Lafeyette denied belonging to a gang—and there was some truth in his denial. Frequently, young boys at Horner claimed allegiance to one gang or another. Children as young as four or five at a neighborhood preschool program would arrive each day with their hats turned to the left, showing allegiance to the Vice Lords, or to the right, for the Disciples. A group like the Four Corners imitated their older counterparts. But there was no real organization or discipline; moreover, they didn’t sell drugs. Had it been in another community, perhaps the gang would have been just a band of friends who occasionally got into mischief. But this was Horner. Such affiliation marked children. “Oh, he’s a gang member,” teachers would say of a student. “He’s trouble.” One public elementary school asked its students to adhere to a dress code so that they could be distinguished from gang members who wore their colors. Children often believe what adults say about them. Rickey at times felt that if they expected him to be bad, he’d be bad. He’d be mean. He’d do it all. Lafeyette resisted, partly at the insistence of his mother. Yeah, he would concede, he hung out with Four Corner Hustlers, “but just ’cause I be with them that don’t mean I be in the gang. The people you thinking be nice, them the ones that gonna be in the gang.”
Lafeyette had grown increasingly cynical. And in a child who has not experienced enough to root his beliefs, such an attitude can create a vast emptiness. He had little to believe in. Everyone and everything was failing him. School. The Public Aid Department. His father. His older brother. The police. And now, in a sense, himself.
Pharoah had found a new interest: politics. It fascinated him. The crowds. The speeches. The promises. The power. LaJoe figured it must be in his blood. Her mother had been the precinct captain for the Democratic Party in Horner and had been in charge of getting out the vote. She handed out chickens, sausages, and pints of wine to neighbors after they voted, not an uncommon practice in Chicago in those days.
As a child, LaJoe remembers meeting aldermen, representatives, and even senators. They would visit the apartments or hold community meetings in the basement. One alderman, Ed Quigley, used to give her and other children stuffed dolls for Christmas. Quigley, who headed the city’s sewer department, helped Paul Rivers get his job with the city. He had helped get her mother her job in the County Treasurer’s Office. Quigley was white; his district was mostly black. His critics called it plantation politics.
Though LaJoe had grown up in a family that thrived on politics, she long ago had given up on politicians. She voted only on occasion. The alderman who succeeded Quigley, Wallace Davis, a local black man, ended his political career in 1987, when he was convicted of racketeering, extortion, attempted extortion, and lying to the FBI. His successor, twenty-eight-year-old Sheneather Butler, a former library assistant, was rarely seen in the neighborhood. Her father, who opponents claimed was the real force behind his daughter, had been a perennial candidate for office. A local magazine chided the younger Butler for not knowing who the Wirtz family was. They were the owners of the Chicago Bulls, the Blackhawks, and, of course, the stadium, a not insignificant piece of real estate in her political ward. The magazine wrote, “Such ignorance is appalling even by the standards of Chicago aldermen.”
The only time in recent memory that LaJoe had gotten excited about an election was when Harold Washington first ran for mayor, in 1983. When he won, in what was considered an upset and a landmark victory for the city’s blacks, she and other Horner residents went out into the streets to celebrate, cheering and whistling at the triumph. But even Washington disappointed her. Neighborhoods like Henry Horner improved little during his tenure.
But a mayor alone couldn’t cure Horner’s ills. The white opposition on the Chicago City Council gummed up most efforts by the administration to do much of anything. Moreover, Washington headed the city during the Reagan years, when federal funds for the nation’s cities and the nation’s poor were cut sharply. From 1980 to 1988, Reagan’s last year in office, Community Development Block Grant expenditures were cut 28 percent; Urban Development Action Grants, 68 percent; and federally subsidized housing, 70 percent. During those years, life only worsened in neighborhoods like Horner, so LaJoe’s enthusiasm and hope for change under Mayor Washington waned.
