On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (9 page)

Mike and Chuck certainly couldn’t afford to maintain long-term relationships in which
a steady flow of cash or other resources guaranteed the ongoing cooperation of neighborhood
residents. But they did occasionally scrape together enough money for one-time payments,
mostly to witnesses during trials.

According to Mike, about two years before we met, he had been walking home from a
dice game with a large wad of cash when a man put a gun to his head and ordered him
to give up his money.
¹⁰
Mike told me that he refused, and attempted to draw his own gun when the man shot
him. Other accounts have it that Mike attempted to run away and shot himself by accident,
whereupon this man took his money and then stripped him of his sneakers and watch.
Whatever the details of this encounter, Mike emerged from it with a bullet lodged
in his hip. His mother looked after him for five months while he was unable to walk,
and then drove him to the outpatient clinic twice a week for months of physical therapy.

By the time we met, Mike could walk normally, though he said his leg hurt when he
ran or stood for long periods, or when the weather changed. He believed this man had
left the neighborhood, but about a
month later he thought he spotted him driving around in a Buick. Mike told me that
the man looked at him, he looked at the man, the man tensed, and Mike opened fire.
Mike said, “I ain’t know if he was going to start chopping [shooting], you know, thinking
I was going to come at him. Better safe than sorry.”

Two days later Mike saw him again, this time while driving with Chuck and another
friend. Although I wasn’t present, Chuck told me immediately afterward that the men
in both cars opened fire, shooting at each other as they drove by in opposite directions.
I couldn’t confirm the shots that Mike, Chuck, and another friend fired, but the glass
in the side and back windows of Mike’s car was shattered, and I counted seven bullet
holes in the side doors. Mike quickly towed the car to a friend’s garage, worried
that the police would see it if they hadn’t been alerted to the shootout. This was
around noon.

That afternoon, Chuck and this friend came to my apartment, took some wet (PCP), and
lay on the couch and floor with covers over their heads.
¹¹
They didn’t eat, drink, or get up for almost twenty-four hours, occasionally murmuring
curses at Mike about how close they had come to death.

Two nights later, the police came to Mike’s old address, his uncle’s house, to arrest
him for attempted murder. Mike’s uncle phoned his mother to let her know they were
coming for him, so Mike left her place and hid out in various houses for the next
two weeks, including my apartment for four days. The police raided his mother’s house
twice, then his grandmother’s house, and then his children’s mother’s house. After
two weeks he scraped together what money he could, found a lawyer, and turned himself
in. He didn’t know who had called the police, but the lawyer showed us the testimony
of the man who had robbed him, explaining that this man would be the main witness
at the trial.

When Mike made bail, the man got in touch with him through a mutual acquaintance.
He explained that he wanted only three hundred dollars, which was what it would cost
him to repair the shattered windows in his car. Mike considered this a very low sum
to get out of an attempted murder charge and happily paid him. He also paid for a
hotel room for this man to stay in on the appointed court dates, in case the police
came to his house to escort him to court.
¹²
This man then failed to show up as a witness for three court dates, and the judge
dismissed
the case. To my utter astonishment, Mike and this man now appeared to be “cool.” The
night after the case ended, we had drinks with the man and played pool together at
a local bar.

People in legal jeopardy can pay others
not
to show up as a witness at a trial; they can also pay people in the neighborhood
to alert them if the police are coming, or can pay those who know of their whereabouts,
activities, or identity not to give this information to the police. With such a large
number of wanted people in the neighborhood (as well as people committing illegal
acts who are liable to be arrested should those acts be brought to the attention of
the authorities), 6th Street engages in a brisk trade in this kind of information
and cooperation.

It should be noted that the payments legally precarious people make to the purveyors
of false documents, or to those who might inform or testify, are in addition to the
money they pay to lawyers and to the state directly in court fees and fines, bail,
probation and parole costs, and tickets. These payouts for their continued freedom
represent no small portion of their income.

