The Executioner's Song - The Executioner's Song Part 61
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The Executioner's Song Part 61

He called Barry and asked if he'd be interested. Right from the start, he said it would be no pie in the sky. Nothing like the Muhammad All project. No great returns promised. No book involved. But definite work for definite good pay. Five thousand dollars for editing the Playboy interview. That was all right with Farrell. He had his own book to get back to, he said, and they sparred a little, then discussed it back and forth. To Schiller's surprise, he had the feeling there was less of a selling job here than he had psyched himself up for. They ended with Barry agreeing to take a look at the letters and interviews done so far. In a week or so, he ought to be able to decide.

"I'm running a bold move," Schiller told Stephie.

She didn't understand the interplays, didn't see how Farrell could write something like "carrion bird" and still respect you.

Stephie was furious at the term. Besides, she didn't want Larry to give the interview over to anybody. He obviously wanted to do it himself, she said. Schiller only won the discussion by telling her about The American Dreamer. " 'Schiller went absolutely blank on Dennis Hopper's more mystical ideas'-you want to hear that again?" he asked her. "Don't you see, there's a side of Gary I can miss completely. I don't know from shinola about karma." That convinced her.

When he could talk Stephie into something, he could convince anyone in the world. She was beautifully sales-resistant.

Barry Golson now flew out to L.A. to discuss Playboy doing the Gilmore interview, and Schiller could see that the editor was arriving in town with a $20,000 face, just what Schiller thought it was worth, plus expenses. It was also obvious that he and Golson were going to be abrasive on each other. Golson looked at him as a businessman, pure and simple.

"We're going to need," said Schiller, "a really good writer to edit these interviews." He mentioned Barry Farrell. Golson didn't indicate he knew who Farrell was. "He wrote a book on the actress, Pat Neal," Schiller said. He also gave Golson Farrell's Life credentials. Golson didn't seem to care. Maybe he wanted his own man in. There might be trouble later, Schiller thought, but he tied the deal for $22,000.

Schiller couldn't resist telling Farrell that Barry Golson of Playboy didn't seem to know him: "It's perfectly understandable that I never heard of Golson," said Farrell in reply, "but I consider it a shocking bit of illiteracy that Golson doesn't react to my name."

Schiller laughed. It would be a couple of weeks before he'd come to realize that Farrell had not said it altogether in jest, and was even annoyed that Golson, being the Playboy Interview Editor, might not be aware that Farrell had done one bang-up job for them years ago with Buckminster Fuller. Barry had come to the place in his life where he was counting his achievements in preference to scoffing at them.

One reason for accepting Schiller's offer was that Barry Farrell didn't mind getting out of L.A. He was feeling some unaccustomed doubts about himself as a professional. Lately, he had been having trouble on deadlines, his wife was not well, and he was being sued in a major way by a publisher for nondelivery of manuscript. Being a man who had always taken his good reputation for granted, his life in Los Angeles of late produced the feeling that he was spinning his wheels. He actually felt grateful to Schiller. Somebody who trusted him to do a job.

Barry had been doing a book about the Mustang Ranch in Nevada when the most extraordinary thing happened. This group of heavies and whores he had been writing about suddenly turned on each other. A killing took place. The dead man was the Argentine heavyweight Oscar Bonavena. A good friend of Barry's, just about the main character in his book, Ross Brymer, was arrested for the deed.

That really knocked the wind out of Farrell's book. He couldn't go on with it. Felt the meaning of the word for the first time-crushed. Then Farrar, Straus &Giroux filed suit in Federal Court. The offer from Schiller felt like pure escape. To be able to labor long hours far away from his own concerns would be like an expense-paid vacation in Tahiti for him.

Tamera was now living in Salt Lake with her brother, Cardell. Out of nowhere, Larry Schiller called one night and said he would like to talk to her. Maybe she would be able to work with him. Just wanted to discuss the possibilities. Could they meet?

Tamera suggested he come to her brother's home. Cardell was an insurance salesman, and fourteen years older, and she followed his judgment greatly. Schiller had a pretty questionable reputation around the journalists she knew.

After all, a lot of newspaper people were having to get their Gilmore stories however they could, and Schiller had just flown in with his checkbook and tied the whole thing up. Everybody was mad at that. Still, she agreed to see him. She thought she was an open person.

Even if she had a bias, she wouldn't be content to live with that.

Once Schiller began to talk, Tamera couldn't hold on to her dislike. Cardell, who was a shrewd businessman, was also swayed.

