The Executioner's Song (109 page)

When she said, “Can’t we always get a repairman?” he told herr. “Debbie, I may need a guy at three in the morning. Get that number. Give him a twenty-dollar bill. If he goes out to dinner, I want to know. I want him to call us. That’s the way it has to operate.” Wanted to break her in right.

In the meantime, he was making plans to sneak a tape

into the execution. It had to be small enough to fit inside a of cigarettes. He didn’t know whether he’d use it or not, but had have the tool. Psychologically, he told himself, he would spend sands for things he might never use, just to feel secure.

Of course, he wasn’t really spending thousands. Schiller made a deal with a private investigator in Las Vegas who would him this minuscule tape recorder for $1,5oo and buy it back $1,3oo. Schiller would have to advance the entire amount up

and there’d be the cost of airfare to Vegas and back. Even so, have an extra implement that might prove crucial for no more than few hundred dollars.

All the same, he was getting in deep, but deep. The

was shaping up, no question about it, as an $i I,OOO week. policemen had to be hired as guards. He wanted Vern’s home tected for the last three or four days, and talked Kathryne moving out of her house with her kids. Then he set up his office the motel practically like a fortress. Was obliged to. Now that had pulled out, NBC would have their hounds running. They staked him out as if he was Mrs. Onassis. Frantic. NBC knew let had given Moyers material for CBS. Another guy might double-crossed the first commitment and given a couple on Gilmore to NBC to get them off his back Otherwise, they

he knew, begin to harass him. In fact, one night, staying over in Salt Lake at the Hilton, he actually had to call the police at 4:3o A.M. in order to have a couple of NBC reporters removed from the hall out side the room he was occupying. Afterward, Gordon Manning, NBC Executive Producer for Special Broadcasts, kept describing him to media people as a lizard. That was television. When you didn’t coop erate, they did their best to squash your nuts.

All the while he was trying to stay on top of his options. What if Gary did change his mind? What if the story became “Gilmore Takes His Appeal”? He and Barry discussed it. They were not sitting there hoping Gary would be executed. They were prepared to go either way. With Gilmore alive, the story would not be as obviously dra matic, but it could be good. You could show the slow subsidence of a man’s hour in the great light of publicity. Gary’s return to the shadows. The thing was not to panic, and never to try to influence history, never force the results. He would realize the story potential whatever it was. They might call him a carrion bird, but he knew from deep inside that he could live with Gilmore’s life. He did not have to profit from his death.

All the same, temptations were commencing for Schiller. No sooner had he set up the office than some crazy offers started to come in. Before they were even settled at the TraveLodge in Orem, Sterling Lord, acting as Jimmy Breslin’s literary agent, was on the phone. He had heard that Schiller might be one of Gilmore’s five guests to the execution, and Lord wanted to see about switching that invitation to Jimmy. It wasn’t clear whether the Daily News or the column’s syn dicate was going to pick up the check, but the offer started at $5,ooo.

Schiller said, “It’s not for me to sell. I can’t even swear to you, Sterling, that I’m going to be there.” Lord called back and said, “I might be able to get as much as thirty-five or even fifty thousand.” “It’s not for sale,” said Schiller. Breslin called. “I’ll give you a carbon of my story,” he growled. That meant Breslin would own it on Head line Day, and Schiller could have it for the rest of time.

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

Schiller decided Jimmy Breslin did not understand where Larry Schiller was really at. Of course, he had a lot of old friends these days. All of a sudden, Sterling Lord was his old friend. Jimmy was his old friend. “Where should I stay?” Breslin asked Schiller, Larry answered, “Well, you can be a monkey and go to the Hilton, come out here and slum with me.” Breslin took a room right next them in the motel. He had great instincts that way.

Barry got upset. “Why Breslin?” he ‘asked. “I’m sorry,” Schiller to Farrell, “I can’t do it all alone.”

“While we’re at it,” said Farrell, “why did you invite

here from the L.A. Times?”

“Don’t you realize,” said Schiller, “I want to give these fellows little piece of the story, so at least I won’t have the L.A. Times and New York Daily News against me. I got to get some people on side, you know.” Couldn’t Barry understand how alone he was that ABC had pulled out? The umbilical cord had certainly been

“Yes,” thought Farrell, “he does everything with a motive. always got a good reason. It’s never that he’s drunk or horny.”