But Pharoah seemed to be picking up where LaJoe and her mother had left off. He got his first taste of politics the previous November, when he and Porkchop boarded a bus along with the Boys Club Drum and Bugle Corps to a downtown parade for presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. It was one of the Democrat’s last rallies before the election. The crowd was too big and the downpour too heavy for Pharoah and Porkchop to see much, but amid all the noise and jubilation and rain, the two twirled flashlights they’d been given and hoisted a placard that read VOTE FOR DUKAKIS ’88. Pharoah yanked his imitation black leather coat over his head to keep his head dry. It was Pharoah’s first up-close encounter with the excitement of politics, and his adrenaline ran high.
Five months later, on March 30, just five days before the city’s mayoral elections, Tim Evans, a black candidate who was running under the banner of the hastily formed Harold Washington Party, visited Henry Horner. Word of his arrival spread quickly through the high-rises. Pharoah, eager for another rally, ran from the apartment to the other side of the Boys Club. A small crowd had gathered around Evans, who was standing on the sidewalk, shaking hands and asking for votes. Suddenly a rock, the size of a baseball, fell near the crowd. Then another. And another. Evans’s bodyguards pushed the candidate into his car. Pharoah covered his head and ran. A rock hit a woman in the knee and a police sergeant on the shoulder. No one was seriously hurt. No one knew who had thrown the rocks or why. It all made the evening news. Evans vowed to return, which he did the next day.
That inglorious moment didn’t dent Pharoah’s enthusiasm, though. The same night, he went to hear Evans and Jesse Jackson speak at the First Congregational Baptist Church. Privately, he began to fantasize about becoming a politician.
The violence never let up. Never. What’s more, no one ever got used to it.
On a dreary April afternoon, LaJoe heard a group of people running from the building past her apartment windows. Often such activity meant the gangs were readying for battle. She pulled back the drapes slightly so that those outside wouldn’t see her. She watched as ten teenage boys chased a man who looked to be about thirty. Two of them caught up with the stranger and wrapped him in their arms as the others flailed away at him with their fists. One boy brought a wooden cane crashing into the man’s rib cage.
From her bedroom window, LaShawn yelled for them to stop. LaJoe ran outside. So did Lafeyette.
“Why’d you try to rape my cousin?” the boy with the cane hollered with each stinging blow. “Why’d you try to rape my cousin?”
The man ran, chased by the pack of teens intent on meting out their own form of punishment. When LaJoe turned to go back to the apartment, she realized Lafeyette had joined them. LaJoe ordered Pharoah to get Tyisha and the triplets, who were playing on the second floor. Once she had the young ones inside, she told them sternly, “Don’t go out of here. You don’t go out of here even to buy a pop.”
Apparently, the man everyone was assaulting had fondled an eight-year-old boy in a vacant fourth-floor apartment. No one thought to call the police. They chose to render justice themselves.
Lafeyette returned ten minutes later, perspiring and out of breath. He and the others had chased the man to Madison Street, where the accused sought refuge in a liquor store. Along the way, the teens had showered him with bricks and rocks.
“They all like raper mans there,” he told his mother, smiling, knowing that what he was about to say had a humorous ring to it: “Maybe it’s a raper mans’ club.” LaJoe didn’t laugh.
Twenty-four
JUDGE FRANCIS MAHAN’S six-year-old courtroom in the Skokie branch of the Cook County Courts is clean and well lit, a stark contrast to the musty courtrooms in the main fifty-nine-year-old Criminal Courts building in Chic
ago. Handsome dark green carpeting matches the cushioned jury seats. The three rows of varnished benches shine.
For many young men at Horner, their only contact with the world outside their own immediate environs is the courts. It can be a cold and humiliating liaison. No one has enough time. The courts are so overburdened that the county has transferred many of its Chicago cases to Skokie. Judge Mahan’s court hears only such cases.
The court was late getting started this morning of March 21. The prisoners, who are bused daily from the county jail, twenty miles away, had yet to arrive. Young men and women, waiting for their relatives and loved ones to appear, sat silently on the hard benches. They listened to the friendly conversations between the public defenders and prosecutors. It seemed to an outsider as if all the attorneys—prosecutors and public defenders—were best of friends.
