Ninja’s eighteen-year-old bodyguard and a couple of “road dogs,” trusted friends, stand by, ready and willing to take any bullet meant for their leader. “Don’t leave home without it,” is the gang’s plagiarized maxim, referring not to credit card power but to AK-47s and Tech-9s. For six years he has been the notorious leader of a large and well-organized gang, one of Dallas’s most dangerous, known for selling and using weapons that are frequently more sophisticated than those carried by Dallas police. Though Ninja can’t read, write, or multiply one-digit numbers, his is a name known and respected throughout the cramped, heavily ethnic barrios of old East Dallas, from East Grand west to Central Expressway, from La Vista south to Peak. “The Ninja, he crazy, he the baddest, he the best.” Ninja’s teeth flash white and the hard lines of his face relax into a smile. “Ninja, he knows what time it is,” they say. main man…” They vie for attention like energetic young cubs, impatiently waiting for a turn to slap their hero’s hand in a sliding lowrider handshake, or to touch the blue lines of a sinewy spider web tattoo etched on the back of his wrist. “How fast can you break down a car?” “What you carrying?” “Lemme see. “Where you been?” demands another, tugging down on a black baseball cap that bears the name of his gang trimmed in gold. “Hey Ninja man, bad dude, what’s going down?” asks a kid whose hair is shaved on two sides, the top cut to stand up like a duck’s top notch. Within seconds a contingent of schoolboy “wannabes” clusters around him, drawn as if by a powerful magnet. His long black eyes flash from one end of the room to the other. A blue bandanna, tied Apache-style, covers hair close-cropped above an angular, mahogany race that is only slightly softened by a slim mustache and a small goatee. Though not large, his presence is forceful, suggesting hidden motives and brooding passions. Ninja crosses to stand with his back to the bare, dingy wall, between two ready exits. It is a fortaleza, a sanctuary, an inner-city mission for teenage gangsters, and neutral turf where rival gang members can meet in uneasy peace. Head high, he walks into Cookie Rodriguez’s Street Church, a drafty, converted warehouse on a seamy stretch of commercial properties on Lawnview Avenue in East Dallas. Though he limps slightly from a bullet-shattered leg, Ninja moves with an easy assurance and a lean dignity.
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