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 s.h.i.t 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 s.p.a.ce-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 ma.s.se 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 f.a.ggot, man," J.T. said. "That n.i.g.g.e.r sucks d.i.c.k all night long!"

I had no idea whether Pastor Wilkins really did have s.e.x 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.

"n.i.g.g.e.r, you you have to meet with him," T-Bone said. "Alone!" 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 s.h.i.t 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 s.p.a.ces to the gangs for business meetings. "Five hundred gets you the back room or the bas.e.m.e.nt, 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 be by yourself, depending on what you're going to discuss." by yourself, depending on what you're going to discuss."

"Yeah," Price chimed in. "If you have to beat somebody's a.s.s, 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 hara.s.sment 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-a.s.sistance center, two beauty salons, and a barbershop.

I wasn't very worried about meeting with Johnny until Price spoke up. "We've also got a problem with this n.i.g.g.e.r," he said, "because he's been charging us more than he charges other n.i.g.g.e.rs."

"You mean he rips off only people in the Black Kings?" I asked.

"That's right," said J.T. "And this one is hard, because Johnny is T-Bone's uncle. He's also a dangerous motherf.u.c.ker. He'll use a gun just like that. So you got to be careful."

"No, you you have to be careful," I said. "I told you I won't use a gun." have to be careful," I said. "I told you I won't use a gun."

"No one said you you have to," Price offered, laughing from the backseat. "But have to," Price offered, laughing from the backseat. "But he he might!" might!"

"What exactly is it that I'm supposed to do?" I asked. "You want me to make him charge you fair prices?"

"Well, this is a tough one," J.T. said, "because we can't have people taking advantage of us, you dig? But the thing is, we provide this n.i.g.g.e.r protection."

"Protection?"

"Yeah, say somebody steals something. Then we find out who did it and we deal with it."

"So he can't tell us that we can't come in his store," Price said. "Not if we're providing him a service."

"Right," said J.T. "We have to try and remind him that he's paying us to help him, and it doesn't look good if he doesn't let us come in his store. See, what he's doing is trying to make back the money that he's paying us for protection."

Johnny was out front when we pulled up, smoking a cigarette. "What's up, Sudhir?" he said. "I see you wasting your time again, hanging around these n.i.g.g.e.rs."

Johnny looked like a caricature of a disco-era hustler: bright orange pants, a polyester shirt that appeared to be highly flammable, cowboy boots with fake diamond trim, and lots of ghetto glitter- fake rubies and other stones-on his fingers. A tattoo on his arm read BLACK b.i.t.c.h, and another on his chest said PENTHOUSE KINGS, which was the name of his long-ago street gang.

J.T., Price, and I followed Johnny into the back of the store while T-Bone peeled off to attend to some other business. The back room was musty and unswept. The walls were plastered with pictures of naked black women and a big poster of Walter Payton, the beloved Chicago Bears running back. The st.u.r.dy shelves and even the floor were crammed with used TV sets, stereo components, and microwaves that Johnny fixed and sold. A big wooden table held the remnants of last night's poker game: cards and chips, cigar b.u.t.ts, some brandy, and a ledger tallying debts. Through the open back door, a small homeless encampment was visible. J.T. had told me that Johnny paid a homeless couple fifty dollars a week to sleep outside and watch over the store.

We all sat down around the table. Johnny seemed impatient. "All right," he said, "what are we going to do?"

"Well, we were thinking more like what you you were going to do, n.i.g.g.e.r," Price said. were going to do, n.i.g.g.e.r," Price said.

"Listen, big black," Johnny said, cigarette dancing in his lips, "you can take that mouth outside if you can't say something useful."

J.T. told Price to go back to the car, leaving just me, J.T., and Johnny.

"You're paying us, Johnny," J.T. said, "and now you're charging charging us. You trying to make your money back? Is that it?" us. You trying to make your money back? Is that it?"

Johnny replied in a calm monotone. "You n.i.g.g.e.rs charge me two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and that s.h.i.t has to stop," he said. "A man can't run a business if he has to pay that kind of money.

And your boys keep coming in here demanding free s.h.i.t. I told Moochie and the rest of them that if they come in here anymore, this .22 is going to find their back." He gestured to a rifle hanging behind him on the wall.

