Page 50 - The Jazzsipper Novel

49

THE JAZZ SIPPER

their trade on another dealer’s corner. Others were witnesses who could
identify a killer. Still others may have been doing nothing more than
sitting on their porches.

Part of the article really caught Aunt Jessie’s attention when she began
reading aloud to herself, and the words began falling of her lips; As horrifying
as the city’s experience was, it was also deeply instructive, shedding
light on the nature of the disease — murder, much of it retaliatory— that
eats so ravenously at the city’s well-being and self-esteem. The lessons
extended to crime-fighting techniques and the challenges posed to
police and prosecutors not just by the killers but by their unwitting
accomplices: witnesses who refuse to come forward; the drug culture
that underlies so much of the slaughter; the failure of the judiciary to
intervene effectively in the lives of career criminals; those who equip
killers with firearms. Much of the blood was shed in a handful of
neighborhoods — indeed, a mere seven square miles — where guns are
plentiful and life often seems cheap. In a six-month period, one woman
who lived near the St. Bernard public housing complex until she fled in
fear, lost her nephew, her husband and a son, all casualties of what she
calls an Uptown, Downtown rivalry. They’ve taken everybody,” she said.
“We have two or three (men) left. They took everybody.”

Aunt Jessie continued reading the next section out loud by this time the
tears were running down her face like someone had turned on a faucet. She
was thinking about how close they came to losing Vance in this seven mile
zone, Uncle Frank had come into the room by then, and was standing and
listening attentively…Sometimes, though, the bloodshed extends beyond