Ben’s

By Sammy Levitt

Beginning with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Logan experienced a massive change and shifting population. The racial boiling point in Philadelphia was ten years later in 1978.

Ben's is set in the summer of that year when turf wars, crime and political upheaval were rampant in the city. The central character, Torch, is a small-time numbers writer who works for Bah-Bah, the head of a lucrative gambling and loan shark operation in south Philadelphia. When Bah-Bah is forced to change the location of his business and go underground, he runs into some tense situations with the members of Ben's. They are a loosely organized group of young men-including Torch-who are engaged in various types of petty crime and hustles. The situation is made more complicated and dangerous by the existence of a hidden meth lab and several, local, rogue cops who want to find it and rip it off.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664157675

Sammy Levitt

Sammy Levitt was born and raised in Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University. He is a former Philadelphia city employee. His articles have appeared in Gambling Times, Win, and American Turf Monthly magazines. He has been an officer in the Roxborough Lodge Son’s of Italy for over 25 years. Parkway high-school , Temple University and a former city-worker who knows the pulse and unique rhythm of his hometown. his two thoroughly engrossing novels, " Ben's" and " The Will of The Creator", reflect his love for all things Philly, well many things anyway. sammy paints vivid word pictures that alternately reflect his unabashed devotion to a tough town without sugarcoating the more unseemly sides of it. philly homies will likely recognize his fictional character as facsimiles of their own acquaintance. and it won't take many pages for readers whether they're rooting for some and against others. In either case by then they'll be drawn into the narrative and will remain so for the duration. I am pleased to offer my endorsement of these books and no doubt any others that he may write. -Bernard Fernandez, former sports writer (now retired) of The Philadelphia daily News

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Copyright © 2021 by Sammy Levitt.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/12/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

825264

This book is dedicated to my mother,

Claudette Pantarelli Levitt, a teacher who worked in

the Philadelphia public school system for 60 years.

CONTENTS

Prologue

BOOK I

Logan

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

BOOK II

Bah-Bah

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

BOOK III

Caesar’s Palace

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

BOOK IV

Answer

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

About the Author – Sammy Levitt

PROLOGUE

There is no afterlife.

You create your own

heaven and hell right

here on earth.

BOOK I

Logan

CHAPTER 1

Philadelphia, June 1978

F ifteen-year-old eleventh-grader Tobias Lil’ Rock Alston ventured to the men’s room on the third floor. It was the final day of class before summer vacation at Cooke Junior High School at Broad and Louden Streets in the Logan section of North Philadelphia. At the moment, the students were between the third and fourth period, around eleven o’clock.

‘Ventured’ was probably the best word, too. The bathrooms at certain public schools in Philadelphia had become adventurous at best and death traps at worse. It wasn’t a joke. In fact, if you asked the white students, who made up less than 5 percent of the overall number of youths there, they probably would say that in their entire public school careers, they only used the bathrooms once or twice. Many white kids couldn’t even imagine what those men’s rooms looked like. They could look like little chapels for all they knew.

Black and with a build that put you in mind of a seven-ounce Joe Frazier, Lil’ Rock possessed no such fear. He wore dungarees and a white Adidas T-shirt. He wasn’t afraid of the men’s room or much of anything else for that matter. He was, after all, a member of the mighty Logan Nation gang, which was one of only two gangs of any significance at Cooke. The other outfit was the Nicetown gang. Nicetown was a section of the city just south of Logan. For the past two years, Logan Nation and Nicetown had been involved in a small but bloody gang war. Fights had occurred outside the school just about every afternoon. But for whatever reasons, these junior high schoolers rarely acted up inside the school itself. Overall, in the twenty-one months that the two gangs had feuded, five youngsters had already been killed. Seven others were doing life sentences at the moment for those murders, and more convictions were pending and expected. Philadelphia needed to overcome in its struggle to unsaddle a certain negative and minor league image that existed nationwide. As for the juvenile-violence specifically, the Logan Nation-Nicetown war was just a subset and throwback to the overall big picture. The police force with a special gang control division, the Catholic Church, the Police Athletic League, and other city agencies, as well as many volunteers, had, for the most part, gotten on top of the embarrassing situation. In recent years, there hadn’t been nearly as much violence. Except for the Logan Nation-Nicetown fight, the death toll had declined greatly in recent years. However, in the prime years of this type of violence between 1973 and 1975, an average of forty-five to fifty-five were killed every year, mostly all by other youths in street-gang warfare city-wide, most of it coming during the school year months. It wasn’t until this stretch (1973 to 1975) that the story received the publicity and attention it deserved. Yet, the statistics show that, from 1968 to 1972, there was an average of forty deaths every year.

