Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [319]
That was good. Farrell was treating him with some seriousness.
All the more unhappy did it make Larry then that the next line said:
The man was something of a carrion bird: Already he'd done business with Susan Atkins, Marina Oswald, Jack Ruby, Madame Nhu, and Lenny Bruce's widow.
Once Schiller got over the impact, it didn't bother him too much. A magazine writer had to put in zingers, and after being screwed on In the Beginning, the Muhammad All book, Farrell owed him a shot anyway. Besides, the rest of the piece was brilliant. A very good article. "Carrion bird" was going to get picked up, but on balance he was ahead. He began to think again of inviting Farrell to work on the questions.
Schiller was suffering with Moody and Stanger's interviews. He just could not accept how little the lawyers were bringing back. Gary had said he would not answer any more questions, but he meant written ones. Talking to him for hours, they should have been able to elicit more. On top of that, they made technical errors.
In the beginning, the lawyers didn't really know how to use a tape recorder. Once, Stanger did an interview with a dead battery. Schiller had to buy fresh ones. He couldn't comprehend how Stinger could keep laughing it off. Once the cassette was not turned over. The lawyers had recorded twice on the same side. Must have sat there, and rewound the tape, then recorded on top of themselves. Ron's attitude seemed to be: If we make a mistake, we get it tomorrow. One time Schiller had met Ron and Bob in a little coffee shop just a couple of miles down the road from the prison. Right away they wanted to listen to a tape just smuggled out. Played it in the coffee shop. Schiller said, "Let's go back to the office for that." But they had to hear what they had done. There, in the fucking restaurant. People nearby could have overheard it all. They couldn't seem to comprehend it wasn't wise, that tomorrow it could all be cut off. Why, they acted as if it was their prison. Schiller, trying to hold on to his temper, sometimes had to tell himself, maybe it is. It was practically their hometown, after all.
"Forget Larry Schiller the businessman," he told them. "That's a side of me, but we're forgetting it. We have history here. We have to get that." When they continued to show resistance, he said finally, "I'm going to give these interviews over to Vern." He was halfway serious. It couldn't be any worse and Gary might open up. What was making Schiller paranoid is that the lawyers didn't bring back a tape every time they went out. He began to wonder what they did discuss when they wouldn't tape. Kept saying to them, "Take down anything and everything, even your legal discussions. Talk about the will It's all. You never know when it's going to be important." Sometimes he would give them a message for Gary and not be certain it had gotten through. Certainly didn't hear it on the tapes.
"Vern may not have your education," he would then threaten, "but he'll listen to me." It all consumed one horrendous week. He didn't have the hours to deal with ABC, movie rights, planning the story, getting ready for the execution, or time to study the letters.
Finally he told them to instruct Gary to call each of them Larry when doing an interview. It was better for Gilmore, he explained, to be thinking constantly of the man to whom he was telling the story of his life. Maybe that way, Schiller thought, they would find it easier to ask a tough question or two. Schiller was trying everything.
More and more he was thinking of an approach to Barry Farrell.
There were a lot of memories he kept of Barry from Life magazine,