Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [348]
From Hawaii, Schiller was making phone calls all over the world to set up the sale of the letters so they couldn't be traced to him. This all involved dealing with the right editor. It was only every few years when he had a particularly big offering, that he would contact the major foreign magazines. He knew, therefore, they wouldn't cross him. He wasn't obliged to be on the phone with them tomorrow making still another deal. He was not an agent who had ten projects moving at once with the same people, and so could say, "All right, I'll give you this concession, if you give me that." Under such conditions, each side could afford to double-cross the other occasionally. Ten mild double-crosses, say, in a hundred deals. But doing custom work, as he did, custom jobs, editors were hardly going to trick him. They'd never have another opportunity to bid on his work.
In Hawaii, he hired secretaries to type the sales contracts. That way, anyone on his traveling team, either his mother, Stephie, or Stephie's mother, Liz, would only have to fill in the amount and the name of the publisher. Since he was doing this preparatory work on the phone, the letters could be presented in lots. Package #1 would offer the magazine a sample contract and five Gilmore letters. The editor would only be allowed to look at them while one of Schiller's women was in the room. That was to make sure no juicy quotes were copied out. If the editor liked what he saw, he could then open Package #2. That contained the complete set of letters, a large package.
He would then be given so many hours to make a decision. Except for the solitary editor in on the secret, nobody on any of those magazines would have the remotest idea who those three women might be.
That much to the good. On the other hand, he did not feel comfortable with the way Barry was now handling the Utah operation.
On the flush of their terrific interview on December 20, Farrell had planned to keep the work going while he was gone, keep it moving like clockwork. The intention was for Barry to call the lawyers each morning from Los Angeles with a new set of questions. Moody and Stanger would then carry them out to the prison, interview Gary, and put the tape on a plane that night. Farrell would pick up the package at the airport, listen to the new tapes, and compose a new set of questions, call them in by the next morning-it would all be very productive.
A strong arrangement, but it was falling through completely.
In one week, things could travel a long distance down the wrong tube.
An unconscionable amount of time was being lost, Farrell explained, dictating the questions to the secretaries. They kept garbling them, and then the lawyers weren't working much. It was like they weren't about to do Schiller's business while he was out of town. "When you get back," Barry said, "we'll go down together." Before he knew it, Schiller was agreeing. But he was infuriated. If Barry was getting such shitty returns, why didn't he travel to Utah on his own and come to grips with the situation instead of limping along with the telephone? But Schiller didn't dare have it out at long distance. That, of course, kept the pressure up everywhere in his system. What a vacation!
4
Sometimes Brenda would feel as if cords were hooked into her flesh and pulling on her organs. Sometimes the pain would hit her when she was seated and she couldn't stand up. Sometimes, standing, it would grab her so suddenly, she'd have to sit down. Long after she stopped going to the prison, she kept trying to call Gary, but it was awfully tricky to get through. Once, she ended up with Sam Smith.
"I didn't think," Brenda said, "phone calls were that much of an inconvenience."
Smith told her they had to bring Gary out of a cell each time. "Why don't you put a phone in his room?" asked Brenda. "Good God, he is on Death Row." "Well," Sam said, "he could