The Executioner's Song - The Executioner's Song Part 60
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The Executioner's Song Part 60

They replied that they did not know how to obtain them.

Now, Larry lost his temper with the lawyers for the first time.

"Don't give me that," he yelled. "You're Gary Gilmore's attorneys. You just ask Noall Wootton to turn them over. Do you mean to say this state has no laws of discovery? You're allowed a copy of everything the prosecution is holding against your client."

It was getting to Schiller that Stanger, in particular, had not done anything. Not only had he not picked up the letters, but he had done nothing about getting a transcript of Gary's trial. Gary didn't want a transcript, Stanger replied.

This had nothing to do with Gary's defense, Schiller explained. It concerned the book and the movie. How could you do the trial without a transcript? Besides, Schiller pointed out, they had a legal duty to perform. What if Gary changed his mind and wanted to appeal? If they had no transcript, and were not familiar with Snyder and Esplin's notes, they could lose a crucial week. A man's life might be lost. He got hysterical in his indignation. "I want you guys to get on the goddamned phone," he said, "and start pulling things together." How could you do the trial without a transcript? Besides, Schiller pointed out, they had a legal duty to perform. What if Gary changed his mind and wanted to appeal? If they had no transcript, and were not familiar with Snyder and Esplin's notes, they could lose a crucial week. A man's life might be lost. He got hysterical in his indignation. "I want you guys to get on the goddamned phone," he said, "and start pulling things together."

He could see they didn't like it one bit, but they also knew that any additional money further down the road was going to come from him.

Schiller couldn't get over the way these lawyers worked. Wootton had never bothered to transcribe the trial. What if the Supreme Court of the United States needed the record? A little later, Moody's secretary called back to say that the legal stenographer thought the job would cost $600. "I'll pay for it," said Schiller, "don't worry." What was more important was that Wootton agreed to turn over the originals of the letters if they would provide him with a set of Xeroxes. So Stephanie went over as Moody's messenger and picked the lot up.

After Larry looked them over, he estimated that Gary must have written through August, September, October, and November, up to the suicide attempt, an average of ten pages a day. Quite a few letters actually went on for twenty of those big, yellow office-pad pages. The total had to be well over a thousand pages. He just skimmed. He could see Gilmore was writing about everything. One place he'd give Nicole a college education with essays on Michelangelo and Van Gogh, in another, pages of fuck talk. Must be tons of meat and potatoes in those envelopes. Schiller figured that he would need at least six complete copies, one for Wootton, one for himself, one for the future writer of the book, and at least three others for sale in different places. He called the main office of Xerox in Denver and asked about the fastest machine they had, and who might have it. He was prepared to fly Stephie to Denver, Dallas, San Francisco, wherever, when damn if they didn't tell him that right in Provo, the Press Publishing Company had just such a machine. Right in fucking Provo. A Christmas card company. Schiller shook his head. Sometimes these things happen.

Obviously he was not going to tell a Christmas card company that Gary Gilmore was what he intended to use their machine for. He merely asked to rent the machine from eleven at night until three in the morning, and used Moody and Stanger as references. Stephie and he went in with a man from the plant and it ended up taking six and a half hours.

There was magnitude to the job. Gary's letters were so carefully folded, it was unbelievable. One small white prison envelope might hold a dozen legal-sized pages. Gary had not only folded the sheets that closely, but Nicole maintained the folds. Schiller began to feel the relationship of Gary and Nicole in the way those letters had been opened and put back, opened and put back.

Later, when he had a chance to read more, Schiller began to feel a little security. Even if the Supreme Court took back their stay and Gary was executed in a week or so, these letters still offered the love story. He not only had the man's reason for dying but Romeo and Juliet, and life after death. It might even be enough for a screenwriter.

The next problem was where to sell some of them. The National Enquirer had made a firm offer for sixty grand to Scott Meredith, but Schiller was debating whether he should offer a package to Time instead.

He could probably get no more than a third as much, but at that price, Schiller liked Time. It was not only the prestige. In essence, Time magazine was a sales letter printed everywhere in the world. Gilmore's importance would be amplified internationally. That alone could pick up the $40,000 difference.

