The Executioner's Song (119 page)

                "I'll do it," said Gary, "but it's got to be off the record. We can't forget my deal with Larry Schiller."

Chapter 27

CUTTING THE STRING

janvier 13

jeudi

Bon maten mon Soul Mate je Love vous. Oh! Je Love vous!

                et avoir besoin de vous tant!

                This morn i have only a few minutes to write as my lawyer should be here soon.

                i have been having fun with an old french book. It is a beautiful language, i would like to learn it maybe even live in France one day.

                Away from here—oh well . . .

                Sundberg informed me that all of the doctors involved in this mess i am in are planning already to recommend that i be released on January 22 (1977 hopefully)

                These long days are truly drawing nearer to your execution date. i find that reality hard to grasp onto.

                Not so much that soon you will die but that i cannot be with you now while it is so near to that time. Why should it be so? There must be logic behind my destiny but i cannot see even a partical of it. . . .

                There are no longer words that can express the Love that is in my soul and my heart for you mon Soul Mate You have all my love. i believe that you know And i know i have yours if you die . . . so soon . . . i will know and feel your soul wrap around my thots and this soul who loves you so deeply.

                Goodbye now my love Till then and forever No matter where i walk ill walk alone Till again im by your side

I Love you

Ever Yours

NICOLE

Larry talked it over with Farrell and they agreed. When it came to talking about himself, Gilmore, no matter how frank he might seem in the interviews, still lived behind a psychic wall. If they were going to learn more, they would have to make a breach. The questions must turn critical of Gary's poses, cut through the sham. So Farrell worked on a special set to give to Moody and Stanger. Schiller also instructed them that Gilmore was to read each question aloud, then answer it. They did not want either lawyer's voice affecting his reaction.

Over the phone in Maximum, Ron Stanger said, "Our friend is thinking he would like to have some serious answers. Quote, unquote."

                "I've been playing serious all along," said Gilmore. "As serious as I've been playing anything."

                "Okay," said Moody.

                Gilmore began to read: "It seems to me now that in your situation with your sense of fate and destiny and karma, this conversation we're struggling to have is really an important event in your life as well as mine."

                "Thanks, Larry," said Gilmore to the introduction.

                "I think," Gary continued, "we both owe it to the importance of the situation to try hard to replace superficial speculative interpretations with deeper harder ones."

                "Right," he said, answering his own reading voice.

                "Sometimes you sound like you're telling a story you've told many times before," went the next question. "My reaction is—oh, Gary, do you tell that to all the girls, or all the shrinks, or all the people who see something of interest in you and want to know you better? A number of stories told in the course of these interviews are stories that you also told Nicole in your letters oft accompanied by, let us say, sweetheart touches, little indications that you wanted to charm the reader, the lover, the observer in a very practiced, calculating way. That's my honest reaction. Tell me where I might be wrong."

                "You're wrong, Larry," said Gary.

                Then Gilmore laughed. "Shit, ain't nothing calculating about that. I get lonely. I like language, but I tell the truth. In jail you rap a lot, you know, to pass the time. Damn near every convict has his little collection of reminiscences, anecdotes, stories, and a person can get sorta practiced at recollecting. You probably got a few yarns you spin on occasion yourself. You know, you gotta go to dinners and different things and, ah, talk to different people, Larry, so you've probably got your favorite little stories yourself. The fact that you tell something more than once to more than one person doesn't make that thing a lie." Gilmore paused. "Larry, I do emphasize things . . . I've spent a lot of time in the hole, and in the hole you can't see the guy you're talking to, 'cause he's in the cell next door or down the line from you. So, it just becomes necessary to . . . make yourself clear and heard because there might be other conversations going on and a lot of other noise, guards rattling keys and doors. Think about that, you know."

                "I am not so sure," said the question, "that you remember truth of your early childhood."

                In a different voice Gilmore answered, "Do you remember truth of your early childhood, Larry?"

                "You've said," continued the question, "that your mother's love was always strong, constant, and consistent, strange adjectives, by the way, to describe a mother's love."

                "I don't think," said Gilmore, "they're strange. I don't respect your question."

                "I don't think," the question came back, "that I've ever heard 'strong, constant, and consistent' employed in such usage before."

                "You probably haven't," answered Gilmore, "but have you ever asked anybody about their mother before?"

                "My impression, Gary, based on talking to others in your family, and based on listening to your voice on these tapes—is that you may have been treated rather cruelly when you were a small child. There are people in the family who say that efforts were made by your grandparents to assume custody of you. That you came at an awkward moment in your mother's life and that she seemed to resent you, when you were small. Is there any truth to any of this?"

                "Not that I know of, Larry," Gilmore replied.

                "What kind of son is it, after all," continued the question, "who does these things you do, and in so doing takes a very beautiful revenge against all those who have failed to love him enough. Maybe that's psychoanalytical bullshit, and if so, I stand accused, but I am yearning to understand how this well-loved young boy grew up to reward his mama with the life you've lived. I think, Gary, that you have been exacting revenge against something that happened to you when you were too small to fight it off. Another reason I am tempted to believe this, is that when the conversation turns to any question where emotion is involved, a trace of a stutter appears in your voice."

                "Dat, dat, dat, dat," Gilmore snickered.

