While Yoko recovers, John starts sharing the news. He types a postcard and sends it to Rolling Stone, thanking fans for “all…your help in the immigration ‘battle’” and commemorating “the great triple event. (judges decision/baby Sean/on J.L.s’ birthday!!!) What a week!”

He signs it “John and Yoko and Sean (three virgins).”

—

December 8, 1980

Mark arrives at the Dakota and finds a new man working the morning security shift. There’s something off about him—something that makes Mark wonder if the guy is an undercover cop.

Have I been flagged as a threat? Let’s find out.

He slips into his disarmingly pleasant and polite persona, leaning into his southern drawl.

Mark smiles. “You wouldn’t happen to know whether John Lennon might be planning on coming out today, would you?” He pulls out his shiny new record. “I’ve got this album here. I’m hoping to get it autographed while I’m here in New York City.”

Mark adds that he’s traveled all the way from Hawaii to meet his idol.

The guard doesn’t give him any information about Lennon, but the man appears relaxed. He’s not an undercover cop. Mark is sure of it.

Which is a good thing. If a cop or anyone here tries to pull anything, Mark will kill him. He will shoot his way in, do whatever it takes to get to Lennon.

Wearing a T-shirt promoting Todd Rundgren’s 1978 solo album, Hermit of Mink Hollow, he retreats across the street. It’s another unseasonably warm day in Manhattan, where the temperature, according to the weathermen, will reach sixty degrees.

Such a great day to be alive. He sits on a park bench in view of the Dakota. He starts to play a game he calls “How is John Lennon spending his final hours?”

Is John at home playing his grand piano?

Is he eating some indulgent culinary creation prepared for him by a private chef?

Is he doing interviews for Double Fantasy?

Or is he having sex with Yoko?

The questions are nonstop. They keep invading his mind.

Mark pulls out the copy of The Catcher in the Rye he picked up this morning. With the clerk as his witness, he used a brand-new Bic pen to inscribe the inside cover:

To Holden Caulfield from Holden Caulfield. This is my statement—The Catcher in the Rye.

He reads the line again. It makes him smile.

History and time, he reminds himself. Synchronicity.

He has no plans to return to the hotel. In a semicircle on the dresser, he laid out a few personal items for the cops he knows will go looking for him there: two photographs of him posing with the Vietnamese refugee children he counseled; a YMCA letter of commendation; his old passport; and the Wizard of Oz photo he purchased at the bookstore—none of it is important, except his final clue.