Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [244]
Smith said he was going to file suit. Dennis said, "I couldn't care less, Warden." He was beginning to take personal pleasure in looking for statements to rile Sam Smith. There was something about Sam's skin that inspired you to get under it.
Dennis even laughed when they strip-searched him, just to be vindictive. It was a comedy. The guards came up to his armpits.
Why, two days ago, they'd been so impressed with the way he acted before the Utah Supreme Court, they let him bring his typewriter into the talk with Gary.
After Boaz got through the strip-search, he met Nicole. There was a slitted window along the south end of the visiting room, and there she was sitting on Gary's lap, right at that end window, both of them looking out at Point of the Mountain. She didn't pay much attention to Dennis. Necking with Gary was all she was heeding.
Still, when she came out of it, Dennis thought she had a sweeter, more innocent-looking face than he had anticipated. She was looking tired, even washed out, and that gave her a melancholy wistfulness he definitely liked. But, Gary glowered. Didn't approve of the budding friendship whatsoever. Looked like he thought Nicole was flirting, when all she was saying was that her grandfather's funeral would be starting in an hour or so.
Once she left, and Dennis was alone with him, Gary hardly offered a chance to talk about Susskind's offer. He was too fired up over Governor Rampton. The subject proved infectious. Dennis loved the way Gary could pass you his steam. In fact, Dennis felt like a boiler, all fired up himself at what he could soon say about the Governor.
From the beginning, Dennis was looking to give out thoughts that would bring people face to face with stuff they had never pondered before. Dennis was looking to make a few shocking statements about public executions and get the people thinking. Make them ask themselves, "Why do we have executions behind locked doors? What are we ashamed of?" Just that morning one of his zingers had been printed:
PROVO HERALD
Provo, Nov. 14, 1976-"I think executions should be on prime time television," Boaz said. "Then we would get some deterrent out of it."
He'd been having press conferences practically twice a day since he and Gary won at the Utah Supreme Court and over and over he kept telling the press that he was there to represent free and open dealing and would present his life as an open book. He might get masted, but his responsibility was to be very Aquarian and even report things about himself and his feelings that might seem strange.
At least the people would be getting open treatment, not manipulation.
The press could misquote him, misrepresent him, take his remarks at random and distort them. It didn't matter. He wasn't going to flatten his personality. In fact, right after he came out of the Utah Supreme Court, he told the reporters he was in Salt Lake because it had a higher percentage of beautiful women than any city he'd been in, Plus the fact, he told the press, that a lot of these women like to meet Californians. For the taste of evil. There were millions to be made here, he said, importing California consciousness.
Really, he said. Of course, they never printed a word of it.
The press responded by asking about his financial affairs. "I have nothing to hold back," he told them. "The fact is, I owe $10,000, actually about $15,000, if you include not only what I owe creditors but friends. I have no shame about this. I made a bad investment once, and immediately found the whole thing bellied up, money gone."
The word in response, he soon learned, was that he was playing Gilmore for the money. He didn't care. The word would turn around when they realized he wasn't.
"Do you think," asked one reporter, "that your experience as a Deputy District Attorney has given you a certain lust for Gilmore's blood?"
"Get it straight," replied Dennis, "working in the D.A.'s office gave