By Reason of Insanity (46 page)

On Canal Street he bought some bedding and towels, a lamp and light bulbs and two extension cords. He also picked up a coffee pot and saucepan and a transistor radio. He examined the gleaming sets of knives in the various sidewalk displays but decided that his knife was yet sharp enough. There was still a lot of life in it, and death too.

That night Bishop went to sleep in his new home, safely tucked into a warm blanket over clean sheets, his portable radio softly playing on an end table next to the folding cot. He was elated over his progress so far and excited at the prospects for the future. He would remain in New York as long as he was accomplishing his purpose. Certainly for the winter, barring unforeseen events. And perhaps longer. Perhaps a lot longer, and maybe even forever. It was surely big enough to accommodate his very special needs. He liked everything about the city, as he instinctively knew he would.

Mostly he liked the way people just accepted anyone at face value. With the right money, you were whoever you said you were! He suspected that with enough money in New York you could be anybody you wanted to be in the whole world. It was all an insane game with everyone playing and nobody blowing the whistle. To the building’s owner he was from Ohio, having left his parents’ home to live on his own. He wanted to paint and so he came on to New York. He had a little saved up and he would work at something for more while he followed his dream. His name was Jay Cooper and he was twentythree years old.

No questions asked. He had the money.

Bishop found the whole idea absolutely incredible. He had enough money now to be anybody. But the only one he wanted to be was Caryl Chessman’s son and the famous slayer of women. And he already was that! So he didn’t need the money. Except he needed it to pretend to be someone he didn’t want to be in order to hide who he really wanted to be. And was!

He fell asleep giggling with delight.

On Wednesday morning he read about himself over coffee in a local shop. She was twenty years old, a prostitute. Her body had been found drained of blood and grossly mutilated. No one had been seen entering or leaving the slum tenement in which she had lived on West 49th Street. There was no appearance of robbery, nor could any reason be given beyond total insanity. Which brought up the name of Vincent Mungo.

The paper made much of the word written in blood on the mirror. “Chess.” Quite obviously standing for “Chessman” and meaning the so-called son of Caryl Chessman, Vincent Mungo, who just as obviously had done the slaughter. It was pointed out that during his lifetime Caryl Chessman had answered to the name Chess. Everyone called him by that name and it was the only one he used.

A clever editor headlined the story “Chess Man Strikes Again.”

The name was to stick.

On that morning Bishop read the story and thought the name in the headline interesting. It tied him even closer to his father, and it was certainly accurate on just about every level. He worried, though, that they might be getting too close to the truth, even if only inadvertently. He hoped his beard would grow swiftly. Until it was fairly full he would continue to wear the fake beard when outside, just as he had done when renting the loft from the owner.

After breakfast he visited a bank in the downtown area, opening a savings account as Jay Cooper with an initial deposit of $2,000. Nothing to attract anyone’s attention. A further $6,000 would be slowly and quietly placed in the account over the next many weeks. The mailing address given the bank was a store on Lafayette Street that acted as a mail drop for a monthly fee, payable in advance—another thing picked up from TV. He had paid for three months before going to the bank. The address given the proprietor of the mail drop, as required by law, was the Chicago address on Jay Cooper’s driver’s license. All perfectly legal.

According to his plan, a further $8,000 would be carefully placed in another bank when he had secured a new identity and papers. These two bank accounts in two different banks would be immediately available should the occasion demand it. Even if one cover was blown, the other would be there waiting for him. Under the circumstances, since he couldn’t go into credit cards or anything beyond such local paper as bankbooks, at least for the moment, it would have to do.

The rest of the money would be hidden at home, to be used for living expenses and kept ready for an instant emergency. The savings book would be proof of his solvency, and the home business he intended to set up as a front was to be proof of his legitimacy.

