The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  NIELSEN I don't know, I think so.

  GILMORE Like I told you, I knew just where I was at every minute.

  NIELSEN What if I go check with these people and they say, "He's feeding you B.S."?

  GILMORE They won't.

  NIELSEN You sure? Everybody will say that?

  GILMORE They might tell you a little different times or whatever.

  NIELSEN What will April say if I ask her about 10:30 last night . . .

  GILMORE I don't know, she's a little spacey. When she was young some guys took her out and gave her some acid without her knowing it and raped her. I don't know what she'll tell you. April was with me every minute last night . . . I got lonely for Nicole, so I just went by and got her little sister. April wanted a ride. We got to necking and laughing and giggling, and I kept her all night. Well, look, that's it.

  NIELSEN I'll check it, I'll check her.

  GILMORE I ain't going to tell you nothing else without a lawyer. That's all, can I eat?

  NIELSEN It's getting close to breakfast time, you hungry? I'll tell them.

  GILMORE My hand still hurts too . . .

  NIELSEN Without an attorney and off the record, you wouldn't answer what I asked you a while ago?

  GILMORE What was that?

  NIELSEN About why they were killed when you left.

  GILMORE I don't know why they were killed. I didn't kill them.

  NIELSEN I hope that's true because that just worries me, that part. I can't understand it. I can understand the other. I can understand the stick-up thing.

  GILMORE I didn't stick nobody up, and I didn't kill nobody.

  NIELSEN Is it all right if I come back this afternoon to talk to you after I check on some of this?

  GILMORE I ain't killed nobody, and I ain't robbed anybody.

  NIELSEN Gary, I hope not but I have a hard time believing otherwise. At this point I have a hard time believing otherwise . . .

  GILMORE I'm hungry, and I'm in pain.

  By the time Wootton got home on Wednesday morning, he had about decided to charge Gilmore with First-Degree Murder on the motel case. While the only print on the gun was too smudged to check out, they had the paraffin test and a witness, Peter Arroyo. He had seen Gilmore in the motel with the gun and the cash box. It looked promising to Wootton.

  Around three-thirty that morning, Val Conlin received a phone call. A voice said, "This is the police. We have impounded a car of yours."

  Val was so drowsy, he said, "Well, okay, fine."

  "We want to let you know we have the car. There's been a homicide." "That's fine," said Val and hung up and his wife said, "What was that all about?" He said, "They've impounded a car. There's been a homicide. I don't know why, I don't know why, gee, you know." He went back to sleep. In the morning he'd forgotten about it.

  When he came into the office next morning, Marie McGrath was there waiting to tell him.

  "You got to be kidding," said Val "Did he kill that guy the other night?"

  Marie said, "What do you mean, the other night? Last night."

  "Last night?" said Val. He was bringing up the rear in every heat.

  "Yes," said Marie, "they caught him on the one he killed last night." That was when Val heard about the motel murder. The call at 3:30 A.M. came back to him.

  A little later, the police were out examining the Mustang. Started taking out clothing and looking for blood. Val was asked, "Did he ever trade any guns with you?"

  "Not to me," said Val, "I don't like guns. I don't like guns." "Well," said the cop, "he stole a bunch of guns. We're looking for them." "Hey," said Val, "not me."

  The police were there an hour. After they left, Rusty took some trash out to the back. She came in saying, "Look what I got."

  The wind had been blowing everything around. She had discovered a sack stuffed under an old soft-drink chest. Opening it, she found several pistols wrapped in newspaper.

  When Val saw them, he shouted, "Hold it, wait a minute. DON'T TOUCH THAT STUFF! Get on the phone. Call a detective!"

  When the police came out, they again asked whether Gilmore offered any guns. Val said, "No. If he had, I would have shit. I don't like guns."

  At 9 A.M., Gary was on the phone. "Where are you?" Brenda asked. He kind of snickered. "It's all right," he said, "I'm in custody. I can't get to you."

  She said, "Oooh, God, thank goodness." Her voice sounded awful in her ear. She was as strung out from lack of sleep as she'd ever been. "Hey, really," Brenda said, "you okay?"

