Vigilante

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “Let’s not call it that. I’d rather say you’re commercializing it.”

  “And what if I say no?”

  “You won’t say no.”

  “But if I do?”

  “If you do, I will hang this stinking fish around your neck and pound you through the concrete right in front of that fancy new Police Administration Building you guys just built downtown.”

  “Think you’re up to that?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled warmly at me. “Justice will be served whether you like it or not. We’re not doing the devil’s work here, Shane. Far from it. The perp who killed Lita was the one doing that. I’m gonna get him or her. The unsub will swing for this and if you join me we can do it together. Seems to me your choice is pretty simple. Be the agent of this killer’s destruction or become the agent of your own.”

  “I don’t think you’ve got what it takes to make good on that threat,” I said.

  “Let me give you a preview then. Why don’t you watch the taping of show one in the green room or, if you want a different experience, you can look at it in the control truck. Laura’s husband, Drew, is our director. Watch him work. Watch me spin it. Watch this thrashing machine come roaring down the road and see if you think you’re fast enough to get out of the way.”

  CHAPTER

  18

  “Roll the main title! Cue the music! Camera Three, you’ll be first to the conference room after the break. Stand by; we’re coming out of main title tape in five, four, three, two, one. Slow fade on the music! Cue Camera One! Cue Nix!”

  I was sitting in a three-tiered darkened control room inside the sixteen-wheel TV truck. The main title of V-TV had just unfurled on a center monitor marked: PREVIEW ONLINE.

  Drew Burke, the director, was thin, cranial, and kinetic, just like his skinny red-haired wife. They obviously ingested way too much coffee and not enough food. I was alone in the top-tier row of the truck. About ten other people were in the darkened control room below me, all of them busily adjusting video and volume pots or running huge consoles. A bank of smaller monitors faced the director and showed what each of the five cameras was shooting. The temperature inside the truck was held at a chilly sixty-five degrees to keep the equipment cool.

  Nix Nash was standing in the center of the V-TV main set, which resembled a glitzy cobalt blue newsroom with scrolling tickers. About ten background actors in shirtsleeves were seated at metal desks, busy miming work in front of computer monitors. Nix had chosen the blue suit, which looked very good on his high-tech blue set. He was pumped up on adrenaline, his face round, his moustache full, bouncing happily in his hand-tooled boots as he leaned toward the camera and began to speak.

  “A dangerous idea is not responsible for the people who choose to believe in it. And ordinary men become extraordinary performing remarkable feats under impossible circumstances.” Now Nix started to stroll his elaborate set. Camera One tracked him.

  “Dangerous ideas can provide big opportunities, but they often get thrust on us when we can least afford it, so the call goes unanswered. We’ve got a whole generation now that was born in an age of extravagant semi-equality. They don’t know what it was like before, so they think, ‘This isn’t so bad. We have our video games, our flat-screen TVs, our SUVs.’ This dumbed-down generation sits lulled by excess completely unaware that all this luxury they take for granted is on the verge of being snatched away by corrupt government officials.”

  Drew instructed Camera One to tighten into a close-up.

  “You probably think, ‘Come on, Nix. Not in America.’” He stood there, his face lightly flushed, burning with this terrible concern. “Have you guys heard about this thing called the goal gradient phenomenon?” He paused and let that mouthful sink in. “It states that the farther we get away from our goals in life, the less interested we become in attaining them. When you put this in a political or a law enforcement context, the goal gradient phenomenon can become really dangerous, because it suggests that at the midpoint in a politician’s or a police officer’s career, when he or she is stuck in middle management, inevitably they begin to experience boredom, malaise, and yes, even cynicism. These three emotions just happen to be the major precursors to corruption.”

  “Camera Two, when Nix moves go with him,” Drew instructed the crew through his headset.

  Nix started strolling his set again, with Camera Two tracking. They passed half a dozen extras working on computers.