After the bank he walked down lower Broadway to City Hall, where he stopped in Modell’s and bought some winter clothing. A heavy flannel shirt, wool socks, thermal underwear, heavyweight denim pants and a hunter’s cap with ear flaps. And most important, a threequarter suede leather jacket with a fiberfill lining. In the basement he got a pair of brown boots with rubber soles and heels. Also a flashlight and extra batteries, a metal can opener, a toothbrush in a plastic case, and a few tools.

In the afternoon he bought a used portable television set in a sidestreet repair shop near his new home. He paid $40, for which he got a thirty-day guarantee. After that the man would charge only for parts for the next year. Bishop thought it reasonable. To the same man he paid $150 for a Nikon 35mm camera and tripod and a quantity of photographic equipment, all of it third-hand but usable. He regarded that as a bit steep but necessary for his purpose.

A search in a neighborhood junk shop got him a dozen old photography and fashion magazines full of female models. From a wholesale supplier on Canal Street he purchased two huge rolls of white filler paper, each three feet wide. Down the block he picked up a staple gun and a roll of one-inch masking tape. His final stop of the day was to a local market, where he bought all his favorite foods: chocolate ice cream, a steak which he intended to eat raw, baloney and bread, and a can of sliced pineapple. That evening he gorged himself into a stupor and fell asleep watching a TV show that featured a double rape by a gang of toughs, a murder in which pools of blood were shown close up, a child thrown out of a fifth-floor window by a parent, and a shoot-out between police and a gunman holding hostages. All of which occurred in the first fifteen minutes. The program was called the “Eleven O’Clock Evening News.”

Thursday morning Bishop awoke early as usual. He wanted eventually to stay up most of every night and sleep very late in the mornings, the way civilized people do, but he knew it would take a while to adjust to that kind of schedule. He had spent too many years in institutional life with its clockwork mentality of early to bed and early to rise. Changes would require time and he had plenty of that, so he believed. All he wanted, everything he needed, would come to him in due time. Of that he was sure. Meanwhile he would use the mornings to best advantage and do what had to be done.

He went to a lumber yard on the Bowery and ordered a dozen eight-foot strips of wood. These he carried home, together with a pound of finishing nails.

The small business venture Bishop had decided upon was photography, which offered him the opportunity of seemingly working at home with no supervision or schedule while maintaining a supposedly legitimate source of income. If needed, proof of self-employment would be the professional camera he had bought. In addition, he would purchase a few checks each month in different banks and make them out to himself, using fabricated names as payers. He would thus appear to be in business and making an income, though one on the most meager survival level.

With the eight-foot strips of wood measured three feet apart along one wall of the loft, the bag of finishing nails and a plastic-handled hammer in his hands, and the two rolls of white filler paper set on the floor next to him, Bishop went to work. Slowly, carefully, he nailed each strip to the brick wall, hammering the two-inch nails into the mortar between the bricks. Hour after hour he kept at it until all dozen strips were firmly embedded along thirtysix feet of wall space.

The strips themselves gave the appearance of a huge structural framework on the wall, unfinished and sadly neglected. But not for long. The three-foot-wide rolls of paper were stapled onto the wood, top to bottom, in eight-foot sections. Each edge overlapped the one previously stapled, until the entire framework was covered with eleven vertical curtains of white.

A thirtysix-foot-long section of paper was then stapled horizontally across the bottom of all the wood strips, over the earlier layer of white. A second piece was fastened above that. And finally a third, extending a foot over the eight-foot-high framework.

By the time he had finished it was late afternoon, his stomach was growling, and his legs hurt from stepping on and off a chair to reach the upper part of the construction. But the difficult job was over. At least half of the loft wall was now a suitable backdrop for photography, as well as a canvas for pictures and film.

After a baloney sandwich he went back to work, searching through the old magazines for photos of female models. He pulled out several dozen he liked. Using the roll of one-inch masking tape, he studiously fastened them on top and bottom along the canvas in an artistic arrangement. The effect was quite startling. The wall seemed suddenly to come alive, transformed from a sea of white to something bright and cheerful, and very professional.

