The Hustle (33 page)

The disenchantment with modern masculinity got a different spin in the 1999 movie
Fight Club
(based on a novel by Portland writer Chuck Palahniuk). The character Tyler Durden—played by Brad Pitt—proposes that the only way to attain manhood in a consumer society in which men are dominated by women, trapped in soul-crushing office and service jobs, and sedated by shopping at IKEA, is to experience physical pain through fighting. The step after that is to destroy the whole structure of modern capitalism and return to an agrarian idyll where the freeways are turned back into farms. “An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars,” Durden says. “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.… We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

The underlying question was how a man was supposed to be a man in a time when his wife is in the workplace (and quite possibly making more money), job security has vanished, technology means that the workday never ends, and life fluctuates to the whims of the market. The traditional gender role for men was becoming less and less tenable; new formulations had to evolve.

One alternative came from hip-hop, embodied especially in the form of Jay-Z, a rapper who had grown up in the Marcy Projects in Brooklyn. His first record, released in 1996, was a straightforward tale of a dealer trying to work his hustle in the “crack game.” Over the next decade, Jay-Z branched out in a way other rappers hadn't, starting his own record label and clothing company, opening a Manhattan nightclub, buying a share of the New Jersey Nets, shilling for Budweiser, and appearing in a commercial for HP computers. On his albums, he built an intellectual framework around what he was doing—he was still a hustler, still keeping it real. It was just that he'd moved far beyond crack. His new gig was hustling in the global marketplace, promoting his brand, and getting paid. In Jay-Z's formulation, the “game” was everywhere. Crack, business, politics—everything is a hustle. Global capitalism is just the projects writ large, survival of the fittest, and it's up to every individual to try to get over however he can. As he rapped, “Momma ain't raised no fool/Put me anywhere on God's green earth/I'll triple my worth.”

If anyone from our team has found secure footing within this new economic world, it's Dino, who has been enabled by technology to run a hedge fund from a financial outpost as Seattle is. At the same time, anyone else anywhere in the world with the ability to raise some cash can start his own fund, whether he is in Cape Town, Moscow, or Kuala Lumpur. Against this global competition, Dino has created his own structure, consisting of his tightly knit Greek family for emotional support and his group of analysts. Dino is, as he says, the “team captain,” piloting his small ship through the global markets. “If you can deliver exceptional value to people,” he says, “they'll pay you.”

If street hustling is a metaphor for life in the global economy, there's a lot more payoff in rapping about it than living the lifestyle. For the guys who got into the underground economy, it's a structure that's a lot easier to enter than to exit.

One morning, I visit JT at the two-bedroom house he shares with his mom in the South End. I sit in the living room on the couch facing a window that looks out on the street. A TV in the corner plays
SpongeBob SquarePants
at low volume while JT sits in a reclining chair across from me. His two-year-old daughter, Simone, perches on his chest, smiling, with her arms around his neck while we talk. JT's mom, Sharon, hurries in and out as she prepares to leave for her job as a sales clerk in the china department at a downtown department store.

On my lap, I'm holding
The Tupac Shakur Legacy
, a coffee-table book that is a cherished possession of JT's. It's a lavish production, full of photographs and little pockets that hold pullout items such as reproductions of the playbill from when a twelve-year-old Tupac landed a role in
Raisin in the Sun
at a Harlem community theater, a complete reproduction of one of his notebooks, and even a copy of his prison ID card from when he was locked up in 1995 after being convicted of sexual assault.

Tupac, JT tells me, is his favorite rapper. “He really talked about what was happening, like Marvin Gaye did,” JT says. I mention Tupac's contradictions, such as singing one song lamenting the death of his friends from violence and then another with lines such as “Fuck you, die slow motherfucker/My four-four make sure all your kids don't grow.” JT tells me, “That's what the streets are like. He was telling both sides.”

