Legacies: An Emerson James Novel

JL Williams

LEGACIES

Emerson James used to be a dangerous man, but you’d never know it. To everyone who knows him now, he is the distinguished Dr. James, respected professor, scholar, and lecturer. To accomplish this, he had to change his life completely.

Thirteen years ago, after participating in unspeakable violence, Emerson left Chicago and never looked back, escaping into the world of academia. Since then, he has desperately avoided anything connected to his former existence.

But he is about to learn that you can’t run from your past forever.

When tragedy strikes, he is forced to return home, but, no matter how hard he tries, going unseen is not an option. As one of the infamous James Boys, a family name synonymous with one of Chicago’s most dangerous street gangs, people constantly seek to test him. Soon he discovers that the longer he stays, the more his life is in jeopardy—from enemies, old friends, his own family, and a new breed of street gangster who would love to make a name by taking him down.

On top of that, there is someone waiting in the shadows—a patient killer seeking revenge who has just one question: How do I make them pay?

As the bodies start piling up, Emerson begins to realize that a string of gruesome murders connect back to him. Now, whether he wants to or not, in order to discover who is killing the people he once knew, he must again embrace the violence he grew to abhor. And the more he looks into their deaths, the more he recognizes that a complex message is being laid out for him by a vicious killer who not only wants his attention, but his life.

Legacies

An Emerson James Novel

JL Williams

Legacies

JL Williams

Copyright ©2014 Julian Williams

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Historical names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The names and locations of actual places mentioned in this book are only for effect with no intention from the author to link them to real events. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without permission from the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

For More information on the author, please visit www.iamemersonjames.com.

Cover Image by PeteSherrard

Cover design by Maya Moody

For Frank and Shirley Jean.

I only want to make you proud.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my family and friends, who were always there, always encouraging, always asking, Is it done yet? To Chicago’s finest, Officer Xavier Gordon and Officer Shirley McCall, thank you for answering my countless law enforcement questions. To Natasha McGruder and Cyndi Onore, understand that without your reading and insight, this book would never have been completed. To Monique Ferrell, your unwavering support and eagle eye were worth more than gold. To Linda and Bill, the roof you provide has allowed me to have a headquarters for my research. And a special thanks to Maya Moody. Without your technical skills, none of this would have been possible.

To my Uncle Bennie, I miss you, man.

Also, to the giants who inspired me—Burke, Mosley, Connolly, George, Sandford, Child, Paretsky, and Baldacci—your prose inspired me to believe I could. And after all of the agent rejections, a special thanks to Locke and Bidinotto for pushing writers like myself to take a chance.

To two of the greatest homes in the world, Chicago and New York, thank you for the stories, the memories, and the gritty vibrancy that make you so distinct.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Synopsis

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Section I

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Section II

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Section III

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Section IV

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Epilogue

Authors Note

I

Vengeance is just.

Justly we rid the earth of human fiends

Who carry hell for pattern in their souls.

But in high vengeance there is noble scorn:

It tortures not the torturer, nor gives

Iniquitous payment for iniquity.

The great avenging angel does not crawl

To kill the serpent with a mimic fang;

He stands erect, with sword of keenest edge

That slays like lighting.

George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy

Prologue

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today’s world is being overrun by the chaos of the damned. This planet is doomed, and it appears that its protracted demise is our fault. If we are to believe the pious texts that many claim are necessary to be classified a so-called civilization, our end was preordained as soon as human beings first made their presence known. The moment we imprinted our feet upon the rich darkened soil and the dry grainy desert, turmoil sprang forth, causing a plague of planetary decimation like nothing before it or anything since. No other creature has had such a negative impact on the earth. No other species will.

Since evolving and walking upright, the main problem seems to be that we are a genus whose ability to be ruled by deductive insight, as opposed to animal instinct, has made us assume a sense of superiority over the planet. This sense of pre-eminence, our God-complex some call it, has allowed us to make decisions that are, more than not, acted upon with singular interests rooted in gratification and selfhood, instead of the natural orders of fitness and survival. As such, our history has been one of arrogant brutality that neither elevates our status as the deserved monarchs of the planet nor proves we deserve to rule. Instead, what we have established is that we are the most vicious species to ever formulate language.

More importantly, we have verified that we will destroy anything that does not respect our requisite craving for destruction. And if we consider the never-ending violence perpetrated by our kind, we must believe that a reckoning will come due, no? That in the end, if there is a higher court—one where an invisible being sits on a throne of clouds judging actions and passing sentence for behavior perceived to be in violation of rules never clearly defined—we, the self-proclaimed superior beings, will have to pay for this deviant behavior one day.

The proof that the end of days is near has always hovered over our heads. Nothing is more persuasive corroboration that this inevitability subsists than how humans have waged war on every land that has ever constructed houses of worship, allowed for individuals to own land, exported a valued commodity for profit, or elected a government to enforce the best interests of its citizens. When one of these concepts is in place, disorder and resentment eventually sprouts buds. When all of these factors are implemented, coupled with a population of individuals forced to accept a socialized mindset, the result is always conflict. And, when these same societies, now driven by profit or hunger, see different lands through envious eyes, warfare comes into play. The consequence of this seemingly converse violence is always the same, no matter the time, the reason, the place, or the oversimplified justifications made by leaders. Whether these issues occur between countries or villages or neighborhoods, there are always certainties: when war comes, carnage follows; people die; homes are destroyed; land is decimated; and those who organize the destruction usually find ways to make obscene profit.

Not surprisingly, a world overrun by humans is currently at war.

When not killing each other en masse, we seem suited to eradicate each others’ futures one person at a time. Even more disturbing is that we seek to kill each other in the most heinous ways, often for reasons explained by no one.

