Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [462]
Then, Schiller tried to convince Kretchmer to break the standard format and use INTERVIEWER and GILMORE rather than PLAYBOY and GILMORE, but suspected there wasn't anything Hugh Hefner would insist on more than the interviewer being made synonymous with Playboy.
Farrell wrote an introduction which Barry Golson had the pleasure of rewriting-he had Schiller on his turf at last!-and then Schiller wanted to go to sleep, Farrell wanted to go to sleep. Debbie, however, had been brought to Chicago to do the last-minute typing, and now that they were done she wanted to swim in Hugh Hefner's famous indoor pool at the mansion where you could watch the swimmers through a glass wall in the underground bar. She wasn't an ex-Playboy Bunny for nothing. So Kretchmer opened up the mansion.
Nobody was in town. Nobody was ever in the mansion anymore now that Hefner was in Los Angeles, but Debbie was able to go swimming while Farrell and Schiller just said, "Oh, no," and lay out in the sauna at three in the morning.
Back in Los Angeles, Schiller heard from Phil Christensen, Kathryne Baker's attorney, who called to say that Nicole was going to be released. Schiller had a flash of the press standing at the front door of the hospital. Here he had never met Nicole and didn't know what she thought of him. Couldn't even be certain she was going to honor the contract.
Naturally, Larry Flynt's new skin mag, Chic, called at just this time to offer $50,000 for a series of nudes on Nicole. $50,000! They were being very polite. Using the word "nudes." Maybe they didn't know how to say "spread-shots." He told Chic he would like them to come up with a list of photographers. That was a ploy to keep them off for a while. Then, Larry called Kathryne Baker and said, "I think it's important Nicole be taken immediately out of Utah, or the press will hound her. You and your kids need a vacation. Have you ever lived at the beach?" Kathryne said, "Nicole really loved the beach when we were up in Oregon."
"All right," said Schiller. "I'll get a house in Malibu. You and Nicole and your family come as my guests. I won't impose. Just come out and have a month off in a different environment."
Kathryne said that would really be wonderful. Larry scrambled around and made arrangements with Western Airlines for tickets for Nicole and her kids under phony names and prepaid the six trips, and called Jerry Scott to go to Kathryne's house at a given hour of the morning to pick up the baggage and bring it to the airport, then return for Mrs. Baker, and coordinate with Sundberg to have Nicole released at a precise time from the hospital so Jerry could zap her to the airport. They figured it would be exactly a thirty-five-minute drive, and would put a ten-minute variance on it. Pick her up forty-five minutes before the plane was due to leave. All arranged.
Nicole was not only getting ready to leave, but had, in fact, even gone up the hospital corridor one last time to pick up her street clothes, when a girl asked, "How do you feel about Gary?" Nicole said, "If he was alive, I'd do it all over again." They turned her right around and put her back in the hospital.
Schiller was on the phone the next four or five days. He spoke to Dr. Woods and the other doctors. He spoke to Kiger. He kept describing the environment he would put Nicole in. Promised to have a doctor standing by if something happened, swore she'd be secluded from the press. He would underline that promise. He sent Kiger a telegram that set it all out, then a longer letter by courier. He suggested that the hospital have the Court recommend her release, thereby lifting the hospital off the hook.
The plan went into effect all over again. Only this time, Schiller decided he would fly to Utah. No way was he going to be caught on the wrong end again, waiting for things to happen. Lucinda was sent to Malibu