The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (17 page)

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Authors: Jon Ronson

Tags: #Social Scientists & Psychologists, #Psychopathology, #Sociology, #Psychology, #Popular Culture.; Bisacsh, #Social Science, #Popular Culture, #Psychopaths, #General, #Mental Illness, #Biography & Autobiography, #Social Psychology, #History.; Bisacsh, #History

BOOK: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
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That day in Queens was strange and memorable. Well-dressed men came and went. They sometimes huddled in corners and talked about things I couldn’t hear, although I strained to eavesdrop. Maybe they were planning a military coup or something.
I asked him how he was adjusting to everyday life. What did he do to pass the time? Did he have hobbies? He smiled slightly.
“I’ll show you,” he said.
He led me from his mother’s house and down an alleyway, and then down another alleyway, and into a cluster of apartment blocks.
“Nearly there,” he said. “Don’t worry!”
We climbed the stairs. I looked apprehensively behind me. We reached a doorway. He opened it. I took in the room.
On every table, every surface, there were the kinds of tiny plastic figures that come free with McDonald’s and Burger King promotions—little Dumbos and Goofys and Muppets from Space and Rugrats and Batmen and Powerpuff Girls and Men in Black and Luke Skywalkers and Bart Simpsons and Fred Flintstones and Jackie Chans and Buzz Lightyears and on and on.
We looked at each other.
“What impresses me most about them is the artistry,” he said.
“Do you arrange them into battalions?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
There was a silence.
“Shall we go?” he murmured, I think regretting his decision to show me his army of plastic cartoon figurines.
 
 
A few minutes later we were back in his mother’s house, the two of us sitting at the kitchen table. His mother shuffled in and out. He was telling me that one day the people of Haiti would call him back to lead them—“They adore me in Haiti,” he said—and, yes, when that day came, he would do his duty for the people.
I asked him about Cité Soleil and Raboteau and the other charges against him.
“There’s not even
smoke
to those claims,” he said. “Not even
smoke
!”
“Is that it?” I thought. “Is that all you’re going to say on the subject?”
“The lies they tell about me break my heart,” he said.
And then I heard a strange noise coming from Constant. His body was shaking. The noise I could hear was something like sobbing. But it wasn’t quite sobbing. It was an approximation of sobbing. His face was screwed up like a face would be if it were crying, but it was weird, like bad acting. A grown man in a dapper suit was pretending to cry in front of me. This would have been awkward enough if he was
actually
crying—I find displays of overt emotion not at all pleasant—but this was a man palpably simulating crying, which made the moment at once awkward, surreal, and quite disturbing.
 
 
Our time together ended soon afterward. He showed me to his door, the epitome of good manners, laughing, giving me a warm handshake, saying we’ll meet again soon. Just as I reached my car I turned around to wave again, and when I saw him, I felt a jolt pass through me—like my amygdala had just shot a signal of fear through to my central nervous system. His face was very different, much colder, suspicious. He was scrutinizing me hard. The instant I caught his eye, he put on that warm look again. He grinned and waved. I waved back, climbed into the car, and drove away.
 
 
I never wrote up my interview with Toto Constant. There was something eerily vacant about him. I couldn’t find a way in. But throughout my time in West Wales, I kept recalling images from our day together. That fake crying seemed very
Item 7: Shallow Affect—Displays of emotion are dramatic, shallow, short lived, leaving the impression that he is play acting
—and also extremely
Item 16: Failure to Accept Responsibility for Own Actions
. The assertion about the people of Haiti adoring him struck me as somewhat
Item 2: Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth—He may claim that others respect him, fear him, envy him, dislike him, and so forth.
His belief that he would one day return to Haiti as their leader seemed quite
Item 13: Lack of Realistic Long-Term Goals.
Maybe Bob’s checklist even solved the mystery of why he agreed to meet me at all. Maybe it was
Item 3: Need for Stimulation/Proneness to Boredom, Item 14: Impulsivity—He is unlikely to spend much time considering the possible consequences of his actions—
and
Item 2: Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth.
Maybe items 3, 14, and 2 are the reasons why loads of my interviewees agree to meet me.
I couldn’t see where the collection of Burger King figurines fit in, but I supposed there was no reason why psychopaths shouldn’t have unrelated hobbies.
Where was he now? After I returned from Wales, I did a search. He was, unexpectedly, housed inside Coxsackie Correctional Facility, not yet two years into a twelve- to thirty-seven-year sentence for mortgage fraud.
Item 20: Criminal Versatility
.
I wrote to him. I reminded him of our last meeting, gave him a potted account of amygdala dysfunction, asked him if he felt it applied to him. He wrote back that I was welcome to pay him a visit. I booked a flight. The Icelandic volcano erupted. I booked another flight a week later, and now here I was, sitting at Row 2, Table 6, in an almost empty visitors’ room.
Coxsackie had one thousand prisoners. Only four had company today. There was a young couple playing cards; an elderly inmate surrounded by his children and grandchildren; the woman I’d met in the shelter, holding an inmate’s hand across the table, casually snaking her fingers through his, pulling at each finger, touching his face; and Toto Constant, sitting opposite me.
 
