Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [283]
Nonetheless, soon as he heard that Schiller was in Utah trying to get the Gilmore story, Farrell was ready to travel with a sharp pencil.
Larry would be exposing himself to the very thing he'd been criticized for in the past. It would be a great opportunity to observe how he would bid for Gilmore's corpse.
So Farrell arranged to do a piece for New West, and talked to the Warden of the prison, to Susskind, and finally got together with Schiller in Los Angeles on the weekend. By then, Farrell was hardly happy about Dennis Boaz. That fucking hippie, he told himself, persistently fails to understand the stakes. Here Farrell had started with a little animus against Schiller, but Susskind was talking future profits up to fifteen million dollars while offering peanuts. Farrell began to think somewhat gloomily-since Christmas resolution or no, he had looked forward to doing a couple of numbers on Schiller-that the man might be the only one with a realistic notion of what could happen when you died in public. Schiller had done it before, seen the relatives, held their hands. He was closer to the difficulty than Boaz, who was always presenting himself as more organic than thou.
God, Gilmore had need of protection. Nothing got covered on TV more than public death. Farrell listened to Dennis talking about Gary and Nicole in a prison cottage with a couple of pet plants in the backyard, and it disgusted Farrell. Gary's life was running out. There was no way they were not going to kill him in the State of Utah.
Why, if Gilmore was not executed, a major wave of executions might be touched off. Every conservative in America would say: They couldn't even shoot this fellow who wanted to be shot. Who are we ever going to punish?
Schiller's rap, at least, was solid. Build foundations. Get those contracts up like walls. Let everybody know where they stand.
Farrell found himself being kind to Schiller in the piece he wrote for New West.
Schiller was on the radio a couple of times, and the nature of his phone calls was changing. He could feel the press coming nearer. He decided to get in contact with Ed Guthman of the Los Angeles Times.
"Ed," he said, "I need an outlet. I'll give you two thousand words for your front page and an exclusive interview with Gilmore sometime before the execution date, if you'll give me one of your top criminal reporters now as a sounding board." Guthman had a good man named Dave Johnston, who was available for a day, and Schiller and Johnston tried to foresee the problems. If, for instance, you could get only one interview with Gilmore, what were the questions to ask?
In addition, Schiller needed a story in the next week or so about himself. Not a large story, but a quiet one on a Monday. He wanted to scale down the importance of his presence on the scene. No sudden focus of attention with everybody saying: Carrion bird is getting it.
Instead, Johnston would write a piece about how the press had come into Salt Lake from all over the world, and Schiller would only be mentioned in the third or fourth paragraph.
Since this modest perspective would not benefit his standing with Vern Damico's and Kathryne Baker's new lawyers, Schiller took pains to tell them separately that the story coming out would give him the virtue of a low profile for the present. He went on to say that there would be times, handling the press, when he might make mistakes, but, "I have seen the heat come down, and I will do my best to protect your credibility. We will set it up like a team operation, and I will take the shots." Over and over he said, "There may be things I do that make you unhappy, we may have our disagreements, but I am still friends with all the people I have worked with. Look," he would say, "pick up the phone and call Shelly Dunn in Denver, Colorado. He was the lawyer on Sunshine. He will tell you how he and I are still friends now, and that, in general,