'I'm not sure I understand what sort of situation we are trying to
create.'
'Don't you see! There are damned ugly tensions between men and women
in this country.
Hideous tensions- Year by year, as the women's liberation movement has
grown, those tensions have become almost unbearable, because they're
repressed, hidden. We'll make them boil to the surface.
'It's not bad. You're exaggerating. 'I'm not. Believe me. I know. And
don't you see what else? There are hundreds of potential psychotic
killers out there. All they need is to be given some direction, a
little push. They'll hear about and read about the killings so much
that they'll get ideas of their own. Once we've cut up a hundred women
and twenty or so men, pretending to be psychotic ourselves, we'll have a
dozen imitators doing our work for us.
'Maybe.
'Definitely. All mass murderers have had their imitators. But none of
them has ever committed crimes grand enough to inspire legions of
mimics, We will And then when we've turned out a squad of sex killers,
we'll shift the direction of our own activities.
'Shift to what?'
'We'llmurder whitepeopleatrandom anduseafictitious black revolutionary
group to claim credit. After a dozen killings of that sort-'
'We could knock off some blacks and leave everyone under the impression
they were killed in retaliation.'
'You've got it. Fan the flames.
'I'm beginning to see your point. In a city this size, there are
countless factions. Blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans, Orientdls, men,
women, liberals, conservatives, radicals and reactionaries, Catholics
and Jews, rich and poor, young and old... We could try to turn each
against its opposite and all of them against one another Once factional
violence begins, whether it's religious or political or economic, it
usually escalates endlessly.
'Exactly. If we planned carefu]1y enough, we could do it. In six
months, you'd have at least two thousand dead. Maybe live times that
number.
'And you'd have martial law That would put an end to it before there was
chaos on the scale you've talked about.
,We might have martial law. But we'd still have chaos. In Northern
Ireland they've had soldiers on street corners for Tears, but the
killing goes on. Oh, there'd be chaos, Dwight. And it would spread to
other cities as-'
'No. I can't swallow that.
'All over the countzy, people would be reading and beadng about New
York. They'd-'
'It wouldn't spread that easily, Billy.
'All sight. All light. But there would be chaos here, it least.
The voters would be ready to elect a toughtalking mayor with new ideas.
'Certly.'
'We could elect one of us, one of the new race. The mayoralty of New
York is a good political base for a -imart man who wants the
