The Last Days of John Lennon

by James Patterson

  Mark feels the news wash over him.

  It’s almost noon, and a crowd is gathering near the Dakota’s entrance, waiting for a chance to see the famous ex-Beatle. A heavyset man with a camera seems annoyed.

  “That’s Paul Goresh,” Jude tells him. “He’s some freelance photographer.”

  Mark doesn’t like the looks of him.

  The cameraman looks right back. He not so casually wanders into their orbit and introduces himself.

  Mark keeps to his practiced story—that he’s from Hawaii and here to get Lennon to autograph his album.

  “Where are you staying in New York?” Goresh asks.

  Why is he interrogating me?

  Mark gets in his face. “Why the hell did you ask me that question? What do you want to know that for?”

  “Easy, man. Take it easy. I was only making conversation, you know?”

  Cool down, he tells himself. Focus.

  Mark turns to Jude. “Would you like to join me for lunch? It’ll be my treat.”

  They choose a restaurant just one block down from the building—the Dakota Grill. He can keep a close eye on the entrance.

  He takes off his hat and his trench coat. The coat holds the gun, so he folds it on his lap.

  He orders two beers and a hamburger. Jude has an omelet and coffee.

  “I’d love to visit Hawaii,” she says. “But it’s such a long plane ride and I’m a little scared to fly.”

  “You can do anything you want if you set your mind to it.” Mark flicks his attention back to the Dakota’s entrance. “The human mind is an incredible thing. Once it’s made up, nothing can stop it from doing what it wants to do.”

  Chapter 60

  I’ve been waiting so long to be where I’m going…

  —“Sunshine of Your Love”

  John has a scheduled photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. To prepare, he visits his local barber and requests a style reminiscent of the Teddy Boy look he favored during his teenage years in Liverpool.

  When he returns to the Dakota, Sean is there. John takes a few minutes to watch cartoons with him in bed.

  “D’ya know what I wanna be when I grow up?” Sean asks, sitting up straight, clutching a soft pillow in his tiny hands.

  “No, what’s that?” John asks.

  “Just a daddy.”

  “Ya’ mean ya’ don’t like it that I’m working now, right, and goin’ out a lot?”

  “Right,” Sean answers.

  “Well, I’ll tell you something, Sean, it makes me happy to do the music and I might be more fun with ya’ if I’m happier, right?”

  “Uh-hum.” The boy nods.

  * * *

  Annie Leibovitz sets up her camera equipment in John and Yoko’s bedroom.

  It’s a reunion of sorts. Though Leibovitz is now chief photographer for the magazine, she and John had first worked together in 1970, when she was a freelance photographer and he was newly an ex-Beatle. She had persuaded Jann Wenner (who claimed the negatives from the shoot) to book her a student fare from San Francisco to New York. Leibovitz’s portrait of John appeared on the cover of the January 21, 1971, issue, which also contained Wenner’s first major interview with him.

  “Listen, I know they want to run me by myself on the cover, but I really want Yoko to be on the cover with me,” John tells her. “It’s really important.”

  Leibovitz tries to promote her boss’s mandate, but John is insistent. ‘I want to be with her.’”

  The photographer pivots to another idea—to reprise the nude Two Virgins shot that appeared on Rolling Stone in 1968.

  John agrees to strip down, but not Yoko. She decides to keep her black top and blue jeans on. Leibovitz chronicles the pose as it evolves, moment by moment. John wraps his naked body around his fully clothed wife and kisses her affectionately on the cheek while lying on the carpeted floor next to their bed. Yoko’s eyes remain open, contemplative.

  “This is it,” John exclaims. “This is our relationship.”

  * * *

  “One more, one more,” Annie Leibovitz says, turning her camera for a better angle.

  John puts on his leather jacket. He’s out of time. A radio crew is arriving for an interview.

  “Ooh, can I have one with the jacket?” Leibovitz asks.

