Vigilante

“Don’t worry, Nix. I know about uncorroborated statements.”

“Good.” He sat on the sofa, but I remained standing. “Lita’s murder is a bag of snakes,” he began. “But you already know that.”

“Is it?”

“You know it is. You went to see Captain Madrid today. She’s had it in for Lita for years. Her husband is a sociopathic killer. Les Madrid has ten notches on his gun.”

“Nine,” I corrected. “One of those guys didn’t make it all the way onto the ark and ended up camping out in an oxygen tent.”

“But you get the point. Besides him, I’ve got a list of half a dozen cops who had contentious arguments with Lita, some in public with witnesses present. You, my unfortunate friend, are holding an ever-expanding bag of runny doo. When it explodes you’re going to wish you’d worn your rain slicker.”

“Really?”

“Yep. But I can help you. We can find a way to make this, if not easy, at least livable.”

“How we gonna do that?”

“I’ve got more evidence coming on Lita’s murder. Stuff you don’t even know about yet. It’s substantial and it’s going to make you and your partner look very stupid because you should have turned it and it points right at the killer.”

“You mean at Carla Sanchez,” I said, holding his gaze.

“I don’t think Carla did it,” he said unexpectedly.

“Except that was your lead.”

“No, it was your lead. I just turned it. As cops, we know sometimes leads go nowhere.”

“So where’s this going, Nix?”

“I’ve got a proposition.” He stood and set his soft drink down, then faced me. He seemed slightly taller. Then I noticed he was wearing boots with three-inch stacked Cuban heels.

“You already know a lot of my people. Marcia, Detective Palgrave, J. J. Blunt, Judge Web Russell.”

“I’m surprised to hear Webster Russell is working for you. I thought he was retired and living in Tahoe.”

“He’s back. He’s a great jurist. The point is, all my people know their stuff. Agree?”

“They’re good.”

“And before they retired they were all destroyed by a corrupt legal system here in L.A. and put out to pasture. I don’t want to see you end up like that.”

“Me neither.”

“So let’s you and me keep it from happening. How’d you like to be on my team? Get off the firing line and step up for a little piece of what we’re doing here. Join Marcia, Frank, and the others?”

“I always try not to crap where I eat.”

“Gee … Good one.” He smiled, but I could tell I was frustrating him. “Here’s the choice as I see it, Shane. You can make a deal with me right now. Join my team, work this case with me, or you face the consequences like those poor cops in Atlanta. We’ll talk money later, but I promise you it’s gonna beat the heck out of your detective’s salary.”

“If I work for you, do I have to retire from the LAPD first?”

“For the time being, to be effective, our arrangement will have to be extremely confidential. You’d have to stay on the job. Later, after I leave L.A., you can pull the pin and if you’ve clicked with my audience, you might even be asked to join the permanent cast of V-TV. Become a famous talking head like Mark Fuhrman, maybe even write a few books.”

“What would my job entail?”

“You’d feed me case facts. There’s a five-thousand-dollar bonus for every fact you give me that I decide to run with on the air.”

“Sell out my case.”

“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.”