Judge Dempsey, though, felt differently. She had seen many cases like this. Cars by the stadium got broken into all the time. The kids always denied they were involved.
“I have no doubt whatsoever but that these minors broke into the car and took all of those things,” she told the two attorneys in front of her. The faces of the five boys, who sat in the first row of benches, remained blank. No smiles or smirks. No anger or tears. Expressionless. Judge Dempsey continued, “And just because some of the things were not found does not place any doubt on the guilt of these minors … I am going to enter a finding of delinquency that is against all five of them on the case. Do any of them have any background?”
“No,” Andrea replied.
“No background? This is the first?”
“Yes.”
“If they had background I would have taken them into custody,” the judge said. “I think they are really a big threat to the public … out there breaking into cars that are parked. The disposition [sentencing] date on all five is October eighteen.”
Both Anne Rhodes and Andrea Muchin were surprised by the verdict. Anne truly believed that at least four of them were innocent. She’d done what she could—but that, she conceded, was limited. Five minutes to prepare for trial. One attorney for all five boys. “We’re looking at our future [in these kids] and we’re not doing our job,” she would say later. The rookie prosecutor, Andrea, hadn’t thought she’d be victorious in her first trial. She felt certain that the judge would find one of them guilty. But not all five. In later months, she, like Anne, would become perplexed and saddened by the huge volume of cases and the little time she had to prepare for them. For her and for Anne it made no sense—such little attention paid to the defendants, all of them children, who most needed it.
Lafeyette thought the judge would lock them up, and when she didn’t, his immediate reaction was relief. His face didn’t show it, though. It looked angry. Angry that Derrick had not confessed his crime. Angry that he didn’t have a chance to say he hadn’t broken into the truck. Angry that the judge said he had done something he adamantly denied doing. Angry that even his public defender didn’t seem to believe him. The five boys walked out of the courtroom without exchanging a word. Though on crutches, Lafeyette was the first one out the door. He didn’t linger. He hobbled ten feet in front of his mother until he left the building through the revolving doors. There, he waited for his mother and muttered something unintelligible under his breath.
“What’d you say?” she asked.
“Mama, I got a case, don’t I?” he repeated.
“You don’t have a case. You have a record,” she explained.
“For what?”
“For breaking into a truck.”
“But I didn’t do it,” he insisted.
“They found everybody guilty.”
“Ain’t nothing you can do?” he pleaded.
“No.”
Lafeyette raced ahead on his crutches.
• • • •
Once home, Lafeyette went straight to his room. He hadn’t said anything since the short conversation outside the courthouse. An hour later, Pharoah came home from school, his heavy bookbag slung over his shoulder.
“Where’s Lafie?” he anxiously asked his mother.
“He’s in the back,” LaJoe said.
Pharoah ran to his bedroom. LaJoe could see he was happy that his brother hadn’t been locked up. He had been worried. The two brothers looked out for each other. Pharoah, in particular, now worried about Lafeyette.
As LaJoe sat on the couch braiding the hair of one of the triplets, she heard shouts from one of the back bedrooms. It was Lafeyette and Pharoah arguing over a shirt. Lafeyette had lent Pharoah’s Bulls T-shirt to Tyisha without asking.
“You better get it back!” Pharoah shrieked.
“I ain’t gonna get nothing,” Lafeyette huffed.
“Yes, you is!”
“No, I ain’t!”
As LaJoe walked toward the back to break up the fight, she smiled. At least, she thought, I still have both of them. At least they’re still mine. She never thought it could be such a comfort to hear her sons arguing.
Epilogue
IT HAS BEEN nearly a year since Lafeyette was found guilty of breaking into a truck. He was given a year’s probation and was required to perform a hundred hours of community service at the Boys Club. After school, he worked with small children. He taught them how to catch a ball and played games with them. He said he tried not to be too mean with the younger children and that if they cursed he told them to stop rather than kicking them out of the club, as he was supposed to do. Lafeyette loved being a big brother to small children. But his troubles didn’t end with probation.
