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“I don’t like people playing games with me,” Gacy continued.

“Hey, believe me, I know that!” said Ken. I knew Ken well enough by now to believe he wished me no ill will; he was just trying to keep Gacy’s gaskets from blowing.

“I’ve been more than fair and generous with him, and to play this holdout game with the phone . . . Come on . . . I have never held out on the phone. Tell me when I even didn’t make the phone bill good?”

“Yeah, John, you’re right.”

“He’s had more than enough money to cover the phone bill. I’ve given him over $475 for the phone.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ken said, desperately trying to appease him. “I’ll have to find out what’s going on.”

“You ask him if he’d like it if I turned his letters over to the Las Vegas police. See if he likes that. Make it a point that he should know not to piss me off.”

I couldn’t believe that this whole blackmail plan was being recorded. What were the odds? I kept expecting the machine to click off at any time. But it didn’t. It just kept recording and recording.

The conversation had moved back to one of the appeals when Gacy abruptly changed the subject.

“I still think Jason is playing games with me.’Cause I did nothing wrong to him, and here it’s been a month I’ve been denied talking to him.”

“Yeah.”

“I still miss all the goddamn letters he was sending me. And none of his letters has been written as loose as they were written before. It’s like he’s on guard.”

“Yeah . . . well . . . maybe he’s afraid.”

Ken’s remark seemed to ignite something in Gacy, because his voice rattled the answering machine speaker: “Yeah, well, I got news for you, never play both ends against the middle with me, because it will backfire.”

“I know,” Ken said, forcing laughter. “I would never even think of that.” More strained laughter followed.

“Well . . . he’ll go down harder than a rock. Same thing with his brother, not answering my letters. ’Cause if he thinks I’m kidding, I’m not. And once the ball gets rolling, there’ll be no stopping it.”

He then began describing how he was going to contact an old friend in Las Vegas from the time when he lived here. I wasn’t sure whether he was planning to pay him to hurt me, but I’d had enough. The sight of the incriminating tape sitting there in my machine gave me the confidence to finally stand up to this monster, to reveal the real Jason.

I picked up the phone and said, “Hello, John.”

Complete silence on the other end.

“Oh,” Gacy said softly, “where were you when we called before?”

“I was still at school.” Gosh, I was enjoying this. “I want to talk to you about this call. Ken never clicked over and my machine recorded the whole thing.”

“What do you mean?” Gacy asked, knowing exactly what I meant.

“You know what I mean. I have it all here on my machine, how you’re going to send the letters to the police. Go right ahead. I have your whole conversation with Ken on tape.”

The other end of the line was completely still. For a moment, I wondered if they’d hung up, but then I heard Gacy’s characteristic mouth-breathing.

“Feel free, John, to tell the police. Everyone here knows that I was just studying you for school. I let everyone know about the content of the letters before I’d even written them. The police already have a copy of them just in case you tried any bullshit like this.”

Okay, I was stretching things. But I wanted to make sure he knew that any leverage he thought he had had just slipped through his fingers. I wanted nothing to do with him anymore.

To underscore my leverage, I said, “I bet Hard Copy or Inside Edition would be very interested in hearing about how John Wayne Gacy tried to blackmail two children, how he tried to get them to have sex together just for his amusement. Don’t forget, I’ve got the whole damn thing on tape.”

“You think so, huh?”

There was no bluster in Gacy’s voice. He sounded tired. Defeated.

Then I heard a click on the phone and the tape stopped circling. That was the last time I spoke to John Wayne Gacy.

44

Execution

It wasn’t easy putting back together the