fortune indeed. A governor for the Black Gangster Disciples answers only to the top guy, Larry Hoover, the eminence gris who runs the show from a cell in Joliet.^[6] If De-De becomes a governor he will control an entire section of the city, and through his hands will pass an unimaginable torrent of cash.

Who gets what in the BGDs is determined with absolute dictatorial authority by the lithe and enigmatic Hoover, the 45-year-old founder of the gang, now doing 150 years for murder. To some people, it may seem a little bewildering that a man behind bars can operate a major drug cartel as efficiently as if he was working out of a Michigan Avenue office suite. But if you’re in the drug business it’s self explanatory. Sooner or later everyone in the trade, like De-De, will wind up doing a little time. If De-De has been straight with the organization and has not messed with the money, he’ll be in good shape. When he arrives in Joliet, instead of getting his throat cut, he will find protection, comraderie, and cash. And in prison as in the world at large, if you’ve got the cash you can have anything you want.

As Goff and Freeman are leaving the courtroom, it becomes clear why the Lexan panels were installed between the crowd and the court officials.  The boy’s mother is waiting for them and she’s enraged.  She berates Goff, but rather than waste her wrath on the white boy, she aims most of it at Scotty Freeman. “You should be ashamed to be in the same race as us!” 

There was a final sinister sidebar to the events leading up to De-De’s capture. “Everybody that was involved with that is now dead,” says Goff. “All the players. The guy's house we went to—they killed, like, five or six people. They were trying to find the informant. They never did get him." 

To an old Chicago hand like Studs Terkel, all this murder and mayhem has a slightly familiar ring to it. Studs has spent the last seven decades coursing the streets of the city recording the images that would emerge in best sellers like Working, and Hard