Page 51 - The Jazzsipper Novel

50

THE JAZZ SIPPER

participants in the drug trade to take the lives of people who simply were
in the wrong place at the wrong time. Uncle Frank thought to himself where
has he heard that before, at the wrong place at the wrong time, he thought
about Vance friend Babu telling him that about Vance at the hospital when
Vance got shot. Uncle Frank continued listing to Aunt Jessie read, by now she
had stop crying, the next part of the article talked about what police called the
Hot Zone, a seven mile square radius in the city where half of the murders
were concentrated, and the police response. Uncle Frank and Aunt Jessie
lived directly square in the middle of the Hot Zone they knew it was bad, but
the article hit home hard.

Out of the 190 square miles the city of New Orleans was comprised
of, within the seven miles they live in had half of the murders. The
seven-square-mile area comprise of older neighborhoods loosely
bounded by Canal Street, North Broad Street, Gentilly Road, Mirabeau
Avenue, Florida Avenue, Kentucky Street and St. Claude Avenue. It
includes the turbulent St. Bernard, Lafitte, Iberville and Florida public
housing developments, and portions of the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th wards.
If there a common denominator to the criminal elements in control of
those neighborhoods, police said, it’s the viciousness with which they
enforced their stranglehold. “On the streets within the seven square
miles, life is cheap.

After Aunt Jessie finish reading the article, and Uncle Frank went to Vance
bedroom and knocked on the door, when Vance came out of the room Uncle
Frank told Vance that he wanted him to take a ride with him to The
Fairgrounds. Aunt Jessie was thanking God, that Vance had come to her and