On February 17th of this year, a banker in Memphis, Tennessee went home for lunch and stabbed his wife 143 times. To accomplish this exhausting act took almost two hours. Upon completion, he removed his blood soaked suit and took a scalding shower. After changing into more casual clothing, he then proceeded to strangle his youngest son—home from school, resting fitfully in his parents’ bed with a high fever—using a plastic grocery bag his wife had brought home from the local Piggly Wiggly. At around 6pm, when the oldest son returned from basketball practice, he was savagely beaten unconscious by a father who outweighed him by more than fifty pounds. Immediately following the assault, using a pearl handled boning knife he had been teaching his boys to skin fish with, the oldest son’s throat was cut with so much force that the boy was practically decapitated. The father then placed his first born alongside the younger brother in the master bedroom, almost as if trying to make them comfortable despite their gruesome ends.

Armed with a hacksaw in their basement’s laundry room, he then proceeded to cut his wife into thirteen separate pieces. Afterwards, carrying a bucket loaded with old cloths, a mop, and several astringents, he cleaned from attic to cellar, as if a realtor and perspective buyers were coming over to appraise the house. The police report confirmed that he later lit a gas grill and proceeded to sear a steak medium rare and blackened two ears of corn on the cob. He then made a version of his wife’s famous garlic mashed potatoes and, adding his own touch, washed it all down with a highball glass of bourbon cut with over-the-counter cleaning bleach. When the pain from his last meal settled in, he apparently felt he needed to do more, so he decided to sit in his garage, door down and sealed tight, engine idling, and listen to Johnny Cash’s mournful rendition of Hurt over and over again until someone noticed the escaping fumes and dialed 911.

He left no note. When interviewed, their relatives and friends said they had no clue. As a matter of fact, they were all shocked because their last interactions with the deceased left everyone with the impression that they were a loving family with only ordinary problems and concerns. Everyone agreed that this was the worst tragedy the tight-knit community could remember.

But there is always something worse.

Let’s not forget the cases that rock us to our core, the ones that force us to look into our own mirrors and question our understanding of a world so maliciously damaging it’s a wonder there are any of us left standing.

With increasing frequency, males of all ages have taken to shooting up spaces where they know they’ll encounter no resistance and, thereby, are assured maximum casualties: darkened movie theaters where the gunfire blends in with big screen explosions and dialogue; campers in a country with virtually no gun violence hunted on a small island while a determined madman corrals them like livestock and shoots them down; college students stalked in their dorms and chased through hallways, bodies torn apart by high velocity ammunition; customers sprayed with bullets in McDonalds while eating burgers and fries; and with searing barrels pushed against their skulls, dozens of small children, supposedly safe at school, murdered execution style. Undeniably, these are horrible crimes meant to dismantle the very fabric of humanity.

And yet and still, there is still room for worse.

Even more shocking than the unexplained violence that springs forth and strikes at the very fabric of the average citizen who has lost his grip on reality, or the mass shooter who is determined to let the world know how displeased he is with his brethren, we are reminded daily of horrid attacks relegated almost entirely to only a portion of our species. These vile acts are so primordial that any comparison to aggressive behavior that exists within the animal kingdom sounds ludicrous.

The human female is assaulted and violated every ninety seconds in the United States, the supposedly freest society on the planet. These violent and sadistic crimes are such frequent occurrences that the words raped and sodomized are brazenly understood concepts the average fifth grader comprehends. Not only do we think that this recurring violence against women is normal, we even have a broken judicial system in place that does not adequately protect or prosecute the crimes when these women come forward.

There are many perfect examples of this debased approach toward the female gender, most notably the fact that every other entertainment program on the airwaves covering the topic does so with a disregard so cavalier that it would be hurtful if we bothered to notice. As a matter of fact, the most successful television shows currently broadcast on TV address the issue of sexual assaults on a weekly basis. And we are obviously entertained, or else we would—wouldn’t we?—write and tell network executives that we will no longer accept sexual sadism as our nighttime guilty pleasure.

And then immediately following these evening programs, there are the factual news fragments that fuel these shows, reporting these seemingly unstoppable crimes at the conclusion of primetime hours.

Four boys, ages nine to fourteen, gang raped an eight-year-old girl in Arizona. They apparently lured her into an abandoned shed with the promise of chewing gum. When the family was notified, her father told officers and a city caseworker that she’d brought them shame and that he didn’t want her back. She is currently being cared for by the state. An eleven year old sixth grader was raped repeatedly by twenty-eight men in Cleveland, Texas; the lawyer for three of the accused said in court that the girl was a willing participant. In West Palm Beach, Florida, a woman is tortured and raped by her fourteen year-old neighbor and nine other teens. The woman’s son, a pre-teen, was beaten, had cleaning supplies poured into his eyes, and was actually forced to participate in his mother’s assault.

In this country, rape is a more popular pastime than all professional sports combined. However, as we live in a patriarchal world, this disdain toward females is not limited to the United States.

On a bus in New Delhi, India, a twenty-three year-old medical student and her male companion were attacked. He was severely beaten. She was then raped by six men who, to ensure that her violation was completely life altering, penetrated her with iron rods, too. They were both stripped and tossed off the bus. She would later die from her injuries.

In Brazil, a nine-year-old girl was repeatedly raped by her step-father. Eventually, she was impregnated and, upon finally telling her mother and being taken to a doctor, was told that if she attempted to carry the babies—twins—she, along with the lives growing inside her, would probably not survive. At this point, the girl’s mother gave the doctor permission to perform an abortion. This is where a story all too common in our world gets complicated.