Schiller just sat there and told them quietly, "I think you ought to know who I am." His career, as he recounted it, sounded pretty good.

She could see Cardell liked the thorough way Schiller had handled the contracts so that there would be something substantial for Nicole's children, and the heirs of the victims. It didn't seem like he was just out to get the money.

Once he finished talking about himself, he said to Tamera, "I'm not going to mislead you and suggest you're going to have a key part in writing a book or movie or anything like that." Still, there was a lot she could do for him, and a great deal he could offer her. If they could set up a working cooperation, he would let Tamera sit in as an assistant on many a meeting. She would meet a number of important people in journalism and television on a different basis from all her lunches and dinners with them heretofore. Those occasions might have been fun for her, but what he offered would be more substantial.

She could be present when important decisions were hammered out in confrontation. She would get a dramatic inside view of how a big story is put together, and know a great deal more when she was done.

Schiller liked her, although that hardly mattered. She was not exactly pretty, but she was attractive. Her features were a little too irregular to make her a beauty, but she was tall and had nice ash-blond hair and was full of energy, real clean-cut country pep. Wham! Pow!

Stick her tongue in her cheek to show her confusion, or-Sock!-skew her lower jaw to the side to register embarrassment. With such a girl, Schiller knew his offer was better than catnip. It was these clean, slightly straitlaced young ladies with a wild ambitious career streak who could never resist opportunity.

He needed, he said, a newspaper to be his source 24 hours a day. His eyes and ears in a strange city. He could tell Tamera that he had lived and worked in many a new town for a week or month, and before he was done, he sometimes knew more about what was going on in that region, be it Provo, or Tangiers, than the natives. Nobody could figure out how he did it, but he would tell her it was simple. He always tried to get a pipeline into a local newspaper. Would she be his pipeline to the Deseret News?

He wanted, he assured her, a relationship that the newspaper would understand and profit from. He would supply them with pieces of information about Gilmore. In turn, she would feed him the local Salt Lake news plus what came in from Orem and Provo. Let him know what was-he used the local expression-coming down, what the Governor was up to, and the Attorney General's office. He wanted to have his finger on it.

When she began to look worried, as if he were proposing a little too much, he went back to his main theme. "Tamera," he said, "even if you don't drink yourself, you're going to see big reporters drinking, and going after a story, and working on their interviews. It's all there to learn."

What he did not mention was his private motive. He had to worry about Nicole. There would come a day when she would walk out of the hospital, and Schiller would go up to her. If, for any reason, she saw him as a Hollywood type waving a contract, then good relations with Tamera might be indispensable.

Cardell left the room for a moment, and Larry nailed the relationship.

He was proud of it afterward. Just a hunch, just a gamble on his instinct, but he knew there had to be some inside reason Tamera had gotten so close to Nicole. Something the two girls had in parallel. When they were alone, Schiller said, "I bet you made it with a con, and then he fucked you over."

Tamera couldn't believe it. She stammered, "It wasn't that kind of relation. Wasn't sexual. But I was in love, and Nicole let me read Gary's letters because I told her about the wonderful letters I used to get from my friend."

Schiller went back to L.A. on the night plane. He had a professional link with Sorensen on the Trib, and what might prove a real connection on the Deseret News. Barry Farrell, whom he called from the airport, said, yes, definitely, he would work with him. The pieces were coming together. Schiller enjoyed an airplane trip at such times.

The first few weeks Nicole was in the ward, they couldn't get her to do a thing. She really told them off. It was absolutely against the rules to have people locked up, but there they were running this surveillance on her all the time. She let them know they were breaking their own rules. She was a bitch, verbally.

Doctor Woods disgusted her. She would ask him innocent things, like, "Do I have to eat all you give me, every meal?" and he would look at her like you could lose your ass giving a solid reply. She thought he was a great pussy. This big, good-looking guy who would never commit himself.

She was so angry at herself for failing in that suicide. Now she had really lost control of her life. They took care of her actions. Told her when she could go to the bathroom, watched her when she ate, just about gave her permission to close her eyes. In the daytime, they didn't allow you to rest your head on a chair. You couldn't go to sleep before eight at night. Here were all these patients, fuck-ups and convicts, kids in for some bump or hassle with the law, yet letting that be done to them. Even acted like they liked this business of living by their own rules.

