The Executioner's Song (146 page)

After the drive out to Malibu, Larry took Nicole and her to the grocery store and Lucinda watched him spend something like $160 on food for the Baker family. It was probably, Lucinda thought, more food than they'd ever had together in their lives, but Nicole didn't say anything. Just walked up and down the aisles. Larry would say, "Well, think we need some of this?" but she just kept walking through this incredible Malibu supermarket with all these dressed-up moneyed people around her.

                Larry kept buying, as if to compensate for the awkwardness of the situation. Two full baskets before long. Nicole would just kind of smile, like food was the last thing she had on her mind. At one point Larry asked her if there was anything else she wanted, and she said, "Yeah, like I think I'd like some instant potatoes."

Later, driving Kathryne Baker around L.A., out on the freeway with this skinny high-strung, very made-up little woman, Lucinda listened to how Gary had come over to Kathryne's house with guns, and she was always terrified of him. It was almost as if so much attention had been given to Nicole, that Kathryne wanted to get in with her story too, and was telling it right in front of the children. It came out in a jumble. But Lucinda was fascinated. When the kids would interrupt, Lucinda wanted them to be quiet.

The first thing Schiller told Nicole after they got back from the supermarket was that she was going to have to take on responsibility for the house. There would be a thousand dollars in cash available as expenses this month, and he would leave whatever part of it she wanted now. The station wagon was also there for her. Now he would say good-bye for a while. The moment he left, however, it came over him that Nicole might open those boxes Gary had left, read something he wrote, and kill herself. She had the kind of calm to do it. That was when he got scared shitless.

                He had said good-bye to her with a great big smile, had told her he'd be around the next day, and she should take it easy and feel right, but he could feel how surprised she was that he was leaving her alone this first night away from the hospital, alone, that is, with her mother and kids. He said, "Hey, you're your own person. If I see you tomorrow, fine. If you don't want to see me tomorrow, nothing lost." That was what he said, but he had never been so scared as on that ride home.

                In fact, he couldn't hold out till he got back. Two-thirds of the way to Beverly Hills, he stopped and called, pretending he had just gotten in, "Want to let you know I'm home safely," he said in a voice that couldn't sell ice cream, but, of course, had to hear her voice to be sure she hadn't packed it in.

Nicole did open the box that night. Gary had left her a Meerschaum pipe which Nicole didn't know was of value. She thought it looked great for blowing soap bubbles. Then there was the watch Gary had broken at the estimated time of execution. She thought it was neat of him to do it. After all, what would it mean if she'd just been handed a watch? Then there was a Bible in the box. Gary wrote he had been sent enough Bibles to open a holy store, but this one arrived on the day he had attempted to take his life the second time.

                She read through newspaper stories he had left her on Gary and Nicole, and looked at a picture of Amber Jim, who was a ten-year-old girl prizefighter who had written to Gary. Plus a bunch of letters from Amber Jim. Nicole actually got jealous reading them, even though Amber Jim was just a little girl. It also made her feel like crying. It was the first thing that brought Nicole close to the reality of all those people besides herself who had been thinking of Gary as the time of his execution came near.

                Then, she saw a picture of Richard Gibbs. Underneath it, Gary had written, "Undercover agent and a rat. Stool pigeon. He really fooled me." A lot of pictures of Nicole and her family at various ages were in the box, and letters sent to Gary from a lot of people. A St. Michael's medal. A navy blue sweat shirt was the best. It didn't stink, but it did smell of him. Smelled nice. It was just a great sweat shirt, and she didn't want to wash it. She wore it that night and wore it a few times after, and never wanted to wash it, but after a while, it got funky and she had to.

Schiller didn't start the first interview for a week. Then it was a problem where to get privacy to do them. The house at Malibu had three bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen, dining room and living room on the main floor, and on the lower level, by the beach, a playroom. Her mother slept in one bedroom, the Baker kids in another, and Nicole was planning to share a big, king-sized bed with Sunny and Jeremy, but she preferred to shack out on her cold, windy porch in the late January and early February winter sunshine of Malibu. It was cold and windy, but she chose it. Virtually moved out there. All her books were on the porch.

                They ended up having interviews in all kinds of places. Now that she was out of the hospital, Nicole hated to be confined to a room, so Schiller would, start his tape recorder in restaurants, or take her for drives and talk in the car. After some days of that, he came to discover that she was going to give him more than he'd ever hoped for, more in fact than Gary ever did or maybe could.

                She seemed to have a commitment to the interviews as deep as the beating of her heart. It was as if she had to tell him the story as once she had told it to Gary, and tell it all, tell it not to satisfy her guilt (and sometimes he thought she felt very guilty), no, tell for some deeper reason. Schiller was profoundly confused why she was so concerned to give it all forth and explain what had happened in the very best way she could ever understand it. Why she was as fair, he decided, to a true description of everything that was not good between Gary and herself as to everything that had been good, until Schiller began to wonder if she had gone through hell and come back with one simple message, "Nothing is worse in all the world than the taste of bullshit in your mouth."

                Of course, sometimes the interviews went slowly. She would admit the most amazing matters, told him about Uncle Lee almost as soon as they started, but little admissions would bother her a lot and she would be embarrassed by the oddest things. Sometimes Schiller would have to wrestle with her most astonishing reluctance to provide a detail he considered trivial.

SCHILLER            Now open the crack in the door a little bit, (long pause)

NICOLE                I can't, Larry.

