“Jeremy Barnes,” I said, as I shook his hand. “Thanks for meeting me so quickly, Detective.”
“Make it Paris.”
“Fine,” I said. “It’s JB. Nice table. You flash the badge, or you got something on the owner?”
Soloman grinned and said, “The hostess?”
“Uh-huh.”
“My niece.”
“Ah,” I said. “That would be another explanation.”
A waiter appeared and took our orders. Actually, he took my order and then asked Soloman if he was having the usual. The detective told him yes, and the kid left. Soloman put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his interlaced fingers.
“Dennis said you two go way back.”
“Elementary school,” I said. “How about you?”
“I was a few years ahead of Denny at the academy. After he graduated, they partnered him with me for a while. We’re not close in the sense that we get together for Sunday dinners, you know, but we trust each other. He said you can be trusted, too.”
There was a pause while our waiter brought us our beverages, iced tea for me, coffee for Soloman. After the waiter left, Paris turned his gaze back to me.
“So, JB, whaddya wanna know about the gangs?”
“Everything,” I said.
Chapter 16
“You probably know some of this already,” he said. “Dennis said you used to teach at Franklin, right?”
“Yeah, until the early nineties.”
“Okay, so you were there when the gangs were getting a toehold in the area. Actually, you and I just missed each other. The department formed the anti-gang unit in ’92. Shoulda done it a few years earlier, but both the city and the school district were in denial for a while there about the existence of the gangs.”
“I remember that,” I told him. “We kept telling the board that we had a gang problem, and they kept telling us we didn’t.”
“That’s what happens when your main concern is PR,” said Paris, “instead of dealing with the problem.”
We paused while the waiter brought our lunches, a grilled chicken salad for me, BLT sandwich and fries for Soloman. He pushed the plate of fries into the middle of the table and said, “Help yourself.”
“Thanks,” I said. We spent a few minutes getting started on our food, and then he took a break and looked over at me.
“Know why the gangs started up here in the first place?” he asked.
“Something to do with gangs in other cities,” I said.
“Right. Places like LA and Chicago and New York had major gang problems long before Pittsburgh even knew what a gang was. In most of those places, it was the Bloods and the Crips. They started out simply defending their territories, but eventually they made the jump to organized criminal activity, and at some point, the gang leaders decided to start new chapters in small and medium-sized cities, like Pittsburgh. Guess you could say that the first gangs here were pretty much like expansion teams in pro sports. The idea was to use local talent to help the national gangs make inroads into loansharking, shake-downs, gambling, prostitution, whatever was available and profitable.”
“Didn’t always work, though, did it?” I asked. “I remember reading something a few years back about some cities, like Milwaukee, I think, managing to stay relatively gang-free.”
Soloman nodded.
“Yep, that’s right. Some cities jumped all over the problem as soon as they saw the warning signs. Formed special units to deal with the gangs, sent people into the communities and schools, gave the kids alternatives.”
“But here in Pittsburgh,” I said, “the powers-that-be chose the head-in-the-sand approach to the problem.”
“Uh-huh, until the problem got so big that it reared up and bit’em on their collective asses. Then they were forced to deal with it.”
“Once it reached that point,” I said, “things did eventually improve.”
“Sure. We always knew what to do, just didn’t have the resources until around ’94.”
“When the problem began spilling out of the poor neighborhoods and into some of the more affluent ones.”
Paris grinned and said, “Detective-in’ make you cynical, or you always been that way?”
“I think I picked up the gene from an uncle. So you guys pretty much eliminated the gangs in the mid-nineties.”
“Yep. It wasn’t all that hard. Once we got support from the local politicians, not to mention some significant federal dollars, it only took about a year or two. Hell, the gangs did half the job for us, killing each other off in turf wars. Then we put the rest of them in jail.”
“So what’s happened recently?” I asked.
He hunched up his huge shoulders for a minute and shook his head slightly.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Over the past year, suddenly we’re seeing gang crap again, but it’s not like the last time. I mean, for the most part, we’re talking about just two gangs in one section of the city, the East End.”
“The Links and the Gates,” I said.
“Right, and they seem to be strictly local, no connection to any outsiders. Also, they’re not very organized, and they don’t appear to be involved in any major criminal activities, at least not so far. Mostly, they fight each other over territory, and they pull off small-time heists, convenience stores, shit like that.”
“Any chance this is just what it seems,” I asked, “just some kids forming gangs and having at one another?”
“Maybe,” he said, “but something tells me there’s more going on here than that. It’s just a gut feeling. ‘Course, I could be wrong. Could just be that the conditions are ripe again for gangs. Once the problem disappeared from public view back in the mid-nineties, the politicians lost interest in spending money on programs aimed at areas without a high voter turnout on election day.”
“Now who’s cynical?” I said.
“Anyway,” Paris went on, “no matter what the source,
