The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Yet, it killed him. It just wasn't Woods's idea of therapy. They'd be junking a lot of their program just to keep a 24-hour watch on Nicole.

  Nicole wanted to go to sleep like she never had before, but immediately a boss-looking chick, probably a patient, but domineering and awful sure of herself in a rotten limited way, was telling her, "No lying on beds in the daytime." "Take a shower!" "Take off your jewelry."

  They started to grab her, and she began to fight. That was when Nicole realized everything she did from here on out was going to be a fight. It came down on her like a disease. It would be a losing battle all the way. "I'm going to be suffocated by these fucking sheep," she said to herself. Yes, this was the place Gary had described where everybody ratted on everybody.

  Instead of working with the antisocial impulses of each patient as it came into conflict with the group interest, instead of the group being the anvil on which each patient's personality might get forged into a little more social responsibility, the emphasis would now have to be on surrounding Nicole, insulating her and cutting off the day-to-day influence of Gary, so that he could not brainwash her with the idea—oh, beautiful guru!—that their souls were scheduled to meet on the other side. Woods would have to issue orders that no aide or patient was to mention Gilmore's name. Not ever. If he was going to keep Nicole alive, he had to neutralize that relationship. Woods could recognize that if nobody would talk to Nicole about Gary, she was nonetheless going to think about him all the time. Woods couldn't stop that. He just didn't want Gilmore able to influence her thinking anymore.

  She tried to go to sleep, and they wouldn't let her. She lay on the floor and they woke her and she went right back to the floor and went to sleep again. Then Norton Willy's wife was shaking her. Mayvine her name was. The wife of Norton Willy who grew up right next door to her grandmother. Nicole couldn't believe that Norton had married this witch, a horrible huge ass-kisser who was now helping to run the place. They kept trying to get Nicole up and wouldn't let her sleep on the couches, but she felt three times as weak as in the other hospital. All she was interested in was being alone, and thinking about Gary

  The ideal way to run a hospital was to take your chances on suicide. That was part of the risk in any innovative therapy. Here, they had to cut the risk off. Kiger's ideas were so unconventional anyway, that his program could receive an irreparable blow if they couldn't supervise Nicole. Nonetheless, it was the pits.

  Schiller went out to the airport. His girl friend, Stephanie, was coming in. Since she had once been his secretary, he knew she would not be surprised when he greeted her with the announcement that they had to go right away to Pleasant Grove near Orem, a good forty miles from the airport, to visit with Kathryne Baker.

  Schiller expected there'd be press outside, but, in fact, the house was hard to find. Naming the streets by compass directions didn't work in Pleasant Grove. There were too many old country roads, paved cow pastures, and dry riverbeds. 400 North was likely to twist across 900 North and 200 East intersect with 60 West. It was not the kind of address that a reporter, fighting a five o'clock deadline, was going to lose a half a day looking for.

  Schiller, however, had time for a long talk with Mrs. Baker.

  He thought it was a sloppy house, with old tires out in the front yard and metal skins rusting in the grass—you couldn't tell if the metal came from old jalopies or old washing machines. There were bits of jam on the table and dust and dirt and grease formed a pomade on many a surface in the kitchen, There were also an astonishing number of kids—he saw Rikki and Sue Baker's kids go through, plus some neighbors', and got them mixed up with Kathryne Baker's youngest child, Angel, who might have been six or seven and was astonishingly beautiful, looked like Brooke Shields.

  With all that noise it could have been confusing, but Schiller was counting on his ability to sell a proposition in a palace or a pool hall.

  He went right into a rap like the one he gave to Vern. "Whether I get the rights to your daughter's life or not, this, I think, is what you should do." And he set out to give her confidence in his understanding of the problems facing her. He told her she should change the phone and get the kids away with a relative. That way, the press wouldn't discover them. "You want to avoid having the children feel this is an indelible experience of horror." All the while, he knew what was impressing her most is that he did not sit there asking questions and writing her answers down, like he was stealing an interview, but was saying: Mrs. Baker, go get a lawyer. Kathryne said, "I don't know one." "Who do you work for?" asked Schiller. When she told him, Schiller said, "Call your boss and ask who his lawyer is." He could see it surprised her agreeably that he wanted her to obtain a representative to take care of her rights. He knew she was not used to talk like that.

