Bright Shiny Morning

by James Frey

  Anybody wearing colors.

  Any particular colors?

  Don’t matter to us.

  Then I’m in?

  That’s the way it works.

  How long I got to do it?

  A week.

  And there ain’t no other initiation?

  Ain’t that enough?

  It’s pretty serious.

  Supposed to be. Supposed to show us that you serious too.

  I am.

  We’ll see.

  I am.

  Like the motherfucker said, we’ll see.

  I’ll show you.

  Then shut the fuck up and go do it.

  You gotta gun I can use?

  Laughter from multiple males. One speaks.

  Yeah, we got guns.

  You got a machete or some shit?

  You gotta get that yourself.

  Alright.

  There are more than 1,500 street gangs in Los Angeles with an estimated 200,000 members.

  A few of the Asian gangs in and around Los Angeles: Westside Islanders, Asian Killa Boys, Black Dragon, Tropang Hudas, Vietnamese Gangster Boys, Tiny Rascal Gang, Sons of Samoa, Asian Boyz, Crazy Brothers Clan, Exotic Foreign Creation Coterie, Korat Boys, Silly Boys, Temple Street, Tau Gamma Pinoy, Korea Town Mobsters, Last Generation Korean Killers, Maplewood Jefrox, LA Oriental Boys, Lost Boys, Mental BoyZ, Oriental Lazy Boys, Rebel Boys, Korean Pride, Asian Criminals, Avenue Oxford Boys, Born to Kill Gang, Cambodian Boyz, China Town Boyz, Crazyies, Fliptown Mob, Flipside Trece, Ken Side Wah Ching, Korean Play Boys, Sarzanas, Satanas, Temple Street, Red Door, Real Pinoy Brothers, Scout Royal Brotherhood, The Boys, United Brotherhood, Bahalana Gang, Black Dragons, Original Genoside, Four Seas Mafia.

  Fifty to sixty percent of all murders committed in Los Angeles County are gang-related, approximately 700 each year.

  He grew up with his mother and three brothers, two of whom had different fathers than he did. The four boys shared a bedroom, his mother slept on a couch in the living room. She worked at a movie theater at night and they got public assistance and there was enough money for food and rent and secondhand clothes, but nothing else.

  He never did well in school. From the first day he went, as a six-year-old, he felt like the teachers were scared of him. Maybe not scared, but apprehensive, and they certainly didn’t care about him. There were never enough textbooks, and hardly any supplies. He tried for a few years, but then gave up. He went every day, but mostly he wanted to have fun and goof around. When teachers yelled at him, he thought it was cool.

  The only people in his neighborhood that seemed to have any money were gangsters. They wore nice clothes and drove nice cars and had diamond watches. When they told people what to do, they did it. They had friends who loved them and respected them and fought for them and fought with them.

  He got recruited when he was twelve. He was walking home and some slightly older boys surrounded him and told him he was going to be one of them and then they beat him. The next day, as he walked to school, he saw the boys on a street corner. He walked over to them and sat with them and laughed with them. He didn’t make it to school that day, or any day after.

  He started wearing colors after his first murder. He was thirteen. He was riding in a car with other boys. None of them were old enough to drive.

  They saw another boy wearing a color they didn’t like, the colors of their enemy. They gave him a gun. He opened the window and started firing.

  The boy fell. He kept firing. They drove away. They ditched the car and went back to their corner and spent the rest of the day smoking weed and drinking beer and celebrating. He saw the boy’s mother on the news when he went home later that night. She was screaming, wailing, her neighbors were holding her up. He watched it with his own mother, who had no idea that he was involved. She just shook her head, waited for the next story.

  Day after day, they stood on the corner and smoked weed and drank beer and talked and laughed and when people in nice cars from better neighborhoods pulled up, they sold them drugs. They went out after their enemies a couple times a week, or when one of their own had been shot and they needed to seek retribution, vengeance.

  His three brothers, all of whom were younger than him, followed him in.

  One of them died three days after joining, he got shot in the head during a drive-by. Another was paralyzed in a different drive-by. The youngest was hesitant, but realized he didn’t have any other options. They were together when he did his first killing, shooting someone wearing a different color and two of the boy’s sisters, one of whom was four years old. They watched a piece about the murder on the news that night with their mother, who had no idea they were involved. She just shook her head and waited for the next story.

