The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  When Ben got up, she fixed him a steak and a salad and they sat down to dinner. Benjamin was already bathed and asleep and finally it got dark. People started coming in for rooms and Ben turned on the TV in the office and began to watch the Olympics. After a while Debbie left him alone to handle incoming guests and went back to cleaning the house. But this stupid fear just kept crawling in her stomach.

  Gary stopped at a gas station on University Street and Third South, a couple of blocks from Vern's house. Gary knew a fellow named Martin Ontiveros who worked there, and in fact, had put in some time that week painting Martin's car. Now he stopped off to ask Ontiveros if he could borrow $400, but was told by Martin's stepfather, Norman Fulmer, who ran the gas station, that they'd just bought 6,000 gallons that day, and didn't have a dime to their name. Nothing in the station but credit-card slips. Very little cash. Gary drove off to Orem.

  Around nine o'clock he started to go back to Spanish Fork to look for Nicole, but on the way he stopped at a store, and the motor wouldn't start. The truck had to have a push. So he pulled in again at Norman Fulmer's gas station to complain. Not only did he have trouble starting, he told them, but in addition, the motor was overheating. "Well," said Norman, "just put it in the bay. We'll change the thermostat." Gilmore asked how long it would take and when Fulmer said twenty minutes, Gilmore said he would do a little visiting.

  As soon as Gilmore was gone, Martin got into the truck, turned the key and pressed the starter. The motor turned over with no trouble.

  In the middle of washing the couch cushions, Debbie Bushnell went out to the front office and asked Ben to go to the store and get some low-fat milk. She was also hoping he would bring back some ice cream and candy bars, and began to giggle at the thought she must be pregnant again. She had certainly felt telltale cravings. Ben, however, didn't want to go. He was interested in the Olympics.

  Washing the couch cushions proved to be a job. She couldn't get it done to her satisfaction with a damp cloth. So she decided to unzip the covers, wash them, dry them, put them on again. In the meanwhile, she was planning to vacuum out the corners of the couch, but when she started to turn on the Kirby, she couldn't bring herself to press the switch. Three times in a row she just kept looking at the label—Kirby—on the vacuum, and not turning it on.

  Then she heard Ben talking to somebody in the front office. She thought maybe there was a child there, because she heard a balloon pop. So she went out to talk. No reason. Just felt like talking to a kid.

  As she went through the door from the apartment to the office, a tall man with a goatee, who had been about to leave, turned around and came back toward her. The craziest word went through her head. "There's poopy-doo," she said to herself. Quickly, she turned around and went back to the apartment.

  She actually retreated into the farthest corner of the baby's bedroom.

  In her mind, she kept seeing that man looking her square in the face from the other side of the counter. She had an ice-cold feeling on her heart. That man was after her.

  Then she got herself together, and walked through the living room into the kitchen and peeked into the office through the narrow space between the television set and the square hole in the wall that separated the kitchen from the office. You could sort of squint into the office through that space. She got there in time to watch the strange man walk out the door. Then she walked in.

  Ben was on the floor. He just lay there face down, and his legs were shaking. When she bent over to look at him, she saw his head was bleeding. She had had first-aid courses once and they told you to put your hand to a wound and apply pressure, but this was awful heavy bleeding. A wave of blood kept rising out of his hair. She put her hand on it.

  She sat there with the phone in her free hand ringing the operator. It rang five times, and ten, and fifteen times, and a man came into the office and said he had seen the fellow with the gun. The phone was ringing the eighteenth, and the twentieth, and twenty-second, and the twenty-fifth time. There was still no answer. She said to the man, "I need an ambulance." The new man didn't speak very good English, but he held the phone, and the operator still didn't answer. The man went out to call the police.

  Now she called Chris Caffee. It was easy to remember that number after calling her four times that afternoon. Then Debbie just sat there with her hand on Ben's head and time went on for a long time. She couldn't tell how long before help came.

  Chapter 16

  ARMED AND DANGEROUS

  Peter Arroyo was coming back to the City Center Motel from the Golden Spike Restaurant where he had gone with his wife and his son and two nieces for supper around nine-thirty that evening. It was now close to ten-thirty and they were returning to their rooms.