"See now, that's the kind of talk we don't need," J.T. said. "I mean, we need to cooperate."

"Cooperate, my a.s.s!" said Johnny. "You can cooperate with my fist."

"Whoa, whoa!" I yelled, trying to be useful. "Let's calm down now, boys. What I think we need is a little-"

"Is this Arab going to sit here all day with us?" Johnny said.

"Leave that boy alone," J.T. said. "I'll explain later." He shot me a glance, a Shut the f.u.c.k up Shut the f.u.c.k up glance. "Listen, you pay me two hundred dollars a month and you'll get the same s.h.i.t from us." He was talking about the protection the gang afforded. "And I'll talk to Moochie and everyone else, tell them they can't steal s.h.i.t. Okay?" glance. "Listen, you pay me two hundred dollars a month and you'll get the same s.h.i.t from us." He was talking about the protection the gang afforded. "And I'll talk to Moochie and everyone else, tell them they can't steal s.h.i.t. Okay?"

"b.i.t.c.h, you better tell him not to bring his girlfriends up in here."

"What?"

"You heard me. He brings them b.i.t.c.hes in here when I'm not around, showing off and taking s.h.i.t off the shelves, eating candy and drinking soda like he owns the place. When my man tried to do something about it, he pulled a gun on him. Let him bring that s.h.i.t on me. Try it once, I'll kill the little b.i.t.c.h."

"All right," J.T. said, putting his hand in front of Johnny's face to shut him up. "I told you I'll I'll deal with the n.i.g.g.e.r." deal with the n.i.g.g.e.r."

"I pay you two hundred dollars and your boys get to come in here, but they have to promise to spend at least two hundred dollars a month on s.h.i.t," Johnny said.

"And you're not going to jack up prices, right?" I said.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n, Arab, you still here?" Johnny said. "Yeah, that's right, they pay what everyone else pays."

"Okay, then," I said, "we got ourselves a deal, boys!" I stood up to go.

"Boy, sit your a.s.s down," J.T. said. "Johnny, we'll get back with you."

"Yeah, we'll get back with you," I said. "We need to deliberate."

Johnny and J.T. started laughing.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n!" Johnny shouted. "You bring this Arab with you wherever you go?"

"One day," J.T. muttered, clearly frustrated that I was taking my role a little too seriously. "One day, that's it."

We got back in the Malibu. Price drove, J.T. rode shotgun, and I sat in the back. My next duty, J.T. explained, was to settle a dispute between two gang members, Billy and Otis. Billy was the director of a six-man drug-selling crew. Otis, one of his six dealers, was claiming that Billy had underpaid him for a day's work. Billy, meanwhile, said that Otis lied about how much crack he sold and kept the extra money. My dilemma would be compounded by the fact that I already knew both Billy and Otis.

As we drove, Price explained my goal: to adjudicate the case and determine a fair punishment. "If Billy didn't pay Otis, then you have to punish Billy," he said. "The punishment for not paying one of your members would be two mouthshots, and Billy can't work for a week. And if you want, you get to make Otis the director for that week. But if Otis stole stole something, then we have a bigger problem. You have to beat the s.h.i.t out of that n.i.g.g.e.r, not just hit him twice. something, then we have a bigger problem. You have to beat the s.h.i.t out of that n.i.g.g.e.r, not just hit him twice. And And he has to work free for a month." he has to work free for a month."

The thought of hitting someone in the face-delivering a "mouthshot"-made me nauseous. Growing up, I used to get picked on all the time. I was tall and athletic, but I was also a nerd, completewith pocket protector, bad haircut, and an armful of math and science books. I was a perfect target for the average football player or any other jock, especially since I played the less "manly" sports of tennis and soccer. I never even learned to throw a punch. In school most of the fights culminated with someone-most often a girl I was with-pleading for the bully to reconsider, or with me rolling up in a fetal ball, which I actually found to be quite a good strategy, since most bullies didn't want to fight someone who wouldn't fight back.

"Now, I don't mean to be picky," I said, "but isn't this why we have you here, Price? I mean, you're the security guy, no? You You beat their a.s.s-I mean, isn't that what you get paid for? And if I'm the leader, I can delegate, no?" beat their a.s.s-I mean, isn't that what you get paid for? And if I'm the leader, I can delegate, no?"

