Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [260]
The singer said his first impulse was not to get involved. "I told him (the attorney) I wasn't looking for any publicity. I thought I had better mind my own business. Who needs that kind of publicity?"
When Boaz persisted, saying his client wanted to see Cash or visit him, Cash said he decided to call the prison.
7
The moment Brenda heard the news, she began to call every hour, but all they would say at Gary's hospital in Salt Lake was that he was still alive. Brenda would ask, "If I go over, will you let me see him?"
They would reply, "You better be walking in with the Governor if you want to get through." She asked if she could talk, at least, to one of the nurses taking care of him, and they finally put a woman on.
"Would you please tell Gary that Brenda called and I'm thinking of him dearly," she said. "I'd love him to fight for his life." It was a mind-blower. She never knew if the nurse passed on the message.
Up at the hospital, they had about decided Gary had not made a real attempt to kill himself. By their best calculation he had taken half of a lethal dose, twenty capsules, about two grams. Three grams represented a 50-percent lethal dose, that is, half the people who took such an amount died. Since Gilmore was a big man, his chance of doing the job with two grams was small. Besides, he had taken the pills just before morning check, That was suspicious. Nicole seemed to have swallowed the same amount many hours earlier and was in much worse condition. After all, she hardly weighed one hundred pounds. He weighed nearly twice as much.
Warden Sam Smith was being interviewed.
INTERVIEWER Any ideas as to how he may have gotten the substance?
WARDEN Well, there's a number of possibilities. He could have accumulated his own medication, saved it up, ingested it, he could have obtained it from possibly other inmates living in Maximum Security, it's possible he could have obtained it from those that have visited him.
INTERVIEWER How easy would it be for someone to take drugs in to the men?
WARDEN Well, it's virtually impossible to prevent someone from hiding something as small as drugs on their person or in a cavity of the body.
INTERVIEWER Aren't people searched, though, when they go in and see him?
WARDEN Yes, the people are given a skin shakedown but that does not mean that you can explore every cavity of the body and ascertain that there is no medication.
INTERVIEWER As the man responsible for Gilmore's well-being and safety, how do you feel about what happened today?
WARDEN Of course I feel bad but I recognize realistically that if a person desires to kill themselves then it's pretty difficult to prevent over a prolonged period of time.
INTERVIEWER Thank you, Sam.
The press was in a savage mood after this interview. One reporter remarked that with Sam Smith to listen to, you didn't need Seconal.
The joke among the press was that looking for a street address in any one of these Utah towns was like trying to locate artillery coordinates on a map. 2575 North 1100 West. "Yes, sir," wrote Barry Farrell in his notebook. "You have the right address. It's just that you're in the wrong town." Barry Farrell, there to do an article for New West, was at a point of frustration where his best pleasure was taking notes. He hated Salt Lake. "There is a Swissness to the place," he wrote, "a complacency that people from the Coast are likely to find infuriating. Getting drunk here is like signing up for methadone maintenance."
Then he added, "After one o'clock, the only sound downtown is the creaking of the neon signs."
It was hard to get near this story. Everything was shut off. Farrell couldn't remember too many occasions when the center of interest in a story had been so removed. He had not been a writer for Life magazine over many a year without getting into a few places.
Often, he could obtain interviews others couldn't. There were, however, no interviews here. In his notebook, Farrell wrote, "One can only imagine how suffocating Gilmore must have found it . . . The claustrophobia that ensues when one finds