The Executioner's Song (49 page)

                After all, it had never been important to her. Easier to let things happen than tell a guy to leave you alone. It was kind of a relief now to have a reason for saying no. Of course, it wasn't that easy to turn away Cliff or Tom Dynamite. She would explain, "I'm not here with you anymore, I'm with somebody else." They understood, Cliff particularly. That didn't keep them from still trying to get it on. She did need company.

                Once or twice it was really hard to tell them to go home. Besides, other people kept dropping over. Dudes out of the past. It wasn't that she couldn't say no, it was that they were expecting it to be like the last time. She didn't want to stand in front of them and scream, "Get out of my life." They hadn't done her any harm.

                She had to figure it out. So she didn't visit the jail, or write. She wanted to wait until she could tell him she loved him enough to be able to do what he asked.

Chapter 22

Truth

Gary was so quiet over the next few days that it got ominous. Cahoon decided he was too morbid and needed company, so he moved over a prisoner named Gibbs from the main tank. They had both done so much time, they might get along.

                Cahoon noticed that soon as he shut the bars, they started a conversation in jail talk. It was that gibberish talk. Use a word like rigger to say nigger. Show the other fellow how many years you put in by carrying on a whole conversation. Cahoon didn't try to get it all. If they said lady from Bristol, that meant pistol, and he would have to get concerned, but Gilmore was talking of ones and twos, and those were shoes. "Yeah," said Gilmore to Gibbs, "A nice pair to go with my fleas and ants."

                "You still got to think," said Gibbs, "of your bunny and boat."

                "Fuck the goat," said Gilmore, "let me stroll in with a dickery dick."

                "That's right, it could juice the chick."

                Cahoon left. They were just doing time. He thought they made a cute couple. Both had Fu Manchu goatees. It was just that Gilmore was a lot bigger than Gibbs. Like cat and mouse. Hell, like cat and rat.

There were only three things in the world Gibbs could honestly say he had any feeling for: children, kittens, and money. Been on his own since he was 4. When 17, he wrote and cashed $7,000 worth of checks in a month and bought himself a new car. Always had new cars.

                By the time he was 4, Gilmore said, he'd broken into 50 houses. Maybe more.

                First time Gibbs went to prison out here, he was behind a 2 1/2-million-dollar forgery. He took, Gibbs said, 21 counts. Next time he went back was when he blew up a cop's car in Salt Lake. Captain Haywood's car.

                Gave him 15 years when he was 22, Gilmore said. Did them at Oregon and Marion. Gibbs nodded. Marion had the credentials. Flattened 11 years consecutively, Gilmore told him. Probably 4 years altogether in Solitary. Gilmore showed real pedigree.

                He was in for rubber rafts, Gibbs told him. Stole forty of them in two weeks out of J.C. Penney's in Utah Valley, Salt Lake Valley, $39 apiece. Chain saws same way. Made two or three hundred bucks a day. Just couldn't manage his money, that's all.

                My problem, too, allowed Gilmore. He had also done a little boosting at J.C. Penney's.

                "Yeah," said Gibbs, "the only difference between you and me is when I do it, I have two shoulder men to run interference. If they come after, my big boys say, 'What are you chasing this guy for?' "

                Gibbs could recognize that Gilmore didn't know any heavies out of Salt Lake. Didn't know the Barbaro brothers, Len Rafts, Ron Clout, Mardu, or Gus Latagapolos. "You're talking heavies, then," said Gibbs.

                Gilmore spoke of the Aryan Brotherhood and his connections there. Gibbs could recognize some heavy names out of Oregon and Atlanta, Leavenworth and Marion. Not legends, but still heavies. Gilmore carried himself like he was well regarded. Of course, Murder One gives a man standing. When they ask you, "What do you get for killing?" the answer is "self-satisfaction." Clears the mind.

                His ring, Gibbs told Gilmore, had done outboard motors, inboard motors, house trailers, and trailer homes. Don't get nervous when they see you carrying the stuff. They had a laugh over this. "Half a million dollars' worth," said Gibbs, "going right down the Interstate."

