Mastro only smiled in reply; he was, Paul saw, genuinely amused.
“What else can you tell us, then? Do you think he has delusions? That he suffers, for example, from messianic fantasies?”
“I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know. All we have is the record of what he’s actually done. He could have any number of motives or delusions.”
“He’s been clever enough to elude your massive task force for quite a long time now.”
“He’s not a raving maniac, no.” Mastro was still smiling with the side of his mouth. “He’s probably an ordinary citizen unless you happen to catch him with a smoking gun in his hand.”
“Well obviously there’s at least one important difference between the vigilante and the rest of us ordinary citizens.”
“He shoots people.”
“Yes, quite.”
Mastro said, “I think everybody has fantasies of violence at one time or another. Even the most civilized people experience anger at some point in their lives. Your wife is mugged, or your kid is beaten up, or somebody slashes the tires of your car—the nature of the offense is almost beside the point. It’s the sense that you personally have been violated. I remember once years ago I left my car parked on a side street while my wife and I visited some friends. It was our personal car, not an official vehicle. We had an old convertible at the time. When we left our friends’ house and returned to our car, I found that the canvas roof had been slashed by vandals. Well it was an old clunker of a car, the whole car probably wasn’t worth a hundred dollars, and no real lasting damage or great cost had been inflicted on me. But in spite of the fact that I’ve been a cop all my adult life and I’ve had to deal with things that are unspeakably worse than this trivial vandalism of a piece of canvas, I still had a predictable natural reaction to this event.”
“What was it?”
“The same as yours or anybody’s, under equivalent circumstances. For just a moment there, in the hot rage of the instant, I had the feeling that if I’d been there in time to see the man slash the car, I’d have killed the son of a bitch in his tracks.”
“You would?”
“Instant gut reaction, Mr. Cavender. I’d been threatened. That car, poor as it was, was my own personal property, and by attacking it this guy had violated me in a very personal sense.”
“Would you really have shot him if you’d caught him in the act? You do carry a gun.”
“Yes, I carry a gun, and no, I would not have shot him. I’ve been a police officer for twenty-two years, including service with the military, and I’ve never killed a man with a gun.”
“Never?”
“I’ve shot a few and wounded them but I’ve never killed a man.”
“You must be rather proud of that record. I know I commend it.”
“Thank you. I can’t say it’s always a matter of choice. Perhaps I’ve been lucky: I’ve never been pushed into a position where I had no choice but to kill, in the line of duty. I don’t think we can condemn officers who’ve found themselves in the position, though.”
“Let’s get back to the slashing of your car.”
“I carry a gun. If I’m not mistaken, I had it on my person that night when we discovered the vandalism. And my gut reaction, as I said, was red-hot anger: I’d have killed the guy, I told myself, if I’d caught him. Now the point is, I wouldn’t actually have killed him. I’d have arrested him. But that situation didn’t apply, you see. The guy wasn’t really there—he’d done his slashing and he was long gone by then. And because he wasn’t there, I was free to indulge in this angry fantasy of killing the guy in retaliation for his violation of my person. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
“You’re saying nearly everybody has experienced that kind of fantasy at one time or another.”
“Yes. It’s a natural thing, it’s human reaction. A sort of safety valve. But fortunately most of us have inhibitions, we’re conditioned by the rules of our society, we have consciences. We don’t actually shoot people for minor infractions. But we do dream about it from time to time. The guy who insulted you in the parking lot last week—you dream about going back there and punching him in the face until he’s a bloody wreck. But of course you don’t actually do it. You wouldn’t get any pleasure out of it even if you did. The pleasure is in the fantasy, because in fantasies you don’t have to worry about conscience or inhibitions.”
“Go on, Captain.”
“All I’m saying is, the vigilante is like everybody else, except for one thing. Somewhere in him, there’s a wire down. There’s been a disruption of contact between fantasy and reality. The conscience and inhibitions have been neutralized by this breakdown, and he’s free to go out and act out these fantasies which are perfectly natural in all of us, but only so long as they remain fantasies. The minute he begins to act these things out, he steps over the boundary between civilization and savagery, between conscience and amorality.”
“Between, if you like, good and evil.”
“Yes.”
“Captain, I must admit you’re an impressive man. You’ve got a good mind, you’re far better spoken than I’d anticipated.”
“We’re not all lump-headed flatfeet, Mr.Cavender.”
Cavender said, “Let me act as devil’s advocate for a moment, Captain. It’s been said, rather loudly and in conspicuous places, that the vigilante has been a force for good in this city. That his actions, and the publicity about them, have acted as a deterrent. That he’s neutralized a few thugs and scared a lot more of them off the streets. Now we’ve heard a lot of statistics since this man started. We’ve heard that muggings are way down, and we’ve heard that they aren’t. You’ve been remarkably candid with me tonight, and I wonder if I can impose on you to be equally candid in answering this one. Can I?”
“Well the statistics are down, that’s a fact. They’re down about twenty per cent in the past two weeks. Part of that is the seasonal drop—the Christmas spirit and all that. Part of it’s probably attributable to the vigilante, but there’s no way to put a specific figure on it.”
“That’s honest enough.”
“I can tell you this much. It’s not an enormous drop. I mean he hasn’t scared half the crooks off the streets or anything like that. He may have dissuaded ten per cent of them—temporarily.”
“Well that means one mugging in ten hasn’t taken place, doesn’t it?”
“You could put it that way,” Mastro said in even tones. “But I’d like your audience to see it this way also. This afternoon a bakery owner who said he’d been inspired by the vigilante tried to shoot it out with two bandits in his bakery. He ended up dead, and he ended up getting all three of the shop assistants shot along with him. Two of them died and the third one was badly wounded. And a few days ago we had a bus driver shoot an unarmed man to death. The bus driver was another fan of the vigilante’s. I think we’re going to see a lot more tragedies like those before this thing is finished, and I’d like to ask people to just think about it before they arm themselves and go out into the streets looking for trouble. What’s more important, a few wallets and handbags and television sets, or the lives of innocent people and unarmed people?”
“I certainly agree with that wholeheartedly, Captain.”
“Violence answers no questions,” Mastro said. “But unfortunately it’s a spreading infection. It’s a lot harder to stop it than it is to start it.”
“Yes. Well thank you very much, Captain.” Cavender turned to the camera. “We’ve been talking with Captain Victor Mastro of the Chicago Police Department,” he began, and Irene switched the set off. The picture dwindled to a piercing white dot that whistled for a while before it died.