The street leading into the Robert Taylor Homes was lined with old, beat-up cars. A school crossing guard leaned on the hood of a car, her morning duty done, looking as if she’d been through a war. She waved knowingly at J.T. as we drove past. We pulled up in front of a high-rise, the lobby populated by a bunch of young men who seemed to stand at attention when they saw J.T.’s car. Unlike the Lake Park projects, which were nearly abandoned, Robert Taylor was thrumming with life. I could hear rap music blasting from a stereo. People stood around smoking cigarettes and, from the smell of it, marijuana. Every so often a parent and child passed through the loose crowd.

J.T. parked his Malibu and strode toward the building like a bad-ass cowboy swaggering into a bar. He stopped just short of the entrance, surveying the area and waiting as people came to greet him. As each young man made his way over, J.T. extended his hand graciously.Few words were spoken; most of the communication was in the form of subtle nods, signals familiar to everyone but me.

“When you gonna come and see me, baby?” one woman called out, and then another: “You gonna take me for a ride, sweetheart?” J.T. smiled and waved them off, playfully tapping their young children on the head as he passed. Two older women in bright blue jackets that read TENANT PATROL came up and hugged J.T., asked him why he didn’t come around more often. J.T. was obviously well known in these parts, although I had no idea why.

Just then someone emerged from the lobby. He was obese, roughly J.T.’s age, and he was breathing heavily. His name was Curly, and-as if in mockery of my stereotypical preconceptions-he was a ringer for Rerun from What’s Happening!! He and J.T. clasped hands, and then J.T. motioned for me to follow them.

“Your mama’s house or mine?” Curly asked.

“Mama’s pissed at me,” J.T. said. “Let’s go to your place.”

I followed them up a few flights of stairs. We stepped inside an apartment furnished with couches and a few reclining chairs that faced a big TV. There was a Christian show playing. The walls were hung with family photos and a painting of Jesus Christ. Toys were strewn about the floor, and the kitchen counter was crowded with boxes of cereal and cookies. I could smell chicken and rice on the stove. Balls of yarn and knitting needles sat atop a drab glass table. The domestic scene surprised me a bit, for I had read so much about the poverty and danger in Robert Taylor, how children ran around without parents and how drugs had overtaken the community.

J.T. gestured for me to sit on the sofa, and then he and Curly sat down to talk. J.T. didn’t introduce me, and before long I was forgotten entirely. Between their fast talk and the gangster vocabulary, I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying, but I did manage to pick out some key words: “tax,” “product,” “monthly dues,” “Cobras,” “Kings,” “police,” “CHA security.” They talked quickly and earnestly. After a while they began throwing numbers at each other in some kind of negotiation. A few times a young man arrived at the screen door and interrupted them, shouting “Five-Oh on Federal” or “Five-Oh in 26.” Later J.T. would explain that that’s how they communicated the whereabouts of the police: “Five-Oh” meant police, “26” was a building number in Robert Taylor, and “Federal” was a busy street flanking the projects. Cell phones hadn’t yet arrived-the year was 1989-so gang members had to pass along such information manually.

I felt a sudden urge to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t feel comfortable asking to use the one in the apartment. After some squirming I decided to stand up and walk around. As I made a move to get up, J.T. and Curly looked at me disapprovingly. I sat back down.

Their meeting had lasted at least two hours. “That’s it,” J.T. finally said. “I’m hungry. Let’s pick it up tomorrow.”

Curly smiled. “It’ll be good to have you back,” he said. “Ain’t the same since you left.”

Then J.T. glanced at me. “Oh, shit,” he said to Curly. “I forgot about him. This is Sudhir. He’s a cop.”

The two of them began laughing. “You can go ahead and take a piss now,” J.T. said, and they both laughed even harder. I began to sense that in exchange for access I was meant to serve as a source of entertainment for J.T.

On the car ride back to Hyde Park, J.T. told me what had just happened. He explained that he had grown up in the very Robert Taylor building we’d just visited. For the past couple of years, he’d been working out of the Lake Park projects because the Black Kings’ citywide leaders had wanted to increase productivity there. But since the Lake Park projects were now slated for demolition, J.T. was returning to Robert Taylor, where he would be merging his own Black Kings gang with the local BK faction, which was run by Curly. This merger was being executed at the behest of the gang’s higher-ups. Curly had been installed as a temporary leader when J.T. was sent to turn around the Lake Park operation. Curly apparently wasn’t a very good manager, which made the gang bosses’ decision to bring J.T. back a simple one.

Robert Taylor and the other projects on State Street, J.T. told me, were “easy money,” partly since thousands of customers lived nearby but also because of “the white folks who drive over to buy our shit.” They came from Bridgeport, Armour Square, and other predominantly white ethnic neighborhoods on the far side of the Dan Ryan Expressway, buying mostly crack cocaine but also some heroin and marijuana. In his new assignment, J.T. told me, he hoped to earn “a hundred times” what he currently earned and buy a house for his mother, who still lived in Robert Taylor. He also said he hoped to buy an apartment for his girlfriend and their children. (In fact, he mentioned several such girlfriends, each of whom apparently needed an apartment.)

At the Lake Park projects, J.T.’s income had been dropping from a peak of about thirty thousand dollars a year. But he told me that now, in Robert Taylor, he stood to make as much as seventy-five thousand dollars or a hundred thousand if business was steady, which would put him nearly in the same league as some of the gang’s higher-ups.

He made a few references to the gang’s hierarchy and his effort to rise within it. There were a few dozen Black Kings officers above him, spread throughout Chicago, who earned their money by managing several gang factions like J.T.’s. These men were known as “lieutenants” and “captains.” Above them was another level of gangsters who were known as the “board of directors.” I had had no idea how much a street gang’s structure mirrored the structure of just about any other business in America.

J.T. made it clear that if you rose high enough in the Black Kings dynasty, and lived long enough, you could make an awful lot of money. As he discussed his move up the ladder, I felt a knot in my stomach. Since meeting him I had entertained the notion that my dissertation research might revolve around his gang and its drug trafficking. I had spoken with him not only about his own gang “set” but about all the Black Kings sets in the city-how they collaborated or fought with one another over turf, how the crack-cocaine economy was fundamentally altering the nature of the urban street gang. Although there was a great deal of social-science literature on gangs, very few researchers had written about the actual business dealings of a gang, and even fewer had firsthand access to a gang’s leadership. As we pulled up to my apartment, I realized that I had never formally asked J.T. about gaining access to his life and work. Now it seemed I might be getting shut out just as things were heating up.

“So when you do you think you’ll be moving over to Robert Taylor?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he said absentmindedly, staring out at the panhandlers who worked the gas station near my apartment.