“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
“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.”
“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
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.”