The Church’s Archbishop decided, with the majestic wisdom only a religion that hates women can, to excommunicate the doctor. Upon further thought, they excommunicated the mother from the country, too. Later, investigators learned that the step-father had also been raping the woman’s fourteen-year-old daughter. When asked, Why excommunicate the doctor and the mother? the Archbishop relied, Rape is bad. Abortion is worse.

Clearly, our depraved indifference is limitless.

As our time on the planet continues, we have proven that the only thing we hate more than ourselves is our neighbor. In the end, we will have hunted every animal for sport, decimated the polar ice caps, and proven that we are still prejudiced and unlearned in our interactions with people dissimilar to ourselves. Every day we seem determined to prove Mark Twain’s essay correct, his assertion that we, humans, are truly the lowest animal. And the longer we skate extinction, the more opportunities we have to validate what Twain’s writing implies—that we are nature’s most inexhaustible predator.

Conversely, while desperately searching for answers outside normal human understanding, applying a different lens allows us to consider a more convoluted reasoning for human depravity.

On a more complex plane, many have suggested that some humans have actually made a pact with an ethereal force, a toxic ether that floats like a weightless energy of some kind, permeating the air and adversely impacting our species like no other. While this spiritual evil may or may not exist—flying above the skies like avenging angels, choosing as hosts those it deems strong enough to exact an insatiable rage—digging under the shell of humankind to find some type of logic behind our horrendous exploits seems too easy. And, while some doctors, scientists, and believers in a top and bottom afterlife argue that there is incontrovertible proof that evil does indeed reside among us, a fact most women would be hard pressed to deny, this explanation is always so mystical that it seems to abdicate responsibility for acts no one wants to admit we are all capable of.

Maybe the simple truth is that one of our primary reasons for existing is to do as much damage to each other as possible. Nothing proves this assertion more than humankind’s most unpredictable and socially arguable act, the one that is most ingrained into our warped sense of responding to a perceived wrong. It is the sentiment each and every one of us, at some point or another, either swallows when it murmurs promises of relief in our ear or is exhaled, released, and allowed to march ahead unrestrained.

Revenge.

Unlike the other forces that govern our cantankerous lives, those that make us seem as if we are actually devolving, it is the retaliatory act that humankind most readily identifies with. It is fueled by a concentrated behavior, laden with a reactionary approach toward those who offend our sense of privileged living. It is powerful, and often behaves as an injurious and punitive force that sits outside of judicial laws and ethics and, sometimes, morality. Since the beginning of humankind, revenge has been as much a part of living as our need to have sexual intercourse. Looking closely, this behavior functions like a virus, one that lives to pollute those it deludes into thinking the time to act is idyllic, and that the time to implement a vindictive plan is now. In this instance, it consumes its host, no longer behaving as some unworldly viral force. At this stage, revenge has fully evolved, has taken over its human shell, and is standing tall and erect and demanding what it thinks it is owed.

Walking upright and blending in with the masses, it watches. With new eyes, it sees the corrupt, vile behavior of individuals who it deems no longer deserve to walk amongst us. And once decided, it waits. It gets stronger. And then, when we least suspect, it strikes. And when this happens, none of us will go untouched.

Sadness has infected the blood streams of a huge portion of the world’s citizens. None more so than those who are not starving, those not sitting on the laps of millionaire actresses who cry and weep for our assistance, children forced to be filmed while flies crawl, undeterred, all over their small faces. We live in towns and cities and few to none of us have ever seen real live tanks or heard actual explosions outside of those playing in movie theatres. Yet here, with us, not them—those oppressed persons who have every right to bitterly spit into the wind, to denounce so-called Gods and Goddesses and scream for the heads of not only their abusers but those who allow their abusers to continue—is a supposedly privileged world where avengers march forward and seek to not only mete out punishment but, moreover, to exceed the offense with overwhelming violence, often when there was no violence originally.

But even in those instances when there has been a physical assault, and, in great measure, the act of lashing out is graspable to any who walks amongst us, revenge can become twisted and allow a sore to become an untreatable infection, thus sanctioning inside us a baseness that is so outside of our normal capabilities that it actually emerges as a wholly different entity. It is then that the wronged individual simultaneously morphs into something less than human and something more than we thought capable, a creature even the most ferocious animal cannot watch.

So remember this. Inevitably we will all die. Some of us will go peacefully after having lived long and fruitful lives, where, if any darkness ever lingered, it was pushed deep inside and buried. Some will die with stained souls, burdened by acts they have never recovered from, proof that we are a species that at least has a conscience. But for those others, individuals who have said their Hail Marys during ceremonial confessions and have been granted human reprieve from their foul, often offensive acts, there may be another future that awaits. This is because some individuals demand a reckoning to ease their own sense of an aggrieved existence.

For these persons, recompense must be had.

Published Conference Proceedings. The Debt Owed: Violence and the De-evolution of a Damaged World. The American Society of Criminology Conference (ASC), Thinking About Context: The Relationship between Crime and Pain, Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 2012. Presenter: James, Emerson. Ph.D.

Chapter 1

Standing outside in the darkened gangway between houses, the figure dressed entirely in black could see the man clearly through the window framed on the side of the house. Inside, the individual being watched kept moving between the kitchen, the bathroom, and the master bedroom. For brief moments the man was out of sight, as he kept stepping out of the bathroom and into the bedroom directly to the right. He was walking casually, his slippered feet shuffling lazily between rooms.