  A few of the white gangs in and around Los Angeles: Armenian Power, the Nazi Low Riders, Aryan Nation, the Peckerwoods, the United Skinhead Brotherhood, the Crackers, the Front, StormFront, Heil Boys, Westside White Boys, Honky, the Spook Hunters, Dog Patch Winos, the Soviet Bloc, Russian Roulette, the Georgian Pack, Aryan National Front, East Side White Pride, the Fourth Reich, New Dawn Hammerskins, American Skinheads, Blitz, the Berzerkers.

  There were more than 30,000 confirmed violent crimes, including murders, rapes, assaults and robberies, committed by gang members within the city limits of Los Angeles between the years 2000 and 2005. It is estimated that one-fifth of the crimes actually committed are reported and confirmed.

  Nobody knows him. Nobody has ever met him. Nobody has ever seen him. He calls twice a day, at noon and at five, to discuss whatever business is at hand. During the conversations he issues orders, reviews cash flows, checks on incoming shipments, passes judgment on friends and foes, delivers their sentences. He speaks to two people. They run the operation for him. One of them has been doing it for three years, the other for six. They are extremely well paid. Their families will be taken care of when they’re gone. They are each the fourth person to hold the position. The first pair disappeared after he had the operation running smoothly enough to bring in other people, and they disappeared because they knew his identity. The others have disappeared because they made mistakes. It is inevitable that mistakes will be made. It is inevitable that they will disappear. They knew of the inevitability when they took the job. They took it because they are extremely well paid, and they are given whatever they want, drugs, money, girls, boys, whenever they want it.

  And their families will be taken care of when they’re gone. After they make their mistake.

  They work on the fifth floor of a ten-floor building owned by a shell company owned by a shell company owned by a shell company owned by him. The rest of the building is filled with other members of their organization, some of whom do work that is considered legal, most of whom do not. The fifth floor is the safest floor because it cannot be directly approached. If the LAPD, the DEA, the FBI, the ATF, the IRS, or any other rival, opposing organization tries to get to them, and get information related to what they do, they have to approach from either above or below, and by the time they reach the fifth floor, whatever they wanted or needed would be gone. The two men rarely leave the floor, which is heavily guarded, and whatever they want or need is brought to them. The one time an approach to the floor was made, and it was made by a rival criminal organization, the guards killed thirty-two men. Eight of the men were shot and killed immediately.

  The others were captured and taken to a warehouse. Before they died, every single one of them wished they had been shot and killed immediately.

  The organization has approximately 50,000 members, though no one really knows. It controls most of Spanish-speaking Los Angeles, though there are a few remaining pockets of resistance and independence. It also controls most of the drug traffic into the city.

  Other groups or organizations involved in the distribution and sale of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana purchase most of it, wholesale, from them. Those that don’t usually end up being taken to the warehouse, where they quick
ly wish they had purchased it from them.

  Aside from drug trafficking, the organization is also involved in gun sales, prostitution, extortion, and the transportation and sale of illegal immigrant labor. With its profits from these ventures, it is buying real estate, both residential and commercial, and setting up infrastructure, including its own stores, restaurants, shipping companies, banks and schools. Unlike most, if not all, organizations of its type, it has long-term goals and plans. From its beginnings, he, from wherever he is, had a vision. It is nearing some type of reality. He wants to completely and totally control southern California.

  Most of the members do not know of or about him. They are recruited the same way other gangs recruit members. Young, angry men, often without stable homes, are given money, guns, a sense of respect, a sense of belonging, and turned loose to buy, sell, rob and kill. They stand on street corners in pressed chinos and flannel shirts and their necks, arms and backs are covered in tattoos. They threaten, menace, occasionally strike out. They love being part of something and they are all willing to kill for it and die for it. Occasionally they are asked to kill for it and die for it. They recruit other members who recruit other members who recruit other members. They have become an army that is impregnable, nearly invincible, unstoppable, and growing, every day it gets larger and they control more, every day it’s growing.