JT says that everything he has learned to survive on the street works against him in the straight world. For example, on the street, you need to be “cool”—showing any type of enthusiasm or emotion can expose you to violence (the African-American sociologist Elijah Anderson calls this “the code of the street”). You learn to lay back and let things come to you. When you start to look for a real job, JT says, it's hard to get out of this mind-set. You still tend to just sit around. And without ever having learned to read very well, JT is totally blocked off from modern technology. He tells me he has never used the Internet. “If you can't spell, you can't use a computer,” he says.

Two decades after going to the streets, JT says, he's got nothing. The money comes and goes, and is impossible to hold on to when you do get it. Without a steady income, you can't support your family, which makes you question your own manhood. You see your friends go to jail or die. You find that others will double-cross you. Eventually you feel trapped. “It's like a drug, man, it's an addiction,” JT says. “I fight every time somebody's talking to me about the game or they're making this money, or they got this plug, and I get that idea, ‘Shit, maybe I should jump back in the game, maybe I'll be successful again.' But then again I think about, ‘What if I do it just one more time and I get popped?' Like
Blow
, you see that movie? When he's older and fat, and he's got the hookup, and that one time cans his ass. That could be me.”

For Damian, the church and his faith in God have provided an alternative structure to the streets. In Sam Townsend, his pastor, Damian has found a mentor who provides advice on things such as work situations, marriage, and buying a house. “He's this stable male figure that leads by example, somebody I can look at whose life is one of stability, a life of love and care for others. I can look at that and say, ‘OK, that's the way a real man's supposed to be.' ”

Damian also has longer-term plans to build a foundation for his family. In addition to his job as a teacher, he has started a number of businesses, though he's found that it's difficult when you don't have much capital to invest. One was selling suits—Damian got catalogs from wholesale suppliers, found customers, took measurements, and then ordered the clothing. He did this for a couple of years, but the margin on each sale was tiny. When a discount clothing warehouse opened in a shopping complex south of Seattle, offering brand-name suits at slashed-rate prices, Damian couldn't compete. He moved on to a few multilevel marketing ventures, including one that involved loan origination—basically, finding people who wanted mortgages, doing the paperwork, and passing it on to a lending company. The housing crash ended that line of work. To increase his income, Damian has decided to leave Zion Prep—as I write this, he's applying for a teaching job with the public schools. His goal, he tells me, is to build some generational knowledge and wealth, so that younger family members, such as his nephew David, won't, like him, have to start from zero.

After my visits with him in jail, Myran ends up doing a little over a year and a half of time (vindicating Myran's delaying tactics, the prosecution eventually dropped the charge that Myran had involved a minor in a drug transaction and reduced the sentence it was seeking). One afternoon, after his release, I meet him at a public housing complex in South Seattle, where he is staying with his girlfriend of fifteen years, who works nearby as a coordinator for a food bank distribution center. The development, tucked behind a Safeway, consists of rows of town houses along tree-lined streets. It's a warm, late summer day, just before the start of school, and a group of kids is running around, playing in the street. Myran stands behind them and waves to me as I drive up. He wears jeans and a green golf shirt, and has sunglasses pushed back on top of his shaved head. He looks healthy, though he also carries a noticeable air of uncertainty.

We drive to a pizza place for lunch. Myran tells me he's trying to keep everything cool, to avoid losing his temper or getting knocked off balance, because the addiction is always there. When he starts to feel frustrated, he tries to do something positive, such as going out and washing the car. When he looks back on his life over the east decade, he tells me, he is ashamed. He thinks of all the things he could have been doing, and the time lost with his kids. As he talks, an image sticks in my mind. Before we left the housing complex, Myran called out to his eight-year-old daughter. She dashed out of the group of kids and grabbed on to his leg, smiling. He introduced us and told her we were going out to get lunch but would be back soon, so she shouldn't worry. As he spoke, he rested his hand on her back, a man trying to grasp a stability that has often eluded him.

Play Hard and Keep It Clean

From my very first trip back to Seattle, the idea of getting the team back together for a reunion comes up as I speak with my teammates. At first, when it isn't apparent to anyone—certainly not me—how far I'm going to pursue finding everyone, it's idle chatter. As time passes, though, and I keep coming back, I find myself relaying information about each player to every other one. The talk of the reunion becomes more consistent, though it's always in the vein of “Wouldn't it be great if we all got together again?” I realize it's going to be up to me to organize it.

