Authors: Charlie Newton
I push out of the booth and into his face "I’ll do Gibbons. You try to remember who you’re pissing on
after seventeen years
." I bump his shoulder as I walk past, out into a ghetto changing from standard early-morning to Byzantine maze.
Some say the Chicago Police Department murdered Fred Hampton.
Alderman Leslie Gibbons is one of them. He was there in ’69 and says he should know. His version of December 4 had no warning, just the apartment door splintering at 4:30 a.m., then one hundred rounds fired
inside
the Black Panther Party headquarters on West Madison—all but one fired by CPD—seventy-five of them into Fred Hampton’s bedroom.
Alderman Leslie Gibbons says Fred Hampton was badly wounded in the shoulder but survived the attack only to face two Chicago police officers who stepped to his bed and executed him with a shot to the head. In front of his pregnant wife.
That’s what she says too.
For eight years prior to being incarcerated for his role in the Black Panther Party, Alderman Leslie Gibbons marched with Martin Luther King, stood with him in Selma and Birmingham and Marquette Park until King was murdered in Memphis. A major résumé.
Leslie Gibbons is a hall-of-famer in the ghetto, and pissing on him in District 6 would be the closest thing to suicide any street cop could conjure. Not pissing on him in the dwindling white neighborhoods of the Southside where they refer to him as "the Ayatollah" would cause the same reaction.
So, that’s what I was doing instead of working. Pissing. My TAC unit is max-shorthanded today with Cisco down and two of our other guys in court. I’m on the street alone. This happens more often than you’d think and more often than any of us prefer to discuss with outsiders, especially those we police.
I’m asking good guys and bad guys wha-sup. Anybody hear shit? Stuff about the mayor, you know? Why somebody gone shoot him, and like that? That’s how it sounded in my head, but not how I said it; I meant the same thing, just without the Sonny Barrett homey lingo. Asshole.
Connie Long, CTA bus driver, didn’t know; Auntie I. L. at the Fried Right didn’t know; Shirl-the-girl transvestite hooker knew, knew for damn sure—the white devil wanted the Southside for hisownself. Motherfuckin’ Irish.
I went where I could, talked to people who knew me, people I’d helped, people I’d arrested and would again. It wasn’t street winter, but it wasn’t hearts and flowers either. See, it’s not like TV where you good- and bad-cop the bad actors. They don’t
have
to talk to you. And they don’t have to be nice or respectful or anything else. They can just not understand, give you slumped shoulders and blank, watery eyes. Or in the afternoon, after the 40s are down, give you the peeled lips, rap-rhythm, "Uh-huh," while they chew gum and check out all the shit around them that they’ve been looking at all day.
You get that a lot; Sonny thinks there’s a school for it hidden under one of the radio stations the El Rukns or the Vice Lords own: The Post-up, Bad-motherfucker Pimp School of Chicago. Cisco says it’s a shame no one does tours from the colleges and corporations, "live-fire exercises" to go with the textbooks and tuition. Cisco has not yet worn a button-down shirt to work, but he will. If he brings a pipe we’ve decided to shoot him.
Anyway, that was the morning, most of it interspersed with angry stares—some leery, some not, fifteen or twenty raised chins mumbling insults, and four in-my-face accusations that we/I murdered Robert, Ruth Ann’s boy.
Lunchtime is better. I share it near Maxwell’s Dumpster with Rasta-Dog, a rangy spaniel the shorties and taggers spray paint when they have extra. He and I discuss mayoral politics while he eats his hot links and the occasional bit of gravel. Rasta-Dog has no insight on Chief Jesse’s assignment but his tail wags when I talk.
We call it even and I do another hour of detective work that yields additional votes to canonize Alderman Leslie Gibbons and a crack whore warning that the GDs are more unhappy with me than usual. At 2:30 I do backup for a uniform car under the viaduct at Eighty-first and Wallace, just down the tracks from Gilbert Court. The stop is loud and angry, but no one gets shot, and the uniforms drive off with two felons when it’s over. I don’t; I sit in my Ford and listen to the engine knock echo off the viaduct’s walls, thinking about yesterday’s dead GDs around the corner…And the gasolined six-flat across the alley.
I drop the Ford into drive and spit gravel with the tires before I can decide to turn into Gilbert Court. Going in there alone is…there isn’t a term for how stupid that is.