Hidden by the darkness, the hooded visitor—as visiting was the best way of describing what had been done—knew that in the other bedroom, located on the left, was where the man kept an assortment of suits and shirts and khaki pants in a small closet. In the same room, slung high and sloppily on what had once been a sofa sleeper, were piles upon piles of more casual clothes, some still with the price tags attached. Initially, the assumption made had been that the man was a clothes hoarder. Upon closer inspection, it was obvious that mixed in with the man’s own was an assortment of varying sizes. Smaller sizes. The other two walls in the room had bulk food items stacked nearly to the ceiling. This second bedroom was a fire hazard, but was otherwise inconsequential.

The house on the other side of the gangway was completely still. Foreclosed on four years ago, the side door had been removed from its hinges. The inside had been gutted. Looters had actually come in and stripped the pipes out of the walls. But the space was far from lifeless. On many nights, the visitor, alongside a family of bold opossums that had taken up residency, squatted there while waiting for the hour to come. At first, the marsupials were wary of the figure invading their space. Now, after having fed them and proving to be no threat, they didn’t even bother to hide. The figure didn’t mind the opossums, and had even taken to naming them and talking aloud when bored.

It was after 11pm, and the man being watched was preparing for his nightly ritual. Dripping wet, he was wearing a beige towel around his waist. He had just gotten the bottle from underneath the sink and poured a significant amount of Canadian Club into a wide brimmed coffee cup. No ice.

Same drink every night. Same cup.

Pushing up on tiptoes and peeping through the tattered black trim curtain that hung lopsided over the sink, the figure could see the square table pressed against the wall with three chairs best described as dingy white pushed underneath. There was a broken folding chair leaning on the side of the white refrigerator. The floor was tiled brown, and the walls were painted tan. Directly overhead, there was a huge water stain on the ceiling so distinctive that it almost looked like an intentional design. The counter top was brown with colorful flakes speckled throughout. There were cigarette burns on the surface that, when you rubbed your hand over it, felt like a design pattern for the blind. Large bags of Cheese Doodles and Doritos and Salt and Vinegar chips were stacked in the corner of the counter inside a wide wicker basket.

Although it was out of view, the visitor knew that directly across from the refrigerator was the entry to the basement. Catty-cornered to the doorway was a closed door that separated the kitchen area from the back room that led to the backdoor. In this space there were two rusting bicycles, bound stacks of old newspapers, and about ten black Hefty bags filled with empty cartons and pop cans heaped on top of one another.

On the side nearest the back door there was a broken picture tube from an old floor model Zenith television set. It looked heavy, a reminder of an age when products were made of sturdier materials. The first time the hooded figure broke in through the back door to learn the layout of the small house, the huge eyesore resulted in a deeply lacerated shin bone. Bleeding through denim that day, the uninvited visitor wondered why anyone would keep something so obviously worthless.

At first glance, the kitchen, like the rest of the house, seemed dirty but, in truth, was far from being so. Besides the dishes piled high in the sink and the empty cartons of fruit punch and milk waiting to be bagged and stored on the back porch, the home was organized. There had never been any roach sightings or mouse droppings visible. After walking through every room and rummaging through every cabinet and dresser, cluttered was the word that best described the house. There were worse qualities, thought the visitor.

The rest of the house revealed more interesting details. The stairs that led down into the basement sloped at an acute angle of about eighty-five degrees. This ridiculous slant seemed to suggest that the stairs had been built first and, later, the cheap foundation had been constructed around it. Hobbling around that first day after tripping over the picture tube, the visitor opened the door to the basement and slipped down three steps before grabbing the wobbly banister and stopping the descent.

Once downstairs, the basement’s first closed door turned out to be a small laundry room. Inside, there were clothes neatly folded on top of a small white dryer. The washing machine was identical in appearance, except that the lid was on top and not in the middle of the appliance. A few feet away on the cemented floor was a drain being circled by a puddle of murky water. There were socks and soiled drawers strewn indiscriminately. Again, after looking closely, the different sizes suggested that all the underwear did not belong to the man.

There was a long wooden table with a computer and printer on top sitting in the middle of the room with a single folding chair pushed underneath. Besides that there was only a bookcase built into the wall with all sorts of texts on all sorts of subjects. Looking at them, the visitor couldn’t determine a theme to his collection. There was nothing else downstairs except for a small bathroom with a toilet and sink behind another closed door and, the visitor noted, pictures hanging on the walls reflecting different periods of the man’s life.

On the other side of the kitchen was a small area that one might call the dining room except that there was nothing in it besides a large armoire with a cheap padlock the visitor picked easily. Inside, it held no surprises. It was, in fact, exactly what the visitor expected to find. Tonight, one important item would be removed. The rest meant nothing.

An array of photographs framed with black wood hanging on flathead nails covered the living room walls. The man who lived there was in every one of them. Like the frames in the basement, besides the man’s mother, there didn’t seem to be any women in any of the pictures. Except one. Interesting but not surprising, there were other faces captured on film the visitor recognized, too.

Also in the living room were two large couches, one under the window, the other against the wall, and a small wooden coffee table with a glass top in the center. There was wooly carpet that was more orange than brown covering the floor. The front door was locked, and the chain was on.

The visitor had broken in four times before this and knew every inch of the house. Peeping in on the man at night week after week and then breaking in during the day when he went out had been done in order to get a real sense of what had been observed through the window. And this had provided all the evidence needed. The visitor had done this because tonight, finally, was the night, and there could be no risk of tripping over a TV or slipping down a poorly constructed staircase. Previous attempts had not gone smoothly, but the lessons learned earlier were done to make this evening perfect.