  Schiller had learned from the deal he made for Sunshine that if you wanted to get into big deals with movies and books, and play with producers and publishers, then you had to lay the right foundation, and draw up the right contracts from day one. Otherwise, you could end in a tree, swinging from limb to limb. With Sunshine, he had failed to get a separate contract from the dying woman's husband. Therefore Universal had to spend a lot of money later to buy his rights. That had been an item to haunt Schiller. So, he laid it out now for Mrs. Baker. "Get yourself a lawyer," he told her. "Get it before we even talk money."

  On the drive away from the house, he had his first big fight with Stephanie. Her father was in the garment business. Way Schiller saw it, Stephanie's father had always been as deep in business as a sheep is thick in wool, but Stephanie was her dad's delight, and dad had done his best to protect her. Stephanie Wolf was one beautiful princess who hated to see business operating. She might have worked as a secretary, but it never rubbed off. She detested business.

  Now, Stephanie was telling him that he'd acted like a manipulator with Kathryne Baker. "How dare you take advantage of that woman by talking business in the middle of all her grief? Her daughter was just committed yesterday." Larry tried to lay it out for her. "You don't mind," he said, "going to ABC's cocktail parties, but ABC couldn't care less whether they're going to have Larry Schiller at their party next week. I'm only as good as what I can do for ABC. Damn it," he said, "if you're interested in me, you've got to accept me as who I am. You've got to love the part you love, and if there's a part you don't like, you've still got to learn to deal with it. You can't bawl the shit out of me because of what I say in a living room, the very minute I walk out of that room." They really had a big fight, Stephanie, after all, was the girl for whom Schiller was ready to break up a marriage that had gone on for sixteen years, but he could see that their relation was going to be put to every strain during this Gilmore business. Part of his brain was beginning to work already on the possibility of sending Stephanie to Europe to take care of foreign rights. If she stayed around, he could lose the Gilmore story. The aggravations between him and her over this one episode had been close to apoplectic.

  That night, unable to sleep, he got up at two in the morning and dictated a contract for the Gilmore rights to a legal service in Salt Lake City. Over the telephone, his words were recorded, and early in the morning some girl would type it up. However, he didn't like the idea that a stranger would hear the terms of the contract. It could easily be leaked to a newspaper. Schiller knew that if he was working for a local paper, he would try to have a pipeline into such places. You could get a story that way.

  Still, he had to have something ready to show Vern's and Mrs. Baker's separate lawyers. So he pretended to be a buyer of sheep and cattle from California, and dictated how many lambs and cows were to be sold in return for conveying full rights to said stock. The humor of it appealed to him at two in the morning.

  Tomorrow, he would change the sheep and cows into specific people. There were a lot of good businessmen in the world, and a lot of good journalists, thought Schiller, but maybe he was one of the few who could be both.

  Over the weekend Barry Farrell interviewed Larry
Schiller in Los Angeles. They had worked together on Life years ago, but Farrell had not been feeling friendly to Schiller lately. A little over a year before, Larry had been getting a book of photographs together on Muhammad All. He had called Barry to say he wanted him to do the text, and Farrell had gotten into conversations with his publisher about it.

  Then Schiller signed Wilfred Sheed. Farrell felt he had been merely another name to feed into the hopper, and was pissed off over that.

  Every December, however, he liked to clean the slates, so he wrote Schiller a letter saying in effect, "I'm over my pique. We did some good things together in the past and maybe we will again." It cleared the air for Farrell. He thought he could talk without bias to Larry if something came up.

  Nonetheless, soon as he heard that Schiller was in Utah trying to get the Gilmore story, Farrell was ready to travel with a sharp pencil.

