One such optimist was Dorothy Battie, a forty-five-year-old mother of six who had spent nearly her entire life in the projects. Dorothy lived in a building a few blocks away from J.T. She was a heavyset woman, deeply religious, who always had a positive demeanor despite having suffered through everything the projects had to offer. Her father and several nieces and nephews had been killed in various gang shootings. Dorothy had fought through her own drug addiction, then helped other addicts enter rehab. Some of her children were now in college, and one was a leader in a Black Kings gang.
Dorothy had never been an elected tenant leader, but she was a self-appointed G.o.dmother to countless families. She helped squatters find shelter, fed tenants who couldn"t afford to eat, and provided day care for many children, some related by blood and others not. Spurred on now by the demolition, she began to act as a sort of relocation counselor for several families who were determined to live near one another in a new neighborhood. They thought that sticking together was their best, and maybe only, chance for survival. These families became informally known as "the Stay-Together Gang," and their undisputed ringleader was Dorothy.
I caught up with her one day in her living room as she was looking over a list of the families she most wanted to help.
"Let"s see," she said, "I got Cherry, three kids. Candy, two kids. Marna, a son and a daughter. Princess, three kids. Carrie, two young girls. And there"s probably a few more." All these young women were friends who shared baby-sitting, cars, and cooking. Now their mission, with Dorothy"s help, was to find a place to live where they could keep their network intact.
"See, here"s the problem," Dorothy explained. "I know what it"s like out there in the private market. You end up in some apartment, with no one around, no one to help you. And you"re scared. At least if a few people can move with each other, stay together, they can help each other. Lot of people out there don"t like us because we come from the projects. They may not answer the door if we knock for help. So I want to make sure people don"t get stuck in the cold."
It was important, she said, to start with the most stable family in the network. That was Cherry, who worked thirty hours a week as a fast-food cashier and also went to night school. Dorothy"s plan called for Cherry to find an apartment in a good neighborhood and then bring the other families over.
While this plan seemed pretty straightforward, Dorothy told me that success was hardly guaranteed. "Things never go as planned," she said bluntly, "because we"re dealing with poor people."
Dorothy"s first obstacle was Ms. Reemes, a powerful tenant in her building, who was not elected to any office but had great influence with the CHA and police. Like Ms. Bailey, Ms. Reemes expected families to pay her a fee, anywhere from fifty to two hundred dollars, for smoothing the relocation process. Every family that Dorothy helped meant one less potential bribe for Ms. Reemes. Although the building hadn"t even been singled out yet for demolition, Ms. Reemes was already accepting "deposits" from families who wanted a rent voucher or relocation services.
"She wanted me me to give her a cut," Dorothy said, "and I told her I"m not even getting paid to help these people! So I told her to go to h.e.l.l. That lady is so selfish." to give her a cut," Dorothy said, "and I told her I"m not even getting paid to help these people! So I told her to go to h.e.l.l. That lady is so selfish."
As Dorothy told it, Ms. Reemes was so miffed by Dorothy"s refusal to play the payoff game that she went on a hara.s.sment campaign. First, Dorothy said, Ms. Reemes put in a bad word about Dorothy with the CHA. Within a week Dorothy"s two grown daughters, both of whom lived in the same building, received eviction notices for late payment of rent. This was particularly surprising, since one of her daughters had no income and was therefore excused from paying any rent at all. Dorothy successfully got the eviction notices rescinded. Then a CHA janitor cut off the electricity in Dorothy"s apartment, but Dorothy paid a squatter to restore it. Ms. Reemes then tried to get the gangs to hara.s.s Dorothy, not realizing that Dorothy"s own son was a senior gang leader. He paid Ms. Reemes a personal visit, and she backed down.
Through a cla.s.sified ad in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Dorothy found a two-bedroom apartment for Cherry"s family in Woodlawn, a poor but stable neighborhood about two miles away, near Hyde Park and the university. Because Dorothy had a CHA connection who helped Cherry get a $500-a-month housing voucher, she had to pay only $150 a month out of pocket. Dorothy found a two-bedroom apartment for Cherry"s family in Woodlawn, a poor but stable neighborhood about two miles away, near Hyde Park and the university. Because Dorothy had a CHA connection who helped Cherry get a $500-a-month housing voucher, she had to pay only $150 a month out of pocket.