All the while, he was playing with the Enquirer on the side.

Their offer had gone from sixty to sixty-five. Schiller needed more money the way a farmer without a tractor needs a tractor, but he hated how the Enquirer would cheapen the property. In the interval, Time looked like they might even go to $25,000.

Then he got the idea to sell an in-depth Gary Gilmore interview to Playboy. That ought to be worth another twenty. Splicing the rope with Time and Playboy, plus the ABC money already spent, plus whatever he could pick up in Europe by selling the letters ought to come to more than a hundred thousand total. That should be enough to take care of all expenses, past and pending.

The lawyers, however, were having their difficulties. Schiller's admission to the press that he was a Hollywood producer had turned everything around at the prison. Sam Smith said he was going to see that nobody profited from the execution of Gary Gilmore. "Not while I'm Warden." He began to put a lot of restrictions on the visits.

When they talked to Gary these days, there was always a guard present. The lawyers would put down the phone and refuse to talk until the guard got the hell out of there. Sometimes the fellow would go to the opposite end of the room, but then, you had to be paranoid that the phones were bugged. It was hell talking around a corner to a client whose face you couldn't see. One day, Moody even went to the mat with Sam Smith over his right to tape-record visits with Gary.

"For executing his Will," complained Bob, "I have to record his remarks in case he changes his mind." He knew the argument was a waste of time, but he did it to keep pressure off the unauthorized tape recordings he was already making. They were difficult enough at best. You had to sneak the machine into the prison under your coat, and then there was the apprehension that a guard could notice the little rubber recording cap that had been slipped onto the earpiece of the phone, Discovery would leave them professionally embarrassed.

Of course, the Bar Association hadn't done anything with Boaz and probably wouldn't start up with them, but all the same, if you valued your reputation this became one more uncertainty to carry around.

Other times, the guards would try to inspect their attache cases as they walked in. Then they would have to put on a real show. They were Gilmore's lawyers, and their briefcases were not to be touched!

It meant they had to psych themselves up every time they came to the prison gate.

One occasion, Ron got into a hell of a fight with Sam Smith. "I'm going to interview my client the way I want," Ron told him, "and you're not going to tell me how to do it." "Look," said Smith, "this is my prison." Ron said, "Piss on that." He started yelling. Smith tried to calm him down. "Now, Ron," he said, "now Ron," said Sam, and Ron answered, "Bullshit, you're not going to tell me how to conduct an interview. I've got to have a record. If my man gets executed, and somebody sues, I want these talks on record. I'm going to handle my client the way I want." "Well," said Sam Smith, "you're going to have to go to Federal Court to find out if you have that right." Ron said, "Buddy, if I have to, I'm going."

It was a hell of a yelling match, and got them nowhere. The Warden would never tell you what you could or couldn't do. He would just say, when asked, that it was against policy. Ron even had a go with Ernie Wright, the Director of Corrections. Ron was one of the five members of the State Building Board, and that was real leverage.

Any time the prison needed a new facility or, hell, even a new shed, they had, like any other State institution, to get permission from the State Building Board. So, Ron had had a day-to-day acquaintance with Sam and Ernie for some time. On this one, however, he ran into a wall. Ernie Wright finally said, "No movie producer is going to make one dime out of Gilmore. It's not fair. We're the ones who take the criticism, and nobody is going to make any money out of this." It got as emotional as that.

"Where is it against policy?" Bob would ask. "In which book?"

"Oh, it isn't written," Ernie Wright said just like Sam, "it's just prison policy."