  "Why," asked Gary, "didn't you come?"

  "I was scared," said Brenda.

  "What about John?" Gary asked.

  "They wouldn't let him come, Gary."

  "You betrayed me," he said.

  "I didn't want to see you smeared all over Highway 89. I didn't want to see policemen I knew getting sent out and their wives left as widows. They're my neighbors." She added, "You're alive, aren't you?"

  "It would have been a lot simpler if they'd wasted me out there."

  "I really didn't want you to get blown away like some common criminal," she said. "To me, you're very uncommon. You're crooked, but you're not common."

  "You could have taken me," he said, "to the state line."

  "Gary, that's good dreaming, but it isn't real."

  "I'd have done it for you," he said.

  "I believe that," she said, and added, "Gary, I love you very much, but I couldn't've done that for you."

  "You betrayed me."

  "I didn't know any other way to round you up," Brenda said. "I love you."

  There was a long pause, and then he said, "Well, I need some clothes."

  "Why did they take yours?" she asked.

  "Evidence."

  "I'll bring some."

  "I gotta have them by ten o'clock."

  "I'll be there," she said.

  "Okay, coz," he said, and hung up.

  She went down to the Provo City Center where they had the new modern jail with the dark brown stone. It looked a lot like the modern Orem City Center with the dark brown stone that also had a jail. She took some of John's old work clothes. Since she couldn't get them back, no reason to give away his best things.

  When she arrived, they had him in some cell downstairs. Told her he hadn't been arraigned yet, so she couldn't see him.

  "Goddamn," said Brenda, "the man can't go into court naked." "We'll take it to him," they said.

  Now, while Brenda was still in the lobby, a TV crew arrived, and the hall became jammed with cables and mini-cameras, and people she'd never seen before in her life. She didn't have any makeup on, her hair was in a dumb ponytail, she had a pair of shorts on, and must have looked as overweight as she felt. She just wasn't about to get on camera.

  Gary was being brought up the stairs, however, so she stepped behind a TV rig and a big cameraman, and watched as he went down the hall. She could see he was looking for her. To herself, she said, "I guess I really hate facing him." She thought she probably shouldn't feel ashamed, but she did.

  Mike Esplin, the court-appointed defense attorney, looked a little bit like a rancher. In fact, he came from a ranching family. He was of reasonable height, pleasantly built, and wore a small brush mustache. His eyes were a watery blue-gray as if he had been staring into harsh sunlight for too long. He was, however, dapper in his dress, real dapper: a gray shirt, red tie, a gray plaid suit with a red stripe.

  The first he heard of Gary Gilmore was when the Clerk in the City Court of Provo called that morning to say the Judge had asked Esplin to come over, if he could, for the arraignment.

  It was no problem. There was hardly a lawyer in Provo who didn't have offices within a block or two of the Court. But things were moving so quickly, Mike Esplin didn't have an opportunity to discuss anything with his new client. In fact, he only met him in the courtroom.

  Of course, there was nothing unusual about that. A Court-appointed lawyer didn't even have to be there for the arraignment. They had called him in this ear
ly only because it was a First-Degree Murder case. Esplin found himself standing with Gilmore in front of the Court one minute after he had introduced himself.

  After the charges were read, they went to an anteroom, and that gave a brief opportunity to chat. But the scene was confusing. What with four or five officers and several news people, they were hardly alone, and Gilmore seemed ill at ease. He immediately said to Mike, "I'm new in the area and don't know any lawyers." Then he said he had no funds.

  Since Esplin wanted to interview him a little more agreeably than this, they were moved down to the holding room in City Jail, a small cell with two bunks. Gilmore seemed paranoid that someone might be listening in on a bug, so they whispered, therefore, in low voices, and Gilmore said he had gone down to City Center Motel and happened to walk right into the robbery.

  When Esplin asked Gilmore why he didn't go to the police after he was shot, Gilmore said being an ex-con, he was afraid they wouldn't believe him. To the lawyer, the story sounded like a bunch of bullshit.

