THE LAST BOARD MEETING

For it might end, you know, in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?

—LEWIS CARROLL, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

After his tornado had found a target for its final act of violence, Mark David Chapman found that his noisy and vexatious mind suddenly had become a place of haunting and unfamiliar quiet. Turning to The Catcher in the Rye for instruction and inspiration, he would sit for hours listening to the albums of John Lennon and the Beatles on the new stereo he had bought his wife. He had destroyed her old record player in a fit of rage several weeks earlier. Gloria Chapman had watched in horror as her wildly laughing husband, in frustration over his inability to repair a minor problem in the mechanism, brought a hammer crashing down again and again onto the turntable. It had been one of the few possessions she had brought into their marriage, just sixteen months before, that he hadn’t sold, destroyed, or thrown away. It had been her last avenue of temporary escape from her husband’s tyranny.

On this night, the 23rd of October, 1980, Chapman was celebrating a quiet victory over his tornado and the new life he was secretly planning for himself. Earlier that afternoon, he had stripped off the humiliating blue uniform with the embroidered white and red name tag, MARK. He had signed out for the last time from his maintenance job at the luxurious apartment complex at 444 Nahua Street in downtown Honolulu. When he signed out, however, it wasn’t as Mark Chapman or even as Holden Caulfield. It was as John Lennon. He had also pasted Lennon’s name over the tag on his uniform.

“A new identity,” he thought to himself. “Not as John Lennon, but as … somebody.”

As he sat listening to the voice of Lennon on the stereo, Chapman contemplated the vaporous creatures that seemed to be moving about inside him. He realized with an unaccustomed detachment that his mind continued to spin, but it wasn’t the same unpleasant spin and tumble of the tornadoes to which he had become accustomed. He found this new motion an altogether pleasant sensation, like the gentle rocking of a ship on a calm sea, or the rhythmic spin and lift of a merry-go-round. For the first time in years, he found that all the thoughts in his mind were synchronized, spinning in one direction. Like jackals drawn to the smell of a bleeding animal, all of Mark David Chapman’s thoughts moved toward an image of a bespectacled and leering John Lennon that seemed to flicker randomly into view on an electronic screen inside his head.

Believing himself to be once again in control of his thoughts and feelings, Chapman began moving with a rare sense of self-confidence among the tangle of misdirected rage and confusion that cluttered his head. He gathered together at last the bitter taproots of fury into the center of his soul. He pondered his rage like a hard-won treasure that he had decided to offer to the only force in the universe he believed powerful enough to see him through the evil act he had begun to plot. Slowly, ritualistically, he began removing his clothes. At last he sat before the record player, naked except for a pair of headphones clamped across his skull.

“Hear me, Satan,” he prayed softly, bowing his head. “Accept these pearls of my evil and my rage. Accept these things from deep within me. In return, I ask only that you …”

He paused, lifting the headphones momentarily from his head to assure himself that his wife was still asleep behind the closed door in the next room. A chill passed through his body.

“I ask only that you give me the power,” he continued, rocking gently in time to the Lennon song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” that had just begun to trickle into the headphones.

“… The power to kill John Lennon. Give me the power of darkness. Give me the power of death. Let me be a somebody for once in my life. Give me the life of John Lennon.”

He would need his Little People. The knowledge and strategic counsel of the Little People would help him to analyze the logistical problems that would be involved in carrying out an act as complex as premeditated murder.

The evening air settled upon his naked skin and Chapman wrapped his arms around himself. His large body began to tremble slightly. Ignoring the sudden chill, he forced his mind to a peak of clarity and began drawing up a mental checklist of the items he would need for his death kit.

He realized he had to get a gun and ammunition. He had to establish a plausible reason for traveling to New York City, to convince his wife and his mother that the mysterious and expensive trip was a venture he needed to undertake. He had to get money to finance the trip and he would need to be able to find his way around the labyrinth of the metropolis.

Recalling that he had visited the city many years ago, he thought warmly of his mother. When his grades had dropped, Diane Chapman had intervened at the last minute to persuade his seventh-grade teacher to allow him to go on the class trip to New York. The only thing he remembered from the brief sight-seeing tour was a long train ride to and from Georgia and the way everyone had laughed when another student had vomited in fear at the prospect of riding an elevator to the top of the Empire State Building. Aside from that distant memory, his only knowledge of the city where John Lennon lived had come from The Catcher in the Rye. The novel had been written before he was born, but Chapman believed that he had come to know the essence of New York from the book. He was certain that he would be able to find his way around the area of Central Park where Lennon lived; the part of New York where the ducks lived and where a melodious carousel carried laughing children; the place that his fictional hero, Holden Caulfield, had so vividly and painfully described for him. Summoning the spirit of Holden, he grew excited at the thought of the passions that the name Mark David Chapman would inspire around the world after his encounter with John Lennon. He thought of his father and all the phony friends who had let him down. He smiled.

Concentrating as hard as he could, Chapman tensed his body. Grinding his teeth, he moved himself back in time, into the relative purity of a childhood rage. He breathed deeply and rapidly, bathing himself in the flames of an imaginary fire, and beads of sweat began to appear across his forehead. Finally, he was there.

The other members of the board were seated around a large mahogany table: the minister of finance, the defense minister, the interior minister, minister of personal relations, cultural attaché, health minister, attorney general, and a retinue of high-level aides. They sat in a circle before charts, maps, and reams of paperwork. Chapman realized in a moment of anxiety that they had been expecting him.

