Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [265]
They thought he was a hustler. The memory burned into the skin right under his beard. "I believe I am a communicator," and the courtroom laughed. He would do this Gilmore one differently. Lay a proper foundation for every corner of the story. And he sat in the room and waited in the heat in his heavy brown coat, and the hours went by.
There was a bearded guy at the other end of the room. Schiller with his black beard and the other guy with his bright brown beard eyed each other. After an hour or two, a girl came in who looked to be media and went over to the other beard and soon started bawling the shit out of the fellow. Schiller could pick up that his name was Jeff Newman and he was from the National Enquirer, and the girl was saying, "You knew she was going to attempt suicide and you sat on it. You and your fucking newspaper." It made Newman so upset, he got up and went out. Now, Schiller went over to the girl and said, "I'm Larry Schiller, representing ABC television." She turned on him like an eagle, claws out, said, "You, too!" Schiller didn't even know her name. She was a local stringer, but sure carrying on. The men didn't give a damn about the women, she was saying, and yet the women were killing themselves over the men. Schiller nodded and got away as quick as he could.
Then a very tall young fellow with dark black hair that came down to his shoulders, and a girl's name tattooed on his knuckles, came in, and looked so shook Schiller figured he had to be Nicole's brother, that is, if she had a brother and Schiller went up and introduced himself but it was apparent the fellow didn't want to communicate, so Schiller sat down again and waited, and another couple of hours went by before he saw a woman standing at the candy shop next to the waiting room. She was thin and small boned, had her hair in a bun, and looked like a very tough western woman who could have walked across the plains. By the expression on her face-such iron fatigue and held-in sorrow, he was sure it had to be Nicole's mother (although later he found out it was Nicole's grandmother, and Nicole's mother wasn't even forty yet) so he wrote a note to introduce himself as Lawrence Schiller and said he was here to discuss the events taking place in their lives in relation to the motion picture and book rights and would appreciate a meeting with her or her authorized representative, or an attorney (it was always better to say "authorized representative" before you said "attorney" so they knew you weren't suing). He finished by mentioning that he was prepared to pay Nicole a minimum of $25,000 for her rights, and put the note in an envelope that had Mrs. Baker written across it.
He handed that to the woman and said, "As you will see, I am Lawrence Schiller from ABC television. This is not the time and place, but when the occasion is right, I would appreciate it if you would open my envelope and read it." Then he turned around walked out of the hospital. A contact had been made.
When the front-page story on Gilmore came out in the New York Times, November 8th, David Susskind was fascinated. For a front-page piece, it was well written, and gave a good description of the murders, the man's sentence, and his decision not to appeal. Put that together with Gilmore's previous criminality, and it all suggested a fascinating scenario.
Shortly after the article caught his eye, almost immediately in fact, Susskind's old friend and associate Stanley Greenberg called, and they had a good conversation. Stanley had written a TV story fifteen years ago about a man awaiting execution. The man had been so long on Death Row that he changed in character, and