  In First-Degree Murder cases, the defense was allowed two attorneys, so, after the interview, Esplin went back to his office and called a few people. When two other lawyers told him that Craig Snyder, whom he knew slightly, did good defense work, he phoned and asked Snyder if he wanted to be involved. While he, Esplin, would be doing this as part of his regular salary, $17,500 a year, a Court-appointed attorney like Snyder, Mike explained, would be paid $17.50 an hour for legal work and $22 an hour for Court time. Snyder said that would be agreeable.

  Esplin then went back to the jail around noon, and told Gilmore the name of his new attorney. He also mentioned that they would charge Gary with the Jensen murder. Gilmore looked him in the eye and said, "No way, man."

  After the police had driven off, Nicole kept saying that Gary was crazy and she should have left him a long time ago. "That crazy bastard, that crazy bastard," she was still telling herself in the morning.

  When the Orem police called, however, a little before noon, to say they wanted Kathryne and Nicole to come down, she was pretty deliberate and cool about it. Even kind of flat.

  She told Lieutenant Nielsen that she had had fights with Gilmore, and left because she was afraid of him. One time, she said, she had to get out of the car and run down the highway because he started to choke her. Then she told Nielsen that Gary had stolen the guns from Swan's Market in Spanish Fork. Added, "I can't tell you much more than that." "Look," said Nielsen, "I'm not going to prosecute you." So she told him that Gary had given her a Derringer for protection, but that after a while she felt she wanted protection, from him.

  When the interview was over, Nicole said, "Please don't tell him I told you these things because . . ." She paused and her mind seemed to slide away from all of them. It was as if she was looking for something a distance away, and then she murmured, "Because I still love him." A little later Lieutenant Nielsen drove her to the apartment in Springville and Nicole turned over her gun and a box of bullets. Nielsen couldn't get over how depressed she was about it all. He was used to taking the depositions of people who were real down, but Nicole would equal any of them.

  After he came back to the station, the Lieutenant began to look into what evidence had accumulated. Two casings had been found under Jensen's body, and one in the blood by Bushnell's head. Those were useful, because an Automatic's markings were easy to identify. It looked like Provo would have authentication for Bushnell, Orem for Jensen. If they could tie the gun to Gilmore, the case was solid.

  Nielsen went over to see Gary about five in the evening. They had moved him already from Provo City Center to County, and that was one old jail. It was dirty. It was noisy. A real slammer. Nielsen had a real interview.

  He brought along a briefcase on which you could flip the handle and a tape recorder inside would start functioning unseen. He didn't dare take it, however, into the cell. Gilmore would have the right to inquire what was in that briefcase, and whether he was being recorded. Nielsen would then have to open it up. That would destroy all confidence Gilmore might have in him. So he left it turned on in the hall just on the other side of the bars. It would pick up what it could.

  The county jail had to be one of the oldest buildings in Utah County. By July, it was hot enough inside to offer a free ticket to hell. With its windows open, you had to breathe the exhausts of the freeway. The prison sat on the edge of the desert in a flat field of cinders midway between the ramp that came off the freeway and the one that went up to it. The sound of traffic was loud, therefore. Since a spur of railroad track also went by, boxcars rumbled through the interview. When Nielsen tried listening to the tape recorder in his office, the sound of traffic on a hot summer evening was the clearest statement he could hear.

  The detective had hopes for the interview. He felt Gilmore would talk ever since the moment right after the capture in Pleasant Grove when Gary asked for him. Nielsen had a strong feeling then that there would be a chance to get his confession. So he moved quickly and not at all unnaturally, into the role of the old friend and the good cop.

  In police work, you had to play a part from time to time. Nielsen liked that. The thing is, for this role, he was supposed to show compassion. From past experience, he knew it wouldn't be altogether a role. Sooner or later, he would really feel compassion. That was all right. That was one of the more interesting sides of police work.

  He had had his experiences. Years ago, when a patrolman, Nielsen did some undercover work in narcotics. There was a working agreement then with the Salt Lake City Police. Because Orem was still small, its police were well known to the locals. To get any effective undercover work, they had to import officers from Salt Lake City. In turn, Orem paid back the debt by sending a few of their own cops. That was how Nielsen first got into it.