In 1970, the Philadelphia police force formed a special gang control unit to deal with this problem. That same year, City Council allocated $400,000 for gang workers. The man who was mayor at the time, who was at the end of his term, held back these funds, and eventually they went to sanitation workers in what some called a political maneuver.

From the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, gang violence had been a key political hot potato in Philadelphia. When the current mayor, Jimmy Cerrone was campaigning, he promised to wipe out the problem, but couldn’t. Philadelphia Magazine wrote of it: The problem is not unimportant to him but it is clearly beyond his capacity to fully appreciate it or solve it.

Lil’ Rock urinated in the stall furthest to the right. He didn’t mind school because of his popularity with his friends and with girls, too. His brother Pete was a warlord, a type of leader in the Logan Nation gang. His next older brother would become a warlord next and eventually he would be one also, and everybody knew it. That was how it worked. It was similar to the Phantom comic strip. First, there was the Phantom, then there was his son, who became the Phantom, then his grandson became the Phantom, and so forth. Lil’ Rock liked his next class, which was shop, in particular. During the past several weeks he had been carefully constructing the perfect zip gun. He was now in the process of putting the finishing touches on it. This popular type of homemade weapon was trendy like spinning tops once were, or the gigantic afro combs in the back of one or two pockets were, or mini-bikes were for a while. The zip gun would become obsolete shortly. It could only discharge one round at a time, which was one of its drawbacks, along with a lack of distance and accuracy. A door lock was employed as a type of barrel. Two pipes were used including one copper pipe which was reinforced with glue. Lil’ Rock also used rubber bands, nails, and wood. He learned from his brother, an ex-convict from Holmesburg Prison, how to make a zip gun. Despite its flaws, the zip gun had proved to be surprisingly effective and certainly deadly. The zip gun had become sort of a symbol of the juvenile gang war era in Philadelphia.

During the short time between classes, the bathroom was always crowded and noisy. There were toilets flushing. Water was gushing in the sinks. The noisy paper towel dispensers were making that clack-clack sound. Groups of three or four gathered together to catch a quick smoke and talk about pussy and imagined conquests. As Lil Rock turned to leave after washing his hands, the place suddenly became eerily silent and very lonely. Everything had taken a moment or two longer than it should have. As he tried to exit the bathroom, he heard A fire engine rushing up Thirteenth Street outside the window toward his left. He turned that way to look out of the window. When he turned back to his right to leave, he was then startled by the presence of three young black males who seemed to grow from behind the first stall in the men’s room. The one in the center of the black wall, the shortest and darkest of the three spoke.

Where you from? The words came like a demand or a statement, anything but a question. It was the last thing he wanted to hear. Like, Let me hold a dime these were, Lil Rock knew these primary precursors to this type of violence. Bad things happened when you heard one or the other of those questions. Lil Rock understood he was about to be moved on.

Lil’ Rock was familiar with the one speaking. His last name he thought was Bell. He didn’t know his first name, but everybody just called him Snake. Snake and the one to his right were both from Nicetown. Nicetown, according to gang experts, had an estimated 225 members. On the other hand, Logan Nation only had 100 to 150 members, but Logan Nation had more fire power they always contended. They had as many guns in fact, as some of the biggest gangs in the city such as The Moon from West Philly or the famed Valley gang from North Philly (according to ‘gang control’ files).

Lil’ Rock noted Snake’s gold chain with an N and a T crisscrossing, hanging on his neck, resting on a blue and white Adidas shirt. He wore a red Jeff. Physically Lil Rock and Snake were mirror images, both built like small linebackers. Height-wise Lil Rock was surprised to see now that they were eyeball to eyeball. He thought he was several inches taller than Snake. Snake’s boys, the ones from Nicetown, always seemed to be tall and thin, like members of a basketball camp. Snake was always dwarfed by these guys, so he seemed smaller than he really was.

