Gang Leader for a Day (7 page)

Nor was Ms. Mae’s description of “community” something I was accustomed to from my own background. I don’t think I could name more than a few people who lived on the nearby streets in the suburb where I grew up, and we certainly never borrowed from one another or planned activities together. Suddenly I envisioned Ms. Mae coming to my apartment someday for a visit and eating bland pasta and steamed vegetables, the only meal I could conceivably cook for her.

She and I kept speaking. I learned that Ms. Mae was the daughter of sharecroppers, had spent two decades as a nanny and a domestic worker, and was forced to move into public housing when her husband, J.T.’s father, died of heart disease. He had been a quiet, easy-going man who worked for the city’s transportation department. Moving into Robert Taylor, she said, was her last-ditch effort to keep the family intact.

Finally J.T. walked into the apartment. He took one look at me and laughed. “Is that
all
you do around here?” he said. “I’m beginning to think the only reason you come over here is to eat!”

His mother told him to hush and brought over some more sweet potato pie for me.

“C’mon, Mr. Professor, finish your food,” J.T. said. “I need to survey the building.”

J.T had by now firmly established his reign over a group of three buildings, one on State Street and two on Federal, each of which he liked to walk through at least once a week. “You have the CHA, the landlord, but then we also try to make sure that people are doing what they’re told,” he explained as we walked. “We can’t have this place go crazy with niggers misbehaving. Because that’s when police come around, and then customers stop coming around, and then we don’t make our money. Simple as that.”

As we entered the lobby of one of his buildings, 2315 Federal Street, he grabbed a few of his foot soldiers and told them to follow us. The August heat made the lobby’s concrete walls sweat; they were cool to the touch but damp with humidity, just like all the people hanging around.

“I always start with the stairwells,” J.T. said. There were three stairwells per building, two on the sides and one running up the middle, next to the elevator. “And I usually have my guys with me, just in case.” He winked, as if I should know what “just in case” meant. I didn’t, but I kept quiet. The foot soldiers, high-school kids with glittery, cheap necklaces and baggy tracksuits, walked quietly about five feet behind us.

We began climbing. It was only eleven on a weekday morning, but already the stairwells and landings were crowded with people drinking, smoking, hanging out. The stairwells were poorly lit and unventilated, and they smelled vile; there were puddles whose provenance I was happy to not know. The steps themselves were dangerous, many of the metal treads loose or missing. Who were all these people? Everybody we passed seemed to know J.T., and he had a word or a nod for each of them.

On the fifth floor, we came upon three older men, talking and laughing.

J.T. looked them over. “You all staying on the eleventh floor, right?” he asked.

“No,” said one of them without looking up. “We moved to 1206.”

“To 1206, huh? And who said you could do
that
?” None of them answered. “You need to settle up if you’re in 1206, because you’re
supposed
to stay in 1102, right?”

The men just cradled their beer cans, heads down, stung by the scolding.

J.T. called out to one of his foot soldiers, “Creepy, get these niggers over to T-Bone.” T-Bone, I knew, was one of J.T.’s close friends and senior officers.

As we resumed our climbing, I a sked J .T. what had just happened.

“Squatters,” he said. “See, a lot of people who live around here don’t have a lease. They just hang out in the stairs ’cause it’s too cold outside, or they just need a safe place—maybe they’re running from the police, or maybe they owe somebody money. We provide them protection. Sometimes they get out of hand, but most of them are pretty quiet. Anyway, they’re here to stay.”

“The gang protects the squatters?”

“Yeah, no one fucks with them if they’re in here. I make sure of that. But we can’t have two million of these niggers, so we have to keep track. They pay us.”

As we continued our climb, we occasionally passed an older woman wearing a blue Tenant Patrol jacket. There were about a dozen of these women in each building, J.T. said. “They make sure that old folks are doing okay, and sometimes we help them.” Somewhere around the thirteenth floor, J.T. stopped when he saw a Tenant Patrol woman bent over a man who was squirming on the floor.

“Morning, Ms. Easley,” J.T. said. The man looked like he was just waking up, but I could also smell vomit, and he seemed to be in pain. He lay right outside the incinerator room, and the garbage smelled terrible.

“He’s coming down,” Ms. Easley told J.T. “He said someone sold him some bad stuff.”

