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themselves. I spotted a tall man in a sweat-stained work shirt, about six-two, wide across the shoulders, standing tensely. I guesstimated his age to be around about forty. His upper-body strength clearly established that he did some heavy lifting for a living. A spit of gray adorned his temples and he was hugging a teenage girl who was crying. I couldn’t see her face but I saw his. His eyes looked as if they were throbbing, the anger in them was just that intense. With an arm around the girl’s shoulders, he comforted her. I could see the oil stains beneath his nails. His jaw clenched as he gritted his teeth twice.
    I was on it. Like radar, my eyes and mind focused in and read the person in front of me. The reporter in me knew that he was my man. It’s a tip-off to a reporter: Who is angry? Who is a leader? Who will open up for whatever the reason? That’s who a reporter has to find, a needle in a haystack, a good witness in the crowd. That was this dude in front of me. He was pissed off enough to give me the gutsy, for true interview that I needed.
    “C’mon!” I told Zeke. We cautiously approached the man I wanted to interview. “I’m sorry to bother you during such a tough time… . Can you tell me what happened here?”
    The teenager stopped crying for a second, then looked at me for a long moment before her tears began flowing once more. The man gritted his teeth again. “I’ll tell you what … these gangbangers are shooting up each other and anybody they see. They just missed my cousin Karen here but got her girlfriend Jackie in the chest. Shooting, that’s all they know. I’m so tired of it! You can’t walk the street, can’t have a damn block party for them trying to kill somebody over turf.”
    “‘Them’ who?”
    “The Bandits and the Rockies.”
    I’m hip to the nicknames for the Gangster Bandits and the Rock Disciples, two of the most notorious street gangs in Chicago. “Did you get a good look at the car?”
    He inhaled deeply, stared a second, then said, “I didn’t see
nobody
… . I just heard a lot of gunfire.”
    “What about the direction the car came from?”
    The girl wailed and he clutched her tightly, soothing, “It’s okay, it’ll be okay, sshhhh.”
    “Sir? Which way did the car come from?”
    He waved his free arm wildly. “This way, that way, some kinda way! It just don’t make no sense. I’m through.”
    “I understand how frustrating this is for you. But if you could answer just a couple more questions—”
    “Enough is enough.”
    Now at this point my reporter instincts kicked in. What kind of body language was this man giving off? How much could I push him? Could I push him? I made a quick assessment of his eyes, his stance, then back to those eyes.
    “Okay, thank you.” I decided to back off and not blow up the bridge. “Sir, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. For editing purposes, say and spell your full name, please?”
    “Calvin Hughes. C-a-l-v-i-n. H-u-g-h-e-s.”
    I gave Mr. Hughes my card because he could be a good contact to have in the neighborhood. I could hear his cousin continuing to sob. I thought, I feel for you girl. It is so tough to watch people hurt. Even though I see so much of it, I have to stay focused, but that does not mean becoming numb. I don’t ever want to go there, because when it gets like that, then it’s time to bail. But you’ve got to do your job. I have to get the story.
    I heard my pager go off. I knew it was
them
. The producer was worrying me about going live for the upcoming newsbreak. Zeke and I went back to the truck to set up a signal to air live pictures from the scene.
    It works like this: An electronic signal is set up from equipment inside the truck. That signal is locked into a channel of a microwave dish on top of the Sears Tower or the Hancock Center. You can then transmit live pictures or play the tape that you’ve recorded back over those channels to the station where it’s recorded