Soon after Cherry moved in with her children and an aunt who would provide day care, Dorothy found a large apartment nearby for Princess and her three children. The only problem was that Princess"s brother and uncle heard about this and decided that they also wanted to move in. If they were found to be living there, Princess would lose her rent voucher on the grounds of illegal tenancy. Worse yet, her brother and uncle were drug dealers who wanted to use Princess"s apartment as a new base of operations. "Princess has put up with those two fools for too long, and it"s hurting her kids," Dorothy told me. "I wanted her to start over, and now her brother and uncle are going to mess everything up."
So Dorothy, with Princess in tow, went to confront the two men at a local bar where they hung out. Princess was worried, since both of them smoked crack and were p.r.o.ne to violence, but Dorothy feared no one. As Princess later described it, Dorothy stormed into the bar and loudly told the two men they"d have her her to deal with if they moved in with Princess. The men threatened to beat up Dorothy and then stomped away. They retaliated by calling Princess"s new landlord and, posing as CHA officials, warned the landlord that Princess was a gang member. The landlord promptly called Dorothy. to deal with if they moved in with Princess. The men threatened to beat up Dorothy and then stomped away. They retaliated by calling Princess"s new landlord and, posing as CHA officials, warned the landlord that Princess was a gang member. The landlord promptly called Dorothy.
He didn"t necessarily believe that Princess was in a gang, he said, but he wasn"t willing to take the chance. So Princess lost her lease. Dorothy eventually found Princess another apartment, but it was smaller, more expensive, and a few miles away from Cherry.
And then Marna was thrown in jail for six months for stabbing her boyfriend. Dorothy moved Marna"s children around from one apartment to another so that the social workers couldn"t find them and send them to foster care. Soon after, Dorothy heard that Candy had promised J.T. that the Black Kings could stash guns and drugs in the new apartment that Dorothy was helping her rent. Since J.T. was paying Candy for this service, Dorothy had little leverage to persuade her to do otherwise. Within a year Candy would lose her lease (and her rent subsidy) when the landlord called the police, having seen so many people tromping in and out of her apartment.
The most astounding story concerning Dorothy-one that I could never independently verify-also had to do with the police. She told me that Ms. Reemes called in Officer Jerry, the rogue cop, who caught her in the lobby, dragged her into a vacant apartment, planted drugs on her, and threatened to arrest her for possession if she didn"t stop competing with Ms. Reemes. When Dorothy refused, Officer Jerry arrested her, but she managed to enlist some other police officers, including Officer Reggie, to set her free. According to Dorothy, Officer Jerry returned two weeks later and told Dorothy that if she just paid Ms. Reemes a share of "her cut"- which, Dorothy insisted, didn"t exist-then he would leave her alone.
In the end Dorothy"s list included twelve families chosen for the Stay-Together Gang. Despite her perseverance, she was able to help only four of them move out together, to neighboring apartments in Woodlawn and South Sh.o.r.e. I would spend much of the next decade keeping track of the Robert Taylor Homes" former tenants to see how they adapted to life beyond the projects. As it turned out, Dorothy"s success rate was easily as good as that of the various social-services agencies contracted by the CHA, each of which was awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to carry out the job. Dorothy herself would stay in Robert Taylor until it was demolished, and then she joined her daughter, Lee-Lee, in Englewood, a high-crime, predominantly black neighborhood a few miles away.
Dorothy"s move to Lee-Lee"s house was, unfortunately, a typical outcome for many tenants who left Robert Taylor and other CHA projects. While the goal of the demolition was to move families to safer, integrated communities, the CHA was so inept that nearly 90 percent of the relocated tenants wound up living in poor black areas that left them as badly off as being in the projects, or worse.