By mid-afternoon no one has accused the Republicans or Alderman Leslie Gibbons of plotting to kill the mayor, although a Blackstone facing five to ten said he may have heard something and would say so if I can "help him out." I do two stolen vehicle stops, assist another uniform car with a woman threatening to kill a man for talking to her child, and now I’m passing Gilbert Court’s dead-end entrance again. And this time I begin to turn.
"5-0! 5-0!"
I jerk the wheel mid-turn and miss a GD lookout sprinting toward Kerfoot Liquors. My tires buckle on the passenger side and the Ford skids sideways at a utility pole—
son of a
—then back onto Vincennes. Horns blare. Two trucks scissor to the shoulders. I split them and shoot through the viaducts bordering Simeon Vocational. Instantly I’m sharing my side of the street with bangers from four gangster sets and blue-and-whites working the daily fight and occasional massacre when class lets out.
I try driving like I know how and only in my lane. A uniform waves; I gulp quick, then wave back and flip a U just beyond the school. Trains rumble over the viaducts I just left, two of them in the same direction and covered in graffiti. I’m about to cruise by Gilbert Court a third time.
Annabelle Ganz is dead, okay? The dicks ID’d her
.
The daylight quits when I enter the viaducts. The mold smells stronger than my basement memories, but the confinement is suddenly the same and I hit the gas.
Like the dicks haven’t been wrong before?
And why in my district? It’s a city of three million, goddamnit—why was she in my district? My right hand pounds the seat. "Not fucking fair! Not fucking fair!"
A truck driver wide-eyes me going by. I reach Gilbert Court and its goddamn basements and this time look away toward the tracks. And decide to do something only slightly less dangerous.
I stop by Ruth Ann’s Emerald Avenue apartment instead. Her street has cars parked on both sides. Directly opposite her porch six GDs lean against an old Ford Galaxy. Ruth Ann’s outside, shoulders folded into her chest, hands folded on her lap. Next to her, one of Alderman Gibbons’s flunkies fills a chair he borrowed elsewhere or bought for the occasion. Five other women sit various boxes and cartons. There are no GDs on the porch; Ruth Ann is not a gangster fan, a vocal opinion that is tolerated but considered treason.
A storefront preacher I know from the Lazarus Temple sits the steps, a Bible in hand, sneakers on his feet, and a pained expression in his eyes. He’s what they call "African," a shouter, a denomination of one who intends to lead his flock back to Africa. Of all the bullshit artists selling religion down here, I believe this fellow means it. He’s about thirty, give or take five, college-educated and confrontational—with both sides—the gangs and us. And alive by accident. For the believer’s sake, I hope he’s not another FBI plant.
And then there’s me. I can tell you that walking a sidewalk on this block, alone and white, is not smart. Not Gilbert Court stupid, but close. None of my mistakes will be lost on those here who don’t like the police in general and me in particular.
Ruth Ann’s fifteen feet of sparse yard separates us. I smile sad. The preacher stands, as does the alderman’s flunky at Ruth Ann’s shoulder. This is a good show by the flunky, although Ruth Ann and I know they never seem to be around when the gangsters are ripping the neighborhood apart. Anyone who tells you that the gangs are an essential part of the "fabric" are in sociology class on the Northside. Gangs are a plague, pure and simple. And the politicians, like the one about to brace me with his righteous indignation and thousand-dollar suit, haven’t done shit about it other than swallow money and blame someone else.
From three steps above me the alderman’s flunky says, "You’re not welcome here."
"Ruth Ann. I wanted to stop by…to pay my respects."
She looks past the flunky to me and the preacher who’s now at my shoulder. I can smell the preacher’s spicy lunch and the sweat in his clothes. It’s new sweat, like he’s been working hard at something today. You can’t hate a guy for that.
The preacher adds his opinion. "You’re not learning, are you? Watch the news, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank—the police can’t kill us all."
"Ruth Ann, I’m sorry about Robert. The whole thing. I’m sorry…about it."
She doesn’t invite me up, although I’ve been on her porch several times and in her apartment when she needed help with Robert and his friends. The flunky steps between her and me, then down one step closer. "As the attorney representing Mrs. Parks, I’m directing you to leave her property unless you have a warrant. In which case produce it."
"Ruth Ann, I—"
"Officer Black."
The alderman’s flunky-lawyer drops another step. "Civil rights. Civil procedure. Get-off-the-property."