I helped get both boys into a private school a couple of miles west of Horner. Providence—St. Mel had been a parochial school until 1978, when the city’s archdiocese threatened to shut it down. The school’s principal, Paul Adams, kept it open as a private institution. All of the five hundred students there are black; three quarters of them are from the surrounding neighborhood. Paul Adams runs a strict school. No gangs. No drugs. No excessive absences or tardinesses. The children are financially rewarded if they make the honor roll. Over 90 percent of each graduating class goes on to college. Funding is a constant struggle, though. Half of the school’s annual $2 million budget comes from private sources, mostly individuals, foundations, and corporations.
Pharoah is thriving there. He likes being challenged and being given two hours of homework every night. It hasn’t all been easy for him, though. Behind in his reading and math scores before he entered, he hasn’t completely caught up. His one consistently good subject is not surprisingly, spelling, in which he gets mostly A’s. His daydreaming and forgetfulness have sometimes interfered with school. There were times, for instance, when he forgot to complete assignments. Now he writes down upcoming events in a small notepad that he calls his “memo.” He also had a problem getting to school on time. His teachers suggested that he repeat sixth grade to buttress his basic skills, but Pharoah insisted on going on to seventh. The school agreed to promote him on the condition that in the first month of the next school year he reduce his tardy days, get his assignments in, and maintain good grades. If he didn’t live up to the terms of the contract, they would place him back a year. Pharoah willingly signed the contract. He also, through the school, was awarded a full scholarship to a six-week summer camp in Indiana.
For Lafeyette, Providence-St. Mel was more of a struggle. He was unable to keep up with the work, and returned to public school with two months left in the year. The year wasn’t by any means a waste, however. Lafeyette discovered what it meant to be a serious student. He occasionally went to school for five to six hours on a Sunday to try to catch up on his assignments. And despite his poor grades, he learned a lot. He talked with great enthusiasm about the Aztecs and Madeleine L’Engle’s book A Wrinkle in Time. He also learned to ask for help, something that is extraordinarily difficult for him.
But after just two months back in public school, Lafeyette was wrestling again with the lures of the neighborhood. He was caught smoking marijuana one morning before school with boys considerably older than he—and on occasion he played hookey. After his mother was called to the school, Lafeyette admitted he had made some mistakes, and promised his mother he would straighten up. LaJoe knows that it’s not a neighborhood that allows adolescents room for mistakes, so she has kept a close eye on her son.
On June 19, 1990, Lafeyette, who had just turned fifteen, graduated from eighth grade. It was one of the few times he seemed truly happy and at ease. He laughed and smiled and embraced his mother and friends with such warmth and spirit that everyone around him was filled with pride and hope for him. It was a small but important victory for Lafeyette.
He plans to enter a parochial school next year that won’t be as academically rigorous as Providence-St. Mel and that offers special assistance to children who have learning problems
.
It has been well over a year since Craig Davis was shot and killed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent, and Lafeyette still will not talk about his friend. The ATF and the police also have remained mum, refusing to discuss the case. One police official, however, who said he couldn’t talk about the incident, challenged the contention that Craig was not a gang member, despite the considerable evidence to the contrary. “Al Capone didn’t have a criminal record either,” he asserted in our brief phone conversation.
Craig’s mother, Christine, plans to file a lawsuit against the ATF. Twice a year, she visits her son’s grave at the Restvale Cemetery, placing on it a wheel of roses and a small American flag. The site is unmarked; it can be found by locating Section A3, Lot 7, Grave 140. She has been unable to afford a tombstone.
Rickey began running drugs for one of the local gangs, though he insists that he has since stopped. The Four Corner Hustlers slowly evolved into a gang that sold drugs, rivaling the Conservative Vice Lords and the Disciples. A man in his early twenties, fresh out of prison, became the group’s leader. Rickey and his friends continued to belong to the Four Corner Hustlers.