INFORMING

If a young man exhausts the avenues discussed above, he may attempt to avoid confinement
by giving the police someone they want more than they want him. In contrast to fleeing,
avoidance, cultivating unpredictability, or paying to pass undetected, this strategy
carries heavy social judgment. Indeed, informing is understood to be such a lowly
way to get out of one’s legal problems that men tend not to admit when they have done
it. Since young men and women typically inform inside police cars or interrogation
rooms, behind closed doors, it was difficult for me to study.

Chuck and Mike were close friends with a young man named Steve, who was about a year
older than Chuck and a year younger than Mike. He lived across the street from Chuck
with his mother and grandmother, his father having moved down south when he was a
small child. Steve’s mother worked in administration at Drexel University, so the
family was better off than many of the others on the block. With his small build,
light skin, and light eyes, Steve looked sneaky, Chuck’s
mom said, someone to keep your eye on. He was also notoriously hotheaded, pulling
out his gun at inappropriate moments, like birthday parties for Mike’s children.

Chuck and Mike hadn’t thought that anyone could make Steve give up the bachelor life,
but after high school he fell in love with Taja, a young woman who had grown up a
few blocks away. Their stormy romance lasted longer than anyone expected—longer than
they
expected, they sometimes laughed. For almost the entire time I knew Steve and Taja,
they were trying hard to have a baby, but Taja would miscarry every time Steve got
locked up: three times in their six-year relationship.

Steve was a drug user more than a drug seller; when we met he was nineteen, and under
house arrest awaiting the completion of a trial for possession of drugs.

In the spring the police stopped Steve while he was carrying a gun, and charged him
with possession without a license to carry. He made bail, but then got picked up soon
after for drinking while driving, revoking his bail. Steve sat in county jail as the
court dates dragged on.

To our great surprise, Steve came home on house arrest three months later, still in
the middle of his trial dates. He explained that the court released him for the remainder
of the proceedings because the jails were overflowing, and the judge determined that
he didn’t pose a flight risk.

In confidence, Mike admitted to me that he did not believe Steve, since he’d never
heard of a person coming home on house arrest during a trial for a gun case. He suspected
that Steve had likely cut a deal to be at home during the lengthy court proceedings,
most likely by giving up somebody the police seemed more interested in.

A week later, a local man on trial for murder phoned Reggie and told him that his
lawyer had shown him Steve’s statement. Apparently, Steve had signed an affidavit
that he had been present at the time of the murder. A younger friend of Reggie’s was
at his house when he got the phone call, and soon began spreading the news that Steve
was a snitch.

Faced with the public and personal disgrace of his betrayal, Steve spent three days
threatening violence against Reggie’s young boy, and then he told him to come to his
house so they could discuss it. As the young man entered, Steve began yelling, “Who
the fuck told you I was a rat, nigga? Who?”

“You just going to sit here and act like you ain’t say shit,” the young man said coolly.
“They got your statement on file.”

Steve said he would kill him, and the young man made a move toward Steve. Mike attempted
to pull the two apart, but Steve pulled his gun and pistol-whipped the young man in
the face and then in the back of his head.

“You been home less than a week!” Chuck admonished, as the young man covered his bloody
face with his hands. “You can’t pistol-whip a nigga that calls you a snitch. Plus,
that makes you look like you really did do that shit.”

“You ain’t mature in jail at all,” Mike added.

Mike asked the young man if he could go to the hospital, and he replied that he had
a couple of open cases, but no warrants. We took him to the ER for stitches. Mike,
who had a bench warrant for failure to appear in court, hovered in the parking lot,
checking in every half hour or so via cell phone.

To my knowledge, this young man never again mentioned that Steve had snitched. A few
days later there was another shootout, and the whole affair took a backseat in the
local gossip.

Most of the time, young men don’t resort to violence to rebuild their reputations
after they snitch. Instead, they attempt to regain the trust and goodwill of the person
they wronged.