In place of the projects, the city began to build market-rate condominiums and town houses, three-story structures tucked cozily together instead of the sixteen-story high-rises separated by vast expanses. Robert Taylor tenants had been promised the right to return to the community once construction was done, but fewer than 10 percent of the units were set aside for public-housing families. It is little wonder that the prevailing wisdom in Chicago is that the Daley administration and the powerful real-estate interests, rather than creating new and improved low-income housing, in fact knocked down the projects to initiate a land grab. As of this writing, the new apartments are set to house mostly middle- and upper-cla.s.s families.
A few months after T-Bone gave me the Black Kings" financial ledgers, Ms. Bailey invited me to a back-to-school party for the children in her building. J.T. had given her a thousand dollars to throw the party and to buy the kids some sneakers, clothes, and school supplies.
I hadn"t been spending much time around J.T."s building in the months leading up to the party. I was generally holed up in the library, working on my dissertation. My advisers and I had agreed that it should explore how families cope with poverty-specifically, how CHA tenants solved problems and kept the community together without much help from the government or charities.
When I arrived for the party, it felt like my first visits from years earlier. There were cars parked all around the basketball court, rap music blasting away, kids running everywhere, and squatters grilling burgers and hot dogs to earn a little money. J.T. and his senior officers were drinking beer and casting an eye over the entire scene. J.T., Ms. Mae, Ms. Bailey, and some of the other tenants greeted me with the same carefree att.i.tude they had showed me when I first began coming around. As I watched Ms. Bailey and some of the other older women tend to the children, I couldn"t help but feel kind of nostalgic. Everyone looked a bit older and more fatigued-just like me, I suppose.
I saw something out of the corner of my eye that stopped me cold: a small garden bursting with bright orange, red, and purple geraniums. In this vast stretch of concrete and patchy lawn, littered with broken bottles, used condoms, and empty crack vials, here was an oasis. I laughed to myself. Why hadn"t I ever noticed it before?
I"d been so caught up with gangs, political chicanery, and the life of poverty that I had missed something so beautiful right there in front of me. What else had I missed because of my incessant drive to hustle?
I thought back to the last time I"d noticed any flowers in Robert Taylor. It had been well over a year earlier. The tenants were preparing for a visit from President Bill Clinton. They were incredibly excited, but also unnerved. His visit was meant to highlight the unprecedented levels of gang violence in Chicago public housing.
Clinton supported the use of police "sweeps," the warrantless searches that the Chicago Police Department was using to combat the gang and drug problems. While the ACLU and other groups decried the sweeps as a violation of const.i.tutional rights, Clinton argued that the right to "freedom from fear" was more important. He wanted inner-city residents to believe, as he believed, that the scourge of street gangs required extraordinary measures, and his trip to Robert Taylor provided a firsthand opportunity to persuade them.
In the weeks before his visit, the project was turned upside down. The police conducted even more sweeps than usual, sometimes ransacking apartments indiscriminately. They also conducted random spot checks in the building lobbies, arresting a great many suspected drug dealers, including many young men who had nothing whatsoever to do with dealing drugs.
J.T. didn"t go so far as to halt drug sales, but he was a bit more cautious, sometimes having his dealers take customers inside to an apartment to obtain the drugs rather than getting them on the street. He also stopped extorting from local stores, fearing that that might lead to arrest. And he stopped laundering money, stowing his cash in garbage bags until the neighborhood quieted down.
On the streets, city tow trucks hauled away abandoned vehicles- as well as a lot of vehicles that might have looked abandoned but were in fact just old and beat up. On top of all this disorder, the weather was unrelentingly hot and humid.
Still, there was hope in the air. Because of Bill Clinton"s overwhelming popularity among African Americans, even the most cynical tenants-including the people whose cars had been towed- were excited about his visit. Tenant leaders led campaigns to spruce up their buildings" lobbies, hallways, and playgrounds. Tenant patrols went door-to-door asking people to tidy up their living rooms and clean their toilets; in one building, snakes and other strange pets were confiscated from certain households. And throughout the project, aged flower beds sprang to life.
