The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Oh, Nicole.

  I wrote you an unnecessarily ugly letter. You're a good girl.

  You get by on very little money and love and raise your kids to the very best of your ability. I'm not blind to any of those things.

  You're a beautiful girl. I love you utterly.

  Right now I hurt again. It is something that I didn't ever want to feel again. But it's here once more, my darling, and it's coupled with a rage that is blinding my reason. Please try to know what I feel. A voice in me tells me to be gentle—to go slow, to understand, to love and know my angel, my elf. Know her many hurts—the things that have happened to her through her young life. But more than that—know of her love for you. Her trust in You, shown by the fact that she 'doesn't lie to you, that she is able to bare her soul and trust you—Know GARY that you too have habits that are not so easy to break. That you GARY are not perfect—that you GARY will be a fool if you do not now understand this woman who loves you.

  But instead I wrote that ugly letter I gave you yesterday—Oh, Angel. Please have more faith and strength than I had in my moments of weak blind rage.

  I have lain on the bed all day in a fog, a miasma, a senseless stupor. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so fucking sorry. All my body feels leaden and heavy. I barely answer Gibbs when he talks. I guess he can sense something is wrong. He keeps the radio turned off because he knows I can't stand to hear it.

  On the last day of September, just before dawn, four cops brought a stocky-built dude with a neatly trimmed beard into the Maximum tank. He smelled of booze. When he saw Gilmore and Gibbs watching, he said loudly, "You guys know Cameron Cooper?" Neither answered.

  So the fellow said, "Well, my name is Gerald Starkey, and I just killed the motherfucker."

  Gibbs said, "If them were doubts, you just eliminated them. Man, them are four policemen listening to your statement." Even Gary started laughing. But Starkey was too drunk to care. He put his mattress and blankets on the bottom bunk and lay down with his head two feet from the toilet bowl. Quickly, he passed out.

  In a while, breakfast came. They split his share. He'd be out for a few hours.

  Around nine-thirty that morning, Big Jake told Starkey to get up for Court. Afterward, Big Jake explained that Cameron Cooper was from a real Founding Family in Utah, knew everybody. Right now, four or five of his friends were in the main tank, so Starkey would have to stay with Gilmore and Gibbs.

  By the time the fellow came back from Court, he was sober and asked if he could read any of the pocketbooks on the table. All afternoon, he lay on his bunk and read. Had a habit of sneezing right onto the pages. Gary would mutter, "Doesn't he have enough sense to turn his fat head?"

  Later, he told them he was the cook at Beebee's Steak House in Lehi, and had been a friend of Cameron Cooper's, but they got in an argument. Cameron took his belt off, wrapped the tongue around his hand, and started whaling the buckle at Starkey, who ducked, came up, and stuck a chef's knife right through his heart. "Well," said Gary to Starkey, "I think he got the point!" They had a laugh on that.

  Then it came out that Brenda and John had walked into the cafe just as the fight began. Soon as Starkey stabbed the dude, Cameron fell up against Brenda and got blood all over her clothes. "Can you believe it," said Gary to Gibbs, "she's going to be the star witness in his trial too. That bitch is having a busy year in the Courts." He got out a letter of Brenda's and read it aloud: "Gary, you just don't know how badly I feel inside. When I was at the Preliminary Hearing, testifying against you, it really hurt." He shook his head, "Can you believe she is a blood relative? I understand better now," he said, "how she's been married and divorced so many times. Anybody with an I.Q. of 60, which is moron level, could tell she's a backstabber. Mark my words, Geebs, retribution will get her in the end."

  Saturday Oct 2

  I been jackin off so much in these past few weeks thinkin of you and the things we did—well, I got to feelin like I was jackin off too much, 2, 3, 4 sometimes 5 times a day. Now they give me a little Fiorinal and that sleeper Dalmine at nite now and downers down me, and I don't jack off so much no more.

