“What do you mean?” I asked. “You mean J.T. controls you?”

“No, but he told me once that if I wanted to hang out with his family, I had to play by his rules: no hustling when there’s a family thing going on. Like tonight. And he runs things around here, so I have to play by the rules.”

Even though J.T.’s gang didn’t actually control the prostitutes in his buildings, Clarisse explained that he did extract a monthly fee from both the hypes and the regulars. The regulars usually paid a flat fee (anywhere from fifteen to seventy-five dollars a month), and in return the gang would beat up any johns who abused the women. The hypes, meanwhile, turned over a cut of their income (ranging from 10 to 25 percent) to J.T.’s foot soldiers, who tried to keep track of how many tricks each woman turned. Clarisse said that J.T. was actually one of the nicer gang leaders on the South Side. He regularly lent money to women, helped them get medical care, even kept a few vacant apartments for them to use as brothels. So although J.T. didn’t technically run a prostitution ring, he certainly controlled the flow of prostitution on his turf and profited from it.

The conversation with Clarisse that night made me realize that I was hardly the only person in the projects whose movements were dictated by J.T.

Whenever he took me on a survey of his buildings, I’d watch him deal with the various people who hung out in lobbies, stairwells, galleries, parking lots, and playgrounds. He warned a prostitute not to hustle out in the open. He told a man selling sneakers-they looked like counterfeit Nikes-to move away from the lobby where J.T.’s gang members were selling drugs. J.T. often forbade homeless men from hanging out in the playground, especially if they were drinking. And if he spotted a stranger on the premises, he’d have one of his senior officers interrogate that person to learn his business. J.T. hardly knew every single person out of the roughly five thousand in his domain, but he usually managed to figure out whether someone was a local, and if he couldn’t figure it out, he had plenty of people to ask.

All of this was accomplished with little drama. “You folks need to move this activity somewhere else,” he’d say matter-of-factly. Or, “What did I tell you about hustling in the park when kids are playing?” Or, “You can’t stay in this apartment unless you deal with Creepy first.” I saw a few people resist, but none for any great length of time. Most of them seemed to respect his authority, or at least fear it.

In most of the sociological literature I’d read about gangs-they had been part of the urban fabric in the United States since at least the late nineteenth century-the gang almost always had heated relationships with parents, shopkeepers, social workers, and the police. It was portrayed as a nuisance at best, and more typically a major menace.

J.T.’s gang seemed different. It acted as the de facto administration of Robert Taylor: J.T. may have been a lawbreaker, but he was very much a lawmaker as well. He acted as if his organization truly did rule the neighborhood, and sometimes the takeover was complete. The Black Kings policed the buildings more aggressively than the Chicago police did. By controlling lobbies and parking lots, the BKs made it hard for tenants to move about freely. Roughly once a month, they held a weekend basketball tournament. This meant that the playgrounds and surrounding areas got thoroughly spruced up, with J.T. sponsoring a big neighborhood party-but it also meant that other tenants sometimes had to call off their own softball games or picnics at J.T.’s behest.

Over time J.T. became less reluctant to leave me alone in Robert Taylor. Occasionally he’d just go off on an errand and shout, “Hey, shorty, watch out for Sudhir. I’ll be back.” I generally didn’t stray too far, but I did start up conversations with people outside the gang. That’s how I first began to understand the complicated dynamic between the gang and the rest of the community.

One day, for instance, I ran into C-Note, the leader of the squatters, installing an air conditioner in Ms. Mae’s apartment. C-Note was a combination handyman and hustler. For five or ten dollars, he’d fix a refrigerator or TV. For a few dollars more, he’d find an ingenious way to bring free electricity and gas into your home. When it came to home repair, there didn’t seem much that C-Note couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do.

After he finished work at Ms. Mae’s, I sat with C-Note on the gallery and had a beer. He told me that he had lived in the building for years and held various legitimate blue-collar jobs, but after being laid off several times he had lost his lease and become a squatter. He always found a little work and a place to sleep in J.T.’s building. He stayed out of people’s way, he told me. He didn’t make noise, didn’t use drugs, and wasn’t violent. He got his nickname, he explained, because “I got a hundred ways to make a hundred bucks.”

I learned that a lot of tenants welcomed C-Note into their homes for dinner, let him play with their children, and gave him money for medicine or a ride to the hospital if he was hurt. But this began to change once J.T. moved his operations back into Robert Taylor. J.T. saw squatters as a source of income, not as charity cases. Nor was he pleased that C-Note was in the good graces of tenants, some of whom lobbied J.T. not to tax C-Note’s earnings. Even J.T.’s mother was on C-Note’s side in this matter.

But J.T. wasn’t one to compromise when it came to money. He had to pay for the upkeep of a few cars as well as several girlfriends, each of whom needed her own apartment and spending allowance. J.T. also liked to go gambling in Las Vegas, and he took no small amount of pride in the fact that he owned dozens of pairs of expensive shoes and lots of pricey clothing. But instead of acting charitably toward someone like C-Note, J.T. was openly resentful of the idea that he was getting a free ride.

One hot Sunday morning, I was hanging out with C-Note and some other squatters in the parking lot of J.T.’s building, across the street from a basketball court. The men had set up an outdoor auto-repair shop-changing tires, pounding out dents, performing minor engine repairs. Their prices were low, and they had lined up enough business to keep them going all day. Cars were parked at every angle in the lot. The men moved to and fro, hauling equipment, swapping tools, and chattering happily at the prospect of so much work. Another squatter had set up a nearby stand to sell soda and juice out of a cooler. I bought a drink and sat down to watch the underground economy in full bloom.

J.T. drove up, accompanied by four of his senior officers. Three more cars pulled up behind them, and I recognized several other gang leaders, J.T.’s counterparts who ran the other local Black Kings factions.

J.T. walked over to C-Note, who was peering into a car engine. J.T. didn’t notice me-I was sitting by a white van, partially hidden from view-but I could see and hear him just fine.

“C-Note!” J.T. yelled. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“What the fuck does it look like I’m doing, young man?” C-Note barked right back without looking up from his work. C-Note wasn’t usually quarrelsome, but he could be a hard-liner when it came to making his money.

“We have games running today,” J.T. said. He meant the gang’s monthly basketball tournament. “You need to get this shit out of here. Move the cars, get all this stuff off the court.”

“Aw, shit, you should’ve told me.” C-Note threw an oily cloth to the ground. “What the fuck can I do? You see that the work ain’t finished.”

J.T. laughed. He seemed surprised that someone would challenge him. “Nigger, are you kidding me?! I don’t give a fuck about your work. Get these cars out of here.” J.T. looked underneath the cars. “Oh, shit! And you got oil all over the place. You better clean that up, too.”