Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [379]
By his reading of the statute, Dorius said, the details of execution were up to the discretion of the Warden. If Sam wished, Gilmore could be strapped in a chair with a hood over his head.
GILMORE Warden didn't come right out and say it, but I believe he is concerned that my standing and looking at the firing squad will unnerve them. I asked him for a good reason why I had to wear the hood, and he couldn't give me one, but he seemed to be thinking about something. Listen, he did say right in front of Fagan, he said, usually they come to your cell, put the hood on you there, and you wear the hood from the time you leave your cell till you're dead. He said he would not do that to me, he said he wouldn't put the hood on me until after I'm in the chair. Now I want the son of a bitch to keep his word on that at least.
Gilmore was certainly showing them how cool he could be. The only newspaper story that irritated him lately was the one that described him as nervous. If Gary was anything, he was not that.
Moody would query him all the time. "Aren't you scared?" he would ask. "No," Gilmore would say. Never once did he admit fear.
Never once was there anything to suggest he wanted to change his mind. His lack of wavering became unbelievable to Moody. Gilmore seemed to be backing his intentions with every cell in his body. Not only was his emotional strength increasing, but his physical. "How do you feel?" Bob Moody would ask. "Did you sleep?" "I slept good last night." "How's exercise?" "I'm building myself."
To demonstrate, Gilmore would do a headstand on top of a stool.
His muscle tone was certainly excellent. These convicts in Maximum seemed to live for nothing but their muscle tone, yet Gary still looked good compared to the super muscle tone of prisoners around him.
Moody never thought of himself as being easy to shake, but Gilmore was beginning to impress him:
4
When Gibbs handed over Gilmore's letters, the New York Post gave him $5,000, holding up the last $2,500. The next thing Gibbs heard from the Post was that they'd checked the list of people invited to the execution and his name was not on it. Still, after checking out his credentials from Treasury and the FBI, the Post people did an interview in a bar, and took about thirty pictures of him.
Once the reporter and photographer left, Gibbs just kept drinking. But it didn't mix with the Oral Varidase, and he got sick to his stomach. The bartender had to help him to the rest room. Gibbs had sent off a thousand of the five thousand right away to his mother, but had been flashing money like a fiend. In the restroom, first thing he knew, a broad was standing there with her dude right behind her.
She lunged at Gibbs, figuring that with his bad leg she could push him down easy but he dropped her with a fist, then nailed her boy friend. This was how he told the story later. When he went back to the bar, two cops happened to be in the restaurant and arrested Gibbs.
The Lance LeBaron didn't seem to work-and he was in the slammer with $100,000 bail.
5
With the execution scheduled for Monday, Schiller had begun to feel the final pressure by Thursday. Rupert Murdoch started calling from New York to offer sums for an exclusive on the execution. All Schiller had to do was walk out to the press after the firing-squad did their job, make a short public statement, then go into a room with one of Murdoch's reporters. Schiller realized he couldn't just say no, or Murdoch might try to get into the execution chamber some other way, bribe a guard, whatever. Rupert Murdoch hadn't bought control of the New York Post and the Village Voice and made a fortune in Australian newspapers for nothing. So, Schiller planned to string Murdoch along. For that matter, he was keeping Time and Newsweek and a couple of others on the string.
Then an Englishman called Schiller. "We want you to walk the Last