  Aw, baby, it's just always bothered me cause I never felt like I really gave you a great wild sweating all controls gone down to earth honest to gosh fuck. Sigh! I was just so hooked on that booze and Fiorinal and I knew all the time that it was fucking me up sexually and I was robbing myself of something so much sweeter and neater.

  Guess I've mentioned that enough times that you see it bothers me.

  Plus, Baby Nicole, I was just a little shy around girls, around you. I mean really, it had just been so damn long since I was with a chick.

  I don't mean that to sound like I ever messed with punks in the joint, I didn't except the time or two I told you I kissed a couple pretty boys and even once fucked one young pretty boy in his bootie. But it weren't nothing and I didn't dig it. I've always dug chicks but I was away from them for so damn long that I was downright shy about even being naked with you. You were always so beautiful gentle and patient and understanding about it. I think in the first week or so you had me relaxed and feeling purty natural again. I had been locked up for 12 1/2 years. I ain't offering excuses or nothing but that amount of time made a difference that I wasn't even aware of.

  When I was a teen-ager pussy was tight. I mean it was hard to get. Girls didn't have the sexual freedom they do now. They even talked different. I never heard a girl say fuck. Just wasn't done.

  You've seen Happy Days on T.V.—well, things weren't quite that dumb but not far from it, really.

  Man, if you got in some chicks pants when I was a kid you were doing something. I got pussy now and then but you had to work at it, morals were different. Girls were suppose to remain virgins till married. It was like a game, ya know? Lots of flirting and teasing.

  When a girl finally decided to let you fuck her she'd always put on this act like she was being taken advantage of and 9 times outa 10 the girl would say "Well, will you still respect me?" Some goof-ball skit like that. Well the cat was always so hot and ready to go by then that he was ready to about promise anything, even respect. That always seemed so silly, but it was just the way the game was played.

  I had a chick ask me that once, a real pretty little blond girl, everybody really was hot for her ass and I had her alone one nite in her house. We was both about 15 and necking pretty heavy both getting worked up and l was in and l knew it and then she came up with that cornball line: "Gary, if I let you do it would you still respect me?" Well, I blew it. I started laffing and I told her: "Respect you? For what? I just wanta fuck and so do you, what the fuck am I sposed to respect you for? You just won a first place trophy in the Indianapolis 500 or something?" Well, like I said I blew that one.

  Oh well. There's still 2 or 3 weeks. If Gibbs makes bail but the time is right right now. This is the best time. That fool wetback Luis is on at nites now and he never comes back here to check on me. He don't check the bars for cuts. He just sets out there watching cop shows on the boob tube. Also this is the perfect time for me to get the shoes—just before I go to court it would be so natural for Snyder or Esplin to bring me a pair of ones and twos.

  Sterling finally said he wouldn't sew the hacksaw into the shoes.

  A lot of precious time had gone by. Nicole decided to try it herself.

  She bought a pair of brogans at the thrift store, and cut a little slot in the sole with a razor. With a lot of work, she was able to push the blade in, but it was too long and so she took a chance and broke the blade in half. She could get that much in. But when she tried to sew up the slit, it looked a mess. They would never pass those shoes.

  Chapter 27

  A PROSECUTION

  The District Court of Utah County had jurisdiction for the trial.

  It would take place in Judge Bullock's courtroom, 310 in the Utah County Building, largest edifice in downtown Provo, a gray, massive, old lion of a legal temple reminiscent to Noall Wootton of a thousand other government buildings tha
t had a Greek pediment supported by stone columns at the top of broad steps.

  Having been born in Provo and grown up in Provo, Wootton kind of liked going to Court there, and this was going to be the biggest murder case he had yet tried.

  Like a lot of other lawyers in the area, Wootton had gone to BYU and transferred to the University of Utah for law school. Did it with no great desire, not in the beginning anyway, just that his father had a successful practice, and Noall figured, hell, he could take the course, and try business afterward. When he got out he was offered a job with the FBI and a position with United Airlines, but turned them down because his father offered to take him in. That worked out well. Wootton, Senior, taught him a great deal.

