The Thomas Berryman Number

“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.

PREFACE

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.

Random observation

: The other day, I showed Cat something Berryman’s girlfriend had given me: it was a Crossman air pistol. To demonstrate how it could put someone to sleep, I callously (stupidly) wounded Mrs. Mullhouse’s calico. It was too much for the old kitty, however, and she died.

Random observation

: Even Doc Fiddler’s Paradise Lounge, one of the top redneck gin mills in the state of Tennessee, has a fresh print of Jimmie Horn over the liquor these days. Horn’s strictly moral drama now, and people are partial to moral drama, no matter what.

One last observation

: In 1962, Thomas John Berryman graduated from Plains High School with one of the highest grade point averages ever recorded in Potter County, Texas. Some teachers said he had a photographic memory, and he had a measured I.Q. of one hundred sixty-six.

A little more digging revealed that he was known as the “Pleasure King,” and nicknamed “Pleasure.”

The women who’d been his girlfriends would only say that he made them feel inferior. Even the ones who’d liked him best never felt totally comfortable with him.

Most people around Clyde, Texas, thought he was a successful lawyer in the East now. At first I’d thought someone in the Berryman family started the rumor; later on, I’d learned it had been Berryman himself.