When he was sixteen, Ronny and a few other young men from 6th Street drove to Montgomery
County late one night and tried unsuccessfully to break into a motorcycle store. When
they couldn’t get in, they returned to their ’89 Bonneville, only to find that the
car wouldn’t start. Ronny called Mike to come get them.

When Mike got the call, he and Chuck and I were watching movies in the apartment.
It was around 2:00 a.m. I heard Mike on the phone to Ronny as follows: “Where the
fuck is that at? Okay. Gimme like, a hour [to get out there].”

Mike turned to me.

MIKE: This lil’ nigga out in the middle of nowhere. Car ain’t starting. We still got
them cables [jumper cables]?

ALICE: No. Who is he with?

MIKE: The boy Dre, couple other niggas.

ALICE: Why is he out there?

MIKE: I don’t fucking know—probably because he trying to steal something. I’ma beat
his lil’ ass to the ground when I see that nigga. Now I got to get up. [
shakes his head as he puts on his boots
] Fuck it. I’ma just wear my long johns.

ALICE: I’ll see you later.

Mike cursed the boys but went out anyway to retrieve them, saying that he couldn’t
refuse his young boy anything. Chuck and I waited until around four. Mike didn’t come
back. The next afternoon, I got a call from a cop at a Montgomery County police station,
asking if I knew a man named Keshon Jackson. After a beat I realized that this was
likely the fake name that Mike had used when he got booked so that any outstanding
warrants wouldn’t come up.

Apparently, when Mike pulled up, the dealership’s silent alarm had already gone off,
and the cops were waiting behind a hill for the boys to try to break in again. The
cops ran out from behind the hill and chased Mike and Ronny, along with the other
boys, across covered pools and sandboxes and through bushes. Two of the boys got away;
Ronny, Mike, and another young man were caught and taken into custody.

According to the signed affidavit that Mike’s lawyer read to us later, Ronny and his
friend, both sixteen, were separately interrogated and agreed to name Mike as the
one who had put them up to it. In exchange, the police dropped the charges against
the minors and drove Ronny and his friend home. Mike, who was twenty-one at the time,
was charged with attempted breaking and entering, vandalism, and trespassing.

When Ronny got back home, he fervently denied that he had informed, claiming he would
never betray Mike like the other boys had. But Mike had seen the police report. On
the phone to me from jail, he said he was deeply hurt by Ronny’s betrayal, since he
considered Ronny a younger brother:

Even if they [the police] was telling him like, look, just say it was Mike and we’ll
let you go home tonight, he should have played his part [remained silent; done the
right thing] just on the strength of everything I done been through for that lil’
nigga. Almost everything he got on his back was shit
I passed off [gave to him], you feel me? Any time he need a couple dollars, who he
coming to? He ain’t going to his nut-ass pop, he ain’t going to Nanna [his grandmother].
He come straight to me like, “Yo, Mike. Let me hold [borrow] this, let me hold that.”
I done broke him off, like, so much change. Who he think keeping him fed out here?
Nigga, you ain’t eating [making money] by yourself! Ain’t no other motherfucker out
here looking out.

Mike spread the word that Ronny had snitched. It was worse than that, in fact, because
Ronny had blamed Mike for a crime that he didn’t even commit. For almost two weeks,
Ronny didn’t come out of his grandmother’s house except to go to school. Then he took
Mike’s gun and robbed a house in Southwest Philadelphia. He sold the TV, stereo, and
jewelry, and paid Mike’s bail.

Mike came home and still refused to speak to Ronny. He wouldn’t allow Ronny to come
to the apartment where he was staying, though Ronny came to the door a number of times.

By the time Mike drove out to Montgomery County for the preliminary hearing, he and
Ronny appeared to be on better terms. In fact, Ronny accompanied him to all the subsequent
court dates to show his support. As we were walking out of the courthouse on one of
these occasions, Mike said to me:

I know, you know, he a snitch, but that’s my little nigga. I raised that nigga from
this tall. Plus, like, he don’t have no real family, like, his pops gone, his mom
out there in the streets. Nigga had to look out for himself.