Quentin sometimes recruited men right off the street. It wasn’t hard to do with so many men in the inner city out of work. Sherrena and Quentin provided tools, materials, and transportation. They paid workers by the task or the day. The amounts typically ranged from $6 to $10 an hour, depending on the job. “These people,” Sherrena once said, “no matter how much money it is, it’s money. And they will work, and they will work for low prices.”
Reported high rates of joblessness among black men with little education obscured the fact that many of these men did regularly work, if not in the formal labor market. Some hustling in the underground economy plied the illicit trades, but the biggest drug kingpin in the city would have been envious of the massive cash-paid labor force urban landlords had at their disposal.2
Quentin dropped Chris off at a newly acquired property he and Sherrena were planning on renting to a woman with a housing voucher. Quentin told Chris to steady the staircase railing and fix a door in anticipation of the Section 8 home inspection. “You know how rent assistance is,” Quentin told Chris. “Everything gotta be perfect….They be coming with some ugly lists.
“All right, boy,” Quentin said as he and Chris exchanged the Vice Lords’ handshake.
In high school, Quentin used to run with the Vice Lords, a street gang that originated in Chicago. He was never very active in the gang, and the two times he had been shot were not gang-related. Quentin took his first bullet when he was nineteen. He and his friends were in a heated confrontation with a group of guys when suddenly a van raced up, and he heard the pop-pop of a 9mm. Quentin was shot in the leg. The second time came a year later, during a mugging. That time, the bullet lodged in his shoulder blade. The shootings left Quentin on “super alert.” A doctor later would diagnose him with stomach ulcers. Over the years, he had learned to relax. When tenants threatened him, he tried to let it slide. But every so often, something would happen, and Quentin would put on his black hoodie and black jeans, and Sherrena would shoot him a dirty look at the door but stay quiet because she had learned she couldn’t say anything when it got to that point, and Quentin would climb in the Suburban and call his guys and go deal with something. The last time the black hoodie came out, a tenant had intentionally and severely damaged one of his properties, out of spite.
Around sunset, after running between Home Depot and Lowe’s, where he was on a first-name basis with the cashiers, after transporting this worker and delivering that tool, Quentin popped his head into Patrice’s old unit. His uncle Verne had spent the last two days there, gliding polyurethane over the hardwoods and covering up the white paint Lamar and his boys had dripped on the brown trim. Quentin was done negotiating with Lamar, even after he painted the pantry. He left Sherrena to deal with him. One thing was certain: if they were paying Uncle Verne, they weren’t paying Lamar. He would have to come up with another plan, and fast.
Uncle Verne’s greasy hair rebelled from all sides of his Baltimore Ravens cap. His pants and flannel shirt were covered in brown paint. His eyes were cloudy and bloodshot. Crumpled aluminum carcasses of drained tallboys—Steel Reserve 211, “crack in a can”—littered the stairwell.
“I need my juice,” Uncle Verne told Quentin.
Quentin looked around. The work was shoddy but done. “It’s good enough for a tenant to move in,” he assessed.
“Huh. This ain’t Brookfield!” Uncle Verne laughed, referencing the predominantly white and affluent suburb.
“You know,” Quentin said, “it doesn’t even matter, ’cause all they gonna do is tear shit up. Sliding furniture, sliding tables, kids, dogs with claws….We don’t need to take no time, trying to do no expensive-type stuff to it, ’cause they just gonna mess it up.” Quentin reached for his wallet. “Boy, you racking up! That’s gonna be like seventy by the time you done?”
“Seventy? Nah, ’cause this room thirty dollars.” Uncle Verne motioned to the large living room.
“No. This room is twenty. ’Member we talked about this yesterday.”
“No. I was charging twenty dollars, and you was charging ten a room.” Uncle Verne laughed nervously.
“Well, then I’ll just have Tiny do this, then!” This was Quentin and Sherrena’s normal response when workers asked for more pay. They simply reminded
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