Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [322]
She could see Cardell liked the thorough way Schiller had handled the contracts so that there would be something substantial for Nicole's children, and the heirs of the victims. It didn't seem like he was just out to get the money.
Once he finished talking about himself, he said to Tamera, "I'm not going to mislead you and suggest you're going to have a key part in writing a book or movie or anything like that." Still, there was a lot she could do for him, and a great deal he could offer her. If they could set up a working cooperation, he would let Tamera sit in as an assistant on many a meeting. She would meet a number of important people in journalism and television on a different basis from all her lunches and dinners with them heretofore. Those occasions might have been fun for her, but what he offered would be more substantial.
She could be present when important decisions were hammered out in confrontation. She would get a dramatic inside view of how a big story is put together, and know a great deal more when she was done.
Schiller liked her, although that hardly mattered. She was not exactly pretty, but she was attractive. Her features were a little too irregular to make her a beauty, but she was tall and had nice ash-blond hair and was full of energy, real clean-cut country pep. Wham! Pow!
Stick her tongue in her cheek to show her confusion, or-Sock!-skew her lower jaw to the side to register embarrassment. With such a girl, Schiller knew his offer was better than catnip. It was these clean, slightly straitlaced young ladies with a wild ambitious career streak who could never resist opportunity.
He needed, he said, a newspaper to be his source 24 hours a day. His eyes and ears in a strange city. He could tell Tamera that he had lived and worked in many a new town for a week or month, and before he was done, he sometimes knew more about what was going on in that region, be it Provo, or Tangiers, than the natives. Nobody could figure out how he did it, but he would tell her it was simple. He always tried to get a pipeline into a local newspaper. Would she be his pipeline to the Deseret News?
He wanted, he assured her, a relationship that the newspaper would understand and profit from. He would supply them with pieces of information about Gilmore. In turn, she would feed him the local Salt Lake news plus what came in from Orem and Provo. Let him know what was-he used the local expression-coming down, what the Governor was up to, and the Attorney General's office. He wanted to have his finger on it.
When she began to look worried, as if he were proposing a little too much, he went back to his main theme. "Tamera," he said, "even if you don't drink yourself, you're going to see big reporters drinking, and going after a story, and working on their interviews. It's all there to learn."
What he did not mention was his private motive. He had to worry about Nicole. There would come a day when she would walk out of the hospital, and Schiller would go up to her. If, for any reason, she saw him as a Hollywood type waving a contract, then good relations with Tamera might be indispensable.
Cardell left the room for a moment, and Larry nailed the relationship.
He was proud of it afterward. Just a hunch, just a gamble on his instinct, but he knew there had to be some inside reason Tamera had gotten so close to Nicole. Something the two girls had in parallel. When they were alone, Schiller said, "I bet you made it with a con, and then he fucked you over."
Tamera couldn't believe it. She stammered, "It wasn't that kind of relation. Wasn't sexual. But I was in love, and Nicole let me read Gary's letters because I told her about the wonderful letters I used to get from my friend."
Schiller went back to L.A. on the night plane. He had a professional link with Sorensen on the Trib, and what might prove a real connection on the Deseret News. Barry Farrell, whom he called from the airport, said, yes, definitely, he would work with him. The pieces were coming together. Schiller enjoyed an airplane trip