The Thomas Berryman Number

In 1962, Thomas Berryman and his companion Ben Toy leave Claude, Texas, after flagging down a car driven by the Bishop of Albuquerque. They arrive in New York City in the Bishop's stolen Coupe de Ville, without the Bishop, establishing from the outset that Berryman is capable of casual violence.

Twelve years later, in 1974, narrator Ochs Jones, a reporter for the Nashville Citizen-Reporter, returns to his hometown of Zebulon, Kentucky, to write about the assassination of his friend Jimmie Lee Horn, the 37-year-old Black mayor of Nashville. Jones frames the story around what an editor at his paper coined "the Thomas Berryman Number," identifying Berryman as a professional killer from Texas with a measured IQ of 166. Horn was shot the previous July under circumstances far more complex than initially understood. The official account held that a troubled young man named Bert Poole shot Horn and was then killed by a Tennessee state trooper. A Washington Post story revealed that the man who shot Poole was not a trooper but a professional killer from Philadelphia named Joe Cubbah, and the real trooper, Martin Weesner, was found dead in the trunk of his squad car. A psychiatrist at a Long Island hospital then contacted the Citizen-Reporter to report that a patient named Ben Toy had discussed the Horn shooting nearly a week before it occurred. The paper sent Jones to investigate.

Jones arrives at the William Pound Institute in West Hampton, Long Island, and gains access to Toy, who is confined to the maximum-security Bowditch ward. Toy demonstrates detailed knowledge of Horn's home, campaign headquarters, and family. He tells Jones about a meeting in Provincetown, Massachusetts, that June, where he and Berryman met a southern lawyer named Harley John Wynn. Wynn represented unnamed employers who wanted Horn killed without suspicion falling on them. Toy collected $50,000, half the total fee, while Berryman secretly photographed Wynn. When Jones asks who hired Berryman, Toy claims he does not know.

Pursuing leads from Toy's hospital records, Jones bribes a doorman to enter Berryman's apartment at 80 Central Park South, where he finds books about Horn, including Horn's autobiography Jiminy, and photographs of a well-dressed blond man he identifies as Wynn. He sends the photos to his editor, Lewis Rosten, in Nashville. Jones also interviews Ettie Hatfield, the longtime Bowditch night nurse who first flagged Toy's ramblings to his psychiatrist, Dr. Alan Shulman. Hatfield reveals that Berryman received $100,000 in two payments and that Toy had advised him against taking the job.

During a second interview, Toy describes Berryman's methods through the Shepherd Industries contract in Lake Stevens, Washington. Posing as a salesman, Berryman spent days at the Shepherd estate, then poisoned himself and the youngest brother with ipecac tablets to keep them both off a flight. The two older brothers flew without him, and the plane exploded after takeoff. The elaborate deception illustrates how Berryman operates and why he was chosen for the Horn job.

Back in Nashville, Rosten identifies the man in the photographs as the personal lawyer of ex-Governor Jefferson "Johnboy" Terrell, a powerful former Tennessee governor with a major grudge against Horn. This identification breaks the case open.

In Jones's final visit, Toy reveals that Wynn began following him around New York after the Provincetown meeting and spotted Berryman. Furious at the security breach, Berryman made clear the consequences. Toy lured Wynn to a junkyard near LaGuardia Airport and shot him, firing a second round to distort the face. Police classified it as a gangland killing, and the body went unidentified for months. Toy then spent days in a private sanitarium, hallucinating voices. Meanwhile, Berryman called Terrell to report Wynn's death and demanded the remaining payment. During this final interview, Toy breaks down, talking incoherently, and must be restrained. Jones's access to Toy ends.

Jones discovers Oona Quinn, Berryman's 20-year-old girlfriend, living in his beach house in Hampton Bays. Over three days, she reveals details of their relationship. In flashback, Berryman told her one night that he had been paid to kill a Black man. She vomited and passed out. He offered to let her leave, but Oona stayed, convincing herself that Berryman leaving her in the house signaled his commitment to her. She confirms to Jones that Poole did not shoot Horn.

Through interwoven flashbacks, the novel reconstructs Berryman's meticulous preparations. He gains 20 pounds on a diet of spaghetti and beer to match a forged credit card photo, gets a crew cut, and commissions fake identifications. He flies to Nashville on his 30th birthday and scouts the Farmer's Market, where Horn will speak on July 4th. He studies Horn's routines, learns the full Independence Day schedule from a talkative campaign worker, and notices Poole, a disturbed divinity student who frequents campaign headquarters and harbors fantasies about killing Horn. On July 1st, Poole calls in to a live television broadcast and threatens Horn on air. Berryman waits outside with a concealed revolver but is thwarted by Horn's protective circle.

Berryman visits his father, a retired circuit judge who uses a wheelchair, in Claude, Texas, before returning to meet Terrell at a Nashville hotel. Wearing a rubber mask, Berryman collects the second $50,000 and says he wants maximum confusion. That same night, Terrell calls a contact in New Orleans to arrange Berryman's assassination after the job is completed. The name Joe Cubbah surfaces.

On July 2nd, Berryman enters Poole's apartment and reads looseleaf writings declaring an obsession with killing an important man. He realizes Poole will serve as the perfect patsy. He buys a .44 magnum with a silencer from a Kentucky gunsmith. That same day, Cubbah accepts the contract on Berryman in Philadelphia. On July 3rd, Cubbah flies to Nashville, befriends trooper Weesner at a bar, forces him at knifepoint to surrender his uniform, and kills him.

On July 4th, the convergence is swift and violent. Berryman visits Poole disguised as a debt collector, confirming Poole will be at the Farmer's Market that afternoon carrying his .44. At the rally, thousands gather. Cubbah, wearing the dead trooper's uniform, scans the crowd for Berryman. As Horn approaches the speaker's platform, Berryman fires two silenced shots through a windbreaker draped over his arm, striking Horn fatally in the chest and head. Poole fires his .44 but misses Horn entirely. Cubbah reflexively shoots Poole dead. Berryman vanishes into the crowd within seconds.

Months later, at the federal penitentiary in Louisville, Cubbah tells Jones what happened next. He followed Berryman and Oona into a supermarket, where Berryman calmly filled a grocery cart as if nothing had occurred. A massive traffic jam trapped everyone for hours. When darkness and rain arrived, Cubbah approached Berryman's car pretending to report broken brake lights. When Berryman cracked the door open, Cubbah stabbed him in the heart. Berryman died almost instantly. Cubbah ordered Oona to remove the body or face prison.

In January, Terrell dies from a sudden chest wound at a Florida hotel, his trial never having reached the courts. Late that month, three schoolboys and a girl discover Berryman's body in a cow pasture behind a motel in Asheville, North Carolina, wrapped in two dresses, with forged identifications nearby. Jones signs off from Zebulon, Kentucky.