Moody and Stanger discovered they could get a lot more done by working with Assistant Wardens and Lieutenants. The two prison Chaplains were also useful. Campbell, the Mormon, was fighting the prison half the time, so you could expect him to become frustrated and walk around in a pout with a tight steely face. But, the other Chaplain, the Catholic, Father Meersman, was an old boy, and he would tell the lawyers, "Butter 'em up. Don't ask whether you can or can't. Just go as far as you can. When they cut you off, try some other time." Father Meersman had worked in the prison for years and enjoyed a smooth relationship, a pleasant-faced man, gray-haired man, not tall, not short, not heavy, not slim, moderate in every one of his physical details. "Just say, 'whatever is fair, Warden, whatever's fair.' "

Of course, Gary could get caustic about Father Meersman. "The padre," he said to Moody and Stanger one day, "gave me a cross to die with. Specially made. Fits in the palm of your hand. That papist prick ought to be a used-car salesman."

Moody also got a little pressure in Mormon circles. He was a member of the High Council, one of twelve Elders to advise the President of his Stake in Provo, but now and then words would come back that some people thought he should be kicked off the High Council for accepting blood money. On the other hand, Church members in good standing would say, "You're doing a fine job. We admire you for that." Half and half.

Moody brushed it off. It was like the flak he took when he defended one man for killing another while driving under the influence of alcohol. "How could you do that?" he was asked, "You're a Mormon. You don't drink." Some Church people didn't understand the system or his role in it.

Still, it wasn't all bad. By this time, Ron Stanger could hardly wait to get home and catch himself on the tube. He frankly enjoyed the publicity more than Moody. Bob wasn't so much in love with his bald head that he wanted to rush over to see his image, but the kids liked it. "There's Daddy," they'd scream. Fun to see them having pleasure. And, of course, at the courthouse and on the street, everybody was asking how they were doing, everybody said they saw them on TV. It was a good feeling for Moody to run into attorneys he had gone to school with, who were now, perhaps, making more money than him, and be able to chat about the case. On the whole, he felt relaxed. Gilmore hurt his practice, and helped it. Changed it. Moody liked to think of himself as a man who wasn't paralyzed by the idea of change.

GILMORE You tell Larry Schiller I want that phone call to Nicole. I'm sure that Schiller can put pressure on people if he wants to.

STANGER Larry's quite a mover, all right.

GILMORE You guys have made some moves, but it hasn't been enough, I haven't gotten the phone call.

STANGER It hasn't been successful.

GILMORE Man, I've gone sixteen days without eating, and I'll go forever.

I'll do whatever I have to do to get that phone call. If it takes a bribe, pay it. I don't give a shit what it takes . . . I want to talk to Nicole and I don't know if I'll be cooperative with anybody until I do.

I guess that sounds like an ultimatum. I don't know if I have the right to ask you to arrange a phone call in order to get answers to these questions, but I guess that's what I'm doing.

STANGER You've got a right to ask what you want, Gary.

GILMORE I want to talk to Nicole.

As soon as the lawyers returned to Provo with a tape, Schiller, if he was in town, would come over to their office to make a copy immediately.

That gave him an opportunity to listen in the lawyers' presence. When Gary now said, "Arrange a phone call," Schiller turned to Moody and remarked, "Come on, does he think I'm going to give somebody twenty-five dollars?" Moody said, "Gary thinks five thousand should do it." "To whom? Who gets it?" Schiller asked.

Moody replied, "Gary says, 'Look for a doctor.' " Schiller said, "I don't think we should get involved in that, Bob. We're going for the long haul."

He had the feeling Gary was testing how far he would go. In effect, they were all asking: How much money does Schiller have in his pocket? Has he another five thousand to hand out? Larry considered it a good way to establish his integrity with Moody if he didn't go along. "I don't think we should get involved," he repeated. "I'll send Gary a telegram."

DEC. 5, 1:30 P.M.

GARY GILMORE.

UTAH STATE PRISON BOX 950.

DRAPER UT 84020.

IN REFERENCE TO YOUR REQUEST TO COMMUNICATE WITH A THIRD PARTY, THIS IS NOT THE MOMENT OR THE TIME, AND THE MEANS YOU HAVE SUGGESTED ARE REJECTED BY ME. I AM HERE TO RECORD HISTORY, NOT TO GET INVOLVED IN IT. REGARDS.

LARRY.

"Actually," said Schiller to himself, "I have become part of it. All around me, I'm becoming part of the story."