SCHILLER            You can talk about murder, you can talk about Gary choking you, you can talk about Uncle Lee molesting you, and you can't talk about Barrett fucking around with your head?

NICOLE                Yeah, I could probably. But I can't just say specific things that he said.

SCHILLER            Why not? (long pause) Is Barrett holier than thou?

NICOLE                (laughs) Fuck you, Larry. I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not going to say what I don't want to say.

SCHILLER            You're just doing that to prove that you're stronger than me, that's all.

NICOLE                No, I'm not doing that to prove anything.

SCHILLER            Yes, you are.

NICOLE                I'm doing it because it embarrasses me.

SCHILLER            How can you be embarrassed with me? Now come on. Do you want me to turn off the fucking tape recorder? Is that what's embarrassing you? I don't understand how you can be embarrassed with me. I really don't.

NICOLE                Good. You never will. (pause)

SCHILLER            Come on, I've got to understand this. I've got to have an example of it. Because it comes up all the time. Come on, don't play games with me. Come on.

NICOLE                (laughs) Oh, God. (whispers)

SCHILLER            "Oh, God," come on.

NICOLE                Larry, I'm trying. I can't say it, all right? I'm really trying. I can't. Forget it.

SCHILLER            I'm not going to forget it. I'm not going to forget it.

NICOLE                Okay. Another time.

SCHILLER            I need to know it this time. Not another time. Give me one example. I mean you're off there in Midway because of what Barrett did with your goddamned head.

NICOLE                (laughs) I didn't say Barrett was the cause of anything that happened on Midway.

SCHILLER            No, you didn't say he was the cause. You said he made you feel a certain way. By things he said to you.

NICOLE                Yes.

SCHILLER            Don't give me that smile. (laughs) Don't give me that smile. You're looking out there, you know. And then you turn around and give me that little smile.

NICOLE                (laughs) I'm laughing at you.

SCHILLER            What?

NICOLE                I'm laughing at you.

SCHILLER            'Cause I'm so naive?

NICOLE                No.

SCHILLER            'Cause I don't have the experience to fantasize or imagine?

NICOLE                No, it has nothing to do with that. It's that you don't give up and you keep sneaking back.

SCHILLER            I'm a little sneak, right?

NICOLE                Yes, sometimes. (long pause)

SCHILLER            You were fucking around. What got you fucking around on Midway?

NICOLE                (long sigh; longer pause; another sigh; still more pause—chuckling to herself) Whatever got me fucking around I don't know, but there's one thing I know, I've always known it and I just haven't even thought about it for quite a while. (pause) I got into this cycle or something of picking up guys that either had never had a piece of ass or guys that were . . . you know, that hadn't had a . . .

SCHILLER            Good lay?

NICOLE                Yeah.

SCHILLER            Right.

NICOLE                Just there staying away from good-looking guys, guys that looked like they could get just about any sweet piece of ass they wanted.

SCHILLER            Right. And you went after the guy that looked like he hadn't gotten laid or never had a good piece.

NICOLE                Right.

SCHILLER            And what was the motive?

NICOLE                (long sigh) Goddammit, you're the shrink. No, you're not, right, I know it, I know it.

SCHILLER            What was the motive?

NICOLE                You just ask me so I'll tell you. It's really obvious to you, though, isn't it?

SCHILLER            No, so help me God, it's not.

NICOLE                I can't believe that.

SCHILLER            It's the truth, kid. So help me.

NICOLE                Aw, that innocent voice.

SCHILLER            'Cause if I knew . . . (laughs) Now just listen to me, Nicole. If I knew, I'd say it, and I'd ask you to confirm it. You stop and think the way I work with you. It's the truth.

NICOLE                (little laugh; long pause) Well, okay, it was because Barrett had me convinced I wasn't any good and so the, the only thing I could do was . . . go with somebody that didn't know what good was.

SCHILLER            You're saying that Barrett had you convinced you were a lousy lay?

NICOLE                Yeah.

When it came to interviewing, Schiller knew he had met his match. Maybe there wasn't a disclosure he had gotten in his twenty years of media that hadn't been built on some part of Bullshit Mountain, but with Nicole he got along. He didn't have to use tricks that often and it moved him profoundly. He took a vow that when and if his turn came to be interviewed on Gilmore, he would also tell the truth and not protect himself.

                Now Schiller was certainly back with Stephie. He was in love. He was going to marry his princess. He saw it as belonging to the best vein of his luck. But he couldn't believe the other side of his luck. It was that he was friends with a girl for the first time in his life.

                Something like affection for himself began to come into Schiller when he realized that the monumental gamble he had taken that Nicole would not commit suicide was probably going to win out. One of the reasons he could trust her not to take her life for too little over the weeks and months and years to come, was because of her friendship for him. She wouldn't do it to him for too little. So he went on with the interviews and at times was ready to cry in his sleep that he was a writer without hands.

Chapter 44

SEASONS

April joined the Baker family out on Malibu after a hard time in the hospital. The patients and staff, she announced, had really laid it on her, and banged her head on the wall. Books and newspapers kept coming in. It was horrible. She kept reading all about Gary.

                Now, at Malibu, she was still panicky. Out of her sleep she would cry, "Mama, are you all right? Are you sure you're all right?" The night would go on.

                In the daytime, April and Nicole would squabble. They had never gotten along. Things might get better, things might get worse, but certain things Kathryne could count on. One of them was that April and Nicole would spit like cats before the day was out.