The visitor had been training a lifetime for this. Had been groomed for it. Had embraced the patience to grow into something so much more than the limits imposed on flesh and bones. And tonight, maybe they would all begin to finally understand. Carefully entering the house like an unseen shadow, walking upright, shimmering with controlled rage and focus, a phantom hidden within the darkness has come for a final visit with Landon Thompkins.

With no conscience or regret, Mr. Lando, as he was known to all the boys he’d counseled, had done things that had not bothered his warped mind or disturbed his gluttonous sensibilities for more years than he could count. His appetite for his perverse proclivities was legendary because who he was and what he did was only a secret in his mind. Early on, he worked diligently to cover his tracks and took precautions that allowed him to act with impunity.

Those days were long ago.

Once considered handsome, he was still a large man, standing 6’4 and weighing 260 pounds. Because of his size and self-confidence, he carried himself like a giant; as such, his presence, previously thought to be oversized yet pleasant, now uncomfortably overtook most spaces. As the years progressed and his looks deteriorated and his true self emerged, even his crooked smile and gapped front teeth, a welcoming greeting a lifetime ago, added an extra layer of sinister to his persona.

Those who worked with him suspected. Those who lived near him sensed it. Those who came into any prolonged contact with him were always made wary. This is because Mr. Lando was a man who wore his need like a cheap cologne, one that offended everyone he came close to, leaving others shocked that he could not smell his own distasteful stench.

Currently, he was living in a decaying two bedroom home on a block where virtually every property was boarded up. Lawns dead and neighbors pushed out, the once lively neighborhood was crumbling. The loss of community, where he was always so comfortable, even after the news about what he was doing was revealed, should have been further foreshadowing of the coming end. Since the relentlessly libelous investigation had finally died down, he spent most of his time in the small house. To most people, the ending of a celebrated career, reputation, and homestead would have signaled that more might befall, and that things would get worse before they got better. Of course, Mr. Lando was not a man who acknowledged those things he thought didn’t directly touch his life. He was too arrogant to think a dilapidated community meant anything to him personally.

Most days, he wasn’t sure how he felt about the feeling of emptiness that cascaded down the street of his Englewood neighborhood like a cart being pushed slowly along by a one armed man, but he knew that he liked the quiet. He had always liked quiet.

In fact, the only noises he ever wanted to hear were their whimpers. Those guttural sounds from his boys were the only ones that had ever aroused him, had ever made him feel whole. He craved those sounds, but only under his terms. No shouting. No yelling. Just their subdued cries, muffled and sensual. He liked his time with them to be drawn out. He wanted it to last. It was special and, he believed, should not be rushed. True intimacy cannot be hurried is what he always told them when they squirmed under his weight, praying that the end was near.

He was a man who hated vulgarity. He hated loud. If they cried out, he gagged them. If they screamed, he put the metal bit he inherited years before into their mouths. In Mr. Lando’s mind, he was an orderly man who liked his surreptitious liaisons to be just right. He sought closeness. In many ways, he was chasing love. Anything less was ugly, and his chosen boys and what they shared was, he believed, beautiful.

For almost twenty years he had been the director of Every Boy’s House, the South Side rehabilitation center for young urban males who were considered at risk for homelessness, parental abuse, and, added some years later to their mission statement, gang violence. The vocation of the center, established in 1933 by the Catholic Archdioceses of Chicago, in an attempt to assist migrating Negro children who were in need of support, specifically the kind of help that would take them away from what the state deemed wayward parents and the negative pull of the streets, was to provide shelter, education, and spiritual elevation to those urban youths in dire need of spiritual uplifting.

Founded by Father Joseph O’Malley, Every Boy’s House was a huge social uplift program supported by the church and, over the years, had been received warmly by everyone in the community. For forty years, they won every humanitarian award the city and state gifted, and received ever increasing non-profit grant monies that kept the program not only alive but a viable tax write-off for the Archdioceses. To all that looked in, the center was a blazing success.

But then the rumors about Father O’Malley started to circulate. Eventually he and the center were investigated by a young and zealous new State’s Attorney, responding to a complaint filed by Floyd C. Jenton, a fifteen-year old gang member who, in 1977, claimed that Father O’Malley promised him extended room and board if Jenton would simply help lather and rinse the backside of the now frail seventy-three year old. According to Jenton, desperate for shelter, hiding from his own gang brothers who had placed a Violation on his head—a physical punishment for violating the gang’s rules, usually involving, best case, only a crippling beating and possible expulsion—he gave in to the elderly man’s requests for two months. Jenton claimed that when the old man tried to kiss him with an open mouth as they both stood naked in the shower, he had finally been pushed too far.

When the State’s Attorney asked the younger man —familiar with Jenton’s extensive arrest record, noting that it included everything from strong arm shakedowns to drug dealing to arson for hire—why he allowed any of this perversion to begin, let alone continue, the street thug answered with shaky voice, I needed help. Father said he’d help. What choice I have? When yo’ only choice be ta swallow yo’ pride or have yo’ dick cut off ‘n stuffed down yo’ throat, what you think you gon’ do? Huh? You tell me what I shoulda dun. Nobody else was helping me. Dey gon’ kill me I back on da’ street. You tell me. Huh? What choice I have? The State’s Attorney had no answer.

When charges were brought against Father O’Malley and the Center, the Archdiocese didn’t hesitate to support their priest and, as they had done in the past, bury the truth.

It wasn’t until around 1985 that priests in the U.S. found themselves under any real threat from sexual complaints. No one wanted to believe that these agents of God, pillars of their communities and men above reproach, could do what countless young people claimed. It was easier to abandon the obviously disturbed imaginations of children who had lost their way than even investigate the merit of their accusations. It took years for any real attention to be paid these spurious claims. This new found interest in sexual misconduct allegations was a direct result of a Louisiana priest’s confession he had molested over two dozen children. He received a twenty year jail term and, from that point on, the previously dismissed indiscretions of the Catholic Church became open to intense inquiry that would rock the institution, eventually costing them a fortune.