In the early days of Robert Taylor, the buildings had competed against one another with flower gardens and other beautification projects. This dormant practice was now reborn in antic.i.p.ation of the president"s visit. He obviously couldn"t visit all twenty-eight Robert Taylor buildings, and he might have time for just one. But this only heightened the intensity of the compet.i.tion. A few tenant leaders called in favors with city officials to try to make sure their building was on the president"s list. Some of them curried additional favor by turning in drug dealers to the police.
The 5011 building, located on the far south side of Robert Taylor, showed particular enthusiasm. This was fueled by the belief that a new construction project next door to 5011 was in fact the construction of a presidential podium. The tenant leader taxed the local gang twenty-five hundred dollars to fund a wide-scale restoration effort. The building"s children were given new clothes and shoes; a mural of historic African-American figures was painted along the building"s ground floor; a few particularly civic-minded tenants even wrote speeches, just in case the president called them up to the podium. And families planted rows and rows of flowers in a garden that had seen nothing but trash for years.
By the morning of June 17, 1994, the day of President Clinton"s visit, the residents of 5011 were fully ready. But his entourage sped past quickly, without so much as a wave. He gave his speech in another part of Robert Taylor. A few of the tenants in 5011 moaned and groaned, but generally they were satisfied that the president had showed up at all. Parents broke out soda and beer, and their kids caught the spirit and launched a party. After the initial disappointment, no one seemed willing to utter a spiteful word. For a time at least, the community shared a deep spirit of satisfaction, of having pulled together. Over and over again, you could hear tenants remark that they hadn"t seen such solidarity in decades.
Now, a year later, the flower bed outside J.T."s building stood as a similar sign of hope-and, in light of the imminent demolition of the projects, a sign of proud obstinacy.
The back-to-school party was in full swing. Kids and grown-ups alike loaded their plates with food. A softball game started up, and a crowd of people gathered to watch. I milled about, saying h.e.l.lo to a lot of people I hadn"t seen in a while.
Suddenly the sound of gunshots pierced the air, and everyone ran for cover. There were four or five shots, rapid fire, from what sounded like a pistol. Parents grabbed their kids and ducked behind cars or ran for the lobby. Above the blaring music, you could hear women screaming for their children. J.T. hollered for everyone to get down.
I found myself crouching behind a car parked near the building. Beside me were a few of J.T."s foot soldiers, young men I barely knew. I asked where the shooting was coming from. They immediately pointed up toward the upper floors of the building.
"n.i.g.g.e.rs are probably high on dope," one of them whispered. "Or else you got an MC who snuck up in the building. It used to be an MC building before we took it over."
Some distance away I could see a thin, dark-skinned woman staggering toward us across the gra.s.sy expanse in front of the building. Her clothes were sloppy, and she was practically falling down, probably either drunk or high. As she came closer, you could hear her talking to herself, most of it gibberish. People started yelling at her to take cover. A few of J.T."s men shouted nasty names and threw beer bottles at her. It was pretty common for drug dealers to treat drug users with disdain; they often justified their line of work by pointing out that they took money from the most useless members of the community.
Some more shots rang out from above, the bullets kicking up clouds of dirt a few feet from the woman.
"That ain"t the MCs firing at us," said the foot soldier beside me. "That"s just some n.i.g.g.e.r who is f.u.c.ked up and looking to cause trouble."
Finally an older gentleman ran out, grabbed the staggering woman, and hustled her into the lobby. After about ten minutes with no more gunfire, most people felt comfortable enough to come out from their hiding places. Parents and children ran into the building, abandoning the party. The squatters and the hustlers, meanwhile, got back to their food and listened to the music. My heart kept racing for several minutes, but even I wasn"t surprised by now that n.o.body even bothered to call the police.
In the spring of 1996, I learned that I had received a junior fel-lowship at Harvard"s Society of Fellows. I was ecstatic; it was a much-sought-after position, a three-year salaried research post. I went to tell J.T. the good news, and that I would soon be leaving town, although I still planned to maintain my ties to Chicago.
