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By Root 12288 0

into the seven rooms Larry had taken at the Orem TraveLodge, complete with their own rented typewriters, tables, two secretaries, guards, office room, writing room for Barry, archive room, Barry's bedroom, Schiller's bedroom, each girl's room, plus direct telephone lines so they only had to use the switchboard for standard incoming calls, and no motel employee could listen in on them, Larry had been dodging the media. Dodging them well. In the middle of all that heat, with everybody trying to get to him, Schiller had been careful to leak only the right stories through Gus Sorensen and Tamera, thereby coloring Salt Lake news, and so indirectly shaping the wire service output. Still, after all that hard-achieved control, Barry had only to walk into the main office to Xerox a page, and there was Jimmy Breslin, notebook in hand, twenty days late on the story, nicely driven down, thank you, in a hired Lincoln with a chauffeur.

There was Schiller telling Jimmy Breslin about the eyes. The eyes.

Well, Farrell liked Jimmy. Breslin had done some nice things for him over the years. When Farrell was doing his column for Life back in '69 and '70 and got into a large dispute one time with his editors, a make-or-break conflict, Breslin did him the favor of talking it over for an evening. Farrell came to the conclusion that Breslin was very smart. "You know, Barry," Jimmy had said, "your column is your real estate," a phrase to stick in Farrell's mind. "Never give up your real estate," Breslin said, "fight and fuck around, patch it up, spackle it, make compromises, but don't give up the real estate." Farrell had followed his advice and thought it was right, so he had a soft spot for Jimmy Breslin.

The soft spot vanished, however, in one hot minute when he walked into the room and there was Schiller with this idiotic blissful smile on his face, rapping away to Breslin about the eyes. He could have been selling a new kind of floor polish on TV. And there was Breslin sitting on the couch, fat as a wild boar, taking notes three weeks late. One monument of bulk accepting tribute from another.

For weeks, trying to push these interviews uphill, Farrell had felt like he was searching in a dark room for a somber object. So when the story about the eyes came through, Farrell felt as if, finally, a little light was being generated. Living with Gilmore's rap sheet, going through his long prison record and petty busts, Farrell had about decided that Gary's life, by the measurement of its criminal accomplishment, would not rank high on any self-respecting convict's scale. He would be looked upon not as a heavy, but a ding.

Sufficiently unpredictable for other convicts to give him a wide berth, but not a convict with real clout on the inside. In fact, close to a total loner. The kind of guy police terminology referred to as a germ. On human scale, a weed. Yet, just yesterday, coming toward the day of his death, talking about his eyes, Gilmore had said something fine as far as Farrell was concerned.

GILMORE I told you that this ninety-year-old man wrote and asked me for my eyes . . . ah, eh, he's too old. I mean I don't want to sound harsh about it, but this other guy is only twenty, and I think it might be better. Would you like to call this doctor and, ah, just tell him simply: . . . you got 'em! Gary Gilmore. And to draw up the papers through you guys.

MOODY We'll bring it up with the Warden.

GILMORE In his letter here, he says something about the young guy's life is just dwindling. Like the guy is really living a hopeless life. I'd rather the eyes be his than just give 'em to the Eye bank. I'd kinda like to know where they went. All right . . . call him collect. (laughing) . . . Ask him if he'll accept a collect call from Gary Gilmore.

The fact that Gilmore could come up with that kind of thinking moved Farrell right down to the gut. The interview had come in the day before, and after he and Schiller had listened to it, Farrell played it again when alone in his room. It was late at night. He had been working for a long time that day. Gilmore's