Now that Gilmore wouldn't answer his questions, Schiller decided he'd better pick up a couple of collateral interviews. Vern had told him that his daughter'd be well worth talking to, so with Stephie he went to visit Brenda and Johnny. It wasn't a great interview but he was delighted with Brenda. She was out front, wisecracking and offered a real image for a TV show. Almost good looking enough to be a Charlie's Angel-type girl. Her husband Johnny also impressed Schiller, but in another way. He felt a little uneasy of him physically.

A strong man, reluctant to talk.

All the while, he loved having brought Stephie. Taking her to the interview warmed Brenda up. Stephie gave these awkward interview situations a little-he didn't want to say class-a little bit of culture, the little bit of softness needed. She was an asset. That is, until they left the place. "You sat there and ate all those hors d'oeuvres," she said, "all that ham and pineapple." Had to be said, Schiller told himself. She was an asset going in, and a liability going out. Her criticisms were so rough, he was fucked for the rest of the day. Taking her to the interview warmed Brenda up. Stephie gave these awkward interview situations a little-he didn't want to say class-a little bit of culture, the little bit of softness needed. She was an asset. That is, until they left the place. "You sat there and ate all those hors d'oeuvres," she said, "all that ham and pineapple." Had to be said, Schiller told himself. She was an asset going in, and a liability going out. Her criticisms were so rough, he was fucked for the rest of the day.

So he was half relieved to interview Sterling Baker and Ruth Ann later in the week when Stephie was not along. He couldn't get over what a gentle fellow Sterling was. So shy, in fact, that he had to take him out to a restaurant. The man just could not sit and be interviewed without something like food to distract the atmosphere. All the same, Sterling showed another side of Gary. Here was this fellow, real gentle, and Gary had been drawn to him.

Moody and Stanger were trying to devise a way for Gary to telephone Nicole. Many a scheme was discussed.

In the meantime, to keep Gary happy, they were getting a few letters ferried to and from Nicole. Naturally, Gary wanted to know how good looking Ken Sundberg was, and Moody had to assure him Sundberg was a serious young Mormon who would not drive a wedge between Nicole and himself.

GILMORE Can I ask you guys a personal question? Sometimes when things become a reality, people don't think about them exactly like they might. You guys aren't going to have any second thoughts?

MOODY Let us say this, Gary, I think Ron and I both have come to look upon you and feel and treat and consider you to be a good friend and I don't like the thought of your being executed, but damnit, we're here to do what you want. We'll continue to work at that even though it is not a pleasurable thing to even think about.

STANGER It certainly is not.

GILMORE You know I'm not asking that you like me. I'm not a likable person, right.

STANGER Whether you like it or not, we've grown to like you very much.

GILMORE The only thing I ask is just respect my own thoughts about death.

Stanger didn't really believe Gilmore was ever going to get it.

There were too many Judges secretly hostile to the idea of capital punishment. On the other hand, Stanger didn't see why he couldn't give his utmost. He liked to respect the role he had assumed. In a manner of speaking, he had been an actor all his life. Of course there were all kinds of ironies in this case anyway. Here he was supposed to be interviewing Gilmore on his past, yet Gary got off more on getting Ron to talk about his own life.

Having been born in Butte, Ron could get a quick laugh by saying, "Leave out the 'e' and you got it spelled." His two older brothers, he told Gary, used to sell newspapers over his near-dead body. Ron would start hawking on the best corner, and quick enough, a couple of bigger newsboys would jump him. As they did, his brothers would jump them, and get the corner for a while.

Back in the '40s, feeling cold and dirty in the winter, he'd be tired from carrying papers around. He'd go to bars and those old gals drinking would buy all he had left out of sympathy. Greatest practice for the law was learning to make those faces that draw sympathy.

Then the family moved to Oregon and there were hardly any Mormons in the town. The church was above a laundry one time. He met people who believed Mormons had horns because they kept more than one wife. Stanger was just a kid but he would say, "I'm all for it." In fact, his grandfather had been a polygamist. When Stanger first came to BYU, they asked in assembly how many of the kids had polygamous ancestors. Near everybody stood up. Of course, those polygamist families were not particularly happy, thought Ron. "You gave so and so a baby," one wife would yell "and you ain't given me one." If you came from a second family, like his dad did, you knew the difference between first and second. Hell, it was hard enough to keep one wife happy.