The smells of Ms. Mae"s cooking-collard greens, cornbread, and smothered chicken-hit me as I walked in the door. "You still manage to get here right when the food is ready, don"t you?" J.T. said with a laugh.
I apologized for missing the last few suburban Black Kings meetings.
"They still think you"re the director of communications," he said, laughing again but looking at the TV instead of at me. "There"s another meeting next Sunday if you want to come with me."
"Sure," I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. "That would be great." I explained why I"d been so busy lately. Until I learned of the Harvardfellowship, I had been applying for teaching jobs at universities all over the country, including Columbia University in New York.
J.T. interrupted my explanation. "You remember Curtis, that tall, dark boy you met?" He suddenly sat up and began to speak with great enthusiasm. "Curtis is from New Jersey, or at least he has work out there. Hey, what do you think about heading out there with me? I"ve been wanting to go and see how they do things. He and I have this bet. He says the women are hotter in his his projects. Says I should come out and see." projects. Says I should come out and see."
I did remember Curtis, a nerdy-looking drug dealer who worked out of the housing projects in Newark. We had exchanged a few words at most when he came to visit J.T. about a year earlier.
"Somehow," I said to J.T., trying to sound appreciative, "I don"t think that would be such a good-"
"Yeah, you"re probably right. Probably not the best time for us to leave right now, especially with everything that"s going on. You need to watch me do my thing, I know." He grew pensive. "I got a couple of big meetings next week, and you probably want to be around for that."
Before I could ask him about these meetings, he had another idea: "You know something? You remember how we talked about how gangs are different across the country?"
I had once told J.T. that gangs in New York and Boston were said to be much smaller than Chicago"s gangs, rooted in local neighborhoods as opposed to being part of a citywide wheel. But no one, I told him, had managed to write an in-depth, multi-city study of street gangs.
"I could help you meet people all over the place!" he continued. He stood up to get a beer from the fridge. "We got people we know in L.A., in Las Vegas, St. Louis. Black Kings are nationwide! I mean, you and I could figure out how the whole thing works."
"So you"ll be my research a.s.sistant!" I said with a laugh, not quite sure what he was proposing.
"No, no! You"ll still be writing about me. me. The book will still be about The book will still be about me, me, but this will add a new dimension to it." but this will add a new dimension to it."
"Yes, it would add a lot, but I"d really have to check with my professors. I mean, I"m not sure what"s going to happen once I move. . . ."
J.T."s voice immediately took on a guarded tone. "No, I understand," he said. "I know you got a lot to think about. I"m just saying that I could help you. But yeah, you talk to your professors first. No big thing. . . ."
We sat there, not speaking, eyes on the TV. I kept hoping we"d be interrupted by Ms. Mae calling us for dinner, but we weren"t. I didn"t even have the energy to muster up a question about J.T."s business or his life, as I"d always done previously whenever he sensed that my interests were shifting. Finally a college basketball game came on, and the blare of the crowd and the cheerleaders drowned out the silence between us.
With the demolition of Robert Taylor now formally scheduled to begin within a year, the drug economy in J.T."s buildings was already faltering. Some of his best customers were tenants, and they were starting to move out. So were a lot of the BK foot soldiers who still lived at home with their moms. (J.T. offered to rent Ms. Mae a home in one of several neighborhoods, and she tried out a few, but she wound up coming back to a cousin"s house a few hundred yards from Robert Taylor.) The whole place had also grown thick with police, called in to protect the streams of contractors, engineers, city planners, and other bureaucrats who were plotting the ma.s.sive demolition.
With less demand for drugs, there was less work for J.T."s rank-and-filemembers. It was in his interest to place these young men in a new gang, since he never knew when he might need their help in the future. Given his standing in the BKs, it was certainly within J.T."s power to rea.s.sign his foot soldiers to other BK factions throughout the city. But he was able to place only a handful at a time, and no more than a few dozen overall. Worse yet, this strategy tended to fail in the long term, since in most cases the host gang wouldn"t fully accept the new member.