  The shot captures him turning up his collar, launching a determined stare directly into the camera lens.

  * * *

  RKO radio announcer Dave Sholin and his crew are escorted into Lennon’s apartment. They follow house rules and take off their shoes before they begin setting up their recording equipment.

  “I hope to God that I die before Yoko,” he tells Sholin and his crew. “I don’t know what I would do if she left before I did.”

  Over the next three hours, conversation covers a wide swath of topics. “He was just bubbling over with enthusiasm with everything in his life,” Sholin recalls. “He felt like that was it; he had turned the page and was starting another chapter.”

  “I’m ready to start all over again and get this thing going,” John tells them. “Who knows what’s going to happen next?”

  The late afternoon sun gives way to twilight. John and Yoko depart with the radio crew. It’s after 4:00 p.m., and the Dakota is shrouded in darkness.

  December 8, 1980

  Jude Stein has given up any hope of seeing Lennon today.

  “Good luck getting your album signed,” she tells Mark.

  “You sure you won’t have dinner with me?”

  “I’ve gotta go, Mark. Good luck!”

  “I plan to stay for as long as it takes.”

  Mark is now alone with Paul Goresh. The fat cameraman is doing his best to ignore him.

  John Lennon emerges from the Dakota. Yoko is with him, along with a small group of people—reporters, Mark thinks. They’re all holding cassette recorders.

  Mark’s heart is pounding, his hand dripping with sweat as he glares at Lennon. The man he’s admired and scorned is finally here, just a few feet away, wearing dark sunglasses and a brown bomber jacket over his thin frame.

  Mark can’t talk.

  Can’t move.

  Goresh is looking at him now. “Hey, man, I thought you wanted your album autographed. What the heck are you waiting for? There he is!”

  Lennon and Yoko look past them, out to the street, at the traffic.

  They’re looking for their limo.

  The night watchman moves up next to the famous couple and says, “I’m sorry, but your car hasn’t shown up yet.”

  Lennon glances at his watch, displeased. Then he turns to the bearded man standing next to him and says, “Can we get a lift?”

  “We’re headed to the airport,” the man replies. “You both are welcome to hitch a ride with us.”

  As the group begins loading their recording gear into the trunk of a car, John and Yoko walk into the street.

  Mark follows.

  Waves his copy of Double Fantasy in Lennon’s direction.

  Lennon takes the album. Mark offers the Bic pen that he’d used earlier this morning to inscribe The Catcher in the Rye.

  This is it.

  Lennon attempts to sign the album, but the pen won’t write.

  This is the moment.

  Lennon makes a few circles, and finally the ink begins to flow.

  History and time, coming together.

  Lennon writes “John Lennon, 1980.” Mark watches, smiling. Goresh snaps a photo and captures the moment.

  Synchronicity.

  Mark slips a hand inside his pocket. His gaze flicks to Yoko, and he’s reminded of a dream he’s had several times, the one where he knocks on the apartment door, and when it opens Yoko smiles at him. She is friendly, happy to see him.

  In that moment, he feels loved.

  “Is that all?” Lennon asks. “Do you want anything else?”

  Mark shakes his head.

  John and Yoko climb into the back seat of the car and
drive off into the night.

  Chapter 61

  I’ve looked at life from both sides now…

  —“Both Sides Now”

  At 4:30 p.m., Jack Douglas is waiting for John and Yoko inside the Hit Factory.

  David Geffen arrives with good news. “Double Fantasy has just gone gold!” he tells John and Yoko after they show up.

  The announcement triggers a round of applause and hugs. For the two weeks since the release, John had been sleepless, worrying about sales for the new album. But achieving gold-album status—five hundred thousand copies sold—returns him to the top of the pop music mountain.

  Over and over, they listen to Yoko’s master vocal and John’s guitar licks and keyboards for “Walking on Thin Ice.”

  “John, are you all right?” Yoko says, wondering why he’s playing the song so many times.

