The Thomas Berryman Number
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Copyright © 1976 by James Patterson
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The author is grateful to Warner Bros. Music for permission to quote excerpted lyrics from “Ballad of a Thin Man” by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1965 by M. Witmark & Sons. All rights reserved.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
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First eBook Edition: April 1996
The Hachette Book Group Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-759-56762-7
Contents
PART II: The End of the Funniest Man in America
PART III: The Girl Who Loved Thomas Berryman
PART IV: The First Southern Detective Story
PART VI: The Jimmie Horn Number
PART VII: The Thomas Berryman Number
GREAT ACCLAIM FOR JAMES PATTERSON AND
THE THOMAS BERRYMAN NUMBER
“PATTERSON JOINS THE ELITE COMPANY OF THOMAS HARRIS AND JOHN SANFORD.”
—
San Francisco Examiner
“PATTERSON KNOWS HOW TO SELL THRILLS AND SUSPENSE IN CLEAR, UNWAVERING PROSE.”
—
People
“
THE THOMAS BERRYMAN NUMBER
IS SURE-FIRE!”
—
New York Times
“WRITTEN SIMPLY, POWERFULLY, WITH SHIFTING POINTS OF VIEW. The book will satisfy mystery and thriller fans, as well as students of the human condition.”
—
Washington Post Book World
“BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN!”
—
Library Journal
“JAMES PATTERSON IS TO SUSPENSE WHAT DANIELLE STEEL IS TO ROMANCE.”
—
New York Daily News
“PATTERSON’S SKILL AT BUILDING SUSPENSE IS ENVIABLE!”
—
Kansas City Star
“PATTERSON DEVELOPS CHARACTERS WITH BROAD STROKES AND FINE LINES. Even the villains are multilayered and believable.”
—
Nashville Banner
“HURRAY! ONCE YOU READ PAGE ONE YOU WILL NOT STOP UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED.”
—
Robin Moore, author of
The French Connection
“HE CREATES A MULTILAYERED, CONVOLUTED PLOT THAT KEEPS READERS OFF-BALANCE, JOLTING THEM AROUND NARRATIVE HAIRPIN TURNS WHILE TRANSFIXING THEM WITH AN EXTRAORDINARY SUSTAINED TENSION.”
—
Buffalo News
“PATTERSON KNOWS HOW TO KEEP THE POT BOILING.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“MR. PATTERSON IS A SKILLFUL PLOTTER, and… has constructed an elaborate thriller full of twists and false starts.”
—
Baltimore Morning Sun
“A WILD RIDE, FROM THE IVIED HALLS OF SOUTHERN ACADEMIA TO THE CRASHING BIG SUR SURF.”
—
Denver Post
“THIS NOVEL IS HARD TO SET ASIDE. PATTERSON’S COMPLEX TALE CHILLS, ENTHRALLS, AND ENTERTAINS THE READER IN A DAZZLING AND UNFORGETTABLE READING EXPERIENCE.”
—
Toronto Star
“Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, and Evan Hunter’s 87
th
Precinct detectives… IT’S TIME TO GET OUT THE PARTY HATS, WELCOME JAMES PATTERSON TO THE CLUB.”
—
Grand Rapids Press
“A TENSE, COMPLEX PLOT OF ABDUCTION AND MURDER THAT IS HARD TO PUT DOWN. THE READER IS HOOKED FROM PAGE ONE…This is a crime story so scary it will hold the reader’s attention and leave a lingering horror at the back of the mind for days.”
—
Baton Rouge Magazine
“AN ENJOYABLE READ, WRITTEN IN CONCISE, PITHY LANGUAGE THAT MOVES AS GRACEFULLY AS IF WE WERE WATCHING IT ON WIDE SCREEN AT THE LOCAL THEATER.”
—
West Coast Review of Books
“EXPECT NONSTOP, MUSCLE-JANGLING THRILLS… DON’T READ IT ALONE, OR ON A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.”
—
Woman’s Own Magazine
“DESERVES TO BE THIS SEASON’S #1 BESTSELLER AND SHOULD INSTANTLY MAKE JAMES PATTERSON A HOUSHOLD NAME.”
—
Nelson DeMille
“A FIRST-RATE THRILLER—FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS AND KEEP THE LIGHTS ON!”
—
Sidney Sheldon
“PATTERSON BRILLIANTLY EXPLORES DARK CREVICES OF THE ABERRANT MIND…[AND] LETS US SOAR AND DIP WITH ROLLER-COASTER THRILLS.”
—
Ann Rule
“PATTERSON IS AN EXCELLENT WRITER.”
—
Lexington Herald-Leader
(KY)
“A TALE WITH THE POLISH OF A MASTER…It’s the sort of tale that keeps your hands gripping the book and your heart pounding at any unusual noise in the house.”
—
Oakland Press
“PATTERSON HAS CREATED A FAST-MOVING, CHARACTER-DRIVEN ROLLER COASTER OF A THRILLER.”
—
Mostly Murder
“AS ENGROSSING AS IT IS GRAPHIC…AN INCREDIBLY SUSPENSEFUL READ WITH A ONE-OF-A-KIND VILLAIN WHO IS AS TERRIFYING AS HE IS INTRIGUING.”
—
Clive Cussler
“THIS IS HORROR THAT’LL HAVE READERS CHECKING THE WINDOW AND DOOR LOCKS, PULLING DOWN THE SHADES.”