  There is little the police, or anyone, can do about it. Arrest one and there are ten more, twenty more, fifty more. Lock one up and the vacuum, if there was one, is immediately filled. Put one in prison and they fuse into the parallel organization that they have there, that controls most of California’s prisons. The leaders are protected, literally and figuratively, by everyone below them, and can also be immediately replaced. The command structure was built to resemble the ones used by military organizations, which are designed to sustain damage and persevere through adversity. When asked recently what he planned to do about the group, an elected city official laughed said—I might join them if this gig doesn’t work out. When he was asked what he planned to do to try and control them he stared straight ahead and said—Nothing. There is nothing I can do. The war with them is over and they won. There’s nothing I can do.

  Ninety percent of the hate crimes in Los Angeles County are committed by gang members, approximately 800 a year.

  A few of the black gangs in and around Los Angeles: Be-Bopp Watts Bishops, Squiggly Lane Gangsters, Kabbage Patch Piru, Straight Ballers Society, Perverts, Pimp Town Murder Squad, Project Gangster Bloods, Blunt Smoking Only Gang, Most Valuable Pimp Gangster Crips, Crenshaw Mafia Gang, Fruit Town Pirus, Fudge Town Mafia Crip, Family Swan Blood, Compton Avenue Crips, East Coast Crips, Gangster Crips, Samoan Warriors Bounty Hunters, Watergate Crips, 706 Blood, Harvard Gangster Crips, Sex Symbols, Venice Shore Line, Queen Street Bloods, Big Daddyz, Eight Trey Gangster Crips, Weirdoz Blood, Palm & Oak Gangsters, Tiny Hoodsta Crips, Rollin 50s Brims, Dodge City Crips, East Side Ridas, Lettin Niggas Have It, Down Hood Mob, Athens Park Boys, Avalon Garden Crips, Boulevard Mafia Crips, Gundry Blocc Paramount Crips, Dawgs, the Dirty Old Man Gang.

  In 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles released a list of the most dangerous gangs in Los Angeles.

  In order, and with their ethnic makeup and area of operation, they are:

  1. 18th Street Westside. Latino/Mexican. Throughout most of the city.

  2. 204th Street. Latino/Mexican. Harbor area/Torrance.

  3. Avenues. Latino/Mexican. Highland Park.

  4. Black P-Stones. African American. Baldwin Village.

  5. Canoga Park Alabama. Latino/Mexican. Canoga Park/West Valley.

  6. Grape Street Crips. African American. Watts.

  7. La Mirada Locos. Latino/Mexican. Echo Park.

  8. Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13. Latino/El Salvadoran.

  Throughout most of the city.

  9. Rollin’ 40s NHC. African American. South Central.

  10. Rollin’ 30s Original Harlem Crips. African American. Jefferson Park.

  11. Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips. African American. Hyde Park.

  The eleven gangs listed above accounted for approximately 7 percent of all reported violent crime in the city of Los Angeles.

  A conversation between a young man and a reporter. The reporter is visiting from Europe and is writing a piece on life in American cities. It takes place in the backyard of a small run-down house.

  So why do you have all of these dogs?

  ’Cause that’s what I do. I raise fucking dogs.

  How many do you have?

  Right now I got about fifteen. Sometimes I got more, sometimes I got less.

  They’re all pit bulls?

  American pit bull terriers. Every single one of them.

  Why pit bulls?

  ’Cause they’re the baddest motherfuckers there are.

  Is that why you love them?

  I don’t love them fuckers. I just fucking raise ’em and sell ’em.

  You don’t love them at all?

  I love ’em a little bit when they’re small and shit. They’re nice and cute and happy, and they like giving licks, but then I make ’em mean.

  You make them mean?

  You gotta train these motherfuckers. They got it in ’em, but you gotta bring it out. You gotta beat ’em up and starve ’em and make ’em fight over food. Then they get the taste of it, the taste of blood, and they start getting mean.

  You beat them as puppies?

  I’ll kick their ass no matter how old they are.

  What if they don’t get mean?

  I let the other ones practice on ’em.

  Who buys these dogs?

  Gangsters.

  Gangsters? Like Al Capone or John Gotti.