  He doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he tells his wife, “I think you just cut your first number one!”

  John, Yoko, and Douglas make plans to finish mixing the song the next day so that they can release Yoko’s new single by Christmas.

  At 10:30, John wraps the session.

  “Should we stop at Wolf’s for a hamburger?” he asks a sound engineer. “If I ate it, it would go right to my knee,” he adds, deploying one of his Britishisms to let everyone know how hungry he is.

  He’ll get dinner with Yoko later.

  First, John has a promise to keep. “I want to go home and kiss Sean good night.”

  December 8, 1980

  The security guard’s name is Jose Perdomo. Unlike the other Dakota watchmen, Jose, a Cuban refugee who speaks broken English, is friendly and talkative.

  They’re discussing Fidel Castro, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

  “What would compel Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot the president?” Mark asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  The temperature has dipped. Mark tightens the scarf around his neck and shuffles his feet in an attempt to stay warm.

  “Do you think Castro had a role in it?”

  “Probably,” Jose replies. “He has a role in everything.”

  Mark thinks back to the moment when Lennon signed his album. He had the perfect opportunity to kill him, but something about it didn’t feel right.

  It makes him question whether he has the strength—the courage—to go through with this.

  He feels like the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

  “It must be incredible seeing a great star like John Lennon all the time,” Mark says, eyes on the traffic. “Lennon is probably the most popular person in the world right now. He’s like a god or something. I wish I had your job.”

  Jose nods respectfully.

  A black limousine rolls up and stops at a traffic light on the corner.

  Mark reaches into his pocket.

  Waits.

  The light changes from red to green.

  The limo takes a wide turn left, heading his way.

  Mark feels adrenaline flooding his veins. He’s seen other fancy cars carrying Dakota residents like Lauren Bacall and Leonard Bernstein, but he has a strong feeling that Lennon is inside that limo, coming back home.

  Coming back to me.

  History and time, coming together.

  Mark tightly grips the .38 Charter Arms as the limo pulls against the curb. He stands at an angle midway between the building and the street.

  Yoko steps out of the car.

  Mark is twenty feet away. He tries to get her attention by nodding.

  She doesn’t nod back.

  Lennon gets out of the vehicle and follows after his wife. He turns to Mark and gives him a cold, hard stare.

  For some reason it brings to mind the Wizard of Oz photograph he left behind on the hotel-room dresser—Dorothy wiping away the tear of the Cowardly Lion.

  Lennon walks past him. There is dead calm.

  Mark takes five steps toward the street.

  Stops.

  Turns.

  Gets in a combat stance and pulls out his .38 revolver, loaded with hollow-point bullets.

  * * *

  John Lennon has his back to him; doesn’t see the move or the gun.

  At close range, Mark fires.

  The sound is loud—and thrilling. He didn’t know if the bullets would actually work. He feared one or more of them had been damaged during the flight and would malfunction.

  “Help him, help him,” Yoko yells. “He’s been shot, he’s been shot,” she screams. “Somebody come quickly.”

  Mark pulls the trigger again—hears the loud gunshot and sees Lennon stumble.

  They’re working, he thinks as he fires shot after shot into Lennon’s back and shoulder.

  Lennon, incredibly, is still standing. The man stumbles away toward the front steps of the Dakota. He drops several cassettes and collapses inside the doorman’s guardhouse.

  You won’t survive this. You’re as good as dead.

  Mark stares after him, the gunshot ringing in his ears. He is not the Cowardly Lion. He is no longer Mark David Chapman or ordinary by any human measures. Now he is something other—something transcendent. Eternal. Now, in this moment, he has become the world’s most famous celebrity.

  Finally, I am known.

  Through history and time.

  The doorman, Jose Perdomo, rushes him and grabs his arm—the one holding the gun. The .38 falls from Mark’s hand. The night watchman kicks it away.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” Jose asks incredulously, tears streaming down his face. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “I’ve just shot John Lennon.”