—
Hartford Courant
The novel of James Patterson
F
EATURING
A
LEX
C
ROSS
Double Cross
Cross
Mary, Mary
London Bridges
The Big Bad Wolf
Four Blind Mice
Violets Are Blue
Roses Are Red
Pop Goes the Weasel
Cat & Mouse
Jack & Jill
Kiss the Girls
Along Came a Spider
T
HE
W
OMEN’S
M
URDER
C
LUB
7th Heaven
(and Maxine Paetro)
The 6th Target
(and Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman
(and Maxine Paetro)
4th of July
(and Maxine Paetro)
3rd Degree
(and Andrew Gross)
2nd Chance
(and Andrew Gross)
1st to Die
O
THER
B
OOKS
You’ve Been Warned
(and Howard Roughan)
The Quickie
(and Michael Ledwidge)
Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
Step on a Crack
(and Michael Ledwidge)
Judge & Jury
(and Andrew Gross)
Maximum Ride: Schools Out — Forever
Beach Road
(and Peter de Jonge)
Lifeguard
(and Andrew Gross)
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment
Honeymoon
(and Howard Roughan)
santaKid
Sam’s Letters to Jennifer
The Lake House
The Jester
(and Andrew Gross)
The Beach House
(and Peter de Jonge)
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas
Cradle and All
Black Friday
When the Wind Blows
See How They Run
Miracle on the 17th Green
(and Peter de Jonge)
Hide & Seek
The Midnight Club
Season of the Machete
The Thomas Berryman Number
For previews of upcoming James Patterson novel and information about the author, visit
www.jamespatterson.com
.
Down on the Farm (1962)
Claude, Texas, 1962
The year he and Ben Toy left Claude, Texas—1962—Thomas Berryman had been in the habit of wearing black cowboy boots with distinctive red stars on the ankles. He’d also been stuffing four twenty-dollar bills in each boot sole. By mid-July the money had begun to shred and smell like feet.
One otherwise unpromising afternoon there’d been a shiny Coupe de Ville out on Ranch Road #5. It was metallic blue. Throwing sun spirals and stars off the bumpers.
He and Ben Toy had watched its approach for six or eight miles of scruffy Panhandle desert. They were doing nothing. “Bored sick and dying fast on a fencerail,” Berryman had said earlier. Toy had only half-smiled.
“You heard about that greaseball Raymond Cone? I suppose you did,” the conversation was going now.
“I always said that was going to happen.” Berryman puffed thoughtfully on a non-filter cigarette. “The way he’s always talking about dry-humping Nadine in his old man’s Chevrolet, it had to.”
“You think he’ll marry her?”
“I
know
he’ll marry her. It’s been happening for about a hundred years straight around here. Then the old man gets him with Pepsi in Amarillo. Then she has the kid. Then he splits on both of them for Reno, Nevada, or California. I hate that, I really do.”
Toy took out a small, wrinkled roll of money and started counting five- and ten- and one-dollar bills. “He says he’ll put a 30-30 in his mouth. Before he marries Nadine.”
“Yeah, well … He’ll be haulassing soda cases pretty soon. That’ll dilute his ‘Frankie and Johnny’ philosophies.”
Thomas Berryman shaded his sunglasses so he could see the approaching car better. A finely made coil of brown dust followed it like a streamer. Buzzards crossed its path, heading east toward Wichita Falls.
When the Coupe was less than twenty-five yards away, Berryman flipped out his thumb. “Are you coming or not?” he said to Toy.
The big car, meanwhile, had clicked out of cruise-control and was easing to a stop.
The driver turned out to be the Bishop of Albuquerque. Padre Luis Gonsolo. Both young men left Claude, Texas, with him. They kept right on going until they were in New York City.
Thomas Berryman and Ben Toy rode into New York in high style too … in the 1962 metallic blue Coupe de Ville … without the Bishop.
Jones’ Thomas Berryman (1974)
My parents, Walter and Edna Linda Jones, didn’t want me to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or even successful; they just wanted me to be refined… I disappointed them badly, however; I went out and became a newspaperman.
SIGN OVER THE DESK OF OCHS JONES
Steve McQueen is a killeryou have to cheer on and root for. NEWSPAPER MOVIE REVIEW
Zebulon, Kentucky, 1974
In November of this year I came back to my hometown (Zebulon) in Poland County, Kentucky; I came home to write about the deaths of men named Bertram Poole, Lieutenant Martin Weesner, and especially my friend Jimmie Lee Horn of Nashville, Tennessee … but most of all I came home to write about something an editor at the
Nashville Citizen-Reporter
had named the Thomas Berryman Number.
This book is mostly for my nine-year-old daughter Cat, I think.
It’s a Sam Peckinpah kind of story: all in all there are six murders in it. It’s about a young Texas man who decided to become a professional killer at the age of eighteen. So far as I can make out, he decided by virtue of executing several beautiful pronghorn antelopes and one Mexican priest, a bishop actually.
Random observation
: A story in a Houston paper reports that
“Not less than five men in the United States are making over two hundred thousand dollars a year as independent (non-mob) assassins.”
What the hell is the point of view over in Houston I wondered when I cut out the clipping and folded it for my wallet.
Random observation
:Very few people have understood the character of men who do evil… Most people who’ve written about them just make everything too black for me. Either that, or they’re trying to make some sugar and spice “Bonnie & Clyde” movie … Anyway, movie stars withstanding, I don’t believe your bad man can be obtuse, and I don’t believe he’d necessarily be morose … In fact, Thomas Berryman was neither of these.