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"Most of his family's in Europe right now. He could join them, I suppose."
"Good. Have him do that. The sooner the better. Today, if possible."
I stuck out my hand. "Sorry about the way things turned out, John."
Dean took my hand and shook it listlessly. "Yeah," he said. "It sure is a mess."
On Saturday, 6 January, two days before my trial was to start, I received a telephone call while in my bedroom: "Gordon, I think you'll recognize my voice."
I did. It was John Dean.
"Gordon, I want to assure you. Everyone's going to be taken care of—everyone."
"Oh?" Dean was repeating almost verbatim his assurances of 19 June, but now he went into detail.
"Absolutely. First, you'll receive living expenses of $30,000 per annum. Second, you'll have a pardon within two years. Three, we'll see to it you're sent to Danbury prison. And fourth, your legal fees will be paid."
Boy, I thought, with the trial only 48 hours away, they're not taking any chances.
Waiting to Kill-or Be Killed-in Prison
In his 4½ years behind bars, Liddy shuttled in and out of eight prisons. After being baited by black inmates both for being white and for his Watergate work for Nixon, Liddy won the respect of many fellow convicts by providing effective legal advice and by showing that he too was tough.
In prison, it made sense to be careful. I decided to tune up my will so as to be ready for anything. The first thing I did was limit my food intake to 600 calories per day. This induced sharp hunger day and night. The discipline was excellent and worth the severe weight loss. I increased the number of push-ups I did daily from 100 to 200 (in sets of 100) added jumping jacks, jogging along the exterior of the cells and situps. Things were going very well, too well, I decided. I needed more stress to bring my will to maximum power. I turned to my old reliable method of ordeal by fire. This test would have to exceed all others in destruction of tissue and time of severe pain.
I selected a particularly strong-willed black bank robber named Tex. Ready with a box of wooden matches, I got him into a discussion of the subject and pressed him to the point where he challenged me. Because I had been warned never again to indulge that practice near or on finger joints and my palm was already burned out, I had to use my forearm.
"Strike a match," I said to Tex, and locked my eyes into his.
He struck it and held it out. I put the outside of my left forearm directly over the flame. As the fire burned through my flesh and melted it back into a blackened depression, a look of horror came over Tex. The match burned down and scorched his fingers before he dropped it. He looked at the burn unbelievingly, then looked ill, got up, and left.
All the nerves in the roughly oval 1% in. by 2 in. area had been destroyed. There was just a deep ache in the center with the severe