Yet, despite being shorter it always seemed to Lil Rock that Snake was a type of leader in the Nicetown gang. He seemed to be highly regarded by his taller peers. He always dressed nice too. In the winter Snake always wore the long-length, Shaft-like leather coat. Snake was similar to Lil’ Rock in that each possessed a wild, fearless streak. The whispers were that Snake had planted two or three men already in his early life. Lil Rock caught Snake’s act two weeks ago. Lil Rock was with a girl at the Toddle House Restaurant, a small, mostly take-out place at Broad and Belfield Street, right on the Mason-Dixon Line dividing Logan and Nicetown. The couple was seated at a booth when Snake came in by himself. He had a take-out order of some hamburgers, French fries, onion rings, and even pecan pie. At 2:30 a.m. the place was crowded as usual because the bars emptied at two o’clock. When the food came, Snake grabbed the bag, turned around, then didn’t run, didn’t walk, but sort of trotted out onto Broad Street without paying. Twenty minutes later, as Lil Rock and his girlfriend got up to leave, they saw the mischievous Snake, his face pressed to the window, stuffing his face with French fries, laughing and taunting the staff. The staff, of course, having no bonds to Toddle House, really didn’t care. Some, Lil Rock noted, suppressed smiles, some didn’t even do that.

Lil Rock, despite being aware of Snake’s reputation, was disturbed and worried about something else. He was concerned not primarily with Snake, a Nicetown boy, of course, or the other taller one to Snake’s left, also from Nicetown. What troubled him immediately was the presence of the one to Snake’s right. He had seen him around. They called him Chops, and he had a cousin or something in Logan. The two would occasionally be together playing basketball in the Logan school yard, which was the primarily home for Logan Nation. Lil Rock never knew his gang affiliation, if he had any. But today he was wearing a baseball cap with the bill facing backwards. That was disturbing, in Philadelphia in the seventies that meant North Philly. If Nicetown was somehow tied in with a corner from North Philly, even a small corner, it was all over because they could pull so many other corners and gangs, maybe even the notorious valley gang in north Philly and Logan Nation, with as much heart as they had, certainly didn’t want them as an enemy.

Where you from? Snake asked again. Lil’ Rock tried to think of a good answer.

You from Logan Nation, the other tall one from Nicetown said. It was response time Lil’ Rock knew. There simply would be no more questions or accusations. Lil’ Rock, despite his very precarious situation, managed to keep a dignified posture and look. If there was fear in him, he didn’t show it.

No, man. I’m from Smedley Valley. The Smedley Valley gang was only a block away from Logan school yard. It was sort of a junior Logan Nation, a type of farm system for Logan Nation - not as big or powerful. There was thought behind that response from Lil’ Rock. His adversaries already knew he was from Logan somewhere. Saying that he was from Smedley Valley, he hoped, would be a satisfying alternative to just saying he was from Logan Nation. At the same time, the answer allowed him to hold onto some macho bullshit dignity which he would think about right up until the very end. Also ’Smedley Valley’ although they were small in numbers was in the ’Valley’ network. It meant they could pull other Valley gangs or corners such as 24 and Burks Valley, or 16 and Oxford Valley or 15 and Venango Valley all of which were in North Philly. Lil’ Rock believed it could save him and he didn’t come off all pathetic and just say, No, man, I’m not from any corner. That, he figured, would be an insult to their intelligence and ultimately wouldn’t do him any good anyway, and would probably only be counterproductive. At that point, three kids from Nicetown were already dead and two from Logan nation. The score was about to be tied up.

No man, you from Logan Nation, Snake said for the final time.

Lil’ Rock’s strategy didn’t work out. Then Lil’ Rock felt it. It came like a punch, a sharp pain and a dull blow. Then there were a few more. They came rapidly, several more punches each preceded by a sharp pain. The third one sent him forward off his feet. Snake held the increasingly limp youngster upright in his muscular arms. Lil’ Rock felt at least two more sharp pricks and simultaneously felt a thud in his back. He was suddenly conscious of more Nicetown boys in the room than he originally thought there were. They started scampering out of the bathroom now. There were five or six in all. One had spray painted on the bathroom walls the words "The town fucks up." Lil’ Rock grew weaker and weaker by the second. Snake allowed him to slowly descend to the floor in an almost caring fashion. The apathetic look on Lil’ Rock’s face never changed. This was precisely how a warrior was to go out. This was how a champion was supposed to go out, like Joe Louis did, on his back.