In front of the new backdrop he placed the tripod mounted with the Nikon. On a low chest of drawers, battered but serviceable, he arranged the rest of the photographic equipment, including several lenses and a light meter. Everything was finally in readiness. Now all he needed was the model for a shooting session, even though he had never snapped a picture in his young life and knew nothing about the camera.

He intended, however, to know the model intimately. All of them.

That night he dined on more baloney sandwiches and a quart of milk while watching a news special on Vincent Mungo. The program began with stills of the Willows hospital, then quickly ran through the cities struck, lingering longest on Chicago. New York was last of course, and the newsman asked rhetorically what new horror Vincent Mungo had in store for the city.

In his peaceful photographer’s studio Thomas Bishop just smiled and sat silently, baloney sandwich in hand.

On Friday morning he threw out the folding cot. It was lumpy and didn’t give the necessary support. To replace it he bought a six-foot by four-foot piece of foam rubber, two inches thick, and a flowery mattress cover. That would be his bed. He would put it on the floor, which was the proper place for the body to lie. Like anyone, to do his best night’s work he needed a good day’s rest.

The next afternoon he went to Barnes and Noble and picked out five books on New York. One was called
The Insider’s Guide to New York
, and holding the book made him feel like an insider. Which made him feel good, since he was tired of being the outsider. He wanted to be part of his adopted city. Temporarily at least.

Another was
New York at Your Fingertips
and from it he learned that Grand Central Station, which he believed must surely be the most beautiful room in the whole world, was ten stories high. One room rising ten stories to the vaulted ceiling! He remembered his first sight of it less than a week earlier; he had not been prepared for such magnificence, could not imagine such size and splendor. He had since dreamed about it. In his dreams he was alone in the huge room, without clothes, racing around the marble floor. It was all his—the great lights danced only for him, the hidden voice spoke only to him. Suddenly the track gates opened and women, naked, defenseless, their flowered heads lowered in submission, long hair flowing over sinewy shoulders, silently swarmed into his room. Thousands of them. Their faces fevered with anticipation, their eyes blazing out of control, they softly melted into one giant luminous iris as the silver knife flashed again and again in his hot hand …

In still another of the books he discovered that New York had several chess clubs, where players could meet over a friendly game at minimal cost. For the solitary player, games could be arranged.

At the checkout counter the girl asked him if he was new to the city.

“Been here all my life.”

“Five books on New York?”

“Born right up the street.”

“You like to read about it.”

“Now I live in the Empire State Building.”

“Nobody lives there.”

“On the top floor.”

She smiled in disbelief.

“I can look in your bedroom window.”

“You don’t know where I live.”

“At night I watch you take all your clothes off.”

Her smile disappeared.

“I can see everything you do in bed and how much you like to—”

“That’s ten sixty-five. Out of twenty.”

She put his change on the counter and started ringing up the next purchase, not looking his way again.

He picked up the money and the shopping bag with his books.

“I’ll see you later,” he whispered on the way out.

When Bishop got home he heated a can of soup and wolfed down a sandwich, then spread the books on his new pallet and began reading about the big city. He was asleep before he finished the first one.

Sunday dawned bright and beautiful, a perfect October day, and he spent the morning in a long, solitary stroll about the deserted streets. All the way to Battery Park at the southern end of Manhattan. In the Wall Street area he did not see one other person. He felt like the last human on earth, and he wondered if he was being watched by alien eyes behind closed windows. But there were no aliens besides himself, and all the windows were blank.

Soho, like most of downtown New York on a Sunday, was mostly empty and as he walked the blocks in the afternoon the emptiness hung heaviry in the air. He was reminded of Willows, not the buildings with the men but the wild places, which were lonely beyond endurance. He had once liked to be alone but that was long ago. Now he wanted to be surrounded by herds of people. They were sheep, he saw them as his sheep, and he was the wolf in sheep’s clothing. While he was among them he was safe.