Sudhir Venkatesh - Gang Leader for a Day

And then there was the matter of my dissertation, which I still had to write. I began to meet more regularly with Bill Wilson and other advisers to see whether I could plausibly move toward wrapping up my graduate study.

Ms. Bailey’s office was packed for the meeting when I arrived, with a few dozen people in attendance, all talking excitedly. As usual, most of them were older women, but there were also several men standing in the back. I recognized a couple of them as the partners of women in the building; it was unusual to see these men at a public meeting. Ms. Bailey waved me up front, pointing me to the chair next to hers.

“Okay,” she said, “Sudhir has agreed to come here today so we can clear this up.”

I was taken aback. Clear what up? Everyone was suddenly staring at me, and they didn’t look happy.

“Why are you sleeping with my daughter?” shouted a woman I didn’t recognize. “Tell me, goddamn it! Why are you fucking my baby?”

“Answer the woman!” someone else hollered. I couldn’t tell who was talking, but it didn’t matter: I was in a state of shock.

One man, addressing me as “Arab,” told me I should get out of the neighborhood for good and especially leave alone their young women. Other people joined in:

“Nigger, get out of here!”

“Arab, go home!”

“Get the fuck out, Julio!”

Ms. Bailey tried to restore order. Amid the shouting she yelled out that I would explain myself.

I was still confused. “Let Sudhir tell you why he’s meeting them!”

Ms. Bailey said, and then I understood: It was the writing workshop. People had seen me picking up the young women and driving away with them. Apparently they thought I was sleeping with them, or maybe pimping them out.

As I tried to explain the writing workshop, I kept getting drowned out. I began to feel scared. I had seen how a mob of tenants nearly tore apart the Middle Eastern shopkeeper who’d slept with Boo-Boo’s daughter.

Ms. Bailey finally made herself heard above the riot. “He’s trying to tell you that he’s just helping them with homework!”

That quieted everyone down a little bit. But still, I was stung: Why weren’t any of the women from the workshop in attendance? Why hadn’t anyone come to defend me, to tell the truth?

After a few more minutes, things having calmed down a bit, Ms. Bailey told me to leave. There was other business to take care of, she said, laughing-at me-and clearly enjoying herself at my expense.

Leaving the building that night, I wondered how much more time I could afford to spend in J.T.’s territory. It was hard to think of any tenants who weren’t angry with me.

Of all the relationships I’d developed during my time at Robert Taylor, it turned out that the strongest one by far was my bond with J.T. As unusual and as morally murky as this relationship may have been, it was also undeniably powerful. Our years together had produced a close relationship. This bond would become even more intimate, to the point that J.T. felt personally indebted to me, when I had the opportunity to help save the life of one of his closest friends.

It was a classic Chicago summer afternoon: a cloudless sky, the muggy air broken occasionally by a soft lake breeze. I was hanging around at Robert Taylor, outside J.T.’s building, along with perhaps a hundred other people. Tenants were barbecuing, playing softball, and taking comfort in the cool shadow of the building. Few apartments had a working air conditioner, so on a day like this the lawn got more and more crowded as the day wore on.

I was sitting on the lawn next to Darryl Young, one of J.T.’s uncles,who relaxed on a lawn chair with a six-pack of beer. Since the beer was warm, Darryl sent a niece or nephew inside every now and then to fetch some ice for his cup. Darryl was in his late forties and had long ago lost most of his teeth. He had unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, walked with a stiff limp, and always wore his State of Illinois ID on a chain around his neck. He left the project grounds so rarely that his friends called him “a lifer.” He knew every inch of Robert Taylor, and he loved to tell stories about the most dramatic police busts and the most memorable baseball games between competing buildings. He told me about the project’s famous pimps and infamous murderers as well as about one tenant who tried to raise a tiger in his apartment and another who kept a hundred snakes in her apartment-until the day she let them loose in the building.

Suddenly Darryl sat up, staring at an old beater of a Ford sedan cruising slowly past the building. The driver was a young white man, looking up at the building as if he expected someone to come down.

“Get the fuck out of here, boy!” Darryl shouted. “We don’t need you around here. Go and sleep with your own women!” Darryl turned and hollered to a teenage boy playing basketball nearby. “Cheetah! Go and get Price, tell him to come here.”

“Why do you want Price?” I asked.

“Price is the only one who can take care of this,” Darryl said. His face was tight, and he kept his eyes on the Ford. By now the car had come to a stop.

“Take care of what?” I asked.

“Damn white boys come around here for our women,” Darryl said. “It’s disgusting. This ain’t no goddamn brothel.”

“You think he’s a john?”

“I know he’s a john,” Darryl said, scowling, and then went back to shouting at the Ford. “Boy! Hey, boy, get on home, we don’t want your money!”

Price sauntered out of the building, trailed by a few other members of the BK security squad. Darryl stood up and hobbled over to Price.

“Get that boy out of here, Price!” he said. “I’m tired of them coming around here. This ain’t no goddamn whorehouse!”

“All right, old man,” Price said, irritated by Darryl’s enthusiasm but clearly a bit concerned. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of him.”

Price and his entourage approached the car. I could hear Price speaking gruffly to the driver while the other BKs surrounded the car so that it couldn’t drive off. Then Price opened the door and gestured for the white guy to get out.

Just then I heard the loud squeal of a car rounding the corner of Twenty-fifth and Federal. Some kids shouted at people to get out of its path. It was a gray sedan, and I could see it roaring toward us, but unsteadily, as if one of the wheels were loose.

The first shots sounded like machine-gun fire. Everyone seemed to duck instinctively, except for me. I was frozen upright; my legs were stuck in place and everything turned to slow motion. The car came closer. Price and the other BK security men ran toward the building as more shots were fired. The car flew past, and I could see four people inside, all black. It looked as if two of them were shooting, one from either side.

Price got hit and dropped to the ground. The rest of his entourage reached the lobby safely. Price wasn’t moving. I saw Darryl lying flat on the grass, while other tenants were crawling toward shelter-a car, a tree, the building itself-and grabbing children as they went. I was still standing, in shock, though I had managed to at least hunch over. The gray car had vanished.

Then I heard a second car screeching down the back alleyway. I was puzzled. In most drive-by shootings, a gang wouldn’t risk a second pass, since the element of surprise had been used up. Indeed, looking around now at the expanse in front of the building, I saw perhaps a dozen young men with guns in their hands, crouching behind cars or along the sides of the building. I had never seen so many guns in Robert Taylor.

Price still hadn’t gotten up. I could see that he was gripping his leg. Somehow the sight of him lying motionless moved me to action. I headed toward him and saw that one of the BKs had come back outside to do the same. We grabbed Price and started to drag him toward the building.