Snake wore nice dress pants and managed to lower Lil’ Rock all the way to the floor while keeping his legs and pants and shoes at a safe distance, avoiding the blood as best as he could which now covered Lil’ Rock from top to bottom in the back. Finally, Snake was the last to run out of the bathroom. Lil’ Rock managed to twist himself around so that he lay prone on the floor. His face rested on the cool bathroom tile now. Somewhere in the distance the school bell went off, indicating it was time for the next class. His mind was still going as life continued to spill from his body. Lil’ Rock thought about the last time he’d been laid, which was also the first time he’d been laid. It was only a week or so ago at the swamp. That was a type of Lover’s Lane in the furthermost part of West Logan in an abandoned former Yellow Cab garage. The sparkle left his eyes around then. If he wasn’t what they call clinically dead at this point, at least death was in the room with him, on the floor with him now. If there was any hint of a look on his face, machismo or fright, or anything, it had long since vanished. His mind continued to process, however. He imagined that he was alone in an Olympic sized swimming pool, a luxury few people, and none that he knew, would ever experience. And in this post-conscious state, he imagined himself stretched out in the pool. Snake had his arms, and the one with the baseball cap backwards, Chops, had his feet. He was being pulled through the water at about 40 miles an hour. He could feel the water getting increasingly colder as it rushed down his back and ass and legs. It was also rushing with increasing speed underneath him, his belly, and his legs. He was being pulled faster and faster through the water, and then finally there was nothing…just darkness.

CHAPTER 2

C aptain Harry Quinn headed the 53 rd Police District which oversaw the Logan Section of North Philadelphia. Although Logan was north, it was really much further north than the areas most people in Philadelphia referred to when they said North Philly. People from Logan, too, whether it was in the thirties, fifties, or now in the seventies, were always quick and sure to make that clear. Logan was a distinct neighborhood with its own look and character and set of problems. Quinn had begun as a street cop twenty-three years ago and with political help had obtained the rank of captain ten years ago. During his tenure as top cop in the District, he had withstood some heavy scandals and problems. In fact, his survival skills were pretty amazing considering police captains didn’t ordinarily have a long shelf life. It turned out that police captains were very often convenient scapegoats when the heat was on. Their title made them sound just important enough that, whenever a captain was fired, it tended to satisfy whoever it was at that moment that had a crusade against the police, whether it be the media, the state, or the community.

On the other hand, captains were just powerless enough to not be able to fight it or do anything about it, and the top guys could remain insulated and protected, the status quo intact. By design, police captains for this reason possessed no power but were built up to appear powerful.

Quinn understood this. He knew he had done a good job here at the 53rd, but that really wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was who exactly it was who was holding your strings. He didn’t kid himself about that. He obviously had some big pull and he knew exactly who it was. He had worked hard as a young cop with the man who was currently the police commissioner, who was his Irish paisano and an appointee of Mayor Jimmy Cerrone himself.

Given his favorable position, Quinn didn’t worry much about anything. The problem was that now Jimmy Cerrone was nearing the end of his second term as mayor. He won by a landslide in 1971, then four years later, another landslide victory in the ‘75 elections. According to a long-standing city charter, the mayor was held to a two-term limit. Now Cerrone’s people were trying to change the charter in a special election in November. Then Cerrone, the idea was, would run for a third term in 1979. Just yesterday, Quinn attended a meeting downtown held by the Change the Charter committee. Unlike Cerrone’s earlier victories, this election promised to be extremely close.

Cerrone had been the police commissioner in the turbulent sixties. He was seen as a tough law and order man, and that image carried over to today. In the 1960s when many other cities on the East Coast burned down and/or were significantly damaged, Philadelphia had sustained only very minor violence. And all of the violence or damage was done in the black community. Whites saw Cerrone now, as then, as the man who would keep their communities relatively crime-free. Inner-city whites loved Cerrone for this reason and voted enthusiastically for him every time. They loved his big 8,000-man police force who Cerrone once said could invade a small country.

