Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [141]
“Your brother,” he went on, “was somebody who was known as a good, steady backup guy. He was somebody you might take along for a second hand when you had to do a certain bad job, and you wanted somebody who could back your action plus keep their mouth shut afterward. Gary worked that way for some of these folks. He was the guy you might have on the lookout when you went inside a place to do something, or the guy you would have waiting with the getaway car. He was somebody you would use, but only so much. You included him because you were afraid of how he might take it if you left him out. There were harder guys in Gary’s circle than Gary, but I don’t think there was anybody who wasn’t a little afraid of him. They knew he would do anything to make his point, and that he would never be intimidated by a threat or challenge.”
Every now and then, one of Gary’s crimes would land him in jail, though never for more than a couple of weeks during this particular period. The jailers found Gary’s behavior becoming more and more peculiar and disturbing. One time, when he was at Rocky Butte on a hit-and-run charge, the jail had him committed to Dammasch Hospital, which was the state mental facility. Gary had been insisting to the jailers that he knew there was some sort of conspiracy at work against him, and the jail’s officers were a part of it. He threw a bowl of hot soup into the face of another inmate, who was working in the kitchen. Gary swore there was poison in the soup. Then he set fire to the mattress in his cell. At the hospital, he told the attending doctor that a radar set had been installed on the roof of the jail and set to his frequency. He also said that he heard voices coming through the jail vents, talking about him late at night. Plus, he was having more savage headaches. One of the hospital’s psychiatrists decided this was all a ruse: Gary probably figured jail time was easier to serve in a hospital than in a cell, or maybe he thought the hospital would offer easier escape opportunities. Gary was returned to the jail. That’s when he started slitting his wrists. He went back to the hospital and finished out most of his sentence there.
THIS IS ONE OF THOSE STORIES THAT NORMAN MAILER originally related in The Executioner’s Song, and that I somehow managed to shut out of my memory, even after reading the book two or three times:
My mother came home one afternoon to find Gary sitting in her green leather armchair, holding a document in his hand. He was glaring angrily at my mother, something she had never seen him do before. “I want to show you something,” he said, and handed her the piece of paper. It was his original birth certificate—the one from McCamey, Texas—with the name Faye Robert Coffman. “Maybe you would like to tell me about this.”
My mother had kept the certificate in her desk all these years. Apparently. Gary had picked the lock and found it. She was taken aback, and she was livid. “What do you think you’re doing?” she said.
Gary shook his head. “Hell, Mom, no wonder the old man never liked me. I was never really his son, was I?”
“How dare you make such an accusation. Of course you were his son. That was just a name we were using when we were traveling through Texas.”
“Don’t give me that fucking bullshit.”
“And don’t you dare talk to me like that. You’re the one who should apologize. You could have asked me about this. Instead, you were in my desk without permission.”
“I never would have gotten this news with permission, would I?” said Gary. He got up out of the chair, grabbed his jacket, and handed the certificate to my mother.
“You can keep it,” she said to him, trying to force a smile.
“No-thank-you,” he said, biting off each word. It was the iciest way he had ever spoken to her.
“Gary, there