“They know,” he thought, trying to look into the eyes of each of his ministers. As the Little People met his gaze and acknowledged his presence, however, he decided that they didn’t know, that his initial suspicion was just another dimension of his paranoia.

President Chapman tingled with excitement as he pondered the magnitude of the secret he was about to unveil.

At last turning from the window and observing his president’s curiously smiling face on the screen, the chief of staff broke off his contemplation of the bird and clouds. He stepped purposefully across the boardroom and took a seat at the head of the table. Clearing his throat, he called the meeting to order.

At Chapman’s request, the board dispensed with a reading of minutes of the previous meeting, a routine discussion involving personal finances and a complex matter involving the purchase and resale by Chapman of signed copies of artworks by Dali and Rockwell. Chapman was glad that he had made the decision to keep the money he had borrowed from his father-in-law for the purchase of the art pieces. He would need it for the trip to New York. His wife would understand, he was sure. Sooner or later, Gloria Chapman always understood that it was necessary for her husband to have his way. It was in the Bible and he had pointed it out to her: woman had been created from man. It was her duty to submit in all matters to the will of her husband.

Hesitantly, Chapman began addressing the board. He began by saying that he was becoming concerned about his personal security. Because of such concerns, he said he had decided to buy a gun. The defense minister glanced briefly up at him and made a note on a yellow pad.

He explained that he would need the money to effect a major new long-term plan within the next week. The finance and defense ministers exchanged wary looks across the table. The board chairman cleared his throat.

“If the president please,” the chairman said deferentially, “the board would be grateful to learn more details of a plan that requires diversion of such large amounts of capital on such fleeting notice.”

Chapman nodded his head and reflected for a moment before answering. He decided to be blunt.

“It’s just because I’ve decided to be somebody,” he replied. “I’ve decided that I can’t go on being a nobody. Because I am rotting away on the inside. Because I’m dying.”

After a brief pause, the Little People looked at him with alarm and expectation. He continued.

“According to my most recent plan, I’ve decided that I must leave these beautiful islands and go to New York. My identity lies in New York City and that is where I must go.”

The Little People looked at each other quizzically.

“Someone from my childhood has caused me great pain,” he tried to explain. “Someone you all will recall from our earliest times together, from our childhood—our innocent days when I used to play you the Beatles songs.”

He explained to the Little People that he had become very upset after finding a book that pictured John Lennon and Yoko Ono living in a sumptuous New York apartment overlooking Central Park. After studying the book, he said he had been astonished to learn that the ex-Beatle had been living in New York City for nearly ten years.

“I thought he lived in England, in a castle or something like that, like the other Beatles,” Chapman said. “But instead he lives in an apartment, a very expensive and elegant apartment, in New York City. All that stuff about peace and love that he sang about, it was all phony. He’s just a rich bastard like the rest of the phony rich bastards that run the world.”

Chapman spoke of the rage he had felt while leafing through the book. He said he had been betrayed by a childhood hero who had misled him, inspiring him with false idealism, in his youth.

“I’ve carried those ideals around all my life, and they’ve just crippled me,” he said. “I believed the Beatles. I believed John Lennon. But they were just saying all that stuff. It didn’t mean anything. It was all a big hoax, but I believed it.”

He began crying.

The boardroom was silent and Chapman’s tear-streaked face had almost faded from the screen. Slowly, he began to speak again.

“I’ve decided that John Lennon has to be stopped,” he said. “It’s clear from this book that he is a phony who was never what he pretended to be. John Lennon is not what he told us he was long ago. Make no mistake. John Lennon has had a lot to do with what I have become, and probably what a lot of people like me have become as well.

“I have decided that I must kill John Lennon.”

None of his ministers spoke. None moved.

“I’ve arrived at this decision after much thought,” Chapman continued. “It will be a difficult task and I need your help.”

After several moments, a murmur of voices began to rise from the table. Several of the little men exchanged rueful glances. Chapman was silent as the board members talked quietly, barely above a whisper, among themselves. After several minutes of debate, his chief of staff stood. Trying to conceal his fear, the little man looked up. He tried to see what was going on in other parts of the complex and fragmented mind that stretched behind the hard blue eyes on the electronic screen.

“We have unanimously agreed that this is a very foolish, a very nonproductive decision that you have made,” the little man said, shaking his head. “We have agreed that we cannot be part of an act that will only cause you further difficulties. If you carry out this plan, you will cause great pain and grief. Not only for yourself but for very, very many people. Please, think of your wife. Please, Mr. President. Think of your mother. Think of yourself.”

“I’ve thought of my wife,” he responded. “I’ve thought of my mother.

“I also have thought of my pathetic father and all of my phony friends.

“And, without all of you—without all of you who exist here only in my mind—I have no self.”

The Little People trembled, recalling when, in childhood, they had been scapegoats for the anger and fear caused by his parents. They were surprised when he began to speak to them softly, with understanding.

“I respect your decision,” he said. “I just want to thank you for the help that you have given me in the past. I owe you a great deal. Perhaps I owe you my life.”

One by one, beginning with his defense minister, the Little People rose from their seats and walked from the secret chamber inside the mysterious mind of Mark David Chapman. Alone in his dangerous world at last, abandoned even by the endlessly forgiving Little People whom he had created within himself, the face of Mark David Chapman faded from the screen.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE LAST BOARD MEETING