  As they passed the front window of the motel office, Arroyo could see a strange sight. He had noticed, while registering, a large motel attendant with a small wife. Now neither of them was visible. Instead, a tall man with a goatee was stepping around the counter just as Arroyo came along the street. The man had a cash drawer in his hand. Arroyo could see that he also had a pistol with a long barrel in the other hand.

  The kids observed nothing. One of Arroyo's nieces even wanted to go into the office to get stamps. Arroyo said, "Just keep going." Out of the corner of his eye he could see the man turn around and go back to the counter. Arroyo looked no more, but continued walking to his car. He kept hoping that what he had seen was somebody fooling around with a gun. Maybe there was a simple legitimate explanation.

  When he reached his Matador which was parked about fifty feet from the office, he sent the girls upstairs. Then he started unloading the car carrier on the roof. Two men came down from the balcony, and he wondered if they were going to the office, but they just happened to be looking for ice, and went right upstairs again.

  Now the man with the gun came out of the door, turned left, and went up the street on foot. Arroyo headed right to the office.

  He could see the motel manager on the floor, and the man's wife next to him with a phone in her hand, and blood all over the place. The man on the ground didn't say anything, he just made noises. His leg was moving a little. Arroyo tried to help the woman turn him over but the footing was slippery. The man was very heavy and lying in too great a puddle.

  Walking away from the motel, Gary put the money in his pocket and discarded the cash box in a bush. About a block from the gas station, he stopped to get rid of the gun. Took it by the muzzle and pushed it into another bush. A twig must have caught the trigger for the gun went off. The bullet shot into the soft meat between the thumb and the palm.

  Norman Fulmer took a bucket of water and threw it over walls of the bathroom. He took a big sponge and washed the tile and scrubbed the floor. Then he went out to see how the work was going on Gilmore's truck. Instead, he saw Gary walking real fast right past him to the men's room that Fulmer had just finished cleaning. There was a trail of blood following Gilmore. "I don't know," Norman said to himself, "I guess he ran into something." And he just mopped up those big drops right there on the bay floor.

  The scanner box was overhead, and Fulmer heard the police dispatcher talking about an aggravated assault and robbery at the City Center Motel. Norman began to listen real hard. He was in the habit of paying attention to the scanner anyway. It was more interesting than music. The dispatcher was now saying that a man got shot and another left on foot.

  Fulmer went back into the bay and saw with one look that Martin Ontiveros had also heard the scanner. He hadn't even removed the old thermostat, but right now he started putting a bolt back in and Fulmer screwed in the other, and soon as that was done, they slammed down the hood even as Gary came back through the men's room door, and said, "Got it done?" Fulmer said, "Yep. I got it all done."

  Gilmore went in from the shotgun side and slid all the way over to the driver's seat. He was hurting, Fulmer could tell. Had to lean all the way over to the left of the steering wheel in order to get the key in with his right hand. When he finally g
ot it started, Fulmer said, "Hey, take care," and Gary said, "All right," and backed out, and sure enough, he slammed into the concrete pole that was there to prevent people from hitting the drinking fountain. "Oh, God," said Fulmer to himself. Gilmore wasn't moving the truck now, and Fulmer was thinking Gilmore still had a gun, but he went back out and slapped the side of the door, and said, "Hey, looks like you're a little wasted. You ought to get some Z's." Gilmore said, "Yeah, I'm gonna go crash." "All right," said Norman, "see you tomorrow."

  As he drove away, Fulmer got the license number, and wrote it right down. He noticed that Gilmore turned west on Third Street, and so was probably going to drive directly past the City Center Motel. Fulmer put a dime in the phone, called the police, told them what kind of a truck Gilmore was driving. The dispatcher said, "How do you know it's the right man?" He told her about the bloody trail Gilmore had left. Then she asked how Gilmore parted his hair. Fulmer said, "Down the middle. He's got a little goatee." The girl said, "That's him." Somebody else must have given a description already. Then Fulmer could hear the dispatcher telling the police that the suspect was heading west from University Avenue. At that moment, one of the patrol cars came screaming through the intersection going east. Fulmer called the dispatcher back and said, "Hey, lady, one of your friends just went the wrong way with the siren on," and had the pleasure of hearing her yell, "Turn around and go the other way."

