The Executioner's Song (95 page)

Having been born in Butte, Ron could get a quick laugh by saying, “Leave out the ‘e’ and you got it spelled.” His two older brothers, he told Gary, used to sell newspapers over his near-dead body. Ron would start hawking on the best corner, and quick enough, a couple of bigger newsboys would jump him. As they did, his brothers would jump them, and get the corner for a while.

Back in the ‘4os, feeling cold and dirty in the winter, he’d be tired from carrying papers around. He’d go to bars and those old gals drinking would buy all he had left out of sympathy. Greatest practice for the law was learning to make those faces that draw sympathy.

Then the family moved to Oregon and there were hardly any Mormons in the town. The church was above a laundry one time. He met people who believed Mormons had horns because they kept more than one wife. Stanger was just a kid but he would say, “I’m all for it.” In fact, his .grandfather had been a polygamist. When Stanger first came to BYU, they asked in assembly how many of the kids had polygamous ancestors. Near everybody stood up. Of course, those polygamist families were not particularly happy, thought Ron. “You gave so and so a baby,” one wife would yell “and you ain’t given me one.” If you came from a second family, like his dad did, you knew the difference between first and second. Hell, it was hard enough to keep one wife happy.

Gary asked him to go on. Thought all this was fascinating.

Ron said he was the first member of his family ever to go to college, and hardly knew why he picked BYU unless it was to be in a place where Mormons were the accustomed thing. He hadn’t been to school more than a few days when this gal who was blond and cute said something about Ernie Wilkinson. Ron opened his big mouth and said, “Who is that?” Thought Ernie was her boy friend. How was he supposed to know Wilkinson was the President of the University. The gal got so sarcastic Ron walked away. “There,” he said to his

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friends, “is one girl I could never go out with.” Now they’d been married twenty-two years, and had quite a family. Five kids, all in adolescence at once, all adopted.

When Ron and Viva couldn’t have children, they waited five years, then put in an application through the Church, and had to wait another two years to get their first adoption. It took so long they already had a bunch of other applications out, and within a year three more children were in the hotise.. Four kids under four years of age. They were going to hold out for a girl on the fifth, but heard about an infant they could get immediately from a sister agency in Oregon. Ron and Viva took all four and jumped on a plane to Portland to pick up the new little one.

Once aboard, they distributed children to everybody. Said to strangers, “Here, we got too many, would you take one?” On the way back, they had a tyke in the lead, then the twins, barely walking, Ron next, holding the next-to-Littlest one, and Viva coming up behind with one more baby. Two old ladies came over and said, “We need to ask a question. Are you Mormons?” When they nodded, the old ladies said, “We could tell. It’s such a big family.” Later, on the plane, Viva remarked, “Wouldn’t it have been funny if you told them we were both sterile?”

He and Gary laughed a long time over that one.

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the Muhammad All book, Farrell owed him a shot anyway. Besides, the rest of the piece was brilliant. A very good article. “Carrion bird” was going to get picked up, but on balance he was ahead. He began to think again of invil2ng Farrell to work on the questions.

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Schiller was suffering with Moody and Stanger’s interviews. I-Ie just could not accept how little the lawyers were bringing back Gary had said he would not answer any more questions, but he meant written ones. Talking to him for hours, they should have been able to elicit more. On top of that, they made technical errors.

Schiller got an advance copy of Barry Farrell’s article in New West. It was called “Merchandising Gary Gilmore’s Dance of Death” which sounded bad, and the piece covered Gilmore’s negotiations with Boaz, Susskind, and Schiller. To Schfller’s satisfaction, the parts on himself, while plus and minus, were generally okay.

Uncle Veto seemed less attracted to Susskind than to Larry Schiller, who made a point of getting around to meet the family. Schiller’s advice to one and all was to hire a lawyer, and when the lawyers were hired they found in Schiller someone who could talk their language, who knew all about court-appointed guardians and trusts, who carried with him a briefcase full of elaborate contracts for the rights to stories even more spectacular than Gilmore’s.