Every day the patients would sit down at a committee meeting-one came right after another-and discuss their rules. Rewrite them. Then they'd get into new hang-ups carrying out the new rules. It took Nicole a long time to realize that that was the way the place was supposed to work. A lot of them got to like writing and rewriting the rules. You could discuss the shit out of the changes, and play a lot of games with people. Fuck them over and get points for it. Go back to the world knowing the ropes. It was a comedy. A real shift in the power trip, thought Nicole.

She wasn't interested. Every time she would look out their second-story window, she would think of jumping through one day, making it to the road, making it out of town. But she knew she couldn't get free that way. They would really lock her in. Her best chance would be in her next Court appearance. She would have to convince them she wasn't suicidal.

Nicole didn't try to decide where she was on that. If they let her out, maybe she would play it straight. Or, she might decide to start running down the Interstate until some big semi clapped her in the ass. She just wanted to get away. The place was too full of shit.

Everybody squealing on everybody. "You broke the rules!" they were always screaming. Then, they would argue it up and down. Nicole tried not to get involved, but after a while, she couldn't help it. Those rules were so fucking stupid. You had to try to improve them.

Then, she dug that there was one rule they were telling other patients but not her. Nobody was to mention Gary Gilmore's name. And no newspapers in the ward. If Nicole brought up Gary, nobody answered. People looked at her like she was kidding. Ha ha. Finally, they told her she was not allowed to say his name. She didn't care. It offended her to speak into the ears of these sheep.

One time, Stein, her grandfather, came to visit, and to say something about Gary. Right away, the posse asked him to leave. She threw a fit. They put her on silent treatment. Nobody swore or got mad, just dead-ass posse staring at her. She would call them names until she could see them cringe, call them sheep and rats, say they were pussy-whipped. She told them she wouldn't go to committee meeting. They carried her over bodily. After a while, she went by herself. She didn't want to be subjected to physical embarrassment. One night they had a dance, and when she refused to join, they lifted her up again and carried her part of the way down the hall. She had to tell them to put her down. She would walk. Then, they started playing the song "King of the Road." She liked that so much, she even danced.

The stuff going on in the meetings was incredible. She was no great brain, but compared to these asses, all totally involved in their own bullshit, she couldn't help opening her mouth to show them a better way. She had to laugh at how they were all working to become the number-one sheep. Of course, number-one sheep got to be the sheep-herder.

God, they could draw maps on how to be an asshole. If you left a pack of cigarettes sitting around and somebody stole a couple, that started tension. Who did it? Can I trust you? So they would vote that you couldn't carry your own cigarettes any more. Somebody else had to dish them out. Like you could only get one on the hour, every hour.

Nicole developed this ability to sit through a meeting and not hear a word. She had to. When she took a bath, three girls stayed in the room to watch her.

Must have been afraid she'd go down the drain. When she talked to Woods, she tried to run a line on him about all the nice things she was going to do when she got out. Some of it was real, some was made-up, but she would talk about getting away from Utah or going to school. She wanted, she told him, to take real care of Sunny and Jeremy. She put on such a good act, that after a while, it wasn't that she wanted to live exactly, it was that she wasn't so sure she wanted to die. You couldn't keep being enthusiastic about all these groovy things you were going to do when you got out, and not begin to wonder a little. Way inside, the enthusiasm didn't always feel completely phony. You couldn't keep being enthusiastic about all these groovy things you were going to do when you got out, and not begin to wonder a little. Way inside, the enthusiasm didn't always feel completely phony.

She tried to make Woods believe she was ready to live without Gary. She never once said it without also saying to herself, "I'm putting the man on." Yet, she could also hear herself saying, "Keep it up. You'll believe it, too."

They had this rule you couldn't sleep without a nightgown. She hated that. Always liked to sleep with nothing on. One night, she slipped her nightgown off under the covers. Damn if three girls didn't come down on her to put it back. All through the night, there'd be a girl taking her turn in a chair to keep a watch on Nicole.

She felt as if slowly, real slow, but real sure, they were smothering her soul. Sometimes it would come over her right in a meeting.

She would be sitting in a line of girls, listening to them bitch and holler and would put her head on her knees and never even look up, once, never react to anything going on. Just sit through a meeting with her head on her knees crying away. Nobody paid any attention. There was always one girl or another off like that, Goddamnedest government she ever saw, half the kids crying, and the others half passing laws or standing up to make speeches full of bullshit. A lot of them wouldn't even remember what they started to say. They'd argue about how you got the floor in the first place, when, in fact, they were sitting on the floor already. And they'd rat on each other. One girl would say, "You were having eye language with Billy," and the other would say, "I wasn't." "Fuck you, you were."