Gary asked him to go on. Thought all this was fascinating.

Ron said he was the first member of his family ever to go to college, and hardly knew why he picked BYU unless it was to be in a place where Mormons were the accustomed thing. He hadn't been to school more than a few days when this gal who was blond and cute said something about Ernie Wilkinson. Ron opened his big mouth and said, "Who is that?" Thought Ernie was her boy friend. How was he supposed to know Wilkinson was the President of the University.

The gal got so sarcastic Ron walked away. "There," he said to his friends, "is one girl I could never go out with." Now they'd been married twenty-two years, and had quite a family. Five kids, all in adolescence at once, all adopted.

When Ron and Viva couldn't have children, they waited five years, then put in an application through the Church, and had to wait another two years to get their first adoption. It took so long they already had a bunch of other applications out, and within a year three more children were in the house.. Four kids under four years of age.

They were going to hold out for a girl on the fifth, but heard about an infant they could get immediately from a sister agency in Oregon.

Ron and Viva took all four and jumped on a plane to Portland to pick up the new little one.

Once aboard, they distributed children to everybody. Said to strangers, "Here, we got too many, would you take one?" On the way back, they had a tyke in the lead, then the twins, barely walking, Ron next, holding the next-to-littlest one, and Viva coming up behind with one more baby. Two old ladies came over and said, "We need to ask a question. Are you Mormons?" When they nodded, the old ladies said, "We could tell. It's such a big family." Later, on the plane, Viva remarked, "Wouldn't it have been funny if you told them we were both sterile?"

He and Gary laughed a long time over that one.

Chapter 16.

BRIDGE TO THE NUTHOUSE.

Schiller got an advance copy of Barry Farrell's article in New West.

It was called "Merchandising Gary Gilmore's Dance of Death" which sounded bad, and the piece covered Gilmore's negotiations with Boaz, Susskind, and Schiller. To Schiller's satisfaction, the parts on himself, while plus and minus, were generally okay.

Uncle Vern seemed less attracted to Susskind than to Larry Schiller, who made a point of getting around to meet the family. Schiller's advice to one and all was to hire a lawyer, and when the lawyers were hired they found in Schiller someone who could talk their language, who knew all about court-appointed guardians and trusts, who carried with him a briefcase full of elaborate contracts for the rights to stories even more spectacular than Gilmore's.

That was good. Farrell was treating him with some seriousness.

All the more unhappy did it make Larry then that the next line said: The man was something of a carrion bird: Already he'd done business with Susan Atkins, Marina Oswald, Jack Ruby, Madame Nhu, and Lenny Bruce's widow.

Once Schiller got over the impact, it didn't bother him too much. A magazine writer had to put in zingers, and after being screwed on In the Beginning, the Muhammad All book, Farrell owed him a shot anyway. Besides, the rest of the piece was brilliant. A very good article. "Carrion bird" was going to get picked up, but on balance he was ahead. He began to think again of inviting Farrell to work on the questions.

Schiller was suffering with Moody and Stanger's interviews. He just could not accept how little the lawyers were bringing back. Gary had said he would not answer any more questions, but he meant written ones. Talking to him for hours, they should have been able to elicit more. On top of that, they made technical errors.

In the beginning, the lawyers didn't really know how to use a tape recorder. Once, Stanger did an interview with a dead battery. Schiller had to buy fresh ones. He couldn't comprehend how Stinger could keep laughing it off. Once the cassette was not turned over. The lawyers had recorded twice on the same side. Must have sat there, and rewound the tape, then recorded on top of themselves. Ron's attitude seemed to be: If we make a mistake, we get it tomorrow. One time Schiller had met Ron and Bob in a little coffee shop just a couple of miles down the road from the prison. Right away they wanted to listen to a tape just smuggled out. Played it in the coffee shop. Schiller said, "Let's go back to the office for that." But they had to hear what they had done. There, in the fucking restaurant. People nearby could have overheard it all. They couldn't seem to comprehend it wasn't wise, that tomorrow it could all be cut off. Why, they acted as if it was their prison. Schiller, trying to hold on to his temper, sometimes had to tell himself, maybe it is. It was practically their hometown, after all.