Overall, the Church hierarchy maintained a steadfast consistency for more than seventy years of suppressing the charges entirely when it could, denying them when it could not, and, when they could neither suppress or deny, reach agreements with victims that always included confidentiality clauses. As one former prosecutor claimed, the one thing the Church never wavers in is their one true principle: institutional self-preservation.

Tallying allegations from 1950-2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ records show that over 4% of serving priests were accused at some point of sexual misconduct. Interestingly, over 80% of all allegations made have been against priests in the United States. Of the victims, 81% have been male. Over the years, 11,000 allegations have been filed against 4,396 priests in the U.S. alone. In 2008, the Church released a callous statement, admitting that molestation was a serious problem but that it was probably caused by ‘no more than one percent of the over 500,000 Roman Catholic priests worldwide.

For those who think the problem will simply go away, in 2003 more than 330 priests of 46,000 American clergy were either dismissed or allowed to resign after the church found it could no longer cover its failings by shuffling their censored priests from parish to parish. By 2004, over a billion dollars in lawsuits had been settled. In 2007 alone, the Church spent another $615 million dollars settling cases. In 2013, the first Pope in over 600 years resigned. They said that the supposed reasoning was failing health. But sexual scandals have multiplied in the last decade, and many believe that the elderly leader of the world’s largest church, quite simply, couldn’t stomach the lies anymore.

Father O’Malley’s case never even saw the dim lighting of a courtroom.

Two years after the investigation, which had been grounded to a strangled murmur right out of the gate, an exhausted and understaffed State’s Attorney’s office dropped the charges, finding themselves no match for the resources proffered by the Catholic Church. Father O’Malley was then allowed to retire and live out his last days in peace and quiet. When he died three years later of oral asphyxiation in what the papers reported as A solo kink act gone horribly wrong, the torch had been officially passed to O’Malley’s most ardent loyalist, Father Thompkins, who, after years of suffering under temporary heads of house, was now the official appointee. It took years to accomplish—knocking on doors and community outreach and food drives and free summer block parties—but, by the mid-1980s, Every Boy’s House was once again receiving state aid and was seen as a thriving part of the South Side community. The charismatic new director was bold and energetic and promised that under his watch the EBH center would make the community proud. And, for nearly fifteen years, Father Thompkins, like Father O’Malley, had the full support of everyone invested in the center’s work.

It wasn’t until the boys started calling him Mr. Lando in 1993 that a darker side to the holy man seemed to emerge, as if the simple renaming had released an energy that lay dormant inside, one that could no longer mask the ugliness that lived within his soul. Everyone assumed that calling him Mr. Lando was a way for the boys to feel even closer to their urban savior. The entire community embraced the nickname, thinking it was a way to express affection and a level of hipness not always apparent in a religious setting.

It took time, but eventually everyone saw that the renaming was just the opposite.

After a similar molestation scandal at the turn of the century, launched at a time when the Catholic Church was under its most revealing attack against more than 200 priests from thirteen states, EBH was closed in the summer of 2001—the result of multiple accusations against Father Thompkins and two of the other priests who acted as dorm directors— leaving only the sprawling brick building and the surrounding brown and yellow row houses used as dormitories as reminders of what was either good intentions in the hands of bad men, or an insidious plan hatched under the guise of good all along.

Inside the house, Mr. Lando was reflecting on those who, over the years, had been his favorites. It had become a nightly ritual, one he performed without fail. Nude, he lay on his bed, heavily oiled from torso to mid-thigh. In his right hand, he held a pair of small men’s briefs while he touched himself roughly, softly gritting harsh words as if one of those boys who he believed trusted him implicitly, though they often cried and seemed reluctant, was there beneath him, excited by his touch. Eyes closed, he was fully stimulated and preparing to climax when he heard a slicing motion move through the air. Opening his eyes, looking straight ahead, he tried to identify the person standing before him. Staring at the smiling face, Mr. Lando didn’t recognize the figure and, had he lived, would not have been able to classify if his assailant had been male or female. What he did immediately recognize was that the elongated tool in the visitor’s hand was stained with blood. What he knew less than a second later was that the blood was his and that searing pain discussed in abstract terms in books and films could never adequately communicate the burning sensation crawling over every tendon. Before he went into shock, he looked down and saw nothing but a pool of red where his mangled hand lay twisted and broken, the compound fracture now barely attached to his wrist. Squeezing his eyes shut tightly before being forced to see just how much more damage had been done to him, irreparable damage to a part of himself he once joked he would never want to live without, he felt the figure bend over and gently kiss his lips. In response, his mouth parted into a silenced O, as if the pain was too intense to even allow for sound.

Surprisingly, the kiss brought him a fleeting sense of comfort.

And, just before the end came and he felt the lethal object actually pierce him between his outstretched legs, forcing open his eyes yet again, he saw the figure mouth words his brain could no longer comprehend. Sensing the end, Father Thompkins, Mr. Lando, attempted to speak, meekly saying the words, Father, please forgive me for I… But before he could utter another syllable, his end was hastened with a heavy-handed strike to the head that instantly stopped all brain function. This last merciless blow was unintended, but the figure standing before Mr. Lando envisioned the vessel it moved through as a…? There was an uncertainty of what name to embrace that exemplified the violent quest ahead, but the understanding that a name is necessary was clear. Something else to think about while plans were put in motion.

A name.