Nicole wanted to say, "You goddamned idiots, I don't care what any of you do. You're all so dumb you think I'm sick. It doesn't matter. Even if you think I'm crazy, this is the way I want to be. I don't want to change." Then, she would realize she was never going to hear Gary's voice again.

Chapter 17.

I AM THE LAND LORD HERE.

Gibbs wrote to Gary and said he was coming up for trial around the twentieth of December. He figured he'd be released, and wanted to know if there was anything Gary wanted done before he left the state, because he wouldn't be hanging around. He was going, he wrote, to show Utah what Mae West had showed Tennessee. Her ass, as she was leaving.

On December 11th, Big Jake brought Gibbs out to the front desk where an older fellow with a mustache was waiting. He walked with a cane and carried a briefcase. This gentleman introduced himself as Gary's uncle, Vern Damico, and said Gary had asked him to deliver a token of his friendship. Then he opened his briefcase and handed over a check made out by a local law firm for two thousand bucks.

Gibbs asked if Gary's mother was financially taken care of, and when Mr. Damico said she was, they shook hands. Gibbs introduced Mr. Damico to Big Jake, and said here was the only jailer Gary had any respect for. Mr. Damico replied, "Yes, Gary has spoken well of you, Big Jake." Damico then said he had some other appointments to keep, wished him good luck and left. Big Jake said, "We should have asked him if Gary would invite me to the execution."

A couple of guards had been standing in the doorway and they were gawking with envy. Gibbs laughed and made a call to Salt Lake, and had a friend come down for the check and put it in the bank.

That evening, Gibbs wrote to Gary again, thanked him for the money, and mentioned how Maximum was filled now, six prisoners altogether, including Powers. Gary answered, "If I were there, we'd keep all of them lying on their bunks like little church mice and we'd put Powers in charge of licking out the Open Pit Sulphur Mine with his tongue." In the letter he also said he was still on the hunger strike and wasn't going to eat "until they let me talk to my sweet lady Nicole."

"I've been trying," Gary wrote, "to keep my thoughts and my mood pretty constant, but lately I've been growing increasingly irritated and angry. I don't like the idea they got Nicole down there brainwashing her."

"Just as a matter of my personal curiosity," Moody said, "is there any way you will stop this hunger strike other than the phone call to Nicole?"

"Nothing," said Gary, "that's it." He paused to indicate that he knew the price of the remark. "I'm awful goddamned hungry, man," he whispered over the phone.

"I admire you for your courage," said Moody.

"It," said Gilmore, "is just goddamned stubbornness."

"Not very many guys," Moody told him, "have the strength of their convictions like you do."

"I spent eighteen straight months in the hole one time," said Gilmore. "I don't think this even compares."

Ron felt that Gary was putting on a show of strength. Each day, he made a point of going through his exercises, and he would do a headstand on a chair to show he wasn't suffering. He was, however, not only losing a considerable amount of weight, but it seemed lately to have an effect on his thinking. He would stumble on words. His cheeks started to sink in. For the first time, Ron became conscious of Gary's false teeth. His loss of weight seemed to change their placement on his gums, and he said everything slowly and deliberately, as if working around a marble in his mouth, sort of a tongue-tied orator.

At this point, Gary told Vern he definitely wanted Ida and him to go visit his mother. Bring her the thousand dollars. Vern talked to Schiller, who latched on immediately. Bessie, once she got talking to Vern, might allow an interview.

So Moody drew up the papers. Schiller said, "I'll pay for the airplane fare, the phone calls, and put a thousand dollars on the top for her release. If you need more, just call." Vern said, "I think I'll need more. Come on, Schiller, you know you can give it to Gary's mother." And Larry knew he would, but a thousand might be right for starters.

So Vern and Ida took the plane from Salt Lake to Portland, rented a little Pinto hatchback, found the trailer park on McLaughlin Boulevard, and knocked on Bessie's door.

At first, it looked like they wouldn't get in. They stood on a little half porch for the longest time with no answer. It was cold, and Vern's leg was aching again from the operation. Bessie's first words were, "Go away. I can't let you in. I'm not presentable."

They had to talk pretty loud to be heard through the door. Finally they identified themselves. Said they'd come clear from Provo. Had things to talk over. Things Gary wanted to tell. Finally Bessie let them in.