"Sudhir," J.T. said, "you have to realize that if you do that, then you lose respect. They need to see that you are the boss, which means that you hand out the beating."

"What if I make them do twenty pushups or fifty squat thrusts? Or maybe they have to clean my car."

"You don't own a car," J.T. said.

"That's right-so they have to clean your your car for a month!" car for a month!"

"Listen, these guys already clean my car, wipe my a.s.s, whatever I want, so that ain't happening," J.T. said calmly, as if wanting to make sure I understood the breadth of his power. "And if they can steal money or not pay somebody for working and they only have to clean a car, then think how much these guys will steal. You have to make sure they understand that they can't be stealing! n.i.g.g.e.r, they need to fear fear you." you."

"So that's your leadership style? Fear?" I was trying to give the impression that I had my own style. Mostly, I was stalling out of worry that I'd have to throw a punch. "Fear, huh? Very interesting, very interesting."

We pulled up to the street corner where Billy and Otis had been told to meet us. It was cold, not quite noon, but the sun had broken through a bit. Aside from a nearby gas station, the corner was surrounded mostly by empty lots and abandoned buildings.

I watched Billy and Otis saunter over. Billy was about six foot six. He had been a star basketball player at Dunbar High School and won a scholarship to Southern Illinois at Carbondale, a small downstate school. He began using his connections with the Black Kings to deal marijuana and cocaine to students in his dorm. He eventually decided to quit the basketball team to sell drugs full-time. He once told me that the lure of cash "made my mouth water, and I couldn't get enough of it. Dumbest move I ever made." Now he was working in the gang to save money in hopes of returning to college.

I always liked Billy. He was one of thousands of people in this neighborhood who, by the time they turned eighteen, had made all sorts of important decisions by themselves. Fewer than 40 percent of the adults in the neighborhood had even graduated from high school, much less college, so Billy didn't have a lot of places to go for counsel. Even so, he was the first one to accept responsibility for the bad decisions he'd made. I'll never forget what he said when he moved back to the projects after dropping out of college: "I just needed someone to talk to. My mind was racing out of control, and I had no one to talk to."

I didn't want to think about hitting Billy today, because I really liked him-and because, at that height, his jaw was nearly out of reach.

Otis was a different story. He always wore dark sungla.s.ses-even indoors, even in winter-and he kept a large knife underneath a long black jacket that he always wore, even in hot weather. He loved to cut people up and give them a scar. And he didn't like me at all.

This acrimony stemmed from a basketball game several months earlier. I regularly attended the gang's midnight games at the Boys & Girls Club. If Autry came up one referee short, he sometimes pressed me into service. I had played basketball growing up, but not how it was played in the ghetto. In my neighborhood we set picks, pa.s.sed the ball-and, perhaps most important, called fouls, even in pickup games. In the gang games, if you called even half the fouls that were actually committed, you'd run out of players by halftime. But during one game I refereed when Otis was playing, I called five quick fouls on him because . . . well, because he fouled somebody five times. He had to leave the game.

From the bench, with a cheap bottle of liquor in his hand, Otis shouted at me, "I'm going to kill you, motherf.u.c.ker! I'm going to cut your b.a.l.l.s off!" It was pretty hard to concentrate for the rest of the game.

I left the gym immediately afterward, but Otis chased me down in the parking lot. He was still in his uniform, so he didn't have his machete with him. He picked up a bottle from the asphalt, smashed it, and pressed the jagged edge to my neck. Just then Autry hustled into the parking lot, pulled Otis back, and told me to run. I stood there in shock while Autry kept yelling, "Run, n.i.g.g.e.r, run!" After about thirty seconds, he and Otis both started laughing, because my feet simply wouldn't move. They laughed so hard that they crumpled to the ground. I nearly threw up.

I was thinking of this incident now, as Otis walked toward us, and I wondered if he was, too. I got out of the car along with J.T. and Price.

"Okay, let's hear what happened," J.T. said. "I need to know who f.u.c.ked up last week. Billy, you first."

J.T. seemed preoccupied, maybe a little upset. I didn't know why, and it wasn't the time to ask. It certainly didn't seem as if I had much chance of leading the conversation.

"Like I already said," Billy began, "ain't nothing to say. Otis got a hundred-pack and was a hundred dollars short. I want my money." He was stubborn and defiant.