“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.

Harry Chisum said, “He’s fighting a losing battle.”

Paul looked at him, trying to ascertain his tone.

Irene said, “Cavender, or Vic Mastro?”

“Your good captain,” Chisum said. “I don’t think he’ll ever find his vigilante.”

“Don’t you? You may be underestimating him. He’s a good cop. One of the best.”

“I’m sure he is. I was very impressed. So were a lot of other people watching, I’m sure. One gets the feeling Captain Mastro has just thrown his hand into the political ring.”

“I’ve had that feeling for a week or more,” Irene agreed. “But why won’t he catch the vigilante, Harry?”

“I can think of two reasons. One is that it would be an embarrassment to Mastro, in the long term. He’d lose more votes than he’d gain.”

“Assuming he really does have the ambitions we’re imputing to him.”

“Yes, assuming that.”

“And the other?”

“I think the vigilante has run his course,” Harry Chisum said. He glanced at Paul and went back to Irene: “He’s done what he set out to do. It’s beginning to backfire on him now. It’s beginning to have unpleasant consequences that he didn’t anticipate when he started. I think, to use the vernacular, that pretty soon the vigilante is going to hang up his guns.”

Irene laughed. “Sometimes you get downright fanciful, Harry.”

“Don’t you think I’m right?”

“No. I think the man’s got the smell of smoke and the taste of blood in him now. I think he’s gone rogue. I don’t believe anything will stop him short of handcuffs and a prison cell—or a bullet.”

“Care to place a small wager on it?” The old man was smiling.

“Are you serious?”

“Certainly. What would you say to fifty dollars?”

“Why Harry, gambling is illegal.”

“Weaseling out? No courage with your convictions?”

“I’ll take the bet.” She grinned at him.

Harry Chisum turned his head. Paul couldn’t make out his expression; the light was behind the old man. “What about you, Paul?”

“I’ll pass. I’m afraid I haven’t got a side to pick.”

“If you change your mind let me know. I’m always glad to take a sucker’s money.”

“Harry’s a fanatical bridge player,” Irene said.

And probably pretty good at poker too, Paul thought. He wished he could fathom what was transpiring behind those dewlappy eyes.

They talked for another hour before the old man saw them to the door. He was all affability when he shook Paul’s hand and urged him to come again. When the door closed Paul thought he glimpsed something else in Chisum’s face: a hint of reproach—or did he imagine it?

Driving Irene back to the city he hardly spoke at all.

31

¶ CHICAGO, JAN. 5TH—Last night, for the second time in little more than 24 hours, Chicago’s vigilante struck again, killing one man and injuring two others.

The dead man apparently was an innocent bystander, the intended victim of a robbery allegedly committed by the two wounded men.

Two men who allegedly had been rolling drunks near several bars in the Loop were found by police officers on Wabash Avenue shortly after 1:00 a.m. this morning, bleeding from .45 caliber bullet wounds, while a third man lay dead nearby.

According to Sergeant James Anderson of the Central District Patrol, the dead man has been identified as Peter A. Whitmore, 43, of 4122 Albion in Lincolnwood. Apparently Whitmore was on his way from a Balbo Avenue bar to the Harrison Street El-station, on foot, when he was accosted on Wabash Avenue by the two alleged robbers, whose identities have been withheld by police pending further investigation. The two men allegedly knocked Whitmore down and were going through his pockets when they were fired on from a passing car.

One of the men was shot in the shoulder, the other wounded twice, in the hip and in the collarbone. The bullet which passed through the second man’s hip barely grazed the flesh, according to police, and it continued on its trajectory, killing Whitmore almost instantly when it struck him in the temple.

According to Sergeant Anderson, the two men said the car from which the shots were fired never stopped moving, and they did not see the gunman’s face or note the type or license number of the car.

Captain Victor Mastro, charged with investigating the series of vigilante shootings, said last night in a telephone interview from his home that ballistics analysis on the bullets recovered from the dead and wounded man had not yet been completed. “But we’re proceeding on the assumption they were fired from the same .45 caliber automatic pistol that’s been used in several other vigilante cases.”