  That night Vern and Ida had been sitting in their living room next to the motel and never heard a sound. "Perry Mason" had been on television, then "Ironside." After which, the sirens began to sound right in front of their house. Naturally they went out in the street to see what was happening. Vern was wearing slippers, and Ida, an orange robe. She was actually barefoot. That's how sudden the police were.

  Ida had never viewed a scene to compare with it. Patrol cars were coming in every moment with their blue lights turning and that awful siren going. Loudspeakers kept making different kinds of noises. Some were blasting orders to the cops, others kept droning the same remark over and over to the bystanders, "WOULD YOU KEEP THE SIDEWALK CLEAR, PLEASE? WOULD YOU KEEP THE SIDEWALK CLEAR, PLEASE?" Ida could see blazes of light, and pools of light, and now an ambulance came up, and paramedics started running out. One great big white light was circling as if to look for the guilty party. It wasn't hard to feel under examination each time the light turned past your face. The sirens were frantic. Every thirty seconds a new police car came screaming into the motel compound. People were even running in from Center Street three blocks away. There was more noise than if the town of Provo was burning down.

  SWAT arrived. Special Weapons and Tactical Team. Two teams of five, one after the other. Moving around in dark blue two-piece fatigue uniforms, with black high-laced jump boots, they looked like paratroopers. Except the word POLICE was spelled out in big yellow letters on their shirts. They were certainly carrying heavy stuff—shotguns, .357 Magnums, semiautomatic rifles, tear gas. The night had turned cool after a hot day, but they were sweating plenty. Those armored vests under the fatigues were hot to carry.

  In the courtyard of the motel, one guest kept shouting, "I saw somebody run in there." He was pointing to a downstairs room, 115

  It wasn't easy to break in on an armed killer. The police were sweating plenty as they axed the door down. Then they maced the hell out of the interior. Put on their gas masks, and jumped through the mess of broken plywood. Nobody was in the room. The smell of Mace, so close to the odor of vomit, drifted out into the courtyard of the motel. For the rest of the evening, everything smelled of vomit.

  Outside, people kept rushing up to the office window. Kids would come tearing along, look in, take off. At one point, a crowd got to gather in front of the picture window of the office, and stood there looking at paramedics pounding away on the chest of Benny Bushnell. He was on a stretcher in front of the counter now. Ida had one nightmarish glimpse of the gore. The office looked like a slaughterhouse.

  Paramedics kept running back and forth between the office and the ambulance. They wouldn't let Chris and David Caffee inside. Chris still felt half unconscious. When the phone rang, she and David had been asleep, and woke up to hear the sound of Debbie screaming, "Ben's been shot." Chris had said out of her sleep, "You know, this isn't a real good joke for late at night. This isn't funny." Half asleep, after being completely asleep, nothing made sense. They had rummaged around the house trying to find what to wear, then rushed over to the motel. Hours later, she would notice they put things on so fast, David's zipper was still down.

  Chris worked her way to the front door of the motel and yelled, "Debbie, I'm here." She could see that Debbie, whose head barely came over the top of the counter, had heard her voice, for she left the office to go back into her apartment, then emerged from the private door. Debbie had little Benjamin wrapped in a blanket and was carrying a large plastic bag of diapers. Debbie now threw the baby on her. Just dumped him over. Like he wasn't real. Debbie wasn't screaming, but she looked weird.

  Debbie said, "Ben's been shot in the head, and I think he's going to die." Chris said, "Oh, no, Debbie. Remember when my mom fell down the steps in D.C. and cracked her head open? Her head bled a lot but she's all right now. Ben'll be just fine." She didn't know what to say. How many times did somebody get shot in the head? She really didn't know what it meant.

