“It’s okay, 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.

That’s how the celebrity game is played.

Soon, everyone in this city will be battling one another to get a glimpse of him, the man who killed John Lennon. His name will be all over the papers, all over the news—all over the world—in just a few hours.

Mark takes in a deep breath.

Smiles.

From the corner of his eye he catches movement outside his window. He turns his head slightly to his right, hears some commotion, and then he sees someone crouching, looking at him.

It’s Yoko.

She stares at him through the glass.

Mark stares back.

Chapter 63

Chapter 63

You stole my heart, and that’s what really hurts.

—“Maggie May”

Officer Frauenberger lays John Lennon across the back seat of the patrol car, manned by officers Jim Moran and Bill Gamble.

“Are you John Lennon?” Moran asks him.