  “I love the concept of freedom, truth, and justice. Who doesn’t?” Nix enthused. “But there’s a catch. You see, in order to have a safe, free, and just society we have to first engage in a huge act of trust. We have to give some of our sacred, constitutionally guaranteed rights over to the people we have chosen to protect us.”

  He now stopped next to a large whiteboard, still looking directly into Camera Two.

  “Ready Four; take Four,” Drew Burke said just as Nix Nash turned smoothly to Camera Four, which was on a medium close-up.

  “Here’s something to consider. Do you know that recently in America we’ve been passing more and more criminal laws and using them to enforce morality? It’s true. And it goes way beyond the easy ones to spot like abortion or right-to-life legislation. We now also have thousands of smaller laws dealing with everything ranging from drug or pill use, to the amount of liquor we can legally consume, right on down to whether we can smoke in our own cars.”

  “Camera Five, you’re on a medium-wide shot. Focus up and go,” Drew said. As the shot changed, Nix turned to the whiteboard, picked a Magic Marker out of the tray, and wrote:

  LEGALLY ENFORCED MORALITY

  As he wrote this he said, “The very people we have chosen to protect us have now decided they also know how we should behave. And with this idea, they’ve begun to redefine the moral playing field, passing hundreds of these laws aimed at creating new moral standards by slowly abrogating more of our constitutional freedoms.” He now wrote:

  NEW MORAL STANDARDS

  “I’m not here to debate the merits of these new laws; that’s an argument you must take up with your duly elected officials. However, I can tell you this much. Unenforceable laws governing moral standards always promote police corruption. It happened during Prohibition, during the shoot-’em-up cocaine days of the eighties, and it’s happening today. The reason is because these laws attempting to enforce morality actually provide criminal organizations and unscrupulous individuals with a huge financial interest to undermine law enforcement, and that causes…” He wrote:

  POLICE CORRUPTION

  Then he underlined it twice and set the Magic Marker back in its tray.

  I sat there alone in the back of the control room watching. I had to admit Nix was smooth and good.

  He stood by his whiteboard frowning. “Remember that thing we were talking about before, that goal gradient phenomenon? It also stipulates that when our police get cynical and bored, they often stray, forgetting their pledge to protect us.”

  He paused, cocking his head as if to think about it. “But hey, then that leaves us with nobody standing between us and these new laws and the corrupt politicians who’ve passed them. So what do we do now?” He gave that a moment, then said, “Well, I’ll tell you exactly. We must become vigilantes.”

  He began walking, bouncing in his boots again, energized by this idea.

  “Of course once we attempt to do this there’ll be angry detractors, because plenty is at stake here. Some will call us meddlers. Others will say we’re off the reservation. But come on; under these circumstances is being a vigilante really such a bad thing? I looked it up. The root word is ‘vigilant.’ Vigilance is an American tradition. We were vigilant at Concord when this country was born and after World War Two when our vigilance overthrew first a fascist, then a Nazi regime; then a few years later we dismantled a communist one. We were vigilant again after 9/11. Like Paul Revere in the Old North Church, we must ride forth spreading the word.”

  “Camera Three, go and be
gin racking,” Drew said. A long shot hit the screen and slowly began to tighten as Nix simultaneously stopped walking. He was now standing on the far side of the set next to an American flag.

  “A vigilante is further defined as a watchman, a guard, a patriotic member of a vigilance committee. So that’s what we are. Vigilantes. Only here on Vigilante TV we’re doing it one police case at a time.”

  “Camera One, you’re on Nix and pulling back,” Drew said as Nix continued.

  “In each city I visit I pick one major case, one investigation that I think has gone astray due to corruption, cynicism, and malaise.”

  Here it comes, I thought.

  “I usually try to find one with civic or legal meaning,” Nix continued. “After I have chosen it, I pursue it until all of us here are satisfied that we have found the real truth. Sometimes that can be very dangerous. A few years ago, I ended up in federal prison for two years because I dared to criticize the power structure right here in L.A. But if we want a fair and just society, we’ve gotta take some chances.”