That was good. Farrell was treating him with some seriousness. All the more unhappy did it make Lan’y then that the next line said:

The man was something of a carrion bird: Already he’d

done business with Susan Atkins, Marina Oswald, Jack Ruby, Madame Nhu, and Lenny Bruce’s widow.

Once Schiller got over the impact, it didn’t bother him too much. A magazine writer had to put in zingers, and after being screwed on

In the beginning, the lawyers didn’t really know how to use a tape recorder. Once, Stanger did an interview with a dead battery. Schiller had to buy fresh ones. He couldn’t comprehend how Stinger could keep laughing it off. Once the cassette was not turned over. The lawyers had recorded twice on the same side. Must have sat there, and rewound the tape, then recorded on top of themselves. Ron’s attitude seemed to be: If we make a mistake, we get it tomorrow. One time Schiller had met Ron and Bob in a little coffee shop just a couple of miles down the road from the prison. Right away they wanted to listen to a tape just smuggled out. Played it in the coffee shop. Schiller said, “Let’s go back to the office for that.” But they had to hear what they had done. There, in the fucking restaurant. People nearby could have overheard it all. They couldn’t seem to comprehend it wasn’t wise, that tomorrow it could all be cut off. Why, they acted as if it was their prison. Schiller, trying to hold on to his temper, sometimes had to tell himself, maybe it is. It was practically their hometown, after all.

“Forget Larry Schiller the businessman,” he told them. “That’s a side of me, but we’re forgetting it. We have history here. We have to get that.” When they continued to show resistance, he said finally, “I’m going to give these interviews over to Vern.” He was halfway serious. It couldn’t be any worse and Gary might open up. What was making Schiller paranoid is that the lawyers didn’t bring back a tape every time they went out..He began to wonder what they did

discuss wouldn’t Kept saying to them, “Take

and g, even your lel s. Talk about the

will It’s all You never know when it’s to be m—

would them a mess for and not

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be certain it had gotten through. Certainly didn’t hear it on the tapes. “Vern may not have your education,” he would then threaten, “but he’ll listen to me.” It all consumed one horrendous week. He didn’t have the hours to deal with ABC, movie rights, planning the story, getting ready for the execution, or time to study the letters.

Finally he told them to instruct Gary to call each of them Larry when doing an interview. It was better for Gilmore, he explained, to be thinking constantly of the man to whom he was telling the story of his life. Maybe that way, Schiller thought, they would find it easier to ask a tough question or two. Schiller was trying everything.

More and more he was thinking of an approach to Barry Farrell. There were a lot of memories he kept of Barry from Life magazine, so Schiller continued to feel pretty damn pleased with the overall respect Farrell had shown in New West. In the old Life days, Schiller had never been able to get rid of a feeling that Barry Farrell had a subtle contempt for him, and was made out of more exceptional stuff than himself. Not more exceptional, maybe, but certainly special. The first time he worked with Barry was after a period of six months Schiller had” spent on and off with Timothy Leary, then Laura Huxley. Life was doing a big piece on LSD and Schiller had done fifty hours of taped interviews and taken thousands of photographs of adolescents and junkies, and college kids, and middle-aged people who took the tour with gurus and had profound experiences. Schiller had begun to think how much he’d like to be a writer, and realized he didn’t know how. When he got back to New York, Life had assigned Barry Farrell to write the text, and the man just sat in his fucking office and worked. Schiller really got upset. How could you write a major piece on the use of this drug, he asked Barry, without going out in the field? So he developed an antagonism for Farrell, even a hatred. Yet when the piece came out, the guy had done it all. Really shaped it. That was the year, 966, when Larry Schiller went from one side to the other on Barry Farrell, and developed a great regard for him as a craftsman and a writer. He did not see why Farrell could not do the same stuff with the Gilmore interviews.

