ringing of his cell phone. It was Daniel, who demanded his friend’s phone back, and soon Daniel and his friend showed up at Marcelo’s house. Javier returned the phone. Daniel suggested to Marcelo and Javier, Let’s go hit stains. Let’s go rob someone, let’s leave our mark, let’s leave our stain.
I ain’t even trying to go, Marcelo said, reluctant to rob strangers.
Come on, man, what the fuck, I got the whip, Daniel replied, a reference to the fact that he had a car.
Javier, who needed a phone and needed money to help pay his family’s rent, seemed excited by the prospect. He nudged Marcelo, who, tired and hungover, relented. The four of them piled into Daniel’s SUV, which belonged to his mother, and they drove around the neighborhood looking for a mark.
To be fair, Daniel’s memory of the events of this morning differs from Marcelo’s. He says that when he came by Marcelo’s house, they all jumped in his car to get breakfast at a local taqueria, and that the robberies were in fact Marcelo’s idea. Marcelo denies that and told me, “I’m just there, like an idiot.”
As they drove by Curie High School, on the city’s southwest side, they spotted a teenager wearing headphones, lost to the beat of his music. A half-block ahead they pulled into an alley, and all but Daniel, who was driving, jumped out of the car and rushed the young man, who took off running. Javier hurled an empty beer bottle, hitting him in the back. The victim tripped and fell, and within seconds the three were on him. All Marcelo remembers of the assault is that he kicked the young man while he was on the ground. Javier snatched his iPhone and his wallet. Marcelo felt empowered, in control. It was, he said later, “like a high.”
Back in the car, they soon pulled up alongside a teen in a black hoodie, and Marcelo noticed a slash through the teen’s right eyebrow, an indication that he belonged to a rival gang. Marcelo leaned out of the passenger-side window and false-flagged, pretending to be a member of the same faction. What up, Folks, Marcelo hollered. (For a few decades now, the city’s gangs have been divided into two sides, Folks and Peoples, a linguistic distinction which to outsiders seems like splitting hairs. Folks. Peoples. It is almost as if they are declaring that we’re one and the same rather than they’re on opposite sides.) The young man replied, That’s right. Fifty-nine—a reference to his street. This was the gang that had shot Marcelo a year earlier, and so at that point nothing else seemed to matter. “This was more personal-type shit,” Marcelo recalls. He jumped out of the car and punched the boy hard enough that his nose bled. During the scuffle, Marcelo began to have a flashback, reliving the moment he had gotten shot. This happened periodically and it scared him, an almost out-of-body experience which felt too real. His anger turned to rage, and he kicked the teen while he lay on the ground. “It was instinct,” Marcelo told me. “I saw him and lost my mind.” They left the teen bloodied, lying on the sidewalk. Marcelo jumped back in the car and they continued trolling.
The next boy they came upon carried a bookbag and wore skinny jeans. “He looked like a lame,” Marcelo told me. He handed over his phone, a Cricket, with no resistance. Here you go, he said, I don’t want no problems.
Then at a bus stop they came upon a boy on his phone. He looked to be roughly their age. They piled out of the car, and before the boy could flee, Javier hit him in the face. Let me see your phone, Marcelo demanded. The boy handed it to him, and Marcelo threw it back. What’d you do that for? Javier asked. Look at that shit, nigga, Marcelo replied. It’s that Cricket shit again, worth thirty bucks. They hit the boy with empty beer bottles, so hard he later needed stitches in his scalp.
Marcelo wanted to go home. He was drained, both physically and emotionally. He didn’t so much have regrets as he did a sense that this was no longer him. And yet, if he was being honest, he got a rush from the morning’s events, almost a high. What was it about hurting someone that gave him satisfaction? he wondered. He insisted they drop him off at his house, and as they cruised