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By Root 12634 0

to. Now that ABC had pulled out, NBC would have their hounds running. They had staked him out as if he was Mrs. Onassis. Frantic. NBC knew Schiller had given Moyers material for CBS. Another guy might have double-crossed the first commitment and given a couple of minutes on Gilmore to NBC to get them off his back. Otherwise, they would, he knew, begin to harass him. In fact, one night, staying over in Salt Lake at the Hilton, he actually had to call the police at 4:30 A.M. in order to have a couple of NBC reporters removed from the hall outside the room he was occupying. Afterward, Gordon Manning, NBC Executive Producer for Special Broadcasts, kept describing him to media people as a lizard. That was television. When you didn't cooperate, they did their best to squash your nuts.

All the while he was trying to stay on top of his options. What if Gary did change his mind? What if the story became "Gilmore Takes His Appeal"? He and Barry discussed it. They were not sitting there hoping Gary would be executed. They were prepared to go either way. With Gilmore alive, the story would not be as obviously dramatic, but it could be good. You could show the slow subsidence of a man's hour in the great light of publicity. Gary's return to the shadows. The thing was not to panic, and never to try to influence history, never force the results. He would realize the story potential whatever it was. They might call him a carrion bird, but he knew from deep inside that he could live with Gilmore's life. He did not have to profit from his death.

6

All the same, temptations were commencing for Schiller. No sooner had he set up the office than some crazy offers started to come in.

Before they were even settled at the TraveLodge in Orem, Sterling Lord, acting as Jimmy Breslin's literary agent, was on the phone. He had heard that Schiller might be one of Gilmore's five guests to the execution, and Lord wanted to see about switching that invitation to Jimmy. It wasn't clear whether the Daily News or the column's syndicate was going to pick up the check, but the offer started at $5,000.

Schiller said, "It's not for me to sell. I can't even swear to you, Sterling, that I'm going to be there." Lord called back and said, "I might be able to get as much as thirty-five or even fifty thousand."

"It's not for sale," said Schiller. Breslin called. "I'll give you a carbon of my story," he growled. That meant Breslin would own it on Headline Day, and Schiller could have it for the rest of time.

Schiller decided Jimmy Breslin did not understand where Larry Schiller was really at. Of course, he had a lot of old friends these days. All of a sudden, Sterling Lord was his old friend. Jimmy Breslin was his old friend. "Where should I stay?" Breslin asked Schiller, and Larry answered, "Well, you can be a monkey and go to the Hilton, or come out here and slum with me." Breslin took a room right next to them in the motel. He had great instincts that way.

Barry got upset. "Why Breslin?" he asked. "I'm sorry," said Schiller to Farrell, "I can't do it all alone."

"While we're at it," said Farrell, "why did you invite Johnston here from the L.A. Times?"

"Don't you realize," said Schiller, "I want to give these fellows a little piece of the story, so at least I won't have the L.A. Times and the New York Daily News against me. I got to get some people on our side, you know." Couldn't Barry understand how alone he was now that ABC had pulled out? The umbilical cord had certainly been cut. "Yes," thought Farrell, "he does everything with a motive. He's always got a good reason. It's never that he's drunk or horny."

Schiller, decided Barry, was getting awful close to giving the goods away. He simply did not understand that each piece, no matter how small, still belonged to one potentially beautiful structure now being put together, and so were not separate chunks of wampum to be traded off at forest clearings to propitiate media dragons.

Farrell told himself that he should have been prepared. All the precautions had been going too well. From the time they moved