Cerrone had that loyal inner-city white vote and didn’t worry about the minor black vote, and that was his winning formula. However, by this point in the late 1970s, the city had almost as many black residents as whites, and blacks had generally been in disagreement with Cerrone’s policies over the years. The black community was much more unified in its opinion and stance regarding Cerrone. It was nearly 90 percent against him. The white community, on the other hand, was more evenly divided. Many whites, particularly many liberals and some other smaller groups, were against him. Despite all that, and in spite of the fact that the media would surely line up against Cerrone in this fight as well, Cerrone’s people thought they had a good chance. The thing was, in Philadelphia, the black-vote-turnout was very low. Many black residents were not even registered to vote. Therefore, registration was going to be the most important issue in this election … no question.

At the meeting, Quinn was informed that a registration drive mounted by the enemy was already underway and Stop Cerrone registration booths would be on every other block in Center City that summer. The Dagos talked down to Quinn at the meeting. They informed him that Logan with its racial mix could go either way. They said that Logan was a key neighborhood and reminded him that it was precisely those types of fringe neighborhoods that proved to be so flammable in the l960s. They talked in particular about the Logan Nation Gang. They were counting on Quinn to keep Logan peaceful and quiet this summer. Historically, Cerrone enjoyed an unusual amount of popularity in Logan, even among the blacks. He had always taken care of Logan, paying attention to the trees, the parks, and the streets, as generally speaking, the mayor prided himself on the attention he paid to wildlife and flora in the city. That was a strong suit of his, whether you liked him or not.

The media kept an eye on Logan because there had always been a type of city-wide curiosity about the place. There were a few reasons for this. One thing was the near incredible beauty that the regular, working class neighborhood featured. From its parks, to its tree-lined streets, to the jewel of its crown - the beautiful Holy Child Catholic Church with its 80-foot steeple and stained glass. Labeled The Cathedral of the North by local historians, certainly the Holy Child Church, which was built in the 1920s, added to the mystique of the neighborhood. Residents took real pride in their community and the small lawns were nicely maintained with carefully pruned bushes. Many of the twins and row houses had cozy front porches with fresh painted furniture and pots of colorful flowers. In Philadelphia, a city that prided itself on diversity, Logan was the undisputed melting pot.

From 1880-1920 when the two major immigrant groups came to the United States (Irish and Italian) they, in general terms, went separate ways when they got to Philadelphia. The Italians went south and the Irish went north. Logan was mostly Irish, at least on the west side of Broad Street. On the east side of Broad Street (the main north-south artery which ran through the entire city and divided east from west) was a large Jewish community with several synagogues. During the course of the twentieth century, various immigrant groups settled in and embraced Logan. At one point or another, Jews, Ukrainians, Portuguese, Filipinos, and Koreans had populated Logan more than any other section of the city. In East Logan there was Birney grade School which was labeled The School of All Nations.

Adding to the reputation of the neighborhood was the problem that it had with many of its homes, now called the Sinking Homes of Logan. Parts of Logan, especially in the southeast corner, were built inexpensively on a cinder and ash foundation over what possibly was a river that ran under the neighborhood. The homes slanted and leaned into each other like drunken sailors since the thirties and forties, but only recently had some serious drainage problems there developed which promised to only get worse. The Sinking Homes were visible to the motorists who drove by on the Roosevelt Boulevard heading home to the popular northeast and who pointed and laughed at the odd-looking houses.

Despite the problems, which included the 53rd District having the highest crime rate in the city…mostly of the misdemeanor sort, Logan was still a relatively safe neighborhood. Even in the mid-seventies when the juvenile gang war problems reached their peak, Logan had been fairly quiet.

This followed a rocky time in the late sixties to early seventies when Logan was in a racial transition and hostilities between the whites and blacks came to a boiling point. Logan at that time had become an area where the practice of blockbusting was rampant. This was the sinister operation of real estate agents scaring the hell out of white homeowners to get them to sell their houses cheaply. One of the tactics they would use would be to circulate flyers into a neighborhood or on a block saying that a record number of houses in the immediate neighborhood had been sold recently and that there were many anxious buyers waiting. The message was pretty clear. The blacks are coming. Get out while your house is still worth something. The result of this was that both the whites who didn’t sell and found that their houses were rapidly decreasing in value, as well as the blacks who were paying high interest rates in a deteriorating neighborhood each felt that they had been victimized or ripped off and a great deal of hostility and animosity flourished. The racial tension of the country resulting from civil rights battles, an unpopular war with an unfair draft, and other dramatic events, the centerpiece of which was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. were also reflected in this small changing community.