They hadn't seen her since the funeral of Grandpa Brown almost eighteen years ago. She had certainly changed. She was no longer beautiful. She had the washed-out, unhealthy look of someone who was in a great deal of pain and rarely saw fresh air. Ida couldn't get over it. Bessie's green eyes had been bright as gems. Now there seemed to be a dull gray film on them.

Ida knew why she hadn't wanted to let them in. With her arthritis she could hardly clean up the litter. When Bessie had lived in Provo, waiting for Frank Sr. to get out of prison, her little house had been immaculate. Ida thought of tidying up a little, but could tell by the expression on Bessie's face that she better not do a thing.

Vern, however, did look in the cupboards and refrigerator, and Bessie was certainly short of food. So he drove down to a grocery store, and brought back about fifty dollars' worth of stuff. After the groceries were laid away, he told Bessie he had some legal papers, and explained there was also a thousand dollars he would leave as a gift from Gary. When she started to thank him, Vern said, "I'm just the mailman. I deliver, that's all." He added there was another thousand she could have by signing papers Larry Schiller had sent up.

Bessie looked at the release, thought about it, said, "I don't think I'll do it right now."

Vern had promised Larry he would try hard. When they came back next day, he brought up the subject again. He could feel how wary she was in business affairs. Like a deer downwind. Didn't matter if you were approaching with a rifle in your hands, or a carrot, there wasn't much talking to the deer. "At this time, Vern," she said, "I'll just hold off." He didn't press her too hard. He said, "My opinion is, you should sign. To help out matters, let's all stick together. See if we can't make something out of the whole thing. I believe Schiller's a good, reputable man."

Bessie just said, "No, I want to wait and see." Vern let it go.

No way you could drag something out of Bessie against her will. Just as soon try it with Gary.

As they got up to leave, Vern took out a thousand dollars in cash and laid it on the table. It was the closest Gary came to being there. Bessie broke down and wept. She and Ida embraced, and Bessie said, "Well, I can certainly use that." They also left a red hand-knit shawl with her, and fluffy house slippers to keep her feet warm.

Somehow, they had never got around to talking of Bessie's case at the Supreme Court. It wasn't until they got back to Provo on December 13th, that Vern heard of the decision in Washington, D.C.

3.

Ten days after the stay, Stanger got a call from the Clerk of the U.S Supreme Court, who said, "I just want to let you know we're going to have a decision today. They're in hand-twisting right now," and Ron got a picture of nine Supreme Court Justices wringing their mitts.

The thought that the Supreme Court was breathing the same legal air on this day as everybody in Utah was exciting.

At the Attorney General's office, word arrived from the Clerk that the vote was being taken, and all the staff got around a large table and listened on a conference call, tallying feverishly as the Clerk read the decision of each Justice. They were so excited they had to add it up a second time to discover they had won 5-4. Bill Evans, Bill Barrett, Mike Deamer, and Earl Dorius were ecstatic. The Stay of Execution had been lifted. It was GO again.

DESERET NEWS.

No More Delays Gilmore Stays Salt Lake, Dec. 13th-In an order Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Gary Mark Gilmore had made a knowing and intelligent waiver of his rights.

On hearing the decision, Gilmore ended a 25 day hunger strike.

Coming into the prison, Moody and Stanger noticed that the guards in the front lobby looked happy. The mood permeated right out to the gate. There was a lot of pressure lifted now that Gary was done with his strike.

When Bob and Ron saw him, they just said, "We understand you came off," and he gave a nod of his head, said, "It was my decision."

It was as if he had been the one controlling the situation. They were careful not to mention that he never did get his telephone call to Nicole. Since they had failed to get it through, they were in no hurry to tease him. Besides, he was in an awful good mood about the Supreme Court.

Actually, it was a relief to the attorneys as well.

Talking about the end of the hunger strike, Stanger said to Schiller, "Gary proved his point." Schiller couldn't resist saying, "What point?"

"Everybody knows he was serious now," said Stanger. It all struck Schiller as a little fuzzy. The truth, obviously, was that nothing was working. Gilmore had expected a lot of results from his hunger strike, got none, and had enough sense of public relations to go back to eating on a day when there was a bigger story to interest the public.

What made Schiller's day, however, was that Gary informed Stanger he would answer the second batch of written questions and was willing to look at a new set that Larry had prepared.

The second set of answers proved, however, disappointing. It was as if the longer the hunger strike had gone on, the more Gary had had to play the con. So many questions were left blank. Invariably, the best ones.

WHY DID YOU TAKE THINGS WITHOUT PAYING FOR THEM-BEER-GUNS-GRAND CENTRAL, ETC.?.