Ghettoside (25 page)

Since the talk with the man in the wheelchair, this remembered tidbit suddenly had new significance.

A warrant database search located by their gang monikers the pair of Nineties gang members the brothers had fought. It turned out that the young street fighter from the Rollin’ Nineties was sixteen. He was on the run with a probation warrant. Gang officers were asked to keep an eye out.

A week went by. Then Skaggs got a call: the sixteen-year-old probationer who’d beaten Bryant’s neighbors was in custody. He’d been brought in by a gang officer who recognized him at Jesse Owens Park. This youth was the son of a plumber from Hot Springs, Arkansas, who had come to L.A. three decades before during the great migration wave and stayed because it was beautiful. The plumber’s family mostly had done well. One son worked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the other for United Parcel Service. But his youngest was different.

The father had been struggling with his problems for several years at the time of the Tennelle case. Like many black parents in Los Angeles, he felt danger pressing in from all sides. Like Wally Tennelle, he was fearful that a gang might recruit his boy. But the father also viewed law enforcement warily and worried for his son’s safety at the hand of the police. He believed many police officers conducted themselves poorly and had it out for black young men. He had sent his son all the way across the city to attend high school in Beverly Hills. But the son hid a friend’s pellet gun in his locker and got caught, the father said.

The boy was suspended by the school and put on probation by a juvenile
court. Once he entered the criminal justice system, things went downhill. He ended up violating his probation and going to juvenile camp. When he came out, he seemed to have taken on a new gang persona. Later, his father turned him in to a probation officer himself. It was an extreme step. But the father hoped that some jail time would straighten him out. Instead, his son came out tougher than ever.

The son had medium light brown skin, flat cheeks, and an angular chin. He looked a little older than he was and had a lean grace. That Tuesday evening, when Skaggs went to the Seventy-seventh to meet him, he had none of the swagger that might have been expected from a hardened Rollin’ Nineties Crip. His eyes were full of tears.

Up until that point, Skaggs had thought this young probationer might be his killer. But once he had sized him up, he shifted gears. When he mentioned the intersection where Bryant was shot, the probationer responded readily: Was this about the killing of “the policeman’s son”? Skaggs began by asking him why he was crying. “My pops, man,” he said. He was going to miss his father’s birthday once again—he had been in jail for every one of his father’s birthdays since he was fourteen, and he was desperate to be available for this one.

Although his speech was laced with ’hood talk—words such as “cherp” and “nigga”—the probationer could turn it off when he wanted. Skaggs asked him to speak up because “my partner’s not the smartest guy around.”

Skaggs loved teasing Farell with this line in the interview room. He had used it many times, taking advantage of the younger detective’s predicament: Farell had to sit by silently to observe the “one lead” rule.

The probationer proved a lucid interview subject. He seemed to have a good memory, and he even displayed a little literary flair, offering details that suggested he was a sharp observer. He made it clear he would help them so long as he never had to appear in court: “You say my name not gonna be in nothing. I believe you,” he said.

“Everybody know.”

This was the phrase the probationer used several times in the next half hour.

Everybody, he said—that is, dozens of people in the gang milieu—knew about Bryant’s death. They knew who did it and for what gang. Everybody knew. Everybody was talking.

It was just as Kelle Baitx suspected—the young probationer’s account suggested that the suspects lived within a few miles of the crime scene, and that they belonged to an underground network that was buzzing with gossip about the case. The case was like many others—more of a public murder than a secret one, a communal event. It was no mystery—except to the police.

The probationer said he had been back in Hot Springs visiting his grandmother in May when he got a “cherp” from a girl he called “Hollywood.” “A tramp just got chipped,” she told him. The probationer was happy—it meant a gang rival had been shot. “I was like, all right,
woo woo woo
,” he said. But then one of the probationer’s homeys called, alarmed. “A police officer’s son got chipped somewhere off Normandie and the police is hot around here
—shit
!” The homey recommended he stay put in Arkansas.