  “Just get outta here, man. Just get outta here!”

  Mark cocks his head to the side, confused. “But where will I go?”

  Jose doesn’t stick around to answer.

  Mark pulls out his paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye from his back pocket and starts to read.

  Chapter 62

  It’s just a shot away.

  —“Gimme Shelter”

  On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, NYPD officer Peter Cullen and his partner, Steve Spiro, are on night patrol. They’re parked at the corner of Broadway and 72nd Street when their police radio squawks.

  “Shots fired, 1 West 72nd Street.”

  Cullen and Spiro know the address—the Dakota.

  With lights flashing and siren wailing, they race east, toward Central Park.

  * * *

  From a terrace twenty-two stories above street level, a young girl and her parents are watching and listening. “I heard the gunshots, the first I’d ever heard. They sounded so much different than on TV. Crack-crack-crack…It was the first time I saw my parents both cry at the same time.”

  * * *

  At the Langham, 135 Central Park West, James Taylor hears gunfire.

  He leans his head out the window and looks toward the building across the street to the south. He’s pretty sure the gunfire came from the Dakota.

  * * *

  Spiro and Cullen draw their weapons and slowly pass through the archway of the Dakota.

  Cullen sees a familiar face. It’s Jose Perdomo.

  “Jose, what the hell is going on here?”

  The security guard points to a doughy man in an overcoat with his nose stuck in a paperback book.

  “He shot John Lennon!” Perdomo cries through trembling lips.

  Cullen motions his partner to stay with the suspect. Steve Spiro points his gun at the man, who throws his hands up in surrender.

  “Don’t hurt me,” he pleads. “I’m unarmed. Please don’t let anyone hurt me.”

  Spiro grabs the suspect and faces him against the wall, kicking his feet apart.

  Cullen enters the Dakota guardhouse, where John is lying facedown. Porter Jay Hastings is ready to apply a tourniquet to John’s wounds, but there is little more he can do than remove John’s glasses and cover him with his uniform coat.

  “It’s oka
y, John, you’ll be all right,” Hastings whispers. Trickles of blood are beginning to seep from the corners of John’s mouth.

  Cullen searches the suspect for weapons, and when he’s clear, shouts, “Cuff him, Steve!”

  Spiro slaps a pair of handcuffs on the suspect’s wrists.

  The man winces. “I acted alone,” he says. “I’m the only one.”

  A third officer, from the Twentieth Precinct, on West 82nd Street, responds to the call. His name is Tony Palma.

  The victim’s situation is critical, and there’s no time for Palma to make the connection that he’s met the wounded man once before, at a coffee shop near the Dakota. There’s no time to call an ambulance.

  “Like weight lifters,” Cullen observes as he and Spiro stay behind with the suspect, Palma and his partner, Herb Frauenberger, carry the bleeding gunshot victim “to a radio car, threw him in the backseat.”

  December 8, 1980

  The police officers’ names are Spiro and Cullen. They lead Mark into the street.

  “Nobody’s gonna hurt you,” Spiro tells him. “Just do as you’re told.”

  Mark freezes.

  “My book, my book!” he says frantically. His life is contained inside those pages.

  Cullen reaches down and grabs The Catcher in the Rye from the pavement. He hands it to Mark as they put him into the back of the squad car.

  He feels safe. And he has his book—his message—to keep him company.

  The enormity of what he’s done settles on him. The dream is no longer a dream but an unshakable, unalterable reality.

  He has gone from unseen to seen.

  From unknown to known.

  From nobody to somebody.

  There will be fan clubs, of course, and psychiatrists. Lots of famous psychiatrists who will all fight for a chance to speak to him, to get in his mind and try to answer the unanswerable question of why. He will never provide them with a direct answer. He has to keep them guessing, because once they figure him out, they’ll move on to someone else.