“Hmm-hmm,” J.T. said disapprovingly. “They all say that when something goes bad. Always blaming it on us.”

“Can one of your boys take him to the clinic?”

“Shit, he’ll probably just be back tonight,” J.T. said, “doing the same thing.”

“Yeah, baby, but we can’t have him sitting here.”

J.T. waved over the remaining foot soldier, Barry, who was trailing us. “Get a few niggers to take this man down to Fiftieth.” Barry started in on his task; “Fiftieth” referred to the Robert Taylor medical clinic, on Fiftieth Street.

“All right, Ms. Easley,” J.T. said, “but if I see this nigger here tomorrow and he’s saying the same shit, Creepy is going to beat his ass.” J.T. laughed.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she said. “And let me talk to you for a second.” She and J.T. took a short walk, and I saw him pull out a few bills and hand them over. Ms. Easley walked back toward me, smiling, and set off down the stairwell. “Thank you for this, sweetheart,” she called to J.T. “The kids are going to be very happy!”

I followed J.T. out to the “gallery,” the corridor that ran along the exterior of the project buildings. Although you entered the apartments from the gallery, it was really an outdoor hallway, exposed to the elements, with chain-link fencing from floor to ceiling. It got its name, I had heard, because of its resemblance to a prison gallery, a metal enclosure meant to keep inmates in check. J.T. and I leaned up against the rail, looking out over the entire South Side and, beyond it, Lake Michigan.

Without my prodding, J.T. talked about what we had just seen. “Crackheads. Sometimes they mix shit—crack, heroin, alcohol, medicine—and they just can’t see straight in the morning. Someone on the Tenant Patrol finds them and helps.”

“Why don’t you just call an ambulance?” I asked.

J.T. looked at me skeptically. “You kidding? Those folks almost never come out here when we call, or it takes them an hour.”

“So you guys bring them to the hospital?”

“Well, I don’t like my guys doing shit for them, but once in a while I guess I feel sorry for them. That’s Creepy’s decision, though. He’s the one who runs the stairwell. It’s up to him—usually. But this time I’m doing Ms. Easley a favor.”

The stairwells, J.T. explained, were the one public area in the building where the gang allowed squatters to congregate. These areas inevitably became hangout zones for drug addicts and the homeless. J.T.’s foot soldiers, working in shifts, were responsible for making sure that no fights broke out there. “It ain’t a pretty job,” J.T. told me, laughing, “but that’s how they learn to deal with niggers, learn to be tough on them.”

The gang didn’t charge the squatters much for staying in the building, and J.T. let the foot soldiers keep most of this squatter tax. That was one of the few ways foot soldiers could earn any money, since they held the lowest rank in the gang’s hierarchy and weren’t even eligible yet to sell drugs. From J.T.’s perspective, allowing his foot soldiers to police the stairwells served another important function: It let him see which junior members of his gang showed the potential for promotion. That’s why he let guys like Creepy handle this kind of situation. “Creepy can take the man to the clinic, or he can just drag his ass out of the building and let him be,” J.T. said. “That’s on him. I try not to interfere, unless he fucks up and the police come around or Ms. Easley gets pissed.”

I realized this was what J.T. had done the night I first stumbled upon his foot soldiers and was held overnight in the stairwell. He had wanted to see how they handled this stranger. Did they remain calm? Did they ask the right questions? Or did they get out of control and do something to attract the attention of tenants and the police?

“So what was going on with Ms. Easley?” I asked.

“You mean why did I give her money?” J.T. said. “That’s what you want to know, right?”

I nodded, a little embarrassed that he could see through my line of indirect questioning.

“Tenant Patrol runs after-school parties for kids, and they buy school supplies. I give them money for that. It keeps them off our ass.”

This was the first time J.T. had mentioned having to deal with tenants who might not like his gang’s behavior. I asked what Ms. Easley might not like about his gang.

“I wouldn’t say that she doesn’t
like
us,” he said. “She just wants to know that kids can walk around and not get hurt. And she just wants to keep things safe for the women. Lot of these crackheads are looking for sex, too, and they beat up women. It gets wild up in here at night. So we try to keep things calm. That’s about it. We just help them, you know, keep the peace.”

“So she lets you do what you want as long as you help her deal with people causing trouble? It’s a give-and-take? There’s nothing that you guys do that pisses her off?”