  Now Nix motioned the camera to follow him and headed toward a big threshold with open double doors. “So let’s go protect the innocent and find some beauty in the truth. We’ll begin in two minutes.” Nix then walked through the open double doors, and when he closed them, the camera stopped on a big brass plaque affixed to one side that read:

  DEPARTMENT OF VIGILANTE JUSTICE

  “Stay on the placard, music up,” Drew said. “Cue the bumpers. We fade to black in five, four, three, two, one.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  The cameras all moved to a nearby set and came on one at a time, lighting the control room’s video monitors. Then, after everybody was in place, Drew Burke said, “Camera Three, we open with you on Nix, then pull out.”

  Nix was now seated on the edge of a conference table in a large room. On one wall was a lit map of Los Angeles.

  Behind him, seated in high-back leather conference room chairs, were Marcia Breen, Frank Palgrave, and J. J. Blunt, as well as three other men and two women I didn’t know.

  Judge Webster Russell was at the end of the table. Web hadn’t changed much since I’d testified in his court a few years back. He was a big, shaggy gray-haired eminence with an honest, solemn face, wearing black judicial robes. A perfect video judge.

  Nix was smiling, and as the theme music faded, he said, “Welcome, my friends, to Los Angeles, California. City of Angels. This town spans 493.3 square miles, with a population of 4 million. According to Forbes.com, Los Angeles is the eighth most powerful economic city in the world. This is a city that hosts the L.A. Lakers, a world-renowned symphony, and the Getty Center. But it also hosted one of the worst police corruptions in modern law enforcement history. The Rampart scandal saw over a hundred convictions overturned on charges that included obtaining false confessions through torture, planting evidence, and yes, even murder. So don’t say it can’t happen here, because it already did.

  “A lot is going on in this town. A lot of people live here, die here, and face injustice here. Tonight we’re going to focus on just one.”

  “Ready Four; take Four,” Drew said, and the shot switched to a close-up of a picture of Lita Mendez being held in Nix’s hand. In the photo, she looked fragile and innocent. Her long black hair curled down on delicate shoulders.

  “This woman’s name is Lolita Mendez. ‘Lita,’ as her friends called her, was not always a warm and fuzzy person. In fact, Lita could sometimes be a real fireball. But once you knew her, it was easy to understand why. She became a friend of mine when I practiced law in this city and, more than once, I found myself facing her moral outrage.

  “Lita was mostly angry at the police because they chose to criminalize her family and friends who live in a Hispanic ghetto right here in L.A. In this eighth-wealthiest economic center on earth, there is an area called Boyle Heights, and Boyle Heights ain’t doing so hot. Boyle Heights doesn’t feel like it’s a suburb of the eighth-wealthiest city in the world. It feels like it belongs in a third-world country.”

  The shot switched back to Nix still sitting casually on the edge of the conference table. “Lita is an ordinary single woman with a tenth-grade education. But more than that, she’s a social activist. She has filed over two hundred civil complaints against the LAPD for violating her rights and those of her friends.

  “The vitriol that came to exist between this hundred-pound Hispanic woman and the nine-thousand, nine-hundred-man Los Angeles police force became intense, personal, and often violent. So why is this lone high school dropout so important right now?”

  Nix took a moment to let his audience wonder. Then he leaned forward and said, “Two nights ago, Lita Mendez was murdered.”

  He paused again for effect, then continued. “It happened in the middle of the night with no witnesses or physical evidence, yet the LAPD has already arrested two suspects, a married couple named Carla and Julio Sanchez. As far as I can see, there is no reason Carla and her husband should have been arrested, because they are certainly not guilty. The police have to be well aware of that fact. So, if they’re not guilty, why are Carla Sanchez and her husband, Julio, currently incarcerated in the Boyle Heights jail? The answer to that lies deep in the fabric of this particular demonstration of police corruption. Watch this.”

  “Music up. Roll film package one,” Drew instructed.

  Video of Lita Mendez came on the screen. She seemed fragile and vulnerable and was seated in her living room with the bedsheets tacked up on the windows behind her. The time-stamped date on the screen was a few weeks ago.