By 1970, a black juvenile/young adult gang, Logan Nation was the biggest gang in Logan, and they occupied the west side of Broad Street. There were three major white corners or gangs (Dunn’s, Ben’s and 1-5-D or Fifteenth and Duncannon) in Logan and all three of them had crossed swords at one time or another with Logan Nation. However, over the years, the only white gang left in Logan was Ben’s (named after a candy store) on the east side of Broad Street. Gang control experts said that the current version of Ben’s started sometime in the sixties, although the reality was that corner boys had hung there for generations. Four years ago there were as many as one hundred juveniles or young adults hanging there. The city’s gang control experts, as well as social workers, worked hard in Logan resulting in the blacks and whites there eventually making peace in 1972. An uneasy co-existence lasted for about a year.

Then, on a little street named Albanus in the west part of Logan, a black youth called Fat Eddie was shot while riding his mini-bike. The shot had come from a rifle from one of the homes on that street.

A disheveled white boy unaffiliated with any gang was arrested for the crime. They took him out of his house in handcuffs, wearing dungarees and no shirt. He claimed that he had been sleeping in his living room at the time. The police didn’t believe him. The black neighbors around there did believe him. They also believed that the shot came from another house on that block. It was never proven, but they believed that a boy named Frenchie, who lived on that street and was from Ben’s, was somehow involved with the shooting.

New violence began between Logan Nation and Ben’s that summer. Quinn, worried about a large-scale race riot, had put a police presence on the east side of Broad Street where Ben’s hung. The gang control arm of the Philadelphia Police Department had sent Quinn a gang control expert who had been working with gang trouble spots in both North and South Philadelphia. His name was Ken Washington, and he was an expert in working with youngsters and young gangs in particular. Washington, Quinn remembered, was studying at that point to be a criminal psychologist. He was working on a master’s degree from Temple University and was functioning as a sort of combination cop and social worker. He had been very valuable that summer keeping any young blood from getting worked up and preventing any further violence. By the time the winter came, Logan was peaceful again, but Washington stayed in the 53rd District mainly because Quinn was happy with the work he had done there.

About that time there was another scandal in Philadelphia. There were a series of allegations of police brutality, including one case where a suspect was coerced into confessing to a fire bombing of a house that killed a family of Latinos in the Feltonville section of North Philadelphia, only ten blocks south of Logan. That specific case led to the firing of eight detectives and the district attorney, and another appointee of Cerrone lost his next election bid. The upset was directly due to the events in Feltonville which made national news.

The Philadelphia Police Department by the mid-seventies had earned a sort of nation-wide notoriety. It was in 1974 that even Johnny Carson got into the act. It happened after his monologue one night and before he introduced his first guest. He had held up a picture of a group of policemen surrounding a man lying on the ground. It was actually in England. You could tell by the strange hats that the police wore. The police were brandishing nightclubs and Carson said, This is a picture of a Philadelphian being arrested for jaywalking.

A few of the police brutality accusations occurred right in the 53rd District. This included one lawsuit brought by the family of a Hungarian immigrant who had been arrested after drinking too much in a Fifth Street bar, then getting arrested and later found hanging in a jail cell in the 53rd District. Another big case was the successful lawsuit brought by a fifteen-year-old youth who had been crossing the railroad tracks one night on his way home. The boy, a redhead called Torch, was ambushed by the police and taken off the tracks peacefully, but he broke away and made a run for it. He was harshly subdued by the police and taken then to the 53rd District.

At the time, a liberal Philadelphia magazine called Brotherly Love Magazine was there doing a report on police corruption and brutality. They had taken photos of Torch’s face and neck, which looked a lot worse than it really was. The youth was originally booked for assault but was eventually cleared of all the charges against him, except for the misdemeanor of trespassing. He sued the city for injuries, and he also sued the railroad. The pictures came in handy at the boy’s trial. Ken Washington had been present and was the officer of record. Given the political pressure from both local and state police brass just then, Quinn had no choice but to dismiss Washington from the 53rd District. He was transferred to North Philadelphia where the gang problem was at its worse.