The probationer got several more calls to the same effect. Everyone was talking about how the “tramp” had turned out to be a police officer’s son and how cops were now scouring the neighborhood. People were scared they’d be swept up in a dragnet and “put up for that shit.”

When the youth returned from Arkansas in early September, his friends were still abuzz. “Stay away from Bloccs,” they warned. “They chip that nigga—police been over there, like, swarmin’.”

People were mad about it. “That Baby Man from Bloccs is stupid,” someone said.

Baby Man
. The probationer knew him. “Oh, cuz did it?” the youth had replied. “That’s crazy!” In the days that followed, he heard more and more. “Every day people talking about it!” he told Skaggs. “Everybody know!”

Ordinarily, gang members welcomed some demonstration of police concern as proof of the seriousness of their attacks. A bit of gang slang
expressed this: “puttin’ up tape” was a phrase used a little like “earning stripes.” A member who “put up tape” had executed a successful mission—killing or maiming a rival with gunfire. Because police encircled shooting scenes with yellow tape only if someone had been seriously hurt or killed, tape signaled that the shooters hadn’t missed or chickened out. It was a badge of honor.

But this was different. With most gang shootings, police intervention often did not go much beyond “putting up tape.” But with an officer’s son dead, police were “superhot.” “Stay away from Bloccs,” people said. “Stay away from Baby Man.”

Push hard enough and eventually the current sweeps you downstream. Skaggs’s case was moving swiftly now. He had two nicknames: “No Brains” and “Baby Man,” both members of the Blocc Crips. There would be no more time wasted on the Sixties.

But the case still remained squarely in the arena of street rumors, where many gang cases foundered. “Everybody know” was a phrase that applied to a lot of unsolved murders south of the Ten.

Skaggs asked the probationer Baby Man’s real name. He couldn’t remember. “His real name is D-something … D … D …” The youth pondered.

What does he look like?
Skaggs asked. “Dark skin. Funny-shaped head,” the youth said. He said Baby Man was about seventeen years old, and he added one of his literary flourishes: “Dry rough hands.”

The detectives kept pressing. What about his head? “It’s, like, an oval shape, like an egg—a cracked egg!” the probationer said. Farell stifled a laugh, and the youth laughed, too. “When you see his picture, you gonna see what I mean,” he promised.

There was more. The probationer had run into Baby Man in Jesse Owens Park at a gathering of gang members. “What’s up, man? You shot that nigga? You shot that police officer’s kid?” he had said in front of everyone.

Baby Man was aghast. People were mad about the trouble the case had caused. Baby Man denied his involvement before the group. After, he pulled the probationer aside, pleading: “Don’ be sayin’ that shit.” He
didn’t admit or deny his involvement. He said he didn’t know what to do and was scared. “Man, I’m gonna go to jail!” he had lamented.

The probationer still couldn’t remember his name, except that it began with
D
.

He told the detectives Baby Man was not popular: “He has got something wrong with him,” he said. “He’s stupid.”

Skaggs started to speak. But the probationer interrupted him. “Devin!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “That’s his name—Devin!”

Devin Davis, sixteen years old at the time of Bryant’s death, was then serving time in a juvenile camp after having been caught with two guns in less than a month. He was easy enough to identify from police records. He had been arrested more than once and had been entered into the gang database—his picture, his personal information, his gang name of Baby Man as well as three or four other monikers, and his membership in the Blocc Crips.

Hazel-eyed No Brains was a different story: Skaggs did not have enough detail to figure out who he really was. He had found no one matching his description in any record search. He was still searching when he got a call from a gang deputy at the Sheriff’s Department.

The deputy’s “friendly” knew exactly who No Brains was. He identified him as an older, light-skinned Blocc Crip with green eyes. He was in jail. But the friendly didn’t know his real name.

The case now had not just direction, but momentum. Skaggs and Farell were working full tilt. In mid-November, they served a search warrant on Devin Davis’s house. Skaggs met his mother. Sandra James, kind, religious, and proper, was very cooperative. She had other grown children who had done well in life, going to school and working, she told Skaggs. But Devin, her youngest, had ADD. He had thrown her off balance with his many problems.

