are no witnesses left to interview or no more evidence to be found. This second explanation is what the police department calls “cleared exceptionally.” Even though neighbors, family, friends, witnesses, and the police are certain who killed Ramaine Hill, there has not been, and may never be, an arrest or a prosecution. Nonetheless, the case is considered solved. If you look at the police department’s end-of-the-year report which lists murder cases that have been cleared, a rather important statistic in a city of over four hundred homicides, Ramaine Hill’s murder will be classified as a closed case. When this detective explained all this to me, he shook his head in resignation, an acknowledgment that it really made no sense. “It’s frustrating,” he told me, on every level, not least because Ramaine Hill, as much as, if not more than, anyone, deserved some justice. He did the right thing: he identified the boy who had shot him two years earlier. And this is what everyone in Chicago’s neighborhoods know: if you do the right thing, bad things often happen.
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I tracked down the cousin at a two-story graystone building on the city’s far West Side. It was a rainy summer day, and so he and I talked on the small porch under an overhang, the rain coming down so hard it was at times hard to hear each other. He wore his hair in long braids, and his eyes were bloodshot, suggesting that he might be high. In the humidity he had unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a well-sculpted yet lean body. He told me he had been a Jesse White tumbler for fifteen years; they’ve performed their acrobatics at halftime of Chicago Bulls and Chicago Bears games, on the Tonight Show, and in two presidential inaugural parades. He told me that after he heard the gunshots, he sprinted across the street and kneeled by Ramaine, who lay on his side. Ramaine, he said, had a large gunshot wound in his neck, a gaping hole, really, and was laboring to breathe. You’re gonna make it. You’re gonna make it, the cousin told him over and over again, hoping that if he said it enough it’d come true.
He told me that over the previous year he, too, had heard that Ramaine had been offered money not to testify in a possible upcoming hearing. He had urged Ramaine to accept the cash. Take the money, he had told Ramaine. You’ll sleep better. But Ramaine had responded, Cuz, why would I take their money if I didn’t do anything wrong?
The cousin confirmed what the detective had told me, that he indeed had identified the shooter, that he had broken down and cried when recounting the shooting, and that after that first encounter he had hidden from the detective. He insisted, “I ain’t afraid,” but continued, “If I testified, they’d come after me. I’d just need to be prepared. I know I couldn’t be out here lacking. I know I’d have to have a gun on me.” He paused, and seemed to guess my next question. “I’m not picking him out of a lineup. I’m not testifying in court.”
I asked him, “But don’t you want justice? Don’t you want him in prison?” The cousin leaned against the railing, nodding to himself, considering my question. He took his time. He brushed his braids from his face, and he extended his hand beyond the porch, letting the raindrops fall on his outstretched palm. The rainwater ran down his forearm. He turned to me, and mused, “Karma is a motherfucker.”
Chapter 19
The Tightrope, part four
SEPTEMBER 6…SEPTEMBER 7…SEPTEMBER 8…
Late one evening Marcelo went to the bathroom to wash up and brush his teeth before bed. As he leaned over the sink, he noticed hair circling the drain. He knew right away the hair belonged to a boy down the hall, and so Marcelo went to the boy’s room and cursed at him, completely out of proportion with the offense. He later apologized. Another time a staff person told Marcelo he had to move away from another boy working on a computer. He yelled at the staff that it was a stupid rule and then turned, retreated to his room, and headed to the shower, where for nearly an hour he let the hot water soothe him. “I struggle with my identity,” he told me. “I’m just scared.”
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During the summer, on Sundays, I would come by to visit Marcelo at Mercy, since he couldn’t go anywhere because of