  Debbie went back in the house, and David looked at Chris and said, "If he's been shot in the head, he's already gone."

  About this time, Chris began to notice that the baby was acting very odd. Benjamin usually recognized her. Chris had worked so often with Debbie in the day-care center that little Benjamin had seen Chris nearly every day of his early life. He was usually very lively and perky with her. Now Benjamin lay there like he was dead.

  His eyes were completely still. Just flopped in her arms and didn't move.

  Vern had known Bushnell slightly. They would chat while Vern sprinkled his lawn and Bushnell watered the motel flowers. One evening a pile of scrap lumber got left in the Damico driveway and had to be brought to Bushnell's attention. He apologized and said he'd get after the carpenters. Next morning the mess was gone. It gave Vern the impression of a conscientious man.

  Now, Martin Ontiveros came up to Vern and said, "Gary did it." Vern said, "Gary who?" The kid said, "Gilmore." Vern said, "How do you know Gary did it? Did you see him do it?"

  "No," said Martin Ontiveros.

  "Then, how do you know I didn't do it?" Vern asked. "You didn't see it happen."

  Vern said, "Go tell an officer. If you think it was him, go tell." Ontiveros now said Gary had just been up at the station, and there was blood all over his pants.

  Vern thought, "Well, it has to bear looking into." He grabbed a cop who was married to a niece of Ida's, Phil Johnson, and asked him to check. Some talk went back and forth on a police radio. Then Phil came back and said, "It must have been him, Vern."

  "Do you think he did it?" asked Ida.

  "Yeah, he did it, the stupid shit," said Vern.

  Glen Overton, who owned the City Center Motel, had just finished listening to the TV news when Debbie called. He lived in Indian Hills at the other end of Provo and came over fast in his green BMW, running every red light on the way.

  When he arrived, the street was in chaos. Nothing but police and spectators jamming the sidewalk and all over the road. There was an unheard sound in the air like everybody was waiting for a scream. Glen didn't know if it looked like a disaster or a carnival.

  Before he even tried to get into the office, he saw Debbie standing all alone outside her apartment. She seemed to be in total shock. He put his arm around her and held her. She kept asking, "Is Ben going to die?" Since they didn't want to let her back in the office, Glen finally asked her to wait outside a minute.

  After Glen identified himself and got in, he watched the paramedics working over Ben. The police were making chalk marks on the carpet, and photographing an empty cartridge on the floor. When he saw a paramedi
c giving Ben heart massage right there, the heel of the man's hand thumping in brutal all-out rhythm against Ben's chest, he knew Ben was dead, or near it. Heart massage was a last resort.

  Now a detective asked Glen to count the receipts and estimate the loss. Glen told them straight out that they never kept much more than one hundred dollars in the cash box. Any greater amount would be concealed in the apartment.

  At this point, the medics got ready to take Ben to the ambulance. Glen Overton found Debbie and as soon as the ambulance took off, he put her in his BMW and followed.

  On the drive, Glen sat behind the wheel trying to digest the irony that Ben had wanted this job because it would safeguard his life.

  On the day Glen first interviewed him, Ben had said he was working in Salt Lake but hated the drive. Said he had the feeling he was going to be killed on that drive. Somehow, Glen felt Bushnell's conviction. There had been a number of good applicants at Ben's level, but the intensity of his feeling that he had to get off the road got him the job. Glen didn't regret it. In fact, he had never known a manager who was so anxious to do more. Ben had kept talking to him about getting his life in order. Didn't know when he'd be leaving. It obsessed Ben a little that he hadn't finished college yet and a new baby might be on the way.

  Ida was on the phone to Brenda. "Honey, somebody shot that dear Mr. Bushnell next door." Ida started to cry. In between sobs, she said, "Somebody seen Gary running away. They've identified him."

  "Oh, Mom." Brenda had been walking around all evening with a sense of disaster.

  Ida said, "He'll come to you. He always does."

  Brenda knew the police dispatcher in Orem, so she called, and said, "This is nothing more than a suspicion, but I think I'm going to need help with my cousin. Catch Toby Bath before he goes off duty."