In Devin’s bedroom, Skaggs found what he was looking for: scribbles on notepaper celebrating the Blocc Crips and bearing the gang moniker Baby Man.

And one more find: a little white scrap of paper with a phone number scrawled on it, and a name: No Brains.

The two Blocc Crips were now linked. But No Brains remained elusive. Skaggs by then knew exactly which bed and jail module No Brains was assigned to. But he still could not get an accurate identification of him from the sheriff’s deputies who manned the jail, and they couldn’t seem to find him.

It took Skaggs two weeks of wrangling with the sheriff’s jail bureaucracy to figure out exactly who and where No Brains was. At one point, he threatened to walk through the module himself—how hard could it be to spot a light-skinned, green-eyed gangster with Blocc Crip tattoos? At last, they came back to Skaggs with a name. The light-skinned inmate was Wright Lawrence.

The name didn’t match any rap sheet. And the state fingerprint database had listed the inmate as “Lawrence Wright.” Skaggs was exasperated—authorities could not even keep their mistakes straight—but he was not surprised. Given the abundance of nicknames, gang monikers, and fake names used by criminals, the problem of people being imprisoned under the wrong name was not uncommon in his experience. This extended to other records as well—homicide victims were frequently listed under different names in various public databases. Spanish names were a mess: Mexican immigrants typically had one or two first names and two last names—their father’s followed by their mother’s. But arrest forms insisted on English conventions, listing everyone as having a first name, middle name, and last name. As a result, Spanish names were often mangled in the booking process.

The names of black people who interacted with the system could present authorities with similar problems. Apart from the endless nicknames and aliases, there were many formal names with multiple variations, unconventional apostrophes, and unusual spellings, and these were frequently misstated or misspelled in public records, even death records. Officers relied on fingerprints and other elaborate cross-checking methods to keep track of who was who.

Skaggs went back to his computer and started over. He looked for records of light-skinned Blocc Crips and rap sheets that matched the inmate known as Wright Lawrence—dates, addresses, arrests—and, by
cross-checking several databases, he arrived at the correct name: Derrick Starks.

He called the Sheriff’s Department to inform them they were holding Starks under the wrong name. Months later, Skaggs checked to make sure they had corrected the error. They hadn’t. Starks remained listed as jail inmate Wright Lawrence for months.

Derrick Starks, twenty-five years old at the time of Bryant’s death, was a Blocc Crip with a typical gang rap sheet that included robbery and attempted burglary. He had been born in Louisiana, where his family’s roots lay. His mother had been one of seventeen children. She was a real estate agent who devoted volunteer hours to helping families who had lost children to homicide. Starks had an older brother in college. He was the troubled younger brother. Raised in a neighborhood near Century Boulevard, he had joined the Blocc Crips in his late teens.

His current jail stint was related to a burglary charge and a parole violation in connection with a car crash. The car had collided with a telephone pole on May 15, four days after Bryant’s death, and Starks had been arrested. The arrest report said Starks had been driving. He had a companion with him when he crashed: a girl.

The car was a black Chevrolet Suburban.

A Suburban, a girl. This last detail was a bonus: Skaggs had been hoping for a girl in the car. Ever since the man in the wheelchair had mentioned that No Brains hung out with a “good girl,” Skaggs had been attuned to this possibility. A girl in a gang car might be an opening. Frequently, she was being dragged along—if not against her will, then at least with no particular choice in the matter. And girls were not subject to the relentless gang violence that boys were—at least not shootings—and so were easier to flip.

Skaggs had time on his side. Both suspects—Devin Davis in juvenile camp and now Derrick Starks—were in custody. They weren’t going anywhere.

The arrest report had listed the girl in the car as Jessica Bailey. It was a false name, as Skaggs was sure it would be. He found an address for a
Jennifer
Bailey in the Hundreds Blocc vicinity from motor vehicle records.

Jennifer Bailey had never been arrested. But Skaggs used her address to cross-check against criminal databases and came up with another name: Jessica
Midkiff
.