Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [314]
"Don't give me that," he yelled. "You're Gary Gilmore's attorneys. You just ask Noall Wootton to turn them over. Do you mean to say this state has no laws of discovery? You're allowed a copy of everything the prosecution is holding against your client."
It was getting to Schiller that Stanger, in particular, had not done anything. Not only had he not picked up the letters, but he had done nothing about getting a transcript of Gary's trial. Gary didn't want a transcript, Stanger replied.
This had nothing to do with Gary's defense, Schiller explained. It concerned the book and the movie. How could you do the trial without a transcript? Besides, Schiller pointed out, they had a legal duty to perform. What if Gary changed his mind and wanted to appeal? If they had no transcript, and were not familiar with Snyder and Esplin's notes, they could lose a crucial week. A man's life might be lost. He got hysterical in his indignation. "I want you guys to get on the goddamned phone," he said, "and start pulling things together."
He could see they didn't like it one bit, but they also knew that any additional money further down the road was going to come from him.
Schiller couldn't get over the way these lawyers worked. Wootton had never bothered to transcribe the trial. What if the Supreme Court of the United States needed the record? A little later, Moody's secretary called back to say that the legal stenographer thought the job would cost $600. "I'll pay for it," said Schiller, "don't worry." What was more important was that Wootton agreed to turn over the originals of the letters if they would provide him with a set of Xeroxes. So Stephanie went over as Moody's messenger and picked the lot up.
After Larry looked them over, he estimated that Gary must have written through August, September, October, and November, up to the suicide attempt, an average of ten pages a day. Quite a few letters actually went on for twenty of those big, yellow office-pad pages. The total had to be well over a thousand pages. He just skimmed. He could see Gilmore was writing about everything. One place he'd give Nicole a college education with essays on Michelangelo and Van Gogh, in another, pages of fuck talk. Must be tons of meat and potatoes in those envelopes. Schiller figured that he would need at least six complete copies, one for Wootton, one for himself, one for the future writer of the book, and at least three others for sale in different places. He called the main office of Xerox in Denver and asked about the fastest machine they had, and who might have it. He was prepared to fly Stephie to Denver, Dallas, San Francisco, wherever, when damn if they didn't tell him that right in Provo, the Press Publishing Company had just such a machine. Right in fucking Provo. A Christmas card company. Schiller shook his head. Sometimes these things happen.
Obviously he was not going to tell a Christmas card company that Gary Gilmore was what he intended to use their machine for. He merely asked to rent the machine from eleven at night until three in the morning, and used Moody and Stanger as references. Stephie and he went in with a man from the plant and it ended up taking six and a half hours.
There was magnitude to the job. Gary's letters were so carefully folded, it was unbelievable. One small white prison envelope might hold a dozen legal-sized pages. Gary had not only folded the sheets that closely, but Nicole maintained the folds. Schiller began to feel the relationship of Gary and Nicole in the way those letters had been opened and put back, opened and put back.
Later, when he had a chance to read more, Schiller began to feel a little security. Even if the Supreme Court took back their stay and Gary was executed in a week or so, these letters still offered the love story. He not only had the man's reason for dying but Romeo and Juliet, and life after death. It might even be enough for a screenwriter.
The next problem was where to sell some of them. The National Enquirer had made a firm offer for sixty grand to Scott Meredith,