There are a few practical matters I fret over. The first is whether we should just meet somewhere like a pizza place, or actually play basketball again. Most of the guys on the team remain in good shape, and when I put the question out, it's unanimous that we have to play. If a guy wants to sit it out, that will be fine, too.

The second worry is logistical: I don't know where to have the reunion. Sean, who has stayed active with Lakeside, tells me he could get the school gym on a weekend. That would have a nice symmetry, as we always practiced at Lakeside. But it strikes me that once again it will require the black side of the team to travel up to meet the white side. It doesn't seem quite right. When Damian tells me about a South End community center that rents courts by the hour and is only a few blocks from Zion Preparatory Academy, it seems perfect.

When I send out an e-mail suggesting a date, Damian, Chris, and Dino all answer within a few minutes: They're in.

“I guess I'll have to work on my game,” Eric Hampton chimes in to the whole group.

“I'll see you all there … with my
1
⁄
4
" vertical. Down from
1
⁄
2
" in the 8th grade,” Sean adds.

JT, who has been one of the most insistent about having a reunion, is not on e-mail. I call his house and speak with his mom. “I'll make sure he gets his ass down there,” she says.

I fly back to Seattle a couple of days before the date and drive down to the community center to pay $50 for two hours of court time. On the morning of the reunion, I wake up feeling nervous. Although most guys have said they're coming, I wonder if they'll actually show. I'm curious how everyone will get along. Though I've spent significant amounts of time with everyone individually, the group as a whole hasn't been together in two decades. Many of my teammates haven't seen each other since high school.

I throw on some old black gym shorts and a faded maroon T-shirt. As I pull up my socks and jam my feet into my basketball shoes, I feel the calmness that comes from slipping into a familiar costume.

I'm staying at my brother's house in Ballard, a neighborhood on the north side of the city. Before I leave, I make a few calls. Sean picks up and we chat for a couple of minutes. He asks who else is coming and assures me he'll be there. JT doesn't answer; I leave a message telling him to call if he needs a ride. I reach Damian as he's getting ready to head out and pick up a new pair of basketball shoes. He says he's worried he's packed on too much weight to play at top form.

Finally, I try the home of Tyrell's parents. The last time I'd seen them, I'd mentioned the plans to have a reunion. They asked me to let them know if it came together. When I call, Tyrell's mom picks up. I fill her in on the location and time. She tells me they'll be out doing errands, but they'd like to come, and takes my cell phone number.

I leave my brother's house and drive over to Interstate 5, merging into the southbound lanes. It's a crisp, bright spring day. The Space Needle juts up before me, the downtown skyscrapers arranged beyond it. The sunlight reflects off Lake Union, which is dotted with sailboats. Farther south, the symmetric cone of Mount Rainier, its sides covered with snow, rises on the horizon. I realize as I'm driving that I'm trundling the same length of freeway that Willie McClain and the black half of the team drove in the opposite direction twenty years earlier to get to our practices at Lakeside. On the way, my mind returns to Tyrell. His death had been the impetus for going back and finding everyone else, and, in the end, this reunion. Over time, I had pieced together the story of his murder.

During the summer of 1991, Tyrell spent a lot of time with his best friend, a kid named Mike Scott; people who knew them called them “T-Baby” (hence Tyrell's tattoo) and “G-Money.” Like Tyrell's older brother, Donnico, Mike was fairly active in the drug game. He was running up monthly mobile phone bills of about $1,100 and owned two cars, a Thunderbird and a white Buick. Tyrell, then nineteen, was more of a friend and sidekick—still living at home, he showed no inclination for getting into it like Mike, Donnico, and JT had at that point. “He was just the mellow guy,” says Donnico, who, after serving more than five years in prison on drug charges, is working as a water-meter reader in Portland, Oregon, when we speak. “Every now and then he'd get some dope from somebody, just enough to get him some money. I can tell you my brother probably never had more than a thousand dollars cash in his career—I think I seen him with maybe six or seven hundred at one time. Tyrell, he wasn't really into anything heavy, as far as drugs or crime. He was just a guy who enjoyed life, smoked some weed now and then, and just liked to look good.”