  Noall soon decided, however, that being in an office all day was not his idea. He enjoyed a courtroom. Even felt contempt for class mates who went to Salt Lake or Denver or L.A. to work. They just ended up in back rooms preparing cases for big-city trial lawyers.

  Whereas Noall was where he wanted to be. Right in the courtroom against those big lawyers.

  He started by doing defense work, but came to the conclusion most of his clients were punks. His duty, as he saw it, was to make certain his client was not convicted if innocent, or not overcharged if guilty. The punks wanted to get off at all costs, guilty or not. Noall couldn't buy that. He began to think prosecution was the way to go.

  One case brought this home. It was a man he defended who had much the same background as Gilmore. The fellow, Harlow Custis, had spent eighteen years in prison, and had now been charged with a simple forged credit card. They were going to send him back to jail for that. Wootton thought Custis was being screwed over. He fought for nine months to get him out of prison. Finally succeeded.

  On the day Custis was placed on probation, he came over to Noall's house and demanded some tires back that he had given in payment. When Wootton told him he wouldn't return them unless paid in cash, he was called every name in the book.

  Three weeks later, Custis got drunk and wrecked his car. Killed a man. No driver's license. At that point, Wootton decided he'd made a mistake and shouldn't have tried to fight the case so hard. That was the moment he decided to move over to the prosecutor's side.

  Preparing for Gilmore, Wootton thought often of his other big case, which had been prosecuting Francis Clyde Martin, who had been forced to get married because his girl was pregnant. Martin took his new wife in the woods and stabbed her twenty times, cut her throat, cut the unborn baby out of her body, stabbed the baby, went home.

  In that case, Wootton had decided not to go for the death penalty. Martin was a nice-looking eighteen-year-old high-school student with no criminal record. Just a kid in a terrible trap who ran amok.

  Wootton had gone for a life sentence, and the boy was in prison now, and might be brought around eventually.

  In fact, Wootton didn't see himself as a terribly strong advocate of the death penalty. He just didn't know that it had a deterrent effect on other criminals. The only reason he was looking for the maximum sentence with Gilmore was risk. Gilmore alive was a risk to society.

  On October 4, Monday, the day before the trial would begin, Craig Snyder and Mike Esplin had a long conference with Gary. After a while, he asked, "What do you think my chances are?" and Craig Snyder replied, "I don't think they are good—I don't think they are good at all."

  Gary answered, "Well, you know, this doesn't come as a big shock."

  They had, they told him, made a special effort with the psychiatrists. Not one would declare Gary insane. For that matter, Gary agreed with them. "Like I said," he remarked, "I can get on and convince the Jury that I'm out of my head. But, man, I don't want to do that. I resent having my intelligence insulted."

  Then there was the business of Hansen. Snyder and Esplin agreed they would be happy if Phil Hansen came in. They said no lawyer was going to be so egotistical as to take a position that he didn't want or need the best professional aid available. But Hansen hadn't gotten in touch.

  They did not say to him that they didn't feel ready to pick up the phone and call Hansen. There was nothing, after all, but Nicole's story to go by. It could prove embarrassing if she misunderstood what Hansen had promised.

  Once more they asked Gary about putting Nicole on the stand. "I don't want her brought into it," Gary said. They could sense his objection. She would have to say she had provoked him unendurably.

  Specify a few sordid details. He wouldn't have anything to do with that. In fact, he was furious that Wootton was calling Nicole as a witness. He told Snyder and Esplin that he didn't want them to exclude the prosecution's witnesses from the courtroom because it meant that Nicole, having been listed by Wootton, would also be kept out. Gary's lawyers said this had to give Wootton an advantage. His witnesses would be able to hear what the ones before them said. Everything in Wootton's presentation would come out smoother. Didn't matter, Gary told them.

