Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [354]
GILMORE Four months.
INTERVIEWER Four months! We thought you said that reform schools educate. Couldn't you have used your esoteric knowledge to stay out of jail?
GILMORE It was just the pattern of my life. Some guys are lucky all their lives. No matter what kind of trouble they get into, pretty soon they're back on the bricks. But some guys are unlucky. They fuck up once on the outside and it's the pattern of their lives to be drawn back to do a lot of time.
INTERVIEWER And you're one of the unlucky ones?
GILMORE Yeah, "the eternal recidivist." We're creatures of habit, man.
INTERVIEWER What's the longest stretch of time you've been free since you first went to reform school?
GILMORE Eight months was about the longest.
INTERVIEWER Your I.Q.'s supposedly about 130, and yet you've spent almost nineteen of the past twenty-two years behind bars. Why were you never able to get away with anything?
GILMORE I got away with a couple of things. I ain't a great thief. I'm impulsive. Don't plan, don't think. You don't have to be a superintelligent to get away with shit, you just have to think. But I don't. I'm impatient. Not greedy enough. I could have gotten away with lots of things that I got caught for. I don't, ah, really understand it. Maybe I quit caring a long time ago.
All that was fine. Farrell was not for buying any of this without further examination, but the man was at least trying to give a presentation of himself. Clearly, it was the way he wanted the world to think of him, remember him. A mighty different man from the letters!
Farrell and Schiller agreed that the trick was to get Gary to talk truly about the murders. Something always happened then. Gilmore's readiness to comment on himself disappeared. His account fell into the same narrative style every hustler and psychopath would give you of the most boring, or of the most extraordinary evening-we did this and then, man, like we did that. Episodic and unstressed. Resolute refusal, thought Farrell, to attach value to any detail. Life is a department store. Lift what you can.
GILMORE April got in the truck and, man, she turned the radio on real loud and moved right over beside me and told me she didn't want to go home, and I told her, Well, look, I'll keep you out all night, if you want. So I drove down to the place where I'd bought my truck and I talked to those guys about the financial arrangements. I give 'em my Mustang as the down payment and we drank some booze and just kind of made a loose arrangement about the truck, they were more or less just holding my guns for me, and, uh, I kept one pistol with me, the loaded one, and I signed the papers and took ownership of the truck and left my Mustang there, and then I was driving around with April and we got out into Orem and I pulled around the corner to this service station and it looked fairly deserted. That's what I guess drew my attention to it. I just drove around the corner and parked and told April to stay in the truck. I'd be back in a moment.
And I went over to the gas station and told Jensen to give me the money, and he did, and I told him, well, come on in the bathroom and get down on the floor, and it was pretty quick. I didn't let him know it was coming or anything. It was just a .22, so I shot him twice in rapid succession, to make sure that he was not in any pain or that he wasn't left half alive or anything. And, and, I left there and I drove to, uh, I don't know just where that Sinclair station was, but I drove back to the main drag. State Street, I guess it is, and I went into Albertson's and bought some potato chips and different things to take to a movie and half a case of beer and some things that April wanted to eat.
Finally, one of the lawyers asked a question. Farrell couldn't help but note that it produced better results. It was obvious Gilmore had to be pushed out of the psychopathic flats.
INTERVIEWER Now, one thing. When you stopped at the gas station, did you have any intention of either robbing Jensen or killing him?
GILMORE I had the