play. What’s your story?”
Yeah, I’m gonna have to give you the ‘truncated’ version, too. And, what do you mean by ‘depending on how you calculate time?’
“Not nearly as exciting as yours. My parents are both dead, I live by myself, and I decided to take a trip to the Big Apple.”
“Also, I might point out,” Scott said, “in December.”
“As you say, I’ve never claimed to be smart.”
A murmur rippled through the small crowd of a dozen or so people and Joe and Scott turned to see the cause. It was rapidly getting dark, and he had to squint a bit to see what caused the excitement. A long white limousine had pulled up to the curb and Yoko Ono hurried through the gathering crowd and into the open back door. Strolling behind her, big as life, was John Lennon.
“We may have chosen a crappy time of year to visit New York, but where else are you gonna be standing around and see a Beatle?” Scott asked.
The man with the gun approached the man with the fame. Joe tensed and moved closer, ready to throw himself into the scene if there was the slightest hint of trouble. Instead, Lennon turned to face the man, who didn’t speak, but simply held out the Double Fantasy album.
“Do you want me to sign that?” John asked in his steady Liverpudlian accent.
The man didn’t answer, and after his earlier brush with Lennon, Joe understood why. He was star-struck and unable to speak. The man just nodded.
“Do you have a pen, then?”
The man with the camera moved closer and twisted the lens, bringing Lennon into focus.
The man reached inside his jacket to his shirt and Joe once again moved closer. He brought out a pen and handed it over. John Lennon carefully autographed it, dated it, and handed the album and pen back.
The photographer snapped half a dozen shots.
“Anything else, then?”
Still mute, the man simply shook his head.
Lennon turned toward the limo and offered Scott and Joe a little wave as he walked by.
In an instant, he was gone.
Joe knew exactly what one of the photos on that roll of film would look like when it was developed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When the limousine pulled away, all the air seemed to have left the party. The photographer walked over to the doorman and asked if he knew where they had gone.
“The recording studio. They’ll probably be gone all night. It’s not unusual for them to come back around sun up.”
Except they won’t this night. For whatever reason, they’ll wrap up the session early and be home before 11:00. This place will be quiet, essentially deserted. A perfect setup for an assassination, especially when the target has no reason to see it coming.
The news passed through the small crowd that John Lennon had likely made his last appearance at the Dakota for the day. Most everyone drifted away to home, hotel rooms, or restaurants, for a hot meal and maybe a fire. It had been warm for a New York December day, but once the sun went down, the temperatures dropped quickly.
“Well, is that it for you, then?” Scott asked. “You came, you saw a Beatle, and now you can head back to Oregon?”
Joe shook his head. He looked intently at Scott, sizing him up. “You see the guy over there?” Joe said with an almost imperceptible nod.
“The guy reading the book that wanted to be your best friend yesterday?” Scott answered, without moving his head.
Joe nodded. “I’ve got a bad feeling about him. I think he’s up to something bad. I heard him muttering some weird stuff to himself a while ago. I also think the doorman said they’d be gone all night so everyone would leave. I know it sounds crazy, but I want to be here in case something happens.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Honestly? I have no real idea, but I want to stay close.”
“Well, I was going to head back to my room at the ‘Y’, but I guess I’ll hang around for a while and see what’s up.”
“Nah, you don’t have to man, I’m sure I’m just being crazy. The wind’s starting to blow, an
d it’s gonna get cold soon.”
“Have you ever stayed at the ‘Y’?”
Joe shook his head.
“Well, if I say, ‘spartan conditions,” a certain image might come into your head. Whatever image that is, the reality is worse. It’s only sixteen bucks a night, but it’s not much more than a cot in a closet.”
Suddenly, my cozy little room at the Empire sounds pretty good.
“So what I’m saying is, given a choice between hanging out with you in the cold for a few hours, or laying on that uncomfortable cot, this doesn’t seem so bad. Even so, what sounds good to me, is a cup of hot coffee. How ‘bout you? You drink the stuff?”
“Sure, of course.”
“The deli makes great coffee. I’ll run down and get us some to go. Black okay?”
“Yes, that’s great.” He dug into his front pocket and pulled out a bill. “If you go get it, at least let me buy.”
“Nah, I got it. Back in a flash.”
Fifteen minutes later, Scott reappeared with two Styrofoam cups of steaming hot coffee. He handed one to Joe.
“Salud,” Joe said, “and thanks.”
They killed time over the next few hours by telling more of their life stories.
Scott had dreamed of being a cop, but he was drafted before he had a chance. He was so physically damaged when he got home that a career in law enforcement was out of the question. He didn’t have much family left, either, mostly just his sister, her husband, and their kids.
“She loves me, and would do anything for me, I know, but who needs the semi-crazy Vietnam vet hanging around their nice, normal family all the time? I won’t do that to them. So, I keep moving.”
Like Rambo or Jack Reacher, without the massive muscles.
Joe told him about his most recent narrow escape from the Mt. St. Helens blast, which seemed to fascinate Scott.
“I’d have loved to see that,” Scott said. “Imagine the power! I’d probably have been one of those shit for brains guys that got caught too close to the mountain when it blew. How many did it kill, anyway?”