  “My name is Lolita Mendez,” she said softly. “I live in Boyle Heights, a suburb of L.A., and members of the Los Angeles Police Department are trying to kill me.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  What followed was a well-produced biography of Lita Mendez, starting with how she grew up on the mean streets of Boyle Heights and ending with her crusade against the LAPD. It included a filmed dispute between Lita and Capt. Stephanie Madrid shot by local TV news cameras outside the IA building. Captain Madrid was demanding that Lita and her pack of neighborhood demonstrators disperse. In the film, Lita was wearing a T-shirt with the picture of a particular police officer screen-printed on the front and a statement accusing him of shooting an unarmed gangster on the back.

  The bio included an interview, obviously taken only hours ago, because it was conducted from inside Corcoran State Prison. Nash was in the visitors’ center with Lita’s brother, Homer Mendez. Homer was a stocky, muscular man about twenty-eight years old who had Evergreen ink all over him. He called the police murderous chota.

  “I knew those cop bastards would eventually kill my big sis,” he said sadly.

  “LAPD Detective Shane Scully has been assigned to the Lita Mendez murder case and this is a very troubling choice,” Nash said, narrating this piece of the film package over a stolen shot of me taken yesterday morning as I was walking toward the media control area a block from Lita’s house.

  The next shot showed Nix outside Lita’s house, posthomicide. The police cars were gone, but there was yellow crime scene tape strung everywhere. “Why would this particular homicide detective be assigned to this particular case?” he asked with a troubled look.

  A picture of Alexa now appeared on the screen. It was a publicity photo taken a few months ago when she’d made captain. She was in her dress blues but looked a little severe in the shot with her braided hat set low, shadowing her gorgeous eyes. Her hair was pulled back; captain’s bars glittered on her shoulders. She was still beautiful, but off this pose you definitely wouldn’t mess with her. Since this particular photo was never published, I wondered how Nash had gotten his hands on it.

  “This woman is LAPD Captain Alexa Scully, and she is Detective Scully’s wife,” Nash intoned solemnly. Then the film package ended and the shot switched back to Nix in the conference room. “Get this,” he said. “Because here’s where the big questions begin. Alexa Scul
ly is also the Chief of Detectives for the entire LAPD.”

  I was getting angry, but there was nothing I could do to stop this. The shot widened to show the full conference room and the other V-TV cast members.

  “Coincidence or conspiracy?” Nix intoned. Then he turned to his panel of experts. “First, let’s talk to Frank Palgrave, who used to work the homicide desk in L.A.’s Metro Division.”

  “Camera One, tighten on Palgrave,” Drew Burke said. “Camera Two, stay with Nix. Hold sizes; we’re intercutting.”

  “Frank, how are homicide detectives assigned to cases in Homicide Special?” Nash asked. The camera shots cut back and forth as they talked.

  “They’re on a standard rotation, just like at the individual divisions.”

  “Interesting. So Scully and his partner, Sumner Hitchens, would be given this case as part of a normal rotation.”

  “Yes.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Nix said, his brow furrowed theatrically. “Along comes this red-hot grounder where a vocal police critic has been murdered, and the Hollenbeck detectives call up Homicide Special and give it over to them. Then lo and behold, who happens to just pop up as the lead investigator, but the very husband of the Chief of D’s. That sound right?” Nash asked the panel.

  “I think it’s preposterous,” Judge Web Russell said. “It’s much more likely that, because of the high-profile animosity between Miss Mendez and law enforcement, the LAPD was trying to contain the situation and Detective Scully was chosen by his wife to operate as an agent of the department.”

  “Wow,” Nix said. “Are you suggesting the cops are trying to bury this case?” He paused for effect, then said, “And then there’s this.”

  Drew cued up a film package that showed Edwin Chavaria being introduced by Nix Nash on tape. That was followed by a shot of Chavaria exiting the V-TV van to come over and talk to me.