"If you get out before me," said Gilmore, "can you bring back some hacksaw blades?"

                "Anybody would, I probably would," said Gibbs. In fact, thought Gibbs, he might. He had as much loyalty in one direction as in the other. He was the man in the old saying. "You got blue eyes, one blew north, one blew south," Except it was Gilmore had the blue eyes. He liked Gilmore. A lot of class.

                "Hey," said Gilmore, "if you could figure a way to get me out of here, I'd pull any job you want. Just keep enough money for me and my old lady to leave the country, and I'll give you the rest."

                "If I wanted out of this jail," said Gibbs, "I'd have people come take me out."

                "Well, around here, I don't know people," said Gilmore.

                "If anybody would, I would," repeated Gibbs.

The cell they were in was divided into two parts, a small dining area with a table and benches, and to the back, away from the bars, a toilet, a sink, a shower, and six bunks. On the other side of the bars was a corridor that led to the next tank. That was used as the women's cell. When no women were there, it was the pen for drunks. Their first night, they had a drunk next door who kept yelling.

                Gilmore answered as if he were the jailer. "What do you want?" he bellowed. The drunk said he had to make a phone call. Had to get bond. Gilmore told him no Judge would give it. Why, the little boy he had hit in the trailer court died. What little boy, said the drunk? Those are your charges: drunk driving, auto homicide, hit and run. Gibbs loved it. The drunk believed Gilmore. Spent the rest of the night crying to himself, instead of yelling for the jailer.

                Gilmore began to do his exercises. That was something, he told Gibbs, he did every night. Had to, in order to tire himself out enough to get a little sleep.

                He did a hundred sit-ups, took a break, then did jumping jacks, clapping his hands over his head. Gibbs lay on his bunk and smoked and lost count. Gilmore must have done two or three hundred. Then he took another break and tried push-ups but could only get to twenty-five. His left hand was still weak, he explained.

                Then he stood on his head for ten minutes. What's the purpose of that, asked Gibbs. Oh, said Gilmore, it gets the blood circulating in your head, good for your hair. He wanted, Gilmore added, to try to keep as much youthfulness in appearance as possible. Gibbs nodded. Every con he knew, including himself, had a complex about age. What the hell, the youthful years were all lost. "My personal opinion," Gibbs said, "is that you are a young-looking person for 35 old. I am five years younger, and look five years older than you."

                "It's your coffin nails," said Gilmore, sniffing the smoke. He had picked a top bunk as far away as possible from Gibbs, who was sleeping in the bottom bed across.

                "You don't smoke?" said Gibbs.

                "I don't believe in supporting any habit you have to pay for," said Gary. "Not if you spend your time in lockup. They had a cell in Isolation named after me."

                The drunk in the next tank was whimpering piteously. Gilmore said, "Yeah, the Gary M. Gilmore Room," and they both laughed. Listening to the drunk cry was as comfortable as lying in bed on a summer night hearing trees rustle. Yes, Gilmore told him, he had put in so much time in Segregation that he almost never earned money from a prison job. And there sure wasn't money coming from outside. Any luxuries allowed in the can, he had learned to do without. "Besides," he said, "smoking is bad for your health. Of course, speaking of health . . . " He looked at Gibbs.

                Speaking of health, he expected the death sentence.

                "A good lawyer could get you Second Degree. They parole Second Degree in Utah in six years. Six years, you're on the street."

                "I can't afford a good lawyer," said Gilmore. "The State pays for my lawyers." He looked down at Gibbs from his bunk and said, "My lawyers work for the same people that are going to sentence me."

"They keep taking me," said Gilmore, "to be interviewed by psychiatrists. Shit, they come up with the stupidest questions. Why, they ask, did I park my car to the side of the gas station? 'If I parked in front,' I said to them, 'you'd ask me why I didn't park to the side.' " He snorted at that. "I could put on an act, have them saying, 'Yeah, he's crazy,' but I won't."

