Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Thirteen

The best part of my job is hitting the streets when there's no crime scene tape dictating my steps.

I'll never run for elected office, so when I kick the bricks and connect with real people, you know I actually enjoy it.

But I'm not out here for pleasure. I doubted and still doubt Bright Star's motives for offering me guidance, so I won't be acting on his supposedly hot tip quite yet.

I did get one instantly useful assist from the young OG, though: he convinced me that if I love my city and see its potential, I need no additional motivation to leave it all on the field and try to clear this story before things explode.

"Eff the cops and your editors," he'd said. "They are not your reasons why."

Can't argue with a man whose employees call him "King!"

I slept well last night, having satisfied Midway brass with an article about the streets mobilizing to call out the killer of fourteen-year-old Jaquisse Morgan and fifteen-year-old Trenton Daniels...and possibly Hildy Fontaine.

Did the streets call the killer out? Not really. The streets eloquently said they were tired of being shot up. Not the same thing, but it'll do for now.

The fact is, in news as in politics, the voice of the few is presumed to represent the thoughts of the many.

Pre-email, high school civics classes taught that for every legitimate constituent letter received by a Congressional office, it was assumed that approximately five thousand more constituents felt the same as the letter writer.

No journalist can capture an entire city, or neighborhood, or even block.

The trick for satisfying —however temporarily— both the power structure and the streets is to find just two or three emphatic voices who can be credibly believed to speak for all the rest.

I know it's cynical, but there aren't enough hours in the day.

That story? That was my cover. Now, with sleep, energy, and purpose renewed by, of all people, a gang leader, I've bought myself time to dig a little deeper.

I start on the blocks where each boy lived. Morgan and Daniels were next-door neighbors, three blocks from the Trotter home.

One by one elderly neighbors, the unofficial watchdogs of the streets, insist the deceased were "good boys," "quiet," "polite," even "church-going," the latter being as old school a compliment as you'll ever hear.

I start to take my street canvas for granted, in fact, after knocking on thirty doors and chatting on the front porches of several more homes.

These boys were saints. Mostly.

"Mister, you five-oh?"

The voice carries the bass of a grown man, a "seasoned" man but comes from a kid who couldn't be older than fourteen. Either he smokes too much or there's something in the water. With those husky pipes this kid has a future singing the blues.

"Nah, little bro'. I'm a reporter. I write for the newspaper, the Daily Midway."

He considers this for a second.

"Why?"

""Why what?"

"Why do you do that job? Why don't you do something else?"

OK, he needs the speech. Some old-fashioned uplifting.

The kid bursts my bubble though, just as I prepare a church-worthy exhortation about helping the community.