"Forget Larry Schiller the businessman," he told them. "That's a side of me, but we're forgetting it. We have history here. We have to get that." When they continued to show resistance, he said finally, "I'm going to give these interviews over to Vern." He was halfway serious. It couldn't be any worse and Gary might open up. What was making Schiller paranoid is that the lawyers didn't bring back a tape every time they went out. He began to wonder what they did discuss when they wouldn't tape. Kept saying to them, "Take down anything and everything, even your legal discussions. Talk about the will It's all. You never know when it's going to be important." Sometimes he would give them a message for Gary and not be certain it had gotten through. Certainly didn't hear it on the tapes.

"Vern may not have your education," he would then threaten, "but he'll listen to me." It all consumed one horrendous week. He didn't have the hours to deal with ABC, movie rights, planning the story, getting ready for the execution, or time to study the letters.

Finally he told them to instruct Gary to call each of them Larry when doing an interview. It was better for Gilmore, he explained, to be thinking constantly of the man to whom he was telling the story of his life. Maybe that way, Schiller thought, they would find it easier to ask a tough question or two. Schiller was trying everything.

More and more he was thinking of an approach to Barry Farrell.

There were a lot of memories he kept of Barry from Life magazine, so Schiller continued to feel pretty damn pleased with the overall respect Farrell had shown in New West. In the old Life days, Schiller had never been able to get rid of a feeling that Barry Farrell had a subtle contempt for him, and was made out of more exceptional stuff than himself. Not more exceptional, maybe, but certainly special.

The first time he worked with Barry was after a period of six months Schiller had spent on and off with Timothy Leary, then Laura Huxley. Life was doing a big piece on LSD and Schiller had done fifty hours of taped interviews and taken thousands of photographs of adolescents and junkies, and college kids, and middle-aged people who took the tour with gurus and had profound experiences. Schiller had begun to think how much he'd like to be a writer, and realized he didn't know how. When he got back to New York, Life had assigned Barry Farrell to write the text, and the man just sat in his fucking office and worked. Schiller really got upset. How could you write a major piece on the use of this drug, he asked Barry, without going out in the field? So he developed an antagonism for Farrell, even a hatred. Yet when the piece came out, the guy had done it all. Really shaped it. That was the year, 1966, when Larry Schiller went from one side to the other on Barry Farrell, and developed a great regard for him as a craftsman and a writer. He did not see why Farrell could not do the same stuff with the Gilmore interviews.

Of course, this was only part of his feeling for Farrell. Barry was not only a craftsman, but a great ladies' man. The type to get away with three-hour lunches. He wore the right suits and right ties, and Schiller was frankly envious of anybody who could go out that long, come back a little tipsy, and still do a hell of a job. Schiller wasn't that good looking then, no beard, pointed nose, small chin, a hungry look.

He was just a working photographer, a kind of maniacal smile on his face because he was trying to do ten pictures at once while toting a big load of equipment on his back. Knew he looked bizarre, but tried to be part of the woodwork. The less a photographer was noticed as a human being, the better the pictures. Your camera could be dynamite when people paid you no more attention than a fly on the wall.

Whereas Farrell, the ladies' man, had a bit of magic about him. Schiller remembered how Barry began to go around with this black girl who was a researcher at Life. A beautiful black girl, oh, God, Schiller remembered, in the '60s to be black and beautiful was to be a star.

She was sweet, she had this nice honey voice, she was intellectual and not street-wise. There was a whole fineness to her, beauty to her, black, beautiful and intelligent. Now she and Barry were married and had a child together. Schiller decided the hell with it, he was just going to see if he could hire Barry Farrell. It would be like getting a prize.