It’d seen better days. Marked up with blue and red paint. Graffiti had been swashed on by local kids. Mean words about mothers and killers, so on and so on. Pitchforks and devils with crowns dancing on brick walls. Tiny dents where bullets had bounced off . Mortar chipped. Gunshots could be heard throughout the night. One gang trying to claim territory and another attempting to reclaim it. The fighting went back and forth. Newspapers got tired of writing about it. They’re doing us a service, one city councilman said. Let them kill each other.

But, the word on the street was always about a fight being on the horizon; a major gangland battle. Machine guns and semiautomatics shooting into the night behind buildings off Western and out in the street; young boys with toys that kill out in the open with nothing to protect them. Wearing dark clothes and ski masks. Some carjacking for quick getaways. Windows shot up. Babies crying in the night.

Everything was fine when the battles took place in the black neighborhoods on the southside. But when they moved north to white land, folks got concerned. Soon, there were hold-ups at ATM’s. Couples getting mugged coming home from theaters. Drunks rolled in alleys. And gangs tagging buildings, shooting at each other down the street from Mr. and Mrs. Weinberg’s house. Something had to change.

And so, a new sheriff was elected to take care of this crime. This blight. His job was to move everything back to the southside. Back to Austin, Cottage Grove, 95th Street, Blue Island. But, this is not business. Business needs to grow. That’s what the gang leaders told the sheriff. Profits were being seen. Now it was just a matter of fighing it out for supremacy.

You can try more cops, one gang leader told him. but they’ll just be killed in the process, he said. You’ll have a real blood bath on your hands. Things will settle down, the leader of the red gang told the sheriff. Soon, the killing will be done, and the blues will stay on the southside. But, we got these pills to push,and every white kid loves them. Black kids too. This is business, he said. This is business.

The killings continued. Robberies, muggings, stickups, a real crime spree. Nothing got solved. The reds and the blues fought it out forever. And ever. Goodbye, Chicago. So long. It’s business. Somebody’s getting paid.