 
He had been led here five minutes earlier, and I was already struck by what easy company he was proving to be. He was doing what I expected he would, protesting his innocence of the mortgage fraud, saying he was guilty only of “trusting the wrong people,” expressing shock at the gigantic sentence, mortgage fraud usually getting you only five years.
“Five years,” he said. “Fine. Okay. But
thirty-seven years
?”
It was true that the length of the sentence didn’t seem fair, in a way. I empathized with him a little about this.
 
 
I told him, with some nervousness, that the brain anomaly I spoke of in my letter would, if he had it, classify him as a psychopath.
“Well, I’m not one,” he said.
“Would you be happy to explore the issues with me anyway?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Fire away.”
 
 
I figured we both had something to gain from the meeting. He was a bit of a guinea pig for me. I could practice my psychopath-spotting skills on him, and he’d have a day out of his cell, away from the monotony, eating burgers brought by me from the machine in the corner of the visitors’ room.
What did I hope to accomplish? I wondered if I’d catch a glimpse of Tony in Toto—maybe I’d identify some shared personality traits, just as Bob’s course had taught me—and I had a bigger objective, too. Terrible things had been done in Haiti in his name. He had profoundly altered Haitian society for three years, set it spiraling frantically in the wrong direction, destroying the lives of thousands, tainting hundreds of thousands more. Was Bob Hare and Martha Stout’s theory right? Was it all because of some malfunctioning relationship between his amygdala and his central nervous system? If so, it was a powerful brain anomaly indeed.
 
 
“Why didn’t you come and see me last Tuesday?” he asked me.
“That volcano erupted in Iceland and everything got put on hold,” I said.
“Ah!” he said, nodding. “Okay. I understand. When I got your letter I was so excited!”
“Really?” I said.
“All the inmates were saying, ‘The guy who wrote the
Men Who Stare at Goats
book is coming to visit YOU? Wow!’ Ha ha! Everyone in here has heard of that movie!”
“Really!” I said.
“Yeah, we have a movie night every Saturday night. Last Saturday was
Avatar
. That movie touched me. It
touched
me. The invasion of the small nation by the big nation. I found those blue people beautiful. I found a beauty in them.”
“Are you an emotional man?” I asked.
“I am emotional.” He nodded. “Anyway, a couple of months ago they chose the
Men Who Stare at Goats
movie. Most of the inmates didn’t know what the hell was going on. They were saying, ‘What’s
this
?’ But I was saying, ‘No no, I’ve met the guy who wrote the book! You don’t understand the guy’s mind! And then you wrote to me and said you wanted to meet me again. Everyone was so
jealous
.”
“Oh! That’s nice!” I said.
“When I heard you were coming last week, my hair was a real mess, but I wasn’t scheduled to have my hair cut so another inmate said, ‘You take my slot.’ We switched slots at the barbershop! And someone else gave me a brand-new green shirt to wear!”
“Oh
God!
” I said.
He waved his hand to say, “I know it’s silly.” “The only little thing we have here is a visit,” he explained. “It’s the only little thing we have left.” He fell silent. “I once ate in the most beautiful restaurants in the world. Now I’m in a cell. I dress in green all the time.”
“Who is the unfeeling one?” I thought. “I only came here to hone my psychopath-spotting skills and this poor guy borrowed a
special shirt
.”
“Some guys here won’t accept visitors because of what we have to go through afterwards,” said Toto.
“What do you have to go through afterwards?” I asked.
“A strip search,” he said.
“Oh
God
!” I said.
He shuddered.
“The indignity of it is awful,” he said.
 
Just then I looked up. Something had changed in the room. Prisoners and their loved ones were bristling, anxiously noticing something I hadn’t noticed.
“This is fucked up,” Toto whispered.
“What is?”
“That guy.”
Without taking his eyes off me, Toto indicated a prison guard—a man wearing a white shirt—who was wandering the room.
“He’s a sadist,” he said. “When he walks into a room, everyone gets scared. None of us want trouble. We all just want to go home.”
“Did he just do something?”
“Not really. He told a woman that her T-shirt was too revealing. That’s all.”
I glanced over. It was the woman I had met in the shelter. She was looking upset.
“It’s just . . . he scares people,” he said.
 
 
“All those years ago, when I met you, something happened,” I said. “It was right at the end of the day. I was heading to my car and I turned around and saw you staring at me. Really observing me. I saw you do the same thing when you walked into this room. You scanned the place, observing everything.”
“Yes, observing people is one of my biggest assets,” he said. “I always observe.”
“Why?” I asked. “What are you looking for?”
There was a short silence. Then Toto softly said, “I want to see if people like me.”
“If people
like
you?” I said.
“I want people to think I’m a gentleman,” he said. “I want people to like me. If people don’t like me, it hurts me. It’s important for me to be liked. I’m sensitive to people’s reactions to me. I’m observing people to see if they really like me.”
“Wow,” I said. “I never thought you’d care so much about whether people
like
you.”
“I do.”
“That’s really surprising,” I said.
 
 
I scowled inwardly. I had driven all this way and there was nothing psychopathic about him at all. He was self-effacing, humble, emotional, self-deprecating, strangely diminutive for such a large man. True, there had been admissions—a few moments earlier—of
Item 11: Promiscuous Sexual Behavior
, but that struck me as a rather chaste addition to the checklist anyway.

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