                Gibbs understood. That offended a true man's idea of himself.

                "I am telling them that the killings were unreal. That I saw everything through a veil of water." Now they could hear the drunk moaning again. " 'It was like I was in a movie,' I say to them, 'and I couldn't stop the movie.' "

                "Is that how it came down?" asked Gibbs.

                "Shit, no," said Gilmore. "I walked in on Benny Bushnell and I said to that fat son of a bitch, 'Your money, son, and your life.' "

                They both cracked. It was funny as hell. Right there in the middle of the night, in this hot fucking two-bit asshole jail, with the drunk slobbering in his shit and counting his sins, they couldn't stop laughing. "Pipe down in there," said Gilmore to the drunk. "Save your crying for the Judge." The drunk was one wet sorrow. Like a puppy first night in a new house. "Hell," said Gilmore, "the morning after I killed Jensen, I called up the gas station and asked them if they had any job openings." Again they cracked.

                Gilmore, tonight, would break off his arm if he could make a good joke. Cut off his head and hand it to you, if his mouth would spit nails. "What's your last best request when they're hanging you?" he asked, and answered, "Use a rubber rope." Pretended to be bouncing on the end, he put his face in a scowl, and said, "Guess I'll be hanging around for a while."

                Gibbs thought he'd piss his pants. "What," asked Gilmore, "Is your last request when they put you in the gas chamber?" He waited. Gibbs wheezed. "Why," Gilmore said, "ask them for laughing gas."

                "That is enough," said Gibbs, "to choke you up."

                For that matter, he was almost strangling on his own phlegm. Smoking gave him a dozen oysters every meal. The kid with phlegm-pot. Gilmore asked, "What do you say to the firing squad?"

       "I," said Gibbs, "ask them for a bullet-proof vest." They laughed back and forth like an animal going in circles and getting weak. "Yeah," said Gibbs, "I heard that one."

Gilmore had a quality Gibbs could recognize. He accommodated. Gibbs believed he, himself, could always get near somebody—just use the side that was like them. Gilmore did the same. Around other each other tonight, they were like boiler-plated farts. Filthy devils.

                No sooner did he think this, than Gilmore got serious. "Hey," he said to Gibbs, "they're figuring to give me the death penalty, but I have an answer for them. I'm going to check into the State of Utah's hole card. I'm going to make them do it. Then we'll see if they have as many guts as I do."

                Gibbs couldn't decide if the guy was a bullshitter. He couldn't visualize doing something like that.

                "Yes," said Gilmore, "I'll tell them to do it without a hood. Do it at night if it's outside, or in a dark room with tracer bullets. That way I can see those babies coming!"

                The drunk was screaming, "I didn't mean to kill the little boy, oh Judge, I'll never drive again."

                "Knock it off," shouted Gilmore.

                Yeah, he said to Gibbs, the only legitimate fear a man in his position could have while facing the firing squad was that one of the marksmen might be a friend or relative of one of the victims. "Then," said Gilmore, "they might shoot at my head. I don't like that. I have perfect twenty-twenty, and I want to donate my eyes."

                This guy was a roulette wheel, decided Gibbs. Just depended which number came up. "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life," said Gilmore from the upper bunk, "and a great many errors in judgment the last couple of months, but this I will say, Gibbs. I am in my element now. I have never misjudged a person who has done time."

                "I hope you have a favorable impression of me."

                "I believe you are a good convict," said Gilmore.

                On that high praise, no higher praise, they went to sleep. It was three in the morning. They would bullshit until three every morning.

September 9

I'm not a weak man. I've never been a punk, I've never been a rat, I've always fought—I ain't the toughest son of a bitch around but I've always stood up and been counted among the men. I've done a few things that would make a lot of motherfuckers tremble and I've endured some shit that nobody should have to go thru. But what I want you to understand, little girl, is that you hold my heart and along with my heart I guess you have the power to crush me or destroy me. Please don't. I have no defense for what I feel for you.