Schiller, decided Barry, was getting awful close to giving goods away. He simply did not understand that each piece, how small, still belonged to one potentially beautiful structure being put together, and so were not separate chunks of wampum be traded off at forest clearings to propitiate media dragons.

Farrell told himself that he should have been prepared. All precautions had been going too well. From the time they the seven rooms Larry had taken at the Orem TraveLodge, with their own rented typewriters, tables, two secretaries, rice room, writing room for Barry, archive room, Barry’s Schiller’s bedroom, each girl’s room, plus direct telephone they only had to use the switchboard for standard incoming calls, no motel employee could listen in on them, Larry had been dod the media. Dodging them well. In the middle of all that heat, everybody trying to get to him, Schiller had been careful to the right stories through Gus Sorensen and Tamera, thereby ing Salt Lake news, and so indirectly shaping the wire output. Still, after all that hard-achieved control, Barry

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only to walk into the main office to Xerox a page, and there was Jimmy Breslin, notebook in hand, twenty days late on the story, nicely driven down, thank you, in a hired Lincoln with a chauffeur. There was Schiller telling Jimmy Breslin about the eyes. The eyes.

Well, Farrell liked Jimmy. Breslin had done some nice things for him over the years. When Farrell was doing his column for Life back in ‘69 and ‘to and got into a large dispute one time with his editors, a make-or-break conflict, Breslin did him the favor of talking it over for an evening. Farrell came to the conclusion that Breslin was very smart. “You know, Barry,” Jimmy had said, “your column is your real estate,” a phrase to stick in Farrell’s mind. “Never give up your real estate,” Breslin said, “fight and fuck around, patch it up, spackle it, make compromises, but don’t give up the real estate.” Farreil had followed his advice and thought it was right, so he had a soft spot for Jimmy Breslin.

The soft spot vanished, however, in one hot minute when he walked into the room and there was Schiller with this idiotic blissful smile on his face, rapping away to Breslin about the eyes. He could have been selling a new kind of floor polish on TV. And there was Breslin sitting on the couch, fat as a wild boar, taking notes three weeks late. One monument of bulk accepting tribute from another.

For weeks, trying to push these interviews uphill, Farrell had felt like he was searching in a dark room for a somber object. So when the story about the eyes came through, Farrell felt as if, finally, a little light was being generated. Living with Gilmore’s rap sheet, going through his long prison record and petty busts, Farrell had about decided that Gary’s life, by the measurement of its criminal accomplishment, would not rank high on any self-respecang convict’s scale. He would be looked upon not as a heavy, but a ding. Sufficiently unpredictable for other convicts to give him a wide berth, but not a convict with real clout on the inside. In fact, close to a total loner. The kind of guy police terminology referred to as a germ. On human scale, a weed. Yet, just yesterday, coming toward the day of his death, talking about his eyes, Gilmore had said something fine as far as Fa/rell was concerned.

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

GILMORE I told you that this ninety-year-old man wrote and me for my eyes.., ah, eh, he’s too old. I mean I don’t want to harsh about it, but this other guy is only twenty, and I think it mi be better. Would you like to call this doctor and, ah, just tell simply: … you got ‘em! Gary Gilmore. And to draw up the through you guys.

MOODY We’ll bring it up with the Warden.

GILMORE In his letter here, he says something about the guy’s ]fie is just dwindling. Like the guy is really living a life. I’d rather the eyes be his than just give ‘em to the Eyebank. kinda like to know where they went. All right.., call him (laughing)… Ask him if he’ll accept a collect call from Gary more.

The fact that Gilmore could come up with that kind of moved Farrell right down to the gut. The interview had come in day before, and after he and Schiller had listened to it, Farrell it again when alone in his room. It was late at night. He had working for a long time that day. Gilmore’s voice got to him. was crying and laughing and felt half triumphant that the man talk with such clarity. Farrell’s own eyes were good, and he thought of them as precious cargo. While he would sign a card any part of his body to anybody, willingly, cock included, it would after he died his normal death. Here was a fellow who had an tion date — imagine that, Barry said to himself after twenty hours work, alone in a room at three in the morning — an execution and everybody wants a piece of him. Everybody is writing to ask this part of his body or that, yet, he could think clearly about it. there were people who carried cards in their wallets that said, “If find me dead, you can have my kidney,” but that was not knowing you were going to be gone on the I7th of January, applicants were coming around now, one week before, ‘asking your liver, your spleen, your left nut. Why see it all as cannibalism, and cry out, “For Christ’s sakes, leave me peace. I want my eyes.”