  Snyder and Esplin tried to change his mind. When witnesses, they said, were not able to hear each other, they felt more nervous on the stand. Didn't know what they were stepping into. That was a great deal for the defense to give away just so they could have Nicole in the courtroom. Gary shook his head. Nicole had to be there.

  The first day was spent in selecting a Jury. On the second day, it was Esplin's disagreeable task at the real commencement of the trial to ask the Judge to send the Jury out since there was a matter of law to discuss. He then told Judge Bullock that the defendant, against their advice, did not wish any of the prosecution witnesses to be excluded.

  It was a poor start. Many a Judge lost respect for a lawyer who could not show a client his best interest.

  MR. ESPLIN Your Honor, Mr. Gilmore has expressed to me the reason for his decision and it's based upon the fact that Nicole Barrett, who is the defendant's girl friend, is listed as a witness for the State, and he does not want her excluded from the courtroom. I think that's the sole basis for his decision.

  THE COURT Is that so, Mr. Gilmore?

  MR. GILMORE Well, yes. I seen that she wasn't on the list until just, you know, yesterday or so, and it appears to me that the reason was so that she would have to be excluded from the courtroom. And I don't want her to have to sit out in that uncomfortable hall all day.

  THE COURT Well, she may have to be in the hall, but certainly we'll have chairs and other comforts there.

  MR. GILMORE Well, it's my decision that she not be excluded, Your Honor.

  THE COURT Is that all there is?

  MR. ESPLIN That's all we have, Your Honor.

  THE COURT That's the law matter? All right, you may bring the Jury back in

  Gary, as if to recoup what he had given away, now spent time glowering at Wootton.

  The irony of the whole thing, Esplin decided, was that Nicole, so far as he could see, wasn't even in Court. All morning Gary kept turning around to look for her. She didn't show up. She didn't get there, in fact, until lunchtime, and then Gary couldn't have been happier to see her.

  Wootton began by explaining his witnesses to the Jury. "Each one," he said, "will give you a small piece of the overall story. They will tell you about how the defendant, Gary Gilmore . . . walked down the street with the motel cash box in one hand and the pistol in the other hand, abandoned the cash box at the end of the block, and abandoned the gun. They will tell you how shortly thereafter he was seen at a service station on the corner of Third South and University Avenue where he picked up his truck, at that time bleeding rather profusely from an injury to his left hand. The witnesses will tell you how they traced the blood trail from the service station back up the sidewalk to where it stopped at a Pfitzer evergreen bush that was planted along the side of the sidewalk. They will tell you how they found a .22 automatic pistol that appeared to have been discharged in the Pfitzer bush, because it had weeds and leaves in the automatic portion of the gun. They will tell you that they found a shell casing there. You'll also hear testimony that the investigators at the motel office w
here Mr. Bushnell was killed found another .22 shell casing. You'll hear expert testimony to the effect that the slug in his head was in fact a .22-caliber slug fired from a gun with the same type of markings inside the barrel, as the .22 pistol that was found in the Pfitzer bush."

  As the exhibits and witnesses were presented during the length of that day, Wootton's case came forth much as he had announced it, solid and well connected. Snyder and Esplin could only raise doubts on small points or try to reduce the credibility of the testimony. So Esplin got the first witness, Larry Johnson, a draftsman, to admit that his plan of the motel, drawn to order in this last week before trial, could provide "no idea as to what plants or vegetables were growing on the 9th of July" around the motel windows. It was a detail, but it dissipated the authority of the first exhibit, and so kept the Jury from becoming impressed too quickly by the sheer quantity of exhibits.

  Wootton, after all, was going to produce eighteen.

  The next witness, Detective Fraser, had taken a number of photographs of the motel office. Esplin got him to agree that the drapes might have been moved before the photographs were taken.

  So it went. Small corrections and small adjustments on the case Wootton was making. When Glen Overton came to the stand and described the appearance of Benny Bushnell dying in his own blood, and the demeanor of Debbie Bushnell as he drove her to the hospital, the defense was silent. Esplin was not going to intensify the vividness of those scenes by cross-examination.