A young pregnant woman approached the clerk of the court. “Is my boyfriend’s attorney here?” she asked. “Ma’am,” shot back the clerk, “I don’t know who your attorney is or who you are.” The woman retreated like a chastised schoolgirl.
Nearby, a mustachioed state’s attorney was asked by a fellow prosecutor what cases he had that morning. In a stage whisper loud enough for everyone in the courtroom to hear: “Bobby Rivers and Tony Oliver. We’re going to stomp them into the ground.” (Bobby was Terence’s alias.) A young man, a courtroom spectator, overheard the exchange. He turned to his friend in disbelief. “Man, they’re dealing with motherfucking lives,” he said.
Judge Mahan, his hands holding up his black robe, entered the courtroom. Everyone rose. With his silver hair and thick black-rimmed glasses, he looked stern and unforgiving. His arrival made people nervous. A young man sitting in the back row began to crack his knuckles. A few feet down from him, a baby started to cry.
“The judge doesn’t like babies getting noisy,” a sheriff’s deputy informed the uninterested-looking mother. She left the courtroom with the bawling child.
The first case the judge heard involved a Hispanic man in his twenties. He had been arrested for possession of fifty grams of cocaine and for stealing his ex-wife’s car. He had already been convicted for talking to a juror in another case and for possession of marijuana. His attorney requested that the judge lower his $25,000 bond. Mahan raised it to $50,000.
Next appeared the father of the baby who had disrupted the courtroom just a few minutes earlier. The rosy-cheeked youth was tall and lanky, his shoulders hunched up to his ears; his blue jeans barely covered his ankles. He was currently on probation (his crime was never disclosed), and he wanted to move his family to Kentucky. “I understand you’ve been good under probation,” Mahan said. “Leave granted.” He then exhibited a rare smile. “Stay out of trouble.”
“I will, Your Honor,” the boy assured him, his attention focused on the green carpet.
A clerk came up to the judge’s bench. The prisoners from the jail still hadn’t arrived. Mahan called for a short recess.
It gave Audrey Natcone some time to discuss Terence’s case with the prosecution. Because of the large number of cases both she and the prosecution handled, they had little if any time to talk or bargain outside the courtroom. She approached Casey Bartnik, the state’s attorney who was handling Terence’s charges. The two, within just a few feet of the spectators’ benches, began to negotiate the terms of the plea bargain.
“What did we offer last time?” Casey asked innocently.
“Ten,” replied Audrey.
“That sounds reasonable to me for two armed robberies.”
“I’m not serving ten.”
The mustachioed state’s attorney overheard her remark and laughed. “You don’t have to serve ten.” Audrey smiled weakly. She knew she identified with her clients too much. She had let her guard down.
“You get paid to do the right thing,” Casey needled.
“I’m doing the right thing,” Audrey insisted.
“You get paid more than me.”
“Rightfully so.” Audrey paused. “I haven’t even seen the photos. I’d like to see them before we make any decisions.” Audrey was still angry that the police had not honored her request for the line-up photos. She was increasingly suspicious that something was wrong.
The state’s attorney pulled from his briefcase a set of Polaroid shots the police had taken of Terence as well as two line-up photos. Ann Mitchell, the owner of the Longhorn Saloon, had identified Terence from the line-up pictures after first viewing the Polaroids. Audrey looked at the line-up photos, shaking her head. Terence stood at the end of the row of men, all of whom towered, by two to six inches, over him.
“Look at this!” Audrey said. “He’s the tiny shrimp at the end. Will you look at this? That’s my client. The tiny shrimp at the end. Of course she picked him out.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you eight,” Casey conceded.
“Can’t you give me six?” Natcone asked.
“Go to trial.”
Audrey reminded Casey that these were Terence’s first offenses as an adult and that he had a supportive home life, that his mother cared about her son. She had been to all his court hearings. But the conversation ended there. Casey wouldn’t come down from eight years. For three crimes, he felt, that was pretty reasonable. Besides, they had Terence’s fingerprints on the most recent armed robbery. Audrey wondered where LaJoe was this day.
