Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Four

Our attempt to find anyone connected to the third victim at Jackson Park Hospital & Medical Center was unsuccessful, but Tony and I still came out ahead of our broadcast rivals.

The next day, I'm greeted with tsk tsks and attaboys from the newsstand outside my apartment building, a few blocks from the Midway, to Pueblo Tienda, the convenience shop where I get café con leche —the first of four daily coffee drinks— on my way to work each morning.

When I arrive at the newsroom, I also find colleagues huddled and reading with horror the story I pulled together for Page 1, above the fold.

Triple Shooting Rocks Garfield Park
Two teenagers dead, one injured; no suspects

Two Garfield Park boys, believed to be between the ages of 13 and 15, were found shot to death in an abandoned chocolate factory on the city's west side, Monday morning.

Police believe the homicides occurred late Sunday or early Monday, between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. They also think there was a single shooter but have not identified a motive.

Sources tell the Midway that a third boy was shot, presumably by the same assailant, but survived and is currently hospitalized at an unknown location...

Praise is nice, but I don't feel like celebrating. It feels a little macabre to cheer the storytelling of violent death.

Calibretti, the urban affairs editor, often teases me that my take on compliments is puritanical.

He's right in that I'm generally allergic to kind words because I question the motives of anyone who would go out of his way to tell me nice things about myself. I know, it's fodder for a shrink's couch. What can I tell you?

But homicide coverage generates especially awkward feelings. Any congratulatory gestures are simultaneously like the celebration of unnatural death and the inadvertent celebration of the status quo, a status quo of angry, likely poor, killer minorities.

That stereotype is good for the business of politics, some quarters of law enforcement, and even some corners of the news industry, but bad for everyone and everything else.

When I moved to Chicago after college and received my first beat assignment, I was excited. Public schools. Municipal government. Both high-energy areas that grab and hold the interest of taxpayers and parents. But very quickly, as I bounced between school board and PTA meetings in neighborhoods like Garfield Park where my latest murder victims were found vs. Beverly, where Volvo SC90s aren't top-tier vehicles but rather the cars the house cleaners drive, the disparities became clear.

I saw how funds, supposedly calculated evenly, were distributed differently. I saw what it looked like when kids arrived at school not having eaten a hearty breakfast and unable to get one at school because their parents hadn't placed any money in their hot meal accounts. Those kids? They couldn't pay attention very well. They tested poorly. And they were assumed to be either lazy, unambitious, or simply incapable of doing the work.

Suddenly stories about books and building maintenance, teacher performance, and test scores felt like they were missing something.

But when I insisted on digging a little deeper for context, I was transferred to "urban affairs," AKA the beat about all presumptive things black and brown...except for public education.

It's where I've been ever since. Maybe because it seems to be the one place in the newsroom that doesn't inspire a management frown when "why" is asked.

Again, I don't mind writing about people who look like me. In many ways, I wear it like a badge of honor. But it is an exhausting exercise to tiptoe daily through minefields of stereotypes about the people I cover and the why of their lives.

I don't want to write more about these boys. It depresses me. But I have to write more about them. Because I want it done right.

Thankfully, the scanners are relatively quiet today. And even if they had gone off, unless it was clear the buzz had something to do with my teenage victims, another reporter would have been sent to respond.

My job, aside from shaking hands and dodging back slaps, has been to think about what the shootings mean and how I might approach the first of many follow-up stories.

Beyond identifying the victims, finding family members and hoping they might agree to interviews, I don't know what to think. I've got calls out to school district sources who may be able to find out more about how the boys were doing in school once we're certain of who they were. That will likely be my starting point. But until I get that intel, I'm stumped.

As six o'clock rolls around, I grab my things and head for the elevators, thankful to call it a day. Limpett and his bosses have given me room to breathe since I came out so far ahead of rivals on day one, and the worst they can do now is catch up to me. But tomorrow the next pound of flesh will be required of me in the form of that first follow-up story, whether or not I think it's done cooking.

I hear footfalls behind me and turn to see Calibretti racing to join me on the elevator.

"Did you hear?"

I shake my head, no. I have no idea what he's talking about. And if I don't speak, maybe I won't have to hear.

No such luck, though.

It turns out that Black really is black. And Whitey was white.

Thankfully, another reporter gets saddled with this story. I can only imagine the jokes tomorrow morning by radio talk show hosts, callers, and friends who will either be outraged or tickled that Whitey finally got it.

Who knows? If I'm "lucky" again and forced to take on the next follow-up story about Black and Whitey, maybe next Black will make bail and set fire to his bastard neighbor Yellow's house.

I'm not kidding. According to Calibretti, Black does have a neighbor —three doors down— named Bodak, like that rapper Cardi B's first hit song about a banana shade no one ever heard of.

What's crazy is that other neighbor's named Bodak and looks like Homer Simpson. I guessed liver disease, but neighborhood gossip says it's too much off-brand tan in a bottle. Who am I to judge?