Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [127]
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.
8
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 camping 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."