The truth of the matter was that the Logan Nation-Nicetown war didn’t really bother Quinn at the moment. It was summer now, and in that particular gang war, violence mostly seemed to occur during the school year, no doubt due to a power struggle at Cooke junior High School. On the other hand, it was sort of a tradition in Logan that whites and blacks went at it more in the summer than in the winter, and that was what worried him at the time moment.

Despite the fact that gang violence and gang killings had decreased significantly in Philadelphia the past three years, the black community was never pleased from the start about the way the juvenile violence was handled by the Cerrone administration. And after all, the black community had much more stock in the problem.

Nevertheless, politically speaking, at least from the viewpoint of Mayor Cerrone or Commissioner Burns or Captain Quinn, it didn’t matter very much if blacks were pleased with the way the Philadelphia police handled the problem or how they reacted. As far as Quinn and the others were concerned, they didn’t expect many blacks to vote for Cerrone anyway.

Therefore, to them it would be much more disastrous for another round of fighting between white Ben’s and black Logan Nation to occur. This, of course, was especially true for Quinn. He was responsible for Logan, and he understood that even his relationship with the commissioner wouldn’t save him. Quinn thought the decrease in reports of black-white gang violence in recent years in Logan was due to the fact that Ben’s, like Dunn’s and 1-5-D, had almost entirely disappeared. They either just got older or simply moved out of the neighborhood. He hadn’t heard much of them at all the past few years which was fine with him. Yesterday however he received a report about a burglary right next to the Ben’s Candy Store on Windrim Avenue. The victim of the burglary was an appliance store, Nate’s Reliable. The report claimed that eighty TV sets had been stolen, a number which may or may not have been inflated somewhat for insurance reasons. (In fact, less than fifty TV sets were stolen). To the untrained eye, this was just a burglary that could be attributed to anybody. But certain clues led Quinn to believe that Ben’s was responsible.

In addition to this burglary and much more important than this burglary was another incident in February that was really troubling Quinn and he couldn’t get a line on it. It was a small robbery in East Logan by a group of pirates who were ripping off drug dealers and other illegal enterprises. They struck in Logan at the home of a small pot dealer that police knew as either Danny Partridge or Danny Parker. The troublesome thing was that these thieves identified themselves as plain clothes cops. At the time, Danny Parker had two Ben’s boys living at his house. One was named Frenchie (the alleged Albanus Street sniper) and the other was named Felix, who had most recently been laid off from nearby Fleer’s bubblegum factory. At the time, there was also a visitor, a thirty-two-year-old former drug addict named Reds, whose brother Shine was also from Ben’s.

The victims of the burglary were handcuffed face down, the shades drawn, and the telephone wire was cut. The group seemed to be experienced and well drilled. It appeared that they knew exactly what they were doing, only they chose the wrong victim. Danny Parker didn’t have much cash or drugs in the house at that time or really at any other time. For no apparent reason, right in the middle of the robbery, a .32 caliber gun was put behind Red’s ear, and he was shot and killed with one bullet. Apparently, this same group, always claiming to be off-duty police, had ripped off dealers before in addition to doing other things. Most recently this same creative bunch had been suspected of raiding a cock fight (fighting roosters) in North Philadelphia.

A juvenile race war and/or corrupt police officers were two big stories that the media would love to sink its teeth into which would be terrible press for Mayor Jimmy Cerrone, especially since for one thing, anything seen as anti-cop was also seen as anti-Cerrone.

When Quinn heard about the murder of Lil Rock, he hoped that this might be a good place for the Nicetown-Logan Nation war to end, at least for the summer. At the same time, he saw all this activity with Ben’s letting him know that they were still around, and it troubled him because he didn’t want to see them start fighting with Logan Nation just then. In other words, it was Ken Washington time again.

There was no doubt that the charter change proposal had to pass or it would be unemployment time for them all. Quinn personally could walk away with no regrets, but he had a twenty-five-year-old son who was already a supervisor down at traffic court and was going to marry a municipal judge’s daughter. The boy had pull up the ass and a knack for politics. The sky was the limit for the kid. Quinn’s friendship with the commissioner could be helpful. That was contingent, of course, on them both being in office.

A knock came on Quinn’s office door just then. Officer Bobby Shannon came in before he was told to. Shannon wasn’t the most gracious guy in