The doorman at the apartment building didn’t give his name, but Mark heard someone call him Jay. Jay is a Beatles fan, too. The man is also a liar. Last month, Jay told Mark that Mr. Lennon was “out of town.” Then Mark saw Lennon and Yoko’s picture on the front page of the New York Times.

That’s when he went out to the movies and saw that stupid film, Ordinary People. Mark likes to think of himself as anything but ordinary, but then he had so closely identified with Timothy Hutton’s character that he felt like making a confession, the way Hutton did to his psychiatrist.

Mark doesn’t have a shrink, doesn’t need one, so he did the next best thing: he went to a pay phone and called his wife. She’s Japanese, like Yoko.

I’m coming home, he whispered. Then he looked around, making sure no one could overhear, and said the words out loud for the first time. I came to New York to kill John Lennon.

Come home, Gloria told him. Come home.

I’m coming home. Your love has saved me. I’m not going to do this.

Now Mark has no intention of returning home. This time he’s committed to his goal. Lennon’s death will prove to the world, once and for all, that the man is a phony. A liar and a sinner.

Gloria believes he has returned to New York to find himself, that he wants to write a children’s book. She believes him—obeys him, grants his every desire. Gloria believes everything he tells her because she is a good Christian woman and does what she’s told.

*  *  *

Safely tucked inside his YMCA room, with its single bed and black-and-white TV, Mark double-checks the lock on the door. Then he turns to his suitcase and removes the gun—a .38 caliber Charter Arms. It’s very similar to the snub-nosed Smith & Wesson handguns used by undercover police. The perfect weapon to use for assassination.

He knows how to handle a weapon. He put in plenty of hours on the range to get certified so that he could carry a .22 when he worked security. He knows how to get in a combat stance and how to sight a target.

Soon the world will know they’re dealing with an expert killer.

There was a time when he preached against guns and violence. Lennon, ironically, was the inspiration for his awakening.

The Beatles are bigger than Jesus, Lennon boasted.

He took Jesus’s side. Took shelter, too, in the spiritual laws of the Christian faith. Took up a life of purpose, starting at the Chapel Woods Presbyterian Church in Snellville, Georgia.

Guns, he told people, were evil. But he soon realized the error of his ways. Speaking is only a weak form of doing.