  His personal appearance, however, presented a problem. He had been a scoutmaster for seven or eight years and looked it. His substantial build, his early baldness, his eyeglasses and red-gold hair gave him the appearance of a businessman, rather than a fellow who might be dealing in drugs. For cover, therefore, he had pretended to be a Safeway meat-cutter, a job he knew something about, since he had done a little of that while working his way through BYU. He even had a union card.

  In Salt Lake City he became known for a time as the meat-cutter who was always looking for dope on the weekend. That worked. A lot of meat-cutters weren't known as the straightest people. Nielsen even used to wear working clothes that showed bloodstains on chest of his white smock, and below the knees of his white slacks where the apron gave no protection.

  On this hot July evening, Nielsen began by saying that Gilmore's story, unhappily, was full of holes. They were checking it out, but it did not add up. So he wanted to know if it would be all right if they talked. Gilmore said, "I've been charged with a capital offense, and I'm innocent, and you're all screwing up my life."

  "Gary, I know things are serious," Nielsen said, "but I'm not screwing with anybody's life. You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to, you know that."

  Gary walked away and then came back a little later and said, "I don't mind talking."

  Nielsen was with Gilmore about an hour and a half. There, in a Maximum Security cell, the two of them locked in together, they spoke. Nielsen came on very light at first. "Have you seen your attorney?" he asked, and Gilmore said he had. Then Nielsen asked him how he was feeling. "How's the arm?" Gilmore said, "Hey, I'm really hurting. They only give me one pain pill, and the doctor said I was supposed to have two."

  "Well," Nielsen said, "I'll tell them I heard the doctor say two."

  Nielsen tried to be as easygoing as he could. He inquired if Gary liked to fish, and Gilmore answered that with the time he'd spent in jail, there just hadn't been much fishing. Nielsen began to talk a little about fly casting and Gilmore showed interest at the idea that you had to get good enough to guess under different circumstances, what a trout was likely to accept in the way of a fly. The detective told him of taking overnight ca
mping trips with his family up in the canyons.

  Gilmore, in turn, talked about a few of his experiences in prison. Told of the fat girl who died, and the time they gave him too much Prolixin, and he swelled up, and couldn't move. Spoke of how prison demanded you be a man every step of the way. Then he asked a little more about Nielsen's background. He seemed interested that Nielsen had a wife and five children.

  Was his wife a good Mormon? Gilmore asked. Oh, yes. He had met her at BYU where she had gone to get away from Idaho. What did she major in? asked Gilmore, as if he were truly fascinated. Nielsen shrugged. "She majored in home economics," he said. Then he grinned at Gilmore. "Her interest was to—-you know, maybe, you know, kind of find a husband." Now they both laughed. Yes, said Nielsen, they had met in freshman year and were married the next summer. Well, said Gilmore, that was interesting. How did Nielsen become a cop? He didn't seem much like a cop. Well, actually, Gerald explained, he had planned on being a science and mathematics teacher when he went up to Brigham Young University from the family ranch at St. John's, Arizona, but he was an active Mormon and in his church work he met a detective on the police force whom he liked and so got interested and took a job as a patrolman.

  Now he was a lieutenant, Gilmore remarked. Yes, in a little more than ten years he'd risen to be a detective, then a sergeant, now a lieutenant. He didn't say that he'd taken courses at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia.

  Well, that was interesting, said Gilmore. His mother had been a Mormon, too. Then he paused and shook his head. "It's going to kill my mother when she finds out." Again, he shook his head. "You know, she's crippled," said Gilmore, "and I haven't seen her for a long time."

  "Gary," said Nielsen, "why did you kill those guys?"

  Gilmore looked him right back in the eye. Nielsen was used to seeing hatred in a suspect's eyes, or remorse, or the kind of indifference that could lay a chill on your heart, but Gilmore had a way of looking into his eyes that made Nielsen shift inside. It was as if the man was staring all the way to the bottom of your worth. It was hard to keep the gaze.