  Larry would be exposing himself to the very thing he'd been criticized for in the past. It would be a great opportunity to observe how he would bid for Gilmore's corpse.

  So Farrell arranged to do a piece for New West, and talked to the Warden of the prison, to Susskind, and finally got together with Schiller in Los Angeles on the weekend. By then, Farrell was hardly happy about Dennis Boaz. That fucking hippie, he told himself, persistently fails to understand the stakes. Here Farrell had started with a little animus against Schiller, but Susskind was talking future profits up to fifteen million dollars while offering peanuts. Farrell began to think somewhat gloomily—since Christmas resolution or no, he had looked forward to doing a couple of numbers on Schiller—that the man might be the only one with a realistic notion of what could happen when you died in public. Schiller had done it before, seen the relatives, held their hands. He was closer to the difficulty than Boaz, who was always presenting himself as more organic than thou.

  God, Gilmore had need of protection. Nothing got covered on TV more than public death. Farrell listened to Dennis talking about Gary and Nicole in a prison cottage with a couple of pet plants in the backyard, and it disgusted Farrell. Gary's life was running out. There was no way they were not going to kill him in the State of Utah.

  Why, if Gilmore was not executed, a major wave of executions might be touched off. Every conservative in America would say: They couldn't even shoot this fellow who wanted to be shot. Who are we ever going to punish?

  Schiller's rap, at least, was solid. Build foundations. Get those contracts up like walls. Let everybody know where they stand.

  Farrell found himself being kind to Schiller in the piece he wrote for New West.

  Schiller was on the radio a couple of times, and the nature of his phone calls was changing. He could feel the press coming nearer. He decided to get in contact with Ed Guthman of the Los Angeles Times.

  "Ed," he said, "I need an outlet. I'll give you two thousand words for your front page and an exclusive interview with Gilmore sometime before the execution date, if you'll give me one of your top criminal reporters now as a sounding board." Guthman had a good man named Dave Johnston, who was available for a day, and Schiller and Johnston tried to foresee the problems. If, for instance, you could get only one interview with Gilmore, what were the questions to ask?

  In addition, Schiller needed a story in the next week or so about himself. Not a large story, but a quiet one on a Monday. He wanted to scale down the importance of his presence on the scene. No sudden focus of attention with everybody saying: Carrion bird is getting it.

  Instead, Johnston would write a piece about how the press had come into Salt Lake from all over the world, and Schiller would only be mentioned in the third or fourth paragraph.

  Since this modest perspective would not benefit his standing with Vern Damico's and Kathryne Baker's new lawyers, Schiller took pains to tell them separately that the story coming out would give him the virtue of a low profile for the present. He went on to say that there would be times, handling the press, when he might make mistakes, but, "I have seen the heat come down, and I will do my best to protect your credibility. We will set it up like a team operation, and I will take the shots." Over and over he said, "There may be things I do that make you unhappy, we may have our disagreements, but I am still friends with all the people I have worked with. Look," he would say, "pick up the phone and call Shelly Dunn in Denver, Colorado. He was the lawyer on Sunshine. He will tell you how he and I are still friends now, and that, in general, I was right about the press, not right about everything, but often right." Then Schiller would mention Paul Caruso's number, and remind them that he was the lawyer on the Susan Atkins case. "We had a lot of trouble with that," Schiller said, 'many disagreements, but feel free to call him." He named a couple of other lawyers as well.

  In fact, Schiller did not have a clear or certain idea what all these attorneys might say about him, but, then, it had been his experience that very few people actually made such phone calls.

  When Vern met his lawyer, Bob Moody, on Monday morning, he thought he was a quiet, confident, intelligent man. Moody was well built, and half bald, and his eyeglasses looked competent. His way of talking was very carefully spoken. Vern noticed that when Bob Moody said something, he didn't have to repeat it. Assumed you understood.

  Vern saw him as in the category of upper class. Would belong to the country club and have an expensive home in the foothills of Provo. "Mortgage Heights," Vern called it.

