Vigilante

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 begin 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.”