That summer, Mike and Tyrell often ended their nights at the 24 Social Club, an after-hours joint in the Central Area, on Jackson Street two blocks east of the intersection at Twenty-third Avenue, where there is now a Starbucks. The club had two rooms: a bar out front and a gambling room in back, with one table for dice and one for cards. Maybe forty people could jam into the backroom, drinking, smoking, and talking, some at the tables and others hanging back to watch sports on TV. Things got going at about midnight and went on until six in the morning, seven days a week. Mike liked to throw dice. Tyrell usually just chilled out, unless Donnico gave him some money to gamble. Early in August 1991, Mike had a run of luck at dice, pulling in, according to the club's owner, $19,000.

After Mike won the money, Donnico tells me, he called Donnico and told him he had a deal set up to buy a kilo of cocaine for $14,500. He asked Donnico if he wanted to go in on it. “Back then [a kilo] was going for eighteen, nineteen all day. So that was a red flag for me off the top,” Donnico says. “It was way too cheap.” He told Mike he wasn't interested. The last time Donnico spoke to his brother, Tyrell was out riding with Mike. They talked about meeting later at the home of a girl Tyrell was seeing. Donnico didn't hear anything from his brother that night. A day or two later, his mom called, asking if he'd seen Tyrell. Donnico told her they'd just talked and everything was fine. A day later, he was at Longacres, a horse track south of Seattle, when his pager started to blow up. One number was from a guy Donnico hadn't heard from in ages. Donnico called and asked what was going on. He said, “Man, call home. They found your brother dead.”

On August 12, two days after Tyrell's dismembered body turned up in the ditch in South Seattle, the
Seattle Times
published a brief article identifying him as the victim. After it ran, someone called the newspaper and told an editor that Tyrell wasn't just some kid, but that he'd been a star basketball player who was known and liked in the community. That piqued the editor's interest; he assigned a journalist to look into it.

The reporter, Elouise Schumacher, a white woman then in her thirties, had been covering the controversies over nuclear contamination at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the disastrous health effects it had on people living in the area. It was her first assignment involving black Seattle. “There was a lot of violence around that time, an extra wave of crime,” she says. “We were not out covering it too much. It was maybe us saying, ‘Oh, maybe we should pay attention to this one, not just do it in a paragraph or two.' ”

She headed to the funeral, a dispiriting affair in which the mourners were flanked by a phalanx of Seattle police officers. She visited Tyrell's parents, interviewing them in Tyrell's spotlessly kept room, with his athletic shoes neatly lined up, his trophies and basketball posters on display, and his oversized stuffed Mickey Mouse. At the time, the police didn't have any leads they'd talk about, or much to say, except that they thought the murder was related to Mike Scott's lucky night at dice (Mike has not been seen or heard from since Tyrell's killing). Coach McClain told her about our team and the efforts he and Randy Finley had made to place Tyrell in a good school. “He had enough talent, enough gifts in sports to soften the blow of being in a private school,” McClain said. “He was a smart young man; there wasn't any [school] work he couldn't do. We put a lot of pressure on him, and we actually tried to force him to go.”

Schumacher framed her article around Tyrell's friendship with John Doces, the white kid from Bellevue who had met Tyrell through the Adopt-a-Family program. “Their friendship had all the makings of a clichéd movie script: rich, white suburban kid befriends needy, black inner-city youth,” it began. “Only this time there's no happy ending.”