Last February, the police caught Rickey with a long butcher knife. Since he was on probation for breaking into a car, they put him back in the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center for six weeks. He’s been to numerous court psychiatrists, all of whom have told his mother that he’s mad at the world and feels it owes him something. His mother checks Rickey’s room every couple of days to make sure he isn’t storing any guns there. Rickey rarely attends school and spends many nights away from home. “I feel someone’s gonna hurt him or he’s gonna hurt someone if he doesn’t get out of here,” his mother says.
Lafeyette doesn’t hang out with Rickey anymore, though they run into each other all the time. Lafeyette still likes his friend and worries about him. Rickey turned fourteen in December 1989.
If there is one constant at Henry Horner, it is the violence. Gwen Anderson, the CHA’s manager at Horner, was transferred to a less stressful job. In one two-week period in the spring, six people were shot, including a plainclothes detective who was returning from a hockey game at the stadium. He was robbed and shot with his own revolver. Luckily, the bullet only grazed his head. The proprietor of the Main Street restaurant, where the boys first saw the rainbow, was also shot. Pharoah and Lafeyette had both gone there to buy a sandwich for their mother and saw his body wheeled out on a stretcher. They presumed him dead. I happened to stop by the apartment the next morning to run an errand with LaJoe. Pharoah was late for school. He said he didn’t have any clean socks—and then started crying. He told me about his friend at the restaurant being shot. He recounted how he and Porkchop would go there to buy french fries or a hamburger and how the man would joke with them. “Ya wanna hamburger?” the man would ask. “Thirty-seven dollars. Ya hear me? Thirty-seven dollars.” Pharoah said he and Porkchop would laugh at their friend’s jokes. A few days later, Pharoah, much to his relief, learned that his friend had survived.
Weeks later, Lafeyette saw a friend run out of a building, clutching his stomach and hollering, “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!” Lafeyette thought he was joking until the friend moved his hand, revealing a circle of blood. Lafeyette ran to the corner store to call an ambulance. None of these shootings made the newspapers.
Both Lafeyette and Pharoah want to move to a safer and quieter neighborhood. Lafeyette talks about it on occasion. So does Pharoah, who sat on his bed one day and cried because he worried that he might never get out of the projects.
In the spring, shortly after the spate of shootings, LaJoe tried to move—and for two months it seemed as if she’d found a way. Through friends, she contacted a man named Robert Curry, who told her that for $80 he could get her name on the top of a waiting list for subsidized housing. She gave him the money and over an eight-week period met with him regularly at a local McDonald’s. Lafeyette and Pharoah told all their friends. Lafeyette began packing his clothes. For two weeks, LaJoe vigorously cleaned her apartment in anticipation of a housekeeping inspection. Curry took her to the city’s north side one Saturday to look at apartments and gave her the address of a building that might have apartments large enough for her family. She planned to take with her Lafeyette, Pharoah, the triplets, and possibly LaShawn’s three children. But it wasn’t to be. As the promises flowed and the time dragged, LaJoe became suspicious. Finally, she went to check out the address of the building where she was promised an apartment. It didn’t exist. That same day, Curry was arrested on charges of theft by deception, having allegedly sold false promises to a group of residents in another neighborhood. His was the second housing scam uncovered that year. Pharoah asked why someone would do such a thing. LaJoe had no answer. She had suspended her disbelief for a while—and now felt humiliated and depressed. It was yet one more disappointment. She planned to testify at Curry’s trial.
Some things have improved. Chicago Housing Authority employees, wearing moon suits and gas masks, cleaned the basements at Henry Horner, removing the animal carcasses and rusted appliances. The CHA has also repaired leaking roofs and replaced the missing heating coils at Horner. In the Riverses’ apartment, the CHA fixed the bathtub faucet so that it no longer runs day and night. Also, LaJoe got a new stove as well as paint, which she and Lafeyette used to put a fresh coat on the walls in the kitchen and in two bedrooms.