"Ruth Ann, I—"
Her face is so tired I feel it from here. Then the flunky is on the sidewalk, making the show, too close to me and he knows it. "You are not the occupying army. You will not murder my client’s son and—"
"Stand back, asshole."
He doesn’t and inflates. "You’re threatening me? On Mrs. Parks’s property, in front of all these witnesses?"
"I’m the police." My tone is a mistake, a big one. "
Stand the fuck back
when I tell you."
He does, one step, then another that wasn’t necessary, then raises both hands to block my mythical line-of-fire at Ruth Ann, grieving mother. Instamatic flashbulbs pop. A camcorder appears. It’s like they’ve been waiting for me.
Sonny Barrett shakes his head when I finish the story, as does Eric Jackson back from his barber chair and half-day, dislocated-shoulder leave. My afternoon post-up at Ruth Ann’s acts as an icebreaker with Sonny. He’s being distant but not so far away that I feel threatened. Distant doesn’t feel good, but it’s better than where we were at Art’s.
Sonny’s day was all Nation of Islam and he looks more spent than usual. Looking into the Nation of Islam and their temple on Seventy-ninth Street is not as easy as it sounds, if in fact it sounds easy. Sonny’s day had no cameras and/or pickets, so by a degree, his went better than mine.
"You won’t make the six o’clock," says Sonny, "but count on the ten."
Eric Jackson concurs. "Scalps, yours for damn sure, as soon as Chief Jesse hears."
Sonny nods and takes another sip. It leaves the Guinness mustache he thinks adds Richard Harris to his lip. We’re doing the Irish end-of-watch
slainte
at Dell’s, a cop bar on Seventy-ninth Street in the DMZ. I don’t come in here much—first, it’s the drinking thing that I’m not doing as hard as I can, and second, it’s the painted glass window that represents all the armor between us and a drive-by that the GDs threaten ten times a day. "Happy hour," I’ve heard them call it.
I ask about Farrakhan again. Sonny shrugs and glances past me to the black patrol officers on my left, then back. I ask a third time. Sonny shakes his head, meaning we’ll talk about Louis Farrakhan somewhere else with fewer black faces. Eric Jackson, who’s black, puts down his Old Style and leans away deeper into the booth. He eyes me so I notice, then shifts his eyes and mine to the barstools at the bar. I look but don’t recognize the backs of anyone seated or their dim faces in the mirror. Our table is suddenly very quiet.
I say, "Why’d you ask me if I was coming to work today?"
Sonny squints, "Huh?"
"We been through this once. Last night, you called from the hospital and asked me."
Shrug and a Guinness sip. "Must’ve been Cisco or one of his babes." He smiles at Eric. "Man, he had some babes in there. I am not shittin’ you."
Since I’m not sure why or how long Sonny intends to run this game, I decide to retire, head home, and see if the locksmith came. Maybe let Stella assault my hair while I consider a life without Sonny Barrett and his private-agenda, alpha-male, Irish bullshit.
Outside, I’m about to get in my car and a blue-and-white stops, then a second one behind it two feet from the bumper. The passenger door of the second car opens and Kit Carson, Watch LT and all-around asshole, steps out. Although this is his district from 8:00 to 4:00, he’s rarely out in it and generally never as night falls. The two uniforms with him are his answer to dusk.
"Officer Black?"
He knows who I am, he’s trying to get me to stop. If I shoot him now, right now—
"Officer Black. I need a moment."
Technically I don’t work for Kit Carson because I’m TAC and we have our own LT, and technically I do because he’s the Watch LT. It’s confusing, and if my LT wasn’t on vacation I’d be much more likely to shoot this asshole and hope for a review board that could see past the lieutenant bars. But that’s not the situation, even in Fantasyland, so I stop on the sidewalk just steps from safety and an evening at home with music and my fish.
"Yes, sir. And what will it be, sir?"
One of the two patrolmen with him chuckles behind his hand; his partner winks.
Kit says, "Could you
possibly
be more stupid?"
"Sir?"
"The community is picketing 6 and you go to the mother’s
house
? Gibbons said you were there to threaten her."
"If you mean Ruth Ann, I went to say I was sorry."
"Sorry?" Kit Carson swells to full departmental height. "Alderman Gibbons has filed a formal criminal complaint against the department naming you, charging harassment and assault. These new charges dovetail with yesterday’s accusations of brutality, violation of civil rights, and ’the police-sanctioned murder of innocent Afro-American citizens.’ Unquote. Report to IAD downtown, now."