Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [231]
Boaz parked his Saab, walked under the guard tower and into the Administration Building. It had a small entrance and no lobby, just two narrow hallways intersecting at right angles and an information window to one side of this cross. It was like the dinky office you might find inside the door of a large warehouse. The guards wore maroon blazers that were too short in the back for those who had big asses, and Boaz could see them strolling down the hall, or going in and out of the crashing double gates that led into Medium Security.
A trustee standing by a glass museum case was selling convict-made tooled leather belts to a group of tourists. Compared to California prisons he'd seen, Dennis thought it was old and funky for a state penitentiary. Still, it didn't have the worst vibration, but was kind of farmlike. Simple faces on the guards, and sly, like they'd been out in the hay. Yet nothing invidious or technologically corrupt. Why, some of the older guards had bellies sticking out large as wheelbarrows, yes, a simple place relatively speaking, country people as they should be.
Some very tough dudes among the guards.
Outside the Warden's office was a typed message tacked to the wall:
I hate guys Who criticize Vigorous guys Whose enterprise Has helped them rise Above the guys Who criticize Sam Smith .
Then the office. Small for a Warden's den, and awful small for Sam Smith who was even taller than Dennis and had a big numb hulk of a body. He looked kind of a cross, Dennis thought, between Boris Karloff and Andy Warhol, and wore big light-shelled plastic-frame glasses. In fact, he spoke in a soft voice.
"I think," said Dennis, "you have some knowledge of my coming here."
"No," said Smith, "I don't know anything about it."
Awful cautious man, thought Dennis. Smith, he decided, was in a frozen space, expression-wise. Leaned back in his chair and looked at his visitor with circumspection.
Dennis explained that he was there as a writer. Gilmore wanted to discuss the possibility of doing an interview with him.
"Oh," said Smith, "we can't let any writers in."
"Well, Gilmore wants to see me. He sent the Chaplain."
Smith shook his head. These were very Warden-type energies, Dennis decided. Many layers of control over fear-didn't want anything to interfere with that control.
"What is this?" said Dennis, starting to get angry. "The man's going to die soon, and no one's getting any access to him. He wants to see me. He wants to talk."
"I just can't let any writers in," said Smith. Man, his body was rigid. For a big man, Smith moved all right, but he sure was tightly controlled. Dennis didn't like him, not the way he'd sit in his chair, cold, worried, not smiling.
Sam Smith sat there thinking for a long time. His next remark surprised Dennis. "Well," said the Warden, "you are a lawyer."
He sure knows, thought Dennis, a lot more about me than he has let on up to now.
From California, Dennis told him. Well, murmured Sam Smith in reply, we couldn't interfere with Gilmore's right to see a lawyer.
Now Boaz was beginning to get it. Could it be that Smith wanted him around instead of Esplin and Snyder? Even if they had been fired, they were still the only Gilmore lawyers in existence. Already, they had caused a delay. Of course! The Warden wanted the execution to take place on time.
Sam Smith still wasn't friendly. In fact, you might say he was physically intimidating. But now he said in that quiet voice, never looking at Boaz, that the only way Mr. Boaz could get in was as a legal counselor. Something would have to be put in writing to that effect.
Dennis drafted a note to say he wouldn't do magazine or newspaper articles, and was in the prison as a lawyer. He added, however, that he was writing this at the Warden's request, and made a point of saying, "Our