  No, not like them. Like the motherfuckers out on every goddamn street corner in this city.

  Gang members?

  Yeah.

  What do they do with them?

  They fight ’em for money, have tournaments and shit. They use ’em to protect their houses. Sometimes they sic ’em on motherfuckers they got beef with.

  On other people?

  Yeah.

  What happens?

  What the fuck you think happens? Ain’t no man can fuck with a pit bull.

  You’ve seen this?

  I ain’t seen it happen, but I’ve seen it afterwards, motherfuckers with their arms or legs bit off, parts of their face bit off, and I heard about some other motherfuckers that got some real sensitive downtown shit bit off. And I heard worse than that too.

  What?

  I heard about these warehouses.

  What do they do there?

  They keep dogs there and they make those motherfuckers real nasty and they never feed ’em. They got a pit in the middle of the warehouse, and when motherfuckers fuck up, they throw ’em in the pit with a couple pissed-off dogs. There ain’t no escape from that kinda shit.

  Do you think it’s true?

  I ain’t got no reason to doubt it.

  Ninety-five percent of all gang members are male. Fifty percent are under the age of eighteen. Thirty percent of those over eighteen are in prison.

  Ninety percent will spend time in prison at some point. Fifteen percent finish high school. Less than one percent will go to college. Eighty percent grow up in single-family households. Eighty-eight percent of the children of gang members also ultimately end up in gangs.

  A few of the Hispanic gangs in and around Los Angeles: 18th Street, Clicka Los Primos, Big Top Locos, Diamond Street, Head Hunters, East LA Dukes, Krazy Ass Mexicans, Primera Flats, Varrio Nuevo Estrada, the Magician Club, Astoria Garden Locos, High Times Familia, Pacas Knock Knock Boys, Sol Valle Diablos, Brown Pride Surenos, Alley Tiny Criminals, King Boulevard Stoners, Washington Locos, Mexican Klan, Barrio Mojados, Street Saints, V13, 42nd Street Locos, Tiny Insane Kriminals, Unos Sin Verguenza, Bear Street Crazies, Midget Locos, Barrio Small Town, Villa Pasa La Rifa, Forty Ounce Posse, Compton Varrio Vatos L
ocos, Big Hazard, Varrio Nuevo Estrada, Michigan Chicano Force, Brown Pride Raza, Pacoima Humphrey Boyz, San Fers 13, Burlington Street Locos, Van Owen Street Locos 13, Big Top Locos, La Eme.

  Lying on a bunk. Staring at the ceiling. It’s the middle of the night. The bunk is in a cell meant to hold one man three are living there. It’s worse than he thought it would be. Much much worse. More tense, more frightening, more violent, more boring. Minutes are hours, hours are days, days are a lifetime. Tense endless moments he could die at any one of them, he could kill at any one of them. He’s a killer, as are both of the other men in the cell, as are almost all of the men in the prison.

  Hundreds of killers living together, divided by race, hating each other, with absolutely nothing to do but wait for time to pass. It’s worse than he thought it would be.

  Sleep is never easy. He’s up five or six times a night. Before he got here he never had trouble with sleep. Before he got here he never thought about what he did out there. They run through his mind. Every one of them. What they looked like, where he got them, who he was with, what he used, how they fell and how they bled, the screams of the witnesses who saw but would never testify. He didn’t know any of them, had never spoken to any of them, had never seen a couple of them before he did it. And it didn’t matter. Who they were what their families were like the dreams they may or may not have had, none of it fucking mattered. He did what he was supposed to do and he did it without thinking about it. Just got in the car and went, leaned out the car, pulled. He never regretted any of them because he never had time for any regrets. Now it’s all he has. Time. Minutes are hours, hours are days, days are a lifetime. He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling. He can’t sleep.

  She’s twenty-four years old. Two of her brothers were shot, one died and one is paralyzed from the neck down, another brother was beaten to death. One of her three sisters was killed. The other two have children whose fathers are either dead or in jail. She has four children with three men. One is dead, one is in prison life no parole, the third spends most of his time playing cards on the front porch of a nearby house. Her oldest child is ten. He’s already wearing colors.