Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [347]
Then it would all come down on him again, his pain, his situation, his fucking life, and he would say to himself, "Gary, that ain't the speech I'd make. I would say, 'Goddamn you, you got more guts than any son of a bitch I ever knew. I just wish I had as many balls as you. Hell, fellow, A man knows a man whenever they meet,' " and he would blink back his sadness, for it was a sentence Gary had written to him in a recent letter that could just as well have been received years ago.
3
Half the value of Schiller's vacation was quickly blown. He had brought Stephie out to meet his brother and sister-in-law and it was a social thing, and she was spending all her time with them, and where was he? On the phone. What headaches.
The lawyers for Max Jensen's insurance company had filed a Wrongful Death suit for recovery of $40,000 from Gary Gilmore's estate, and as a courtesy to Colleen Jensen, had hooked on a million-dollar suit for her. Now, while Schiller was trying to go belly-up to the sun, damn if the insurance lawyers didn't get a Court order that Gary had to give a deposition. When Schiller found out about it, he hit the fucking ceiling. He was stuck to the phone. Said to Moody, "Did you agree? You didn't fight it? What do you mean you didn't?"
He did not enjoy shrieking at Moody because it was highly nonproductive. Moody was too stubborn for that. Just sat behind his glasses. A real poker player. Yet Schiller couldn't help himself. He was climbing the walls and bouncing.
"What are you upset about?" asked Bob Moody. "What's the big thing about a deposition?"
Schiller almost said, "Are you out of your mind?" He did say, "Don't you understand? The Enquirer can make a goddamned deal with those lawyers, go in for three hours, and pick up Gary's whole life story. Even if they can't get any of their own reporters in, they can coach one of the attorneys to pump Gary." It was awful. They had a right to start the deposition with where-were-you-born, then go into Gilmore's criminal record. "The whole story," shrieked Schiller, "can be pulled out in one session."
Moody said, "We can't stop it."
"Bullshit," said Schiller. "I want you to go right into Court. If you can't block the deposition, at least file a motion that it's got to be put in bond." He smacked his fist against the night table, feeling a whole kinship with the notion of bond. "The tapes from that meeting," he said, "have got to be sealed right at the jail, and the Court has to give an order that they're not to be transcribed for so many months, blah blah, you understand what I mean, et cetera." Stephie was ready to kill him. Here it was supposed to be a vacation, and he was living on the phone. "Is this what it's going to be like when we get married?" she cried out. Was she just another woman? Was she a business deal? Schiller waved her off. Over the wire, he was practically writing out the motion. What a relief when he learned a couple of days later that the Judge agreed to seal the stuff in wax, literally, until March.
There, in the balmy air of Hawaii, Schiller began to breathe. The Enquirer could still try to get those insurance lawyers to take notes, but he didn't worry about that. Now that there was a Court order invoking secrecy, a lawyer could be disbarred for making such a deal.
Besides, no local Mormon would fight a Judge's order. It had been close. A possible catastrophe averted.
Yet when the lawyers went to the prison next day to take the