Terence had asked LaJoe not to come. He didn’t want to put his mother through any more pain. He saw how worried she was each time she came to court.
“I let my family down,” Terence said. “I promised my little brothers, my mama, my father, and all of them that I would never come back to jail again. But things didn’t go my way. I just got caught up. I’m the one that’s supposed to be showing an example for them. And it seem like I just failed.”
On her last visit to the court, LaJoe had brought Pharoah with her. He had wanted to come. He was curious; he’d never been in a courtroom. He also was eager to see Terence. Lafeyette had wanted to come, too, but LaJoe wouldn’t take him. After each visit with Terence in the county jail, Lafeyette couldn’t sleep. He would daydream in school about Terence. Within a few days, he’d get bags under his eyes, not unlike his mother. He worries harder than me, LaJoe thought.
When LaJoe had entered the courthouse with Pharoah, he peppered her with questions. “How come there ain’t no jurors like in Barney Miller? … Who them peoples? … Which room is Terence in?” It was all new for Pharoah. He had to know everything that was going on.
The two sat in the first row, listening to the proceedings. “What old boy mean he going to give him two years? What for?” he whispered. His mother shushed him. Pharoah, who was restless, had noticed the scheduling sheets outside the courtroom and wandered out to look at them. He slid them from their glass case. LaJoe followed.
“Mama,” he said, reading from the sheets. “Lee Butler. Sexual. Lee Butler. Sexual. Lee Butler. Sexual. He got three cases. I know he be ashamed when he come into the courtroom.” He would later describe the accused rapist who appeared in court that day: “I won’t say he was dirty but he didn’t know how to dress. He had holes in his pants.”
That morning, Terence’s case was continued—court jargon for postponed—and he was given a new court date. But LaJoe and Pharoah were able to visit with him before he was bused back to the jail. They met in a small room behind the courtroom.
When Terence greeted LaJoe and Pharoah, he took off his shirt and flexed and posed, exposing a set of rippling new muscles. In jail, Terence had been lifting weights three hours a day. He could now curl 120 pounds. His muscles bulged so that he couldn’t button his gray Levi’s. Pharoah would later tell Lafeyette of his visit and, in an imitation of Terence, shuffled backward, flexing his biceps and puffing up his chest. “ ‘I’m strong,’ ” he told Lafeyette, relaying what Terence had told him. “ ‘I got it made in here. I don’t have nothing to worry about around here.’
“You should of seen his chest,” he told
his brother. “He had huge muscles. They must be doing Terence all right ’cause he was skinny at home.”
Pharoah had decided before his visit with Terence that he would smile through the whole encounter no matter how sad he felt. To brighten Terence’s spirits. Just as he did with his father. And so, as Terence showed off his new body and talked to LaJoe, Pharoah kept up a look of good cheer, intent on making both his older brother and his mother happy. When they left, Terence gave Pharoah a thumbs-up. Pharoah signaled back in kind.
That was nearly two months ago. The visit had disturbed LaJoe. Terence had told her he wouldn’t take the ten years even if that meant going to trial. It was just too many years to be away from the family.
• • • •
A deputy sheriff led Terence and the two other defendants back into the courtroom. He glanced at neither the spectators nor the attorneys; he looked straight ahead. The three stood shoulder to shoulder facing the judge, their hands clasped behind their backs, as if they were still in handcuffs. Terence’s muscular body was popping out of his clothes. His blue V-neck sweater strained at the seams. His pants were so short, they exposed the red and yellow stripes on his sweat socks. He raised his head as the judge talked in a low whisper to the two attorneys, who stood before the bench. At their request, Judge Mahan agreed to a private conference. Before any plea bargain could be entered, the judge had to agree to it.
Before Audrey left the courtroom for the judge’s chambers, she pulled Terence aside. “I can get you eight years,” she said. Terence didn’t hesitate: “I want six.” Audrey told him they would talk later.
In the conference, Judge Mahan agreed to the plea bargain arrangements. If Terence pleaded guilty, he would sentence him to eight years. The prosecution could avoid a trial and Terence could eliminate the possibility of getting more time. Audrey now had to convince him.