Vincent Lane, the CHA’s director, raided and reclaimed all eight buildings at Rockwell Gardens. Each high-rise now has round-the-clock security guards. Lane provided nine hundred new bedroom doors for families who had long gone without them. The complex has new playground equipment, and in the spring the area is awash in bright colors: pink and red begonias, pink and white spider ladies, and seven hundred white and pink rosebushes. CHA employees there wear buttons that read I’M PART OF THE SOLUTION.
On one of his frequent visits to Rockwell, Lane met an elderly tenant who was standing outside her first-floor apartment. She took Lane’s hand and pressed it between both of hers. “I’m very pleased with what you’re doing,” she said, looking him directly in the eye. “I’m so happy.” Her face lit up with a big smile. Lane told her he hoped to do more to spruce up the complex and to put a stop to the shooting and the drug dealing. Already, the sweeps had had some effect. Violent crime, though it by no means disappeared, was down. The gangs had moved some of their drug operations elsewhere. Lane was about to leave when the woman, still smiling, hollered after him, “I opened my bedroom window for the first time in about seven years last night and got some air. I slept good last night.” Lane turned and smiled. “I’m so happy,” she repeated. “Any way I can help you, I’ll be here.”
Lane would still like to sweep Henry Horner and all the buildings in the other nineteen complexes, but money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development has not been forthcoming.
Chicago Commons has expanded its Better Days for Youth program, which saw Lafeyette as one of its first participants. A new $750,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services will allow Chicago Commons to launch a major gang- and drug-prevention program for children up to seventeen in Horner and nearby neighborhoods. It has also expanded its literacy program and is making an effort to put together its own library for the neighborhood children. A drug rehabilitation center for young mothers plans to open at the boarded-up Mary Thompson Hospital, just a couple of blocks from Horner. And the juvenile court is doubling the number of courtrooms to accommodate the overload of cases.
Dawn and Demetrius finally got an apartment in another housing complex, the ABLA Homes, where Craig had lived. They are now on the fourteenth floor of a sixteen-story high-rise. Their apartment is sparsely furnished, but they’re doing everything they can to get by. Dawn got pregnant again and tried to have an abortion, but it cost too much. She now has five kids. Her new son is named Demone. Although she hasn’t found permanent work, she spent six weeks, while pregnant, going door to door for the U
.S. Census. Demetrius continues to watch the kids and lands an occasional job repairing cars. They rarely visit Horner.
Terence expects to get out of prison sometime in 1991. He has earned his high school equivalency and continues to write regularly to his family. LaShawn, Brian, and their three children live with LaJoe. Paul, the boys’ oldest brother, moved out of the apartment with his girlfriend. They got their own apartment elsewhere in Horner. Paul, the boys’ father, found a part-time job with a moving company. After his first few days on the job, he was able to give LaJoe money to buy Tammie and Tiffany sandals for the July Fourth holiday.
A Note on Reporting Methods
IN REPORTING this book, I spent a good deal of time just hanging out with Pharoah and Lafeyette, sometimes as much as four to five days a week. We watched TV together, played basketball, and sat in their room talking. We ate at nearby restaurants, where I would conduct interviews, some of them tape-recorded. LaJoe was like a second pair of eyes and ears for me. She relayed incidents involving her children that I would talk about with them at a later date. LaJoe and I met regularly over a three-year period.
In addition to my time spent with Lafeyette, Pharoah, and their family, I interviewed over a hundred other people, including the boys’ friends and neighbors, police, schoolteachers, judges, attorneys, Chicago Housing Authority officials, and local politicians. Almost everybody offered cooperation, though there were a few people who declined to be interviewed.
Of the numerous scenes in the book, I witnessed nearly half. I usually took notes at the time—and frequently went back later to question participants about the episode. Those events at which I wasn’t present I re-created from interviews with people who were. Where possible, I talked to at least two participants, especially if one of them was a child. When only children were involved, like the afternoon on the railroad tracks, I returned to the location with one or more of the boys so that they could help me envision what had taken place. In those instances where dialogue was re-created, it was based on the memory of at least one of the participants, and often on the memory of two or three.