The Executioner's Song (115 page)

SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Salt Lake, Jan. 10—Officers guarding Gilmore indicate he is starting to get nervous as the date for execution draws near.

Nicole, some guards said in the newspaper that I'm nervous. I've never been nervous in my life and I ain't now.

                They are.

                I'm just pissed off because I hate being watched—

Sam Smith called Earl Dorius to discuss the execution one more time. There was still the question of whether to carry out the death sentence on the prison grounds. That could have an adverse effect upon the convicts. On the other hand, if they took it outside, there would be problems of security and demonstrators. They would also have to locate some suitable facility on State land. Dorius and Smith both came back to the conclusion it was better to face the unpleasant consequences of having it take place within the prison.

                Sam returned to another crucial question. In November, in December, and now again there had been popular talk. of employing volunteers from the general public as executioners. A few people had even sent letters. From the beginning, however, it had been Dorius's flat-out recommendation to use peace officers. The statute was silent on the matter, but Earl thought any system set up for screening possible kooks among the volunteers would be expensive, and the legalities a tangle. Like it or not, Earl didn't see it as a viable choice.

                It came down, as it always had, to using peace officers. Earl thought it was important, however, not to use anyone from the prison. Sam agreed it could only get a guard labeled a convict-killer, and thereby make him a future risk if he wanted to continue working inside. He would be an affront to the inmate population. So, they agreed: peace officers. From either the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office or the Utah County Sheriff's Office, Sam would keep the names secret.

It was Earl Dorius's view that the ACLU would have to file some action by Wednesday, January 12. Otherwise, should they lose in the lower Courts, they would not have allowed themselves time to appeal.

                Bob Hansen, however, made Earl a bet. The ACLU would save Judge Ritter, their ace in the hole, for the very end so there might not be time to obtain an override from a higher Court. "They'll wait until Friday the fourteenth, just before closing."

Hansen was ready to tell you his opinion of Ritter. "The law can be bent," he would say, "we all twist the law, a little. But Ritter tortures it." And he would go on to speak of the Judge's habits.

                One of Ritter's most unendurable characteristics, according to Hansen, was that he might have a list of forty trials and, on one day, call in all the attorneys in all forty cases. Then he would go down the list asking, "Are you ready? Are you ready?" He'd let them know, "All right, you're number two, you're number three," so forth, but when the first trial would end, he would call everybody back in, and say, "I've decided on number twenty next instead of number two," It sounded like a bad joke, but that was the way he ran things. Number twenty had to start a trial in five minutes. It was crazy. You never knew when you were going to be on. You'd have to have your witnesses ready four or five trials ahead. If they came from out of town, you had to put them up in motels. It was a disaster.

Of course, as a practical matter, give Ritter forty trials, and thirty-eight got settled out of Court. Nobody could stand the god damned suspense. That might be all right for some, but if you were working for the government, and didn't have a budget to keep your witnesses indefinitely available, and so they weren't there, Ritter simply dismissed the case. It could be a major felony, or a securities fraud, even an indictment the government had been working on for twenty years, Ritter would dismiss. You had to go up on appeal to get a reverse. That would usually be won, but then the government had to rearrest the parties all over again. A horrible waste of time. He just tortured the law.

By January 10, one week to go, there were press people in and out of the ACLU office all day. Cameras and microphones were always cocked. One didn't have to get prepared for them, they were there. Shirley Pedler felt as if she was always on. It had her up the wall that her hair needed to be constantly combed. She never knew when someone was going to be pointing another lens. And her clothes had become a problem. She could no longer come to work in dungarees and a T-shirt. Shirley decided to keep the Levi's, but wear a good shirt and a nice blazer. Since you were photographed from the waist up, it worked.

                At least she began to lose that awful awareness of "Hey, you're on TV. A lot of people are going to see this!" It was a relief. She'd been going for a long time with the feeling they were going to lose, so it gave her a heavy sense of responsibility when she didn't do things right with the media. She was so wound up that even when she managed to leave the office at seven or eight at night, she would just pace at home and smoke. She'd always been a smoker, but now she never quit. On a chain from morning to night.

                That morning, January 10, Shirley and some of the attorneys were discussing final legal operations and when she stepped out of the conference room into the hall, she was almost knocked down by press people. Didn't even have a statement. The conference had been called to determine which group could do what, but the lawyers hadn't come to any conclusions. Shirley started to say, "I have nothing to say," and dropped her papers. The haste with which she stooped to pick them up got some of the press laughing, as if she was trying to conceal dark deeds. Shirley couldn't get over how the media thought the ACLU was the center of a lot of legal action coming up.

                In fact, they had about decided there were good reasons for the ACLU to stay out. In the Utah community they were seen as such a radical group, that they hurt a cause by coming in.

                So, it was one glum conference. They felt they had no real standing. Their best hope was with Richard Giauque who had informed them that Mikal Gilmore was arriving in Salt Lake tomorrow. If Giauque could bring in a suit by the brother, or Gil Athay come in with one for the hi-fi killers, then the ACLU could enter as Friends of the Court. But the only real shot they could fire on their own was a taxpayers' suit. That was on the shakiest ground. They had such slim pickings that the best idea proposed this morning was for somebody to go out to the hospital and try to see Nicole. Maybe she could get Gary to change his mind about dying. Dabney said he would give Stanger a ring.

STANGER            Jinks said, "How much influence does Nicole have over Gary?" I said, "Why, what are you talking about?" He said, "Well, we were thinking that possibly we could get her to try to talk Gary into fighting."

GILMORE            They're clutching at straws, aren't they?

Schiller decided it was time to set up an office in Utah for the big Push. Told his secretary in L.A. to call some agencies and hire a couple of hard workers to type the transcripts. Single girls who could make the move to Provo and be able to work twenty hours a day, if necessary. Keep their mouths shut. Under the circumstances, Schiller wasn't about to look for local Provo talent. He arranged to have phones put in at the Orem TraveLodge and began making as many as two trips a day between Salt Lake and Los Angeles. With better than a week to go, the new hired girls, Debbie and Lucinda, came to Utah, and set up his office in the motel. First thing he told Debbie was, "I want the night phone numbers of two Xerox repairmen."

                When she said, "Can't we always get a repairman?" he told her, "Debbie, I may need a guy at three in the morning. Get that number. Give him a twenty-dollar bill. If he goes out to dinner, I want to know. I want him to call us. That's the way it has to operate."

                Wanted to break her in right.

                In the meantime, he was making plans to sneak a tape into the execution. It had to be small enough to fit inside a pack of cigarettes. He didn't know whether he'd use it or not, but had to have the tool. Psychologically, he told himself, he would spend thousands for things he might never use, just to feel secure.

                Of course, he wasn't really spending thousands. Schiller made a deal with a private investigator in Las Vegas who would sell him this minuscule tape recorder for $1,500 and buy it back for $1,300. Schiller would have to advance the entire amount up front and there'd be the cost of airfare to Vegas and back. Even so, he'd have an extra implement that might prove crucial for no more than few hundred dollars.

                All the same, he was getting in deep, but deep. The last week was shaping up, no question about it, as an $11,000 week. Off-duty policemen had to be hired as guards. He wanted Vern's home protected for the last three or four days, and talked Kathryne Baker into moving out of her house with her kids. Then he set up his office in the motel practically like a fortress. Was obliged 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.

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 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.