Sudhir Venkatesh - Gang Leader for a Day

Ms. Bailey pulled me aside and asked if I would drive Taneesha to the hospital.

“I don’t have a car, Ms. Bailey,” I said. “Didn’t you call the ambulance?”

“Okay, then, do me a favor,” she said. “Ask C-Note to tell the boys in the lobby to take her.”

“What about the ambulance?”

“Oh, no, baby,” Ms. Bailey said softly. “They never come.”

I wasn’t sure whether to believe her, but at least fifteen minutes had passed since I’d arrived and there was no ambulance. Provident Hospital was only two miles away.

I walked out to the gallery and told C-Note, who simply leaned over and yelled down to the street twelve floors below. “Cheetah! Yo, Cheetah! Ms. Bailey says bring the car ’round! You got to take her to the hospital!”

“C-Note!” Ms. Bailey shouted out. “Don’t yell! He’s still in the building. Damn, we can’t have him leaving the building.”

I was confused. Whom didn’t she want to leave the building? Before I could ask, she rounded up the men and addressed them as if she were a general and they, however ragged, were her troops. “She got hurt pretty bad. She’ll make it, but she don’t look so good. I need you-all to find him. He goes by ‘Bee-Bee.’ He may be in 407, inside that vacant apartment, or at his cousin’s. I want to see him before you do anything to him.”

I figured out that the man who had beat up Taneesha was hiding in the building.

“What if he starts to run or gets crazy?” one of the men asked. “Can we get him then?”

“Yeah, I suppose, but don’t hurt him too bad before I talk to the fool. And don’t let him get away. Sudhir, could you call J.T.?”

I nodded and followed C-Note and the others as they made for the stairwell. I recognized most of them as squatters who helped C-Note fix cars in the warmer months.

As soon as we were out of Ms. Bailey’s earshot, I told C-Note I wanted to come with him.

“Call J.T.,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t mess around with this. Do what Ms. Bailey says, boy.”

C-Note had called me “boy” only a few times, the last one when a friend of his was caught in a knife fight and C-Note instructed me to watch from inside a car, where I couldn’t get hurt.

“I will, I will,” I insisted. “But I want to go.”

C-Note realized I wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Just stay near me,” he said. “But if shit gets crazy and I tell you to leave, you go, right? You hear me?”

Eight of us made our way down the stairwell, our breath leaving trails of hot steam in the frigid air. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask. Who was Bee-Bee and what was his relationship with Taneesha? Did C-Note and the other men know him? But we were moving too fast, and C-Note was preoccupied, his eyes ablaze.

We stopped just above the fourth-floor stairwell, since it was thought that Bee-Bee had taken refuge in Number 407. “Charlie, you and Blue go ahead,” C-Note said. “Shorty, you and them go to the other stairwell in case he runs past. Sudhir and me will stay in the back. Charlie, I’m right behind you, so if he got a knife, just let him go. I’ll get him.”

It struck me that I might not be as far out of the way as I’d planned.

All the men hurried to their positions. I could see the door to Number 407 from where I stood in the stairwell with C-Note. Charlie and Blue approached it. Like C-Note, they wore secondhand clothes and ill-fitting shoes. Charlie had a crowbar in his hand. Blue’s fist was clenched, but I couldn’t tell what he was holding.

Charlie knocked. The thin wooden door gave a hollow sound. All the other apartments on the floor had thick steel doors, but the CHA used wooden doors to designate which apartments were vacant. “Yo, nigger!” Charlie called out. “Hey, Bee-Bee! Taneesha says she wants to talk with you. Come on out. She says she’s cool with everything.” He looked back at us. C-Note waved his hands, signaling him to shout again. “Yo, Bee-Bee! Taneesha says she just wants to talk, nigger! I’ll take you up there.” Why would Bee-Bee need an escort to go back upstairs? I thought. And why on earth would he believe any of this?

Just then a voice rang out from the stairwell above us. “He’s on eleven, and he’s coming down the stairs! Get him, he’s coming down!”

C-Note instinctively pinned me against the gallery, letting Charlie and Blue go past. They stopped just inside the stairwell. C-Note and I crouched down a few feet behind them. The intense cold made me shiver. Charlie pressed his hand toward the floor a few times, motioning us to stand still. I had never heard the building so quiet. Apart from the wind and some cars in the distance, the only sound I could make out was a mouse or rat scratching around in the incinerator room.

Then, from above, I heard some distant footsteps turning into a rumble. Someone was running down the stairs, breathing heavily. I found myself grabbing onto the back of C-Note’s jacket. Charlie and Blue were crouched just in front of us. I made out what was in Blue’s hand: brass knuckles.

Just as the footsteps reached the fourth floor, Charlie jumped up and swung the crowbar, waist high. He struck Bee-Bee full-on, bowling him over.

“Yeah, nigger!” Blue shouted, then jumped over and started pounding Bee-Bee in the side. His head hit the wall of the stairwell and snapped back. “Leave that bitch alone, you hear me?” Blue shouted, punching him repeatedly in the gut. “You better leave her alone, nigger!”

Bee-Bee was tall and strong, and he threw Charlie off him. He stood up and began shouting, but Blue tackled him, smashing Bee-Bee into the wall. The two of them started tumbling down the stairs. Charlie grabbed Bee-Bee’s leg, so he, too, fell down the stairwell.

“Grab his other leg!” Charlie yelled in our direction. C-Note jumped down the stairs and made a grab. Blue, meanwhile, was struggling to get out from under Bee-Bee, who had Blue’s head in a choke hold. I could see that Blue was struggling to breathe; he looked like he might pass out, or worse. I felt as if I had to do something. Running over to them, I kicked Bee-Bee in the stomach, which made him relax his grip on Blue. The other men smothered him, and I could hear his muffled words: “Okay, okay. All right, enough.”

Blue, the strongest of them, bent Bee-Bee’s arms behind his back, bringing him to his knees. I don’t know whether it was the cold air, the adrenaline, or the swift kick I’d delivered, but I was badly out of breath. I leaned against the wall near the incinerator room. “Charlie, run back up the stairs and make sure he didn’t drop nothing,” C-Note said. “We’ll meet you at the office.”

The rest of us walked Bee-Bee downstairs to Ms. Bailey’s office. She wasn’t in, so C-Note sent another squatter to fetch her. We all stood outside the office, silent. No one seemed to worry that Bee-Bee would run away.

He sat down on the floor with his head pitched back, resting against the wall. This was my first opportunity to get a good look at him. He was young, his face light-skinned and boyish but with a menacing air. And he appeared to be aging fast. His nostrils were black, his eyes hollow and glazed, telltale signs of crack use. He wore a brown sweatshirt over a stained white tank top, with loose jeans and unlaced sneakers dirtied by the winter slush. I saw a gang tattoo on his neck, the crescent-and-star pattern of the Black P. Stone Nation. The Stones had been largely dismantled in the 1980s by the feds, with some remaining factions now aligned with the Black Kings. Why, I wondered, was Taneesha hanging around with this guy?

C-Note had caught his breath by now. “You really fucked up this time, Bee-Bee.”

Bee-Bee said nothing. He wiped the sweat from his face.