By God, was Gary like Han’y Truman, mediocrity history? Christ, he had even become the owner of a the precise remains of Gary Gilmore. That, to Farrell, was more

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pressive than any ability to steer a firm course toward execution. Farrell had not been much impressed by that bravery. Gilmore, he thought, had a total contempt for life, his life, your life, anyone’s life. Waived his own away because it was a boss thing to do, showdown shit, pure pathology that came out of long years of playing chicken with prison authorities. Yet, now, overnight new celebrity, movie star without portfolio, Gilmore was responding humanely to all the attention, actually functioning like a decent man. Those eyes redeemed the scene. Farrell was feeling very protective about this story.

So when he saw Schiller and Breslin on the couch, he went into a tantrum. Barry liked to keep his cool, but twenty-hour work sessions had certainly heated him up. “You have a cop,” he said to Schiller, “sitting up all night across the corridor to make sure nobody breaks into this office, but you ought to have that cop sitting on your upper lip.” He was mad enough to smash a table. “Schiller, you’re not handing this over to Breslin.”

Before the fight could even develop, however, Jimmy took out his pad, pulled the page he had been writing on, tore it in little pieces, and threw them up in the air. Beautiful, thought Farrell. He was very pleased with Breslin.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Farrell had to be glad the eyes had been kept for him. He needed something nourishing in the marrow, for he had been discovering an awful lot about Gilmore that was not so good. Rereading the inter views and letters, Farrell began to mark the transcripts with different-colored inks to underline each separate motif in Gilmore’s replies, and before he was done, he got twenty-seven poses. Barry had begun to spot racist Gary and Country-and-Western Gary, poetic Gary, artist manqu6 Gary, macho Gary, self-destructive Gary, Karma county Gary, Texas Gary, and Gary the killer Irishman. Awfully prev alent lately was Gilmore the movie star, awfully shit-kicking large-minded aw-shucks.

GILMORE Here is that other girl who writes to me: “How’s my wild pony with those wild eyes …. I wish I could kiss you just once. I don’t know, Gary, how to say goodbye to you. Gary, I’m cryin’ right now on your letter, I love you, I hate the fucking system, I hate that they won’t even let you call Nicole, the fuckers. Execution. What is this? Wild, wild West? My love is with you, Gary. I love you.” (laugh ing) I think she’s got a case for me, eh? I got three letters from her today. A good thing for me I’m not in California. Christ, oh, ah, man, she’d wear me out.

STANGER IS she fifteen? Holy mackerel.

GILMORE Pretty hard to keep up with.

Then there was the old con full of jailhouse wisdom:

GILMORE After you get known as a troublemaker, it’s so easy to keep getting in trouble, ‘cause all them guards, man, like they put your picture on the hot list in the fucking guards’ lounge. You know, watch this guy, suspected of doing this and that. Some guards take a personal dislike to you, man, and antagonize you in little ways that’ll make you blow up, you know, in a situation where you’re always wrong-and never right-because you’re the prisoner. They got the hammer, you know?

The subtlety of the self-pity was cloying. Still, Farrell was loving the job even more than expected. One twenty-hour day after another, sure enough, but what absorption! What delight to be altogether out of himself. By God, Barry thought, I have all the passions of an ar chivist. I’m proprietary about the material.

Once in a while, he even laughed. One night when he and Larry were so tense from overwork that they could hardly look at one an other, a tape came in from Gilmore that got them laughing so hard they almost slid off their chairs. It had to be the tension. Yet for one glorious minute, Gilmore was as funny to Farrell as Bob Hope on a good night, same maniacal see-through X-ray eye, same hatred of horseshit. God, sometimes he saw into the bottom of the pot, thought Farrell.