Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [315]
He could probably get no more than a third as much, but at that price, Schiller liked Time. It was not only the prestige. In essence, Time magazine was a sales letter printed everywhere in the world. Gilmore's importance would be amplified internationally. That alone could pick up the $40,000 difference.
All the while, he was playing with the Enquirer on the side.
Their offer had gone from sixty to sixty-five. Schiller needed more money the way a farmer without a tractor needs a tractor, but he hated how the Enquirer would cheapen the property. In the interval, Time looked like they might even go to $25,000.
Then he got the idea to sell an in-depth Gary Gilmore interview to Playboy. That ought to be worth another twenty. Splicing the rope with Time and Playboy, plus the ABC money already spent, plus whatever he could pick up in Europe by selling the letters ought to come to more than a hundred thousand total. That should be enough to take care of all expenses, past and pending.
The lawyers, however, were having their difficulties. Schiller's admission to the press that he was a Hollywood producer had turned everything around at the prison. Sam Smith said he was going to see that nobody profited from the execution of Gary Gilmore. "Not while I'm Warden." He began to put a lot of restrictions on the visits.
When they talked to Gary these days, there was always a guard present. The lawyers would put down the phone and refuse to talk until the guard got the hell out of there. Sometimes the fellow would go to the opposite end of the room, but then, you had to be paranoid that the phones were bugged. It was hell talking around a corner to a client whose face you couldn't see. One day, Moody even went to the mat with Sam Smith over his right to tape-record visits with Gary.
"For executing his Will," complained Bob, "I have to record his remarks in case he changes his mind." He knew the argument was a waste of time, but he did it to keep pressure off the unauthorized tape recordings he was already making. They were difficult enough at best. You had to sneak the machine into the prison under your coat, and then there was the apprehension that a guard could notice the little rubber recording cap that had been slipped onto the earpiece of the phone, Discovery would leave them professionally embarrassed.
Of course, the Bar Association hadn't done anything with Boaz and probably wouldn't start up with them, but all the same, if you valued your reputation this became one more uncertainty to carry around.
Other times, the guards would try to inspect their attaché cases as they walked in. Then they would have to put on a real show. They were Gilmore's lawyers, and their briefcases were not to be touched!
It meant they had to psych themselves up every time they came to the prison gate.
One occasion, Ron got into a hell of a fight with Sam Smith. "I'm going to interview my client the way I want," Ron told him, "and you're not going to tell me how to do it." "Look," said Smith, "this is my prison." Ron said, "Piss on that." He started yelling. Smith tried to calm him down. "Now, Ron," he said, "now Ron," said Sam, and Ron answered, "Bullshit, you're not going to tell me how to conduct an interview. I've got to have a record. If my man gets executed, and somebody sues, I want these talks on record. I'm going to handle my client the way I want." "Well," said Sam Smith, "you're going to have to go to Federal Court to find out if you have that right." Ron said, "Buddy, if I have to, I'm going."
It was a hell of a yelling match, and got them nowhere. The Warden would never tell you what you could or couldn't do. He would just say, when asked, that it was against policy. Ron even had a go with Ernie Wright, the Director of Corrections. Ron was one of the five members of the State Building Board, and that was real leverage.
Any time the prison needed a new facility or, hell, even a new shed, they had, like any other State institution, to get permission from