J.T."s gang also had a lot of older members, in their thirties and even forties, who were unwilling to accept a transfer, since that typically meant a drop in seniority and, accordingly, income. Some of these men began to leave J.T."s command altogether, trying to secure positions within other gangs around the city-occasionally, to J.T."s deep displeasure, within a rival gang.
A few of J.T."s men traveled as far as Iowa to try to set up shop. I never went along on any of these out-of-state recruiting trips, but judging from the frustration of the BK missionaries who returned to Chicago, this plan wasn"t going to work out very well.
J.T. tried to hold things together, but the new economics of his situation conspired against him. He grew lonely, feeling as if he were being abandoned by his own BK family. His sense of paranoia grew even more acute. Whenever I saw him, he immediately began to speculate that the more senior BK defectors were revealing the gang"s secrets to rival outfits: where the BKs stored guns and drugs, which cops were open to bribery, which local merchants were willing to launder money.
And then there were the arrests. The federal indictments that had begun to tear apart other gangs were now striking the Black Kings as well. Barry and Otis, two of J.T."s younger members, had recently been arrested. I wondered how long J.T. would be able to stay free himself. One night, driving back from one of the suburban gang meetings, he mused that jail might actually be the best of his options, since anyone who escaped arrest for too long was suspected of being a snitch and placed himself in real danger on the streets.
Soon after this conversation, I heard that T-Bone had been arrested. He was eventually convicted of trafficking narcotics and sentenced to more than ten years in prison. His prompt transfer to an out-of-state prison fueled speculation that he was testifying against his peers to get a reduced sentence. I tried every avenue I could think of, but I had no luck reaching T-Bone. I eventually heard that he had died in prison, and he became celebrated in death for never having cooperated with the police to sell out other gang members.
For a time I thought that J.T. and I might remain close even as our worlds were growing apart. "Don"t worry," I told him, "I"ll be coming back all the time." But the deeper I got into my Harvard fellowship, the more time pa.s.sed between my visits to Chicago, and the more time pa.s.sed between visits, the more awkward J.T. and I found it to carry on our conversations. He seemed to have grown nostalgic for our early days together, even a bit clingy. I realized that he had come to rely on my presence; he liked the attention and the validation.
I, meanwhile, grew evasive and withdrawn-in large part out of guilt. Within just a few months at Harvard, I began making a name for myself in academia by talking about the inner workings of street gangs. While I hoped to contribute to the national discussion on poverty, I was not so foolish as to believe that my research would specifically benefit J.T. or the tenant families from whom I"d learned so much.
As demolition became a reality, and as J.T."s gang continued to fall apart, so did our relationship. When I told him that I"d been offered a job teaching sociology at Columbia University upon completing my Harvard fellowship, he asked me what was wrong with teaching in Chicago. "What about high school?" he said. "Those people need education, too, don"t they?"
The breakdown of the gang affected Ms. Bailey as well. When the gang didn"t make money, Ms. Bailey didn"t make much money either. And with demolition so near, she needed all the money she could get to help the tenants she wanted to help. She paid for day care so single mothers could go look for new apartments. She hired a car service to take tenants on their housing searches. She helped others settle their outstanding electricity bills so they"d be able to get service once they entered the private market.
But as the money ran out, some tenants began to turn on her. Even though the CHA was supposed to provide relocation services, it was Ms. Bailey who had stepped into the breach, for a fee, and so she was the one who now caught the blame. She was widely accused of pocketing the gang"s money instead of using it for the tenants.
I had never seen Ms. Bailey cry until the moment she told me about these accusations. "I have lived here for almost my whole life, Sudhir," she said mournfully.
We were sitting in her office on a hot spring day. The old bustle was long gone. It used to be that we couldn"t sit and talk for ten minutes before Ms. Bailey was interrupted by a needy tenant; now we had the room to ourselves for well over an hour.
"You"ve been told before that you work too closely with the gangs," I said. "Why does it bother you now?"
"Out there they don"t have anybody," she said. "Out there they think they can make it on their own, but . . ." She tried and tried, but she wasn"t able to finish her sentence.
I wanted to say something worthwhile but couldn"t think of anything. "They"ll . . . they"ll be okay," I sputtered. "h.e.l.l, they lived through the projects."
