A Hungry Heart by Gordon Parks

Author:Gordon Parks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2005-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

MY NEXT assignment involved violence of another kind. With Hank Suydam, a young reporter, I was sent to expose “Crime Across America.” Chicago, the outlaw kingdom of Al Capone, was our starting point—and the correct choice. But the world of crime also came in smaller hands, and quickly those hands reached out to thrust me into the heart of my assignment. With pistols drawn, Chip and Jimmy, two detectives on the Homicide Squad, led me to it. Cautiously we were approaching an open door on the second floor of a tenement when a woman’s scream sent a cat scurrying past us. We burst into the room where a hazy tableau faced us. A naked woman squirmed on the floor. A huge Black man stood beside a bed wielding a butcher’s knife dripping with blood. In the bed was the victim. His throat had been cut, his penis sliced away and stuck into his mouth. He had been caught sleeping with the murderer’s wife. Without resistance the husband and wife were led to a patrol car. Chip radioed the morgue. I unloaded my camera and went back to my hotel to give Hank the details. Several minutes passed before he went to the bathroom and vomited. Later that night the devastating tableau arrived to visit my dreams.

Such tragedy was built into the everydayness of Chip and Jimmy. Jimmy’s answer to my query about his profession was explicit. “Hell, there ain’t much difference between a cop and a crook. Could’a been either one. It just happened that I was in the right place at the right time.” It was as simple as that.

Two days later we were approaching Michigan Avenue when the car radio squawked with an alert. A store was being robbed only two blocks away. The robber was fleeing through an alleyway when Chip spotted him. We sped closer. The teenager was attempting to duck inside a building door when Jimmy pulled his gun, aimed, and shot him dead. After the corpse was placed in an ambulance Chip went to the corner and bought three corned-beef sandwiches and some Cokes. The sandwich he offered me went into my camera bag. The Coke went into my trembling stomach. The dead teenager went to the morgue.

Two nights later, with eight cops, I was in a laundry truck outside a tenement that had been set up for a drug bust. A stool pigeon had been sent in to buy marijuana. If he was successful he was to come out smoking a cigarette, and go free. He came out smoking, and we climbed a fire escape up to the second floor. There, through a dirty window, Chip saw three Black children—a small boy and two small girls. They were watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon on an ancient TV set. Their father sat half-naked in an armchair drinking beer. “Let’s go.” Screaming, the children ran to their father. He jumped up and Chip put the barrel of the shotgun to his forehead. “All right, you Black bastard.

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