What had been certain in the moment was that, because of the self-aware understanding of the mission at hand, the unknown visitor could not risk that a blindly merciful God did indeed exist and chance Mr. Lando being forgiven. There were several blows to follow, but Mr. Lando was already gone. Death was swifter than intended, but still death had come.

Blood-soaked, the visitor looked down at what was left of Mr. Lando. The large man’s face was split into sections, divided into pulpy halves like a breakfast grapefruit. The blood no longer sprayed from where his wrist had been opened, or from the severed erection he had done so much harm with over the years. Now there were just large crimson pools dripping off the sides of the bed, spreading across the floor. The praying had brought about a brief panic, and panic had altered the plan. Because of this, the satisfaction that raced through the visitor was fleeting.

Pushing up from the mounted position on top of the body and shaking it off, the visitor breathed in deeply and tried to become centered with its human shell once again. And then with a nod, the visitor smiled. It was the thought of how much more work was to come that now sent a new wave of pleasure through every fiber of the figure’s being. Work to be done were the words whispered and repeated.

Mr. Lando was not the first.

He will not be the last.

Chapter 2

Pinching the fading remains of the joint he was smoking, he exhaled the last of the weed before blowing it out in a stream of funneled smoke. Head bobbing up and down, he thought about how much he really loved the way the thick white swirl looked as it floated away inside the absent wind and eventually faded into the darkness. Just give it a minute, he thought. He was hoping it would calm him down. He was hoping to get his head on straight and make sense of what had happened. That was the plan when he put flame to rolled paper and inhaled with all the strength his lungs could draw in. The weed will make everything better, he thought.

But that’s not what happened.

Bracing himself against the lamp post, he felt even more out of sorts than he had five minutes ago. Eyes opening and closing, spots exploded behind his pupils. Shaking his head from side to side, he wasn’t quite sure what was wrong. All he knew was that he was angry. No, angry didn’t quite sum up what J.C. Alvin was feeling. His wrenching emotions coiled tightly into a knot and then rolled through his clenched jaw down into his neck and shoulders. Actually, what he was experiencing was something more like a psychotic break, uncontained feelings spilling out, now teetering on becoming a blinding frenzy. As he stomped around, slamming his palms into his thighs, he could not believe he had just allowed himself to be goaded into a fist fight. In a bar of all places. A fucking fist fight, he thought. Stupid, stupid! he shouted, whirling around in a dizzying circle.

All he kept thinking was that he knew better, that this whole day had been beneath him, and that this final incident was the culmination of the universe punishing him for getting out of bed. Fuck! he shouted.

Besides just being humiliated, he knew that once Big T or, worse, Night found out, there would be hell to pay, questions to answer. That’s because keeping a low profile nowadays was essential, especially with the police cracking down on them—watching their houses, tailing their cars, sitting outside their various legal businesses, especially the clubs.

J.C. knew better. But he had always known better, and that rarely made a difference.

Eyes closed tightly, he looked like a petulant child listening to his disappointed parent’s disciplinary lecture. Rocking on his heels, he could actually hear T yelling. Fuck, man! What’s wrong wit’ you? You a general. Hell, supposed to be a businessman! Can’t scratch yo’ hands in da street no mo’. See, dis here why we don’t be telling you shit. All you wan’a do is stay high. Man, why you gotta be act’n so stupid? We legal now, but all you wan’a do is stay up in da hood spots, slumming with dese base ass niggas. But you know what? Fuck it. Know why? Cus Night gon’ come for yo’ ass. I can’t save you this time, stupid!

Same speech he had been hearing for years. Same tone. Same T. Stupid, stupid, he said again.

The winter had been unnaturally warm. And by March, the Chicago Police Department had placed an ARA, All Resources Assault, into gang activities. That’s because on Friday the 16th, the temperature had peaked at 82 degrees. A perfect day. A perfect weekend. Before it was over, before Sunday dawn, forty people had been shot and seven had been killed. An innocent four-year old girl sitting on her porch was one of the fatalities. Then came an unseasonably warm Memorial Day weekend. The end result of that heat wave was forty three shot, eleven dead. And every bullet had been traced back to a weapon used or sold by Affiliates.

Across the nation, news reports embarrassed Chicago, suggesting that the third largest city in America was home to untamed streets, neighborhoods that were wildly out of control. So the Police Superintendent was on the news every other day vowing to bring law and order to what the papers were calling Chicago’s Pervasive Gang Problem.

The murder rate was skyrocketing, the count already 200 dead and climbing by June 1st—up from 134 the previous year—which suggested that the battle to claim neighborhoods was crawling along like a fast moving fuse. On top of that, with Chicago police vowing to clean house from the bottom to the top, the pressure to catch any Affiliates dirty was their latest prime objective.

Gone were the good old days of several years back. The age of a completely distracted police force was over. So much so, the whole priority of the city’s terrorist watch seemed long forgotten. For years, the gangs had taken advantage and gotten paid, while the government mandated state and city officials to watch for foreign terror cells, making the looming war abroad every large city’s number one concern. Police departments around the country had spent months and months, time that rolled into years and years, training. The government had invested money and equipment into state budgets to give them the latest technology and surveillance equipment. Seminars were held. Conferences attended.

Every night, terror alerts became the lead story on the 10 O’clock news. All the while, citizens held their breath, afraid somebody like Abu Qatada might drive a panel van down Stony Island Avenue armed with a bookcase nuclear device capable of blowing up cars and burning brick buildings into cinder ash.

Inevitably, tensions rose. Citizens locked their doors and hid inside. And the streets were quiet. Because of the fear the government had instilled after the attacks on U.S. soil, everybody seemed to have a shared concern in George Bush’s War on Terror. His words resonated in the ears of everyone with a television: Freedom itself was attacked this morning by faceless cowards. And freedom will be defended. I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks.