Of course, this was only part of his feeling for Farrell. Barry was not only a craftsman, but a great ladies’ man. The type to get away with three-hour lunches. He wore the right suits and right ties, and

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Schiller was frankly envious of anybody who could go out that long, come back a little tipsy, and still do a hell of a job. Schiller wasn’t that good looking then, no beard, pointed nose, small chin, a hungry look. He was just a working photographer, a kind of maniacal smile on his face because he was trying to do ten pictures at once while toting a big load of equipment on his back. Knew he looked bizarre, but tried to be part of the woodwork. The less a photographer was noticed as a human being, the better the pictures. Your camera could be dynamite when people paid you no more attention than a fly on the wall. Whereas Farrell, the ladies’ man, had a bit of magic about him. Schiller remembered how Barry began to go around with this black girl who was a researcher at Life. A beautiful black girl, oh, God, Schiller remembered, in the ‘6os to be black and beautiful was to be a star. She was sweet, she had this nice honey voice, she was intellectual and not street-wise. There was a whole fineness to her, beauty to her, black, beautiful and intelligent. Now she and Barry were married and had a child together. Schiller decided the hell with it, he was just going to see if he could hire Barry Farrell. It would be like getting a prize.

He called Barry and asked if he’d be interested. Right from the start, he said it would be no pie in the sky. Nothing like the Muhammad All project. No great returns promised. No book involved. But definite work for definite good pay. Five thousand dollars for editing the Playboy interview. That was all right with Farrell. He had his own book to get back to, he said, and they sparred a little, then discussed it back and forth. To Schiller’s surprise, he had the feeling there was less of a selling job here than he had psyched himself up for. They ended with Barry agreeing to take a look at the letters and interviews done so far. In a week or so, he ought.to be able to decide.

“I’m running a bold move,” Schiller told Stephie.

She didn’t understand the interplays, didn’t see how Farrell could write something like “carrion bird” and still respect you. Stephie was furious at the term. Besides, she didn’t want Larry to give the interview over to anybody. He obviously wanted to do it himself, she said. Schiller only won the discussion by telling her about The American Dreamer. ” ‘Schiller went absolutely blank on Dennis Hopper’s more mystical ideas’—you want to hear that again?” he asked her. “Don’t you see, there’s a side of Gary I can miss com

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pletely. I don’t know from shinola about karma.” That convinced her. When he could talk Stephie into something, he could convince anyone in the world. She was beautifully sales-resistant.

Barry Golson now flew out to L.A. to discuss Playboy doing the Gilmore interview, and Schiller could see that the editor was arriving in town with a $2o,ooo face, just what Schiller thought it was worth, plus expenses. It was also obvious that he and Golson were going to be abrasive on each other. Golson looked at him as a businessman, pure and simple.

“We’re going to need,” said Schiller, “a really good writer to edit these interviews.” He mentioned Barry Farrell. Golson didn’t indicate he knew who Farrell was. “He wrote a book on the actress, Pat Neal,” Schiller said. He also gave Golson Farrell’s Life credentials. Golson didn’t seem to care. Maybe he wanted his own man in. There might be trouble later, Schiller thought, but he tied the deal for

Schiller couldn’t resist telling Farrell that Barry Golson of PLayboy didn’t seem to know him: “It’s perfectly understandable that I never heard of Golson,” said Farrell in reply, “but I consider it a shocking bit of illiteracy that Golson doesn’t react to my name.” Schiller laughed. It would be a couple of weeks before he’d come to realize that Farrell had not said it altogether in jest, and was even annoyed that Golson, being the Playboy Interview Editor, might not be aware that Farrell had done one bang-up job for them years ago with Buckminster Fuller. Barry had come to the place in his life where he was counting his achievements in preference to scoffing at them.

One reason for accepting Schiller’s offer was that Barry Farrell didn’t mind getting out of L.A. He was feeling some unaccustomed doubts about himself as a professional. Lately, he had been having trouble on deadlines, his wife was not well, and he was being sued in a major way by a publisher for nondelivery of manuscript. Being a man who had always taken his good reputation for granted, his life in Los Angeles of late produced the feeling that he was spinning his wheels. He actually felt grateful to Schiller. Somebody who trusted him to do a job.