Sudhir Venkatesh - Gang Leader for a Day

T-Bone countered by saying that maybe I should give the cleanup job to Moochie because he was making so much money lately. A little community service, T-Bone said, might ensure that “Moochie’s head doesn’t get too big.” One of a leader’s constant struggles was to keep younger members from feeling too powerful or independent.

Then Price threw in the fact that Moochie, who was in his early twenties, had been sleeping with Ms. Bailey, who was about fifty-five. This news shocked me: Was Moochie really attracted to a heavyset woman in her fifties? Price explained that younger guys often slept with older women, especially in winter, because otherwise they might not have a warm, safe place to spend the night. Also, a lease-holding woman might let her younger boyfriend stash drugs and cash in her apartment and maybe even use it as a freelance sales spot.

“Maybe Ms. Bailey gets to liking Moochie and she tells everyone not to buy shit from anyone but his boys,” Price said. “You can’t have that, because Moochie feels like he owns the building, and he doesn’t.”

“What if I flip a coin?” I asked, frustrated that I was spending so much time delegating janitorial duties. “I mean, you can’t win one way or the other.”

“Giving up already?” J.T. asked.

“Okay, let’s send Moochie over there,” I said. “It’s better that his head doesn’t get too big. Short run, you lose a little money.”

“You got it,” T-Bone said, and stepped away to make a phone call.

Price brought up the next item. The BKs had been trying to find a large space-a church or school or youth center-where they could hold meetings. There were several occasions, J.T. explained, when the gang needed to gather all its members. If a member violated a major gang rule, J.T. liked to mete out punishment in front of the entire membership in order to encourage solidarity and, just as important, provide deterrence. If a member was caught stealing drugs, for instance, he might be brutally beaten in front of the whole gang.

J.T. might also call a large meeting to go over practical matters like sales strategies or suspicions about who might be snitching to the police. A big meeting also gave J.T. a captive audience for his oratory. I had already been to a few meetings in which the only content was a two-hour speech by J.T. on the virtues of loyalty and bravery.

He often called the gang together on a street corner or in a park.

But this was far from ideal. There were about 250 young men in J.T.’s gang; summoning even 50 of them to the same street corner was sure to bring out the police, especially if a beating was on the agenda.

I was curious about the gang’s relationship with the police, but it was very hard to fathom. Gang members brazenly sold drugs in public; why, I wondered, didn’t the cops just shut down these open-air markets? But I couldn’t get any solid answers to this question. J.T. was always evasive on the issue, and most people in the neighborhood were scared to talk about the cops at all-even more scared, it seemed to me, than to talk about the gang. As someone who grew up in a suburb where the police were a welcome presence, I found this bizarre. But there was plainly a lot that I didn’t yet understand.

The Black Kings also needed to meet en masse if they were preparing for war with another gang. Once in a while, a war began when teenage members of different gangs got into a fight that then escalated. But leaders like J.T. had a strong incentive to thwart this sort of conflict, since it jeopardized moneymaking for no good reason. More typically, a war broke out when one gang tried to take over a sales location that belonged to another gang. Or one gang might do a drive-by shooting in another gang’s territory, hoping to scare off its customers-perhaps right into the territory of the gang that did the shooting.

When this kind of spark occurred, J.T. might pick up the phone and call his counterpart in the other gang to arrange a compromise. But, more often, gang leaders ordered a retaliation in order to save face. One drive-by shooting begat a retaliatory drive-by; if a Black Kings dealer got robbed of his drugs or cash by someone from another gang, then the Black Kings would do at least the same.

The retaliation was what signaled the start of a war. In J.T.’s gang it was the security officer, Price, who oversaw the details of the war: posting sentries, hiring mercenary gunmen if need be, planning the drive-bys. Price enjoyed this work, and was often happiest during gang wars.

I had never seen a war last beyond a few weeks; the higher-ups in each gang understood that public violence was, at the very least, bad for business. Usually, after a week or ten days of fighting, the leaders would find a mediator, someone like Autry, to help forge a truce.

“Pastor Wilkins says we can meet once a week at the church, at night,” Price said. “I spoke to him yesterday. He says he would like a donation.”

Price started to chuckle. So did T-Bone, who had returned from his phone call, and J.T.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Pastor Wilkins is a faggot, man,” J.T. said. “That nigger sucks dick all night long!”

I had no idea whether Pastor Wilkins really did have sex with men, but I didn’t think it much mattered. Price and the others enjoyed making fun of him, and that was that.

“I still don’t see what’s so funny,” I said.

“Nigger, you have to meet with him,” T-Bone said. “Alone!”

“Oh, I get it. Very funny. Well, how about this? Since I’m leader, then that meeting is now scheduled for tomorrow. Ha!”

“No, the pastor wants to meet today,” J.T. said, suddenly stern. “And I need to find out today if we have a place to meet on Friday. So you’re up, brown man. Get ready.”

“All right, then. I’m delegating T-Bone to visit Pastor Wilkins. Now, you can’t tell me that I can’t delegate!”

“Actually, I can,” J.T. said. “It says in the gang’s rules that only the leader can make these kinds of meetings.”

“Now you guys are making shit up. But fine, I’ll do it. I say we give him fifty bucks for the use of the church.”

“What!” Price said. “Are you crazy?”

“Fifty will just make sure the cops arrive on time,” T-Bone said. “You better think a little higher.”

“Well, what did we pay last time?” I asked.

“It depends,” J.T. said, explaining that it was not uncommon for the less well-established clergy to rent out their storefront spaces to the gangs for business meetings. “Five hundred gets you the back room or the basement, but that’s just one time. And the pastor stays in the building. Seven hundred fifty gets you the place to yourself. And sometimes you want to be by yourself, depending on what you’re going to discuss.”

“Yeah,” Price chimed in. “If you have to beat somebody’s ass, you might want to be alone.”

I asked for a little time to think things over.

The four of us left the restaurant and got into J.T.’s Malibu for our next task: a meeting with Johnny, a man who owned a convenience store and no longer allowed members of the Black Kings inside. I already knew Johnny. He was a local historian of sorts who liked to regale me with stories of the 1960s and 1970s, when he was a gang leader himself. But he stressed how the gangs of that period were totally different. They were political organizations, he said, fighting police harassment and standing up for the community’s right to a fair share of city services. In his view, today’s gangs were mostly moneymaking outfits with little understanding of, or commitment to, the needs of Chicago’s poor black population.

Johnny’s store was on Forty-seventh Street, a busy commercial strip that bisected Robert Taylor. The strip was lined with liquor stores, check-cashing shops, party-supply and hardware stores, a few burned-out buildings and empty lots, a public-assistance center, two beauty salons, and a barbershop.