When Schumacher turned in the story, the front-page editor rejected it, telling her he thought it was “racist.” “I guess he thought I was portraying him as a dumb kid,” Schumacher says. After spending nearly two weeks gathering the details of Tyrell's life, Schumacher was distraught—she'd come to feel a personal connection with him. Schumacher left the office and walked around for an hour. Upon her return, she went to the paper's only black editor, told him the story had been spiked, and gave him a copy to read. He liked it enough to champion it onto the front page, where I saw it on August 26, 1991: Tyrell, smiling on one knee, cropped out of a larger group photo of our team, tucked into the bottom left hand of the paper, right under the news of the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The break in the case came when the Seattle police got a copy of Mike Scott's cell phone bill. The detectives found that calls had been made late into the night on August 7 and then stopped for a few hours. Then, on the morning of August 8, two calls were placed to a number in Los Angeles, at 7:02 and 7:28. The cops got Mike Scott's girlfriend to call the number. She told the person who answered that it was her phone, and she wanted to know who had been using it. The man on the other end was named Harold. He told her that his cousin who lived in Seattle, Trenino Rollins, had called him the morning in question.

Trenino “Reno” Rollins also hung out at the 24 Social Club in the summer of 1991, though he wasn't friends with Mike and Tyrell; at thirty-one, Rollins was more than a decade older than G-Money and T-Baby. About five-foot-ten and 150 pounds, he had hair down to his shoulders in braids, a beard, and a mustache, and was known as a ladies' man. Rollins was new to Seattle. He later testified that he'd been born in Winnsboro, Louisiana, and, in 1985, had gotten a job installing TV towers that took him around the country. In 1990 he settled in Seattle, where he worked as a welder. When he was laid off, he began selling cocaine. When the Seattle Police later ran checks on Rollins, they did not find any evidence of a prior criminal record from other states.

At eight in the morning on September 17, 1991, Seattle police detective Hank Gruber and his partner met Rollins coming back from the mailbox at his apartment and told him they wanted to ask him some questions. Rollins lived in the Marina Apartments, a complex near Lake Washington in the Rainier Beach neighborhood in South Seattle, a quarter mile from the spot where Tyrell's body was dumped.

After Rollins allowed the cops into his studio, the first thing Gruber noticed was a “super-single” waterbed—an odd size, about four by seven feet. Tyrell's body had been wrapped in sheets made for just that type of bed. Upon seeing it, Gruber advised Rollins of his rights. He asked if there was a gun in the apartment. Rollins told him there was one under the couch cushion. It was a .22 semiautomatic pistol; ballistic tests later determined that it was the weapon used to execute Tyrell with a bullet to the back of the head. The homicide detectives placed Rollins under arrest.

When the case went to trial the next year, Rollins maintained his innocence. When first questioned, he told the police he knew nothing about Mike Scott, Tyrell, or the cellular phone, and that he had gotten the gun from his brother. He changed his story in court, where he testified that he didn't know Tyrell, but that he had bought cocaine from Mike several times. In addition, Rollins said, he had purchased the gun from Mike. He claimed that in the early hours of August 8, Mike had knocked on his door, asked to borrow the gun back—Rollins said Mike told him he had to meet a guy to do some business—and left his cell phone as collateral. In the morning, Rollins said, he used the phone to call his cousin. Later that day, Rollins explained, Mike returned the gun and took his phone back. At the time of the trial, Mike was still missing. Rollins clearly meant to create the impression that Mike had killed Tyrell and then fled Seattle.

Whatever his story, there was too much evidence against Rollins, who, after all, had handed the detectives the murder weapon. The pattern on the sheets wrapped around Tyrell's body was the same as that on some that were still in Rollins's apartment. Forensic investigators also found fibers on Tyrell's corpse that matched the carpet in the apartment. Finally, the police found Mike's and Tyrell's rings in Rollins's closet—Mike's a gold band with three diamonds in the middle, Tyrell's also gold, but with a dollar sign on it. The jury found Rollins guilty of first-degree homicide; the judge sentenced him to twenty-three years in prison.

After the conviction, Hank Gruber, the detective on the case, went into the King County Jail and asked Rollins to take him to Mike Scott's body, just to clear things up for Mike's family. He checked Rollins out and Rollins guided him to another wooded road in the South End. Mike Scott's body had been dumped down a hill, where it had lain undiscovered. Unlike Tyrell, Mike was still in one piece.