The funny thing is that while it took several years for the average citizen to calm down, to return to a sense of self-serving living and me mentality lifestyles, the gangs had adjusted their business ventures early on, and gotten rich. They understood that, obviously, the only thing better than Ben and Jerry’s for calming nerves was a euphoria that only dope could provide. It was as if the people had asked for help, and the pushers answered, Why eat calorie loaded Chunky Monkey and stress about foreign terror cells when heroin is so readily available?

So, while the police trained and learned how to be 21st century cops, the gangs acted with impunity, observing a kind of civil truce in the name of APC, the Almighty Paper Chase. And the money from illegal drugs was plentiful, enough that every dealer, every gang and its members, even more than usual, got paid well. Initially, violent crimes were down, and the streets of Chicago experienced a sense of relative calm. And then came 2003.

‘03 was a nightmare.

Thankfully, violent crimes dipped soon after. By 2005, Chicago and every other big city was once again nervous because the national threat level, measured by the National Terrorism Advisory System, had everyone who watched the news or read the papers in a tizzy. Bush had been re-elected, and his hard-on for Bin Laden had grown. He seemed determined to keep the promise he made in 2001: Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts. And make no mistake, those who hated the United States had been listening. They heard the tough talking Texan. Loud and clear. The result was that the battle became about more than Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistan was suddenly suspect. Syria, Yemen, and Egypt all seemed to have a foot in the water. North Korea was acting strangely. Suddenly Iran was making nuclear moves. Again.

The result was the U.S. vacillating between orange and red on the threat color code. So cops in Chicago were everywhere. And they had Federal support. Men and women trained to look for suspicious activity. Experienced and capable individuals with badges and guns who responded to a wide range of what they deemed to be criminal or dangerous behavior. This, of course, made the gangs tread lightly. Thanks to the looming threat of terrorism from abroad, train stations and high rise buildings were being watched constantly. For a while, things seemed calmer.

But the last few years in Chicago had been awful, and the free reign that had existed because of more pressing matters was now a thing of the past. After Obama killed Osama, people celebrated in the streets. But for some reason, those same people, who had lost their homes and were now unemployed at rates all but a few had ever experienced before, started firing guns in the air like it was New Years Eve. Before you knew it, there were bodies in the street, almost like rather than returning to their own abodes, the revelers decided to go and shoot their neighbors instead.

Early on, the Department of Homeland Security established a presence in large cities. And then, just as people started to depend on them, they were called away. So, with DHS seemingly relegated to luggage and Al-Qaeda, the cities were back in the hands of local law enforcement.

On the street, the police were now squarely focused on the gangs. Domestic Terrorism, as the gangs’ actions were now labeled, was all the rage. To make matters worse, joining the flood of drugs was a flood of guns, a fact that Affiliates, more than any other gang, had invested in for decades, having made connections abroad that had inundated the south and west sides of the city with drug crazed lunatics armed to the teeth. Daily, drama on the corners simmered. At night, gunshots lit up neighborhoods across Chicago. Not only were the gangs killing each other while unavoidably creating collateral damage, they were also now being blamed for every violent crime that happened, even the ones where the cops knew there was no gang involvement. It almost seemed like detectives would arrive at a clearly domestic violence homicide and find a way to blame it on the gangs. What? Her husband killed her? Are you sure? You found him in the alley trying to toss the gun? Neighbors heard him threaten her yesterday? Well, check him for gang tats and then roust the corners, bang on some doors. Bet my paycheck the Black Gangster Disciples, or the Dog Soldiers, or Angry Souls, or them fucking Affiliates had something to do with this!

Big T and Night had been scolding everybody for months about the crackdowns. The older heads, ranking members, had been listening. Most of them who represented Tribe—those privileged members who were always different than the other Affiliate sects and now, thanks to the prosperous years, were trying desperately to invest heavily in legit businesses—would meet with them and discuss how to stop the senseless murdering that was bad for everybody. The ranking leaders seemed to take heed. And they swore they would talk to the young up-n-comers.

But the average corner slinger on the street—the younger generation that seemed like all they wanted to do was chase Death, catch him, and pull his hood back, distinguishable by the over-sized t-shirts and pants they all wore like a uniform—generally did what they wanted. Everybody knew that they were out of control, and, as Big T put it, Fuck ‘em. Chastising dese young fools be a waste of time. Dey be dead before anybody can call ‘em in to be checked.

On the South Side, Big T and Night were still a force to be reckoned with. On the street, their standing as RBC’s, Representers Beyond Challenge, had not diminished, even for the latest ever evolving crop of corner hustlers. Ironically, both men had adjusted quickly to being off the set. Big T and Night had become businessmen, and they, as T said, Likes not having to wonder if one of dese young fools gon’ come’n try to get some. Hell, paying off dese crooked ass inspectors and trying to cut deals with liquor vendors be almost relaxing compared to dealing with these new niggas running wild out here. If anything, their successes now garnered a sort of envy that, at times, seemed like it could turn lethal. But everybody knew that if you came for T or Night—you’d better bring everybody you knew.

When the ranking members on the street sought out T and Night’s counsel, both men would always make time to come to the Station, the Affiliates’ main headquarters, and talk. But as the violence became worse, Night let it be known not to waste their time on what now was simply referred to as Generation Lost.

J.C., however, was a different story.

The pull of the streets had always been J.C.’s weakness. He liked being out there in the thick of it. He liked pulling over on the corners in his black on black Cadillac truck and talking to the young corner