"But you see, Sudhir, I know that and you know that, but they they sometimes forget. It"s like I told you many times: What scares sometimes forget. It"s like I told you many times: What scares you you ain"t what scares ain"t what scares them. them. When they go to a new store or they have to stand at a bus stop in a place they never been to before, When they go to a new store or they have to stand at a bus stop in a place they never been to before, that"s that"s what scares them. I wanted to help them feel okay. And just when they need me, I can"t be there for them." what scares them. I wanted to help them feel okay. And just when they need me, I can"t be there for them."
"You can still do things-" I started to say. But I stopped. The pain on her face was evident, and nothing I could say would console her. I just sat quietly with her until we"d finished our coffee.
I saw Ms. Bailey a few more times, but she was never again the same. For health reasons she moved into her nephew"s home in the middle of West Englewood, a poor black community about two miles from the projects. I visited her there. She had several ailments, she told me, but it was hard to sort out one from the other. "I stopped going to the doctor"s," she said. "One more test, one more drug, one more thing I got to pay for. And for what what? To live here here?"
She waved her hands out at the miles and miles of poor tracts surrounding her nephew"s house, tracts that held far too few of the people from her old high-rise home, the people who"d once given her life meaning.
Winter in Chicago comes fast, and it comes hard. The cold delivers a wallop, making you shudder longer than you"d expect. The first blasts of chilling wind off the lake feel like an enemy.
It was a late Sunday morning in November 1998, and I was waiting outside J.T."s building one last time. About a half dozen Robert Taylor buildings had already been torn down, and his was due for demolition within a year. Nearby businesses had started to close, too. The whole place was starting to feel like a ghost town. I had changed as well. Gone were the tie-dyed shirts and the ponytail, replaced by the kind of clothes befitting an edgy young Ivy League professor. And also a leather briefcase.
I leaned against my car, stamping my feet to keep warm while waiting for J.T. I was just about to get back into the car and turn on the heater when I saw his Malibu charge down Federal Street.
J.T. had called the night before to request a meeting. In his characteristically ambiguous way, he wouldn"t divulge any details. But he sounded excited. He did tell me that the federal indictments were probably over and that he wouldn"t be arrested. I wanted to know how and why he had escaped arrest, but I didn"t have the guts to ask. He"d always been secretive about his contacts in law enforcement. He also asked a few questions about what kind of research I"d be doing in New York. I mentioned some possible ideas, but they were vague at best.
We greeted each other with a handshake and a smile. I told him he looked like he"d put on a little weight. He agreed; between his work and the needs of his growing children, he said, there wasn"t as much time to exercise. He pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. There were several names and phone numbers printed in J.T."s scratchy handwriting. Among the names was that of Curtis, the gang leader in Newark we"d talked about before.
"You should call these people," J.T. said. "I told Curtis that you wanted to see how things worked out there. He"ll take care of you. But Billy Jo, that"s the one who really knows what"s happening in New York. Here, give him this."
J.T. had often talked about his friends who ran drug-dealing operations in New York. But what with the federal indictments, the demolition of Robert Taylor, and my own career moves, I had pretty much forgotten about them. Also, given how things had turned out with me and J.T.-it was pretty obvious by now that I wasn"t going to write his biography-I was surprised that he"d go out of his way to put me in touch with his contacts back east.
He took out another sheet of paper, tightly folded over in fours, the creases a bit worn, as if he"d been carrying it in his pocket for a while. His hands were so cold that they shook as he unfolded it. He gave the paper to me and blew on his hands to warm them up.
"Go ahead, n.i.g.g.e.r, read it," he said. "Hurry up, it"s cold!"
I began to read. It was addressed to Billy Jo: Billy, Sudhir is coming out your way.Take care of the n.i.g.g.e.r.... Billy, Sudhir is coming out your way.Take care of the n.i.g.g.e.r.... My eyes scanned down and caught a phrase in the middle of the page: My eyes scanned down and caught a phrase in the middle of the page: He"s with me. He"s with me.