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.
“Get Serena! Get Serena!” someone shouted down from an upper floor. “She’s out there with her baby!”
The BK helping me with Price ran over to help Serena and her children to a safe spot. I dragged Price the rest of the way by myself and made it to the lobby just as the second car emerged from the alley. I heard some shouts and some more gunshots. I saw that the BK who’d gone to help Serena had draped his body atop her and her kids.
In the dim light of the lobby, I could see that Price’s leg was bleeding badly, just above the knee. J.T.’s men pushed me out of the way. They carried Price farther inside the building, toward one of the ground-floor apartments. I wondered where J.T. was.
“Sudhir, get inside, go upstairs to Ms. Mae’s-now!” It was Ms. Bailey. I gestured toward Price, to show that I wanted to help. She just yelled at me again to get upstairs.
About five flights up the stairs, I ran into a group of J.T.’s men on the gallery, looking out. “I don’t see no more!” one of them shouted to some BKs on the ground outside. “It don’t look like there’s any more! Just get everyone inside and put four in the lobby.”
I heard a stream of footsteps in the stairwell. Parents yelled at their children to hurry up, and a few mothers asked for help carrying their strollers. I heard someone say that J.T. was in the lobby, so I hustled back downstairs.
He stood at the center of a small mob, taking reports from his men. There was a lot of commotion, all of them talking past one another:
“Niggers will do it again, I know they will!”
“We need to get Price to the hospital, he’s still bleeding.”
“No, we need to secure the building.”
“I say we drive by and shoot back, now!”
As instructed, four young men now stood armed guard in the lobby, two at each entrance. Under normal circumstances young gang members like these bragged about their toughness, their willingness to kill for the family. But now, with the danger real, they looked shaky, eyes wide and fearful.
J.T. stood calmly, wearing dark sunglasses, picking his teeth. When his eyes fell upon me, he fixed me with a glare. I didn’t know what he was trying to communicate. Then he pointed toward the ceiling. He wanted me upstairs, at his mother’s place, out of the way.
Instead I walked even farther into the lobby, out of his view. I asked a rank-and-file BK where Price was. He pointed down the hall. J.T. approached, patted me on the back, and pulled me in close. “Price isn’t doing so hot,” he whispered. “He’s bleeding real bad, and I need to get him to the hospital.”
“Call the ambulance,” I said instinctively.
“They won’t come. Listen, we need your car. If they see one of our cars come up to Provident, they may call the police. We need to borrow your car.”
“Sure, of course,” I said, reaching for my keys. I had recently bought a junker, a 1982 Cutlass Ciera. “Let me get it.”
“No,” J.T. said, grabbing my hand. “You can’t leave the building for a while. Go upstairs, but let me have the keys. Cherise will take him.”
I gave J.T. my keys and watched him walk toward the apartment where Price was being looked after. It was common practice to have a woman drive a BK to the hospital so that he wouldn’t immediately be tagged as a gangster. Cherise lived in the building and let the Black Kings use her apartment to make crack cocaine. J.T. sometimes joked that the young women in the projects would never turn on their stoves if it weren’t for his gang cooking up crack.
J.T. commandeered a vacant apartment on the fourteenth floor to use as a temporary headquarters. The scene was surreal, like watching an army prepare for war. I sat in a corner and watched as J.T. issued commands. Small groups of men would come inside, receive their orders, and hurry off. J.T. assigned several men to take up rifles and sit in the windows of the third, fifth, and seventh floors. He instructed other groups of men to go door-to-door and warn tenants to stay away from the west-facing windows.