“We just keep the peace, that’s all,” he muttered, and walked away.

J.T. sometimes spoke vaguely like this, which I took as a sign to stop asking questions. At times he could be extraordinarily open about his life and his business; at other times he gave roundabout or evasive answers. It was something I’d learn to live with.

We kept climbing until we reached the top floor, the sixteenth. I followed J.T. down the hallway till we came to an apartment without a front door. J.T. told our foot soldier escort to stand guard outside. The young man nodded obediently.

Following J.T. inside, I was hit by a noxious odor of vomit, urine, and burned crack. It was so dark that I could barely see. There were several mattresses spread about, some with bodies on them, and piles of dirty clothing and fast-food wrappers. The holes in the walls were stuffed with rags to keep out the rats.

“Sudhir, come over here!” J.T. shouted. I followed a dim light that came from the rear of the apartment. “See this?” he said, pointing to a row of beat-up refrigerators. “This is where the squatters keep their food.” Each fridge was draped with a heavy chain and padlock.

“Where do they get the fridges?” I asked.

“From the housing authority!” J.T. said, laughing. “The CHA managers sell fridges to the squatters for a few bucks instead of taking them back to get them fixed.
Everyone
is in on it. That’s one thing you’ll learn about the projects.”

J.T. explained that this apartment was a “regular” squat, which meant that the people sleeping there paid the gang a rental fee and were therefore allowed to keep food and clothes inside. Ten people stayed in this apartment. A squatter known as C-Note, who had been in the community for more than two decades, was their leader. It was his duty to screen other squatters who wanted to take up quarters, help them find food and shelter, and make sure they obeyed all J.T.’s rules. “We let him run things inside,” J.T. said, “as long as he pays us and does what we say.”

There were other, less stable squats in the building, J.T. explained.

“We got a lot of apartments that are just basically for the hos and the crackheads. They get high and spend a few nights and then they leave. They’re the ones that end up causing trouble around here. That’s when the police come by, so we have to be tight with them.”

Outside the squat I sat down on the gallery floor, finally able to take a clear breath. I felt overwhelmed by all the new information hitting me. I told J.T. I needed a rest. He smiled, seeming to understand, and told me he’d survey the other two buildings by himself. When I started to resist, worried I might not have this chance again, J.T. read my mind. “Don’t worry, Mr. Professor. I do this every week.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “I’m beat. I’ll meet you back at your place. I’ve got to go write some of this down.”

My heart froze after I realized what I’d just said. I had never actually told J.T. that I was keeping notes on all our conversations; I always waited until we split up before writing down what had transpired. Suddenly I feared he would think about everything we’d just witnessed and discussed, including all the illegal activities, and shut me down.

But he didn’t even blink.

“Shorty, take Sudhir back to Mama’s place,” he told the young man who’d been standing guard outside the squat. “I’ll be over there in an hour.”

I quietly walked down the sixteen flights of stairs and over to Ms. Mae’s building. The elevators in Robert Taylor worked inconsistently at best, so the only people who bothered to wait for them were old people and mothers with small children. The foot soldier accompanied me all the way to Ms. Mae’s door, but we didn’t talk; I tended never to talk to foot soldiers, since they never talked to me— which led me to think they’d probably been told not to.

I wound up sitting at the living room table in Ms. Mae’s apartment, writing up my notes. In a short time the apartment had becomethe place I went whenever I needed a break or wanted to write up some field notes. J.T.’s family grew comfortable with my sitting quietly by myself or even napping on the couch if J.T. was busy.

Sometimes the apartment was peaceful and sometimes it was busy. At the moment J.T.’s cousin and her two children were staying there, as was one of J.T.’s sisters. But the living arrangements were very fluid. Like a lot of the more established households in the projects, Ms. Mae’s apartment was a respite for a network of poor and needy relatives who might stay for a night, a month, or longer. Some of them weren’t actually relatives at all but were “strays” who just needed a place to stay. It could be hard to sort out J.T.’s relatives from the strays. Several of his uncles, I learned, were high-ranking gang members. But I didn’t even know how many siblings he had. I’d often hear him talk about “my sister” or “a brother of mine on the West Side,” but I couldn’t tell if these people were blood relatives or just friends of the family.