  To Moody, Vern Damico seemed a concerned relative, sincerely looking for good advice and the best deal he could shape up. He kept saying that he wanted Gary's wishes to be carried out. He wanted some kind of dignity retained for his nephew if possible.

  Moody talked to him about the difficulty of trying to represent Gary's criminal interests and his literary estate. Bob Moody didn't think it would work to negotiate contracts for books or films while trying to advise Gary on his legal situation. Suppose, at some point, Gary wished to change his mind and appeal, why then the rights for his life story would be considerably less. A potential conflict of interest existed right there. You just didn't want a situation where a lawyer might have to ask himself whether his client's death might be more profitable to him. Vern nodded. A second lawyer would be necessary.

  Bob now mentioned a fellow named Ron Stanger. A local man with whom he had worked in the past. Worked with him, worked against him. He felt he could recommend Ron.

  In fact, Moody had already called Stanger over the weekend.

  "How," Bob Moody had kidded, "would you like to take over from Dennis Boaz?" They had agreed it would be fascinating. Lots of public appeal and great legal questions. In fact, a fellow like Gilmore, capable of putting the State of Utah through hoops, ought to be interesting to meet.

  Of course, they also wondered whether this would be another crusade where you don't get paid. Moody had said good-bye to Stanger with the mutual understanding that they would consider a lot of things, and one was capital punishment. Of course, you could assume it would not go that far. Probably, the convict was bluffing.

  When it got to last push against last shove, he'd appeal.

  Just about a week ago, Moody and Stanger had happened to be leaving Court together, and saw Snyder and Esplin out on the court house lawn being interviewed by local TV. As they drove past, they catcalled. It was really funny seeing Craig and Mike under TV lights.

  Shortly thereafter, they ribbed Snyder in the coffee shop. How did it feel to carry out an appeal your client didn't want? "You really do good work," they told him with a grin. Snyder grinned back.

  Even after the suicide attempt it was hard for Moody and Stanger to take the case with complete seriousness. By then, courthouse talk was "Snyder, your work is going to blazes. Your man is carrying out the sentence himself." But, then, lawyers had to be like surgeons, joked while they washed their hands. So, on the phone that Saturday night, when Moody told Stanger there was a good possibility he'd be called in, Stanger replied, "All we need is to be on TV and have Craig Snyder drive by."

  Now, dis
cussing it with Vern on Monday morning, Bob Moody said over the phone, "Ron, come over and meet Vern and see what he thinks of you." It was his way of telling Stanger he had the job.

  Vern was struck with the difference. Ron was a real peppy fellow.

  In fact, his physical appearance threw Vern. Stanger looked like a fresh kid out of law school. Vern wondered, "Can a man this young do what Gary wants?" He decided to hire him because of Moody's recommendation, but couldn't keep from saying to Stanger, "I guess you're kind of young."

  "Not really," said Stanger, pointing to Moody, "this bald-headed guy and I are practically the same age." Vern didn't know if he liked him. Stanger's eyes were gleaming, like his hooves were flashing in the air. "Let's get it on," was his look. Maybe that was good for a lawyer.

  Vern was having to make a lot of decisions about people before he knew how much to trust them. That was not what he would call comfortable.

  A few years back, when Moody was Assistant County Attorney, he had been prosecuting a drug charge, and Ron Stanger had been defending. Ron's methods that day were downright insulting. Moody finally got so mad, the Judge called Stanger and him to the bench, and the Jury got a big kick out of that. Two lawyers fighting to the death. In the closing argument, Ron added the crowning blow of telling the Jury that if Mr. Moody had really been ready to prove his case, he would have taken this ten-dollar bill the prosecution said was paid over for drugs, and shown the fingerprints on it. It was a closing argument, with no opportunity for rebuttal, so Bob couldn't reply that a ten-dollar bill has no less than ten thousand fingerprints on it. He was plenty upset. Part of the game was to win your case—you loved to win—but Ron's tactics had gone further than a friendly jab or two.