                "You begin," the question continued, "talking like a reformed stutterer. I don't think you're a man without feelings. I think you're a man who somehow can't bear to admit what his feelings are."

                There was quite a pause before Gilmore replied. "Larry, I swear to God that I cannot recall, and I have a terrific memory, my mom ever hitting me. I don't think she ever even so much as spanked me.

                She always loved and believed in me. Fuck what everybody in the family says. I have a beautiful mother. Fuck what everybody in the family says. I have a beautiful mother. I repeated that because of the background noise. I don't know if you can hear it on the tape, but I can."

                Gary stopped reading for a moment. "Some feelings are personal," he said to Moody. "Christ, the guy wants to x-ray me publicly. Shit."

                Moody said, "I think he's just trying to find out the facts."

                "Dammit," said Gilmore, "Larry's probably trying to bring me a bit of anger here, so I might answer a little more spontaneously."

                He went on with the interview, he read the rest of the questions, but nothing further developed. Gilmore did not get excited again.

Barry felt as if he had thrown his best punch and the man had taken it. Maybe the mother was not the sore spot. He gave up hope of a breakthrough. The Playboy interview would have to be constructed out of materials at hand plus whatever more came in on the Moody-Stanger local.

After the interview, Sam Smith had a conversation with the lawyers about a last-minute appeal. The Warden was worried that if Gary changed his mind at the very end, there would be no mechanism to stop the execution. Smith thought the lawyers ought to inform Gilmore of that.

                Gary did not even care to discuss it. "There are no precautions to take," he told Moody and Stanger. Wouldn't even authorize them to have another conversation about it. The lawyers decided it was highly unlikely Gary was going to change his mind and, if he did, they still didn't see how the Warden could avoid contacting the Governor, no matter what he said now.

Sam Smith also consulted Earl Dorius. Should Gilmore be hooded? The man wanted, he said, to be able to stand up and face his executioners. However, Smith remarked, he had to think of what was best for the firing squad. The hood was for their benefit just as much. Who wanted to stare down his sights at a man staring back? Besides, Smith said, What if the fellow lost his nerve at the last minute and started dodging bullets?

                By his reading of the statute, Dorius said, the details of execution were up to the discretion of the Warden. If Sam wished, Gilmore could be strapped in a chair with a hood over his head.

GILMORE            Warden didn't come right out and say it, but I believe he is concerned that my standing and looking at the firing squad will unnerve them. I asked him for a good reason why I had to wear the hood, and he couldn't give me one, but he seemed to be thinking about something. Listen, he did say right in front of Fagan, he said, usually they come to your cell, put the hood on you there, and you wear the hood from the time you leave your cell till you're dead. He said he would not do that to me, he said he wouldn't put the hood on me until after I'm in the chair. Now I want the son of a bitch to keep his word on that at least.

Gilmore was certainly showing them how cool he could be. The only newspaper story that irritated him lately was the one that described him as nervous. If Gary was anything, he was not that.

                Moody would query him all the time. "Aren't you scared?" he would ask. "No," Gilmore would say. Never once did he admit fear.

                Never once was there anything to suggest he wanted to change his mind. His lack of wavering became unbelievable to Moody. Gilmore seemed to be backing his intentions with every cell in his body. Not only was his emotional strength increasing, but his physical. "How do you feel?" Bob Moody would ask. "Did you sleep?" "I slept good last night." "How's exercise?" "I'm building myself."

                To demonstrate, Gilmore would do a headstand on top of a stool.

                His muscle tone was certainly excellent. These convicts in Maximum seemed to live for nothing but their muscle tone, yet Gary still looked good compared to the super muscle tone of prisoners around him.

                Moody never thought of himself as being easy to shake, but Gilmore was beginning to impress him:

When Gibbs handed over Gilmore's letters, the New York Post gave him $5,000, holding up the last $2,500. The next thing Gibbs heard from the Post was that they'd checked the list of people invited to the execution and his name was not on it. Still, after checking out his credentials from Treasury and the FBI, the Post people did an interview in a bar, and took about thirty pictures of him.

                Once the reporter and photographer left, Gibbs just kept drinking. But it didn't mix with the Oral Varidase, and he got sick to his stomach. The bartender had to help him to the rest room. Gibbs had sent off a thousand of the five thousand right away to his mother, but had been flashing money like a fiend. In the restroom, first thing he knew, a broad was standing there with her dude right behind her.

                She lunged at Gibbs, figuring that with his bad leg she could push him down easy but he dropped her with a fist, then nailed her boy friend. This was how he told the story later. When he went back to the bar, two cops happened to be in the restaurant and arrested Gibbs.

                The Lance LeBaron didn't seem to work—and he was in the slammer with $100,000 bail.

With the execution scheduled for Monday, Schiller had begun to feel the final pressure by Thursday. Rupert Murdoch started calling from New York to offer sums for an exclusive on the execution. All Schiller had to do was walk out to the press after the firing-squad did their job, make a short public statement, then go into a room with one of Murdoch's reporters. Schiller realized he couldn't just say no, or Murdoch might try to get into the execution chamber some other way, bribe a guard, whatever. Rupert Murdoch hadn't bought control of the New York Post and the Village Voice and made a fortune in Australian newspapers for nothing. So, Schiller planned to string Murdoch along. For that matter, he was keeping Time and Newsweek and a couple of others on the string.