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Lonnie Huggins is a dead-eyed enforcer for the Mickey Cobras, a gang in the Cabrini Green housing projects. He's been in jail for a while, working on his muscles and keeping his mouth shut. This earns him a whopping bonus from his boss Cecil Jones. The bonus is four bricks of cocaine, which Lonnie is supposed to use to start a new operation in Minnesota. Lonnie hides the cocaine in his Beemer. His girlfriend Latricia Gibbons is a low-grade snitch, and rats him out to the cops on his second day of freedom. Since he's caught with a weapon, the police confiscate his car. His boys are supposed to buy the car when it comes up at auction. There is a hustler at the auction site who sells it early to a businessman, who gives it to his girlfriend. Lonnie tells his boys (Boo, Pookie, Melvin, and Dease) that they have to get the car back, or else. Nobody wants to know what, "or else" means, because it won't be good. On the other side of the fence, there are the members of the 18th Precinct Tactical team: Stacey Macbeth, Mike Zito, Timothy Hagen, Sergeant Ryan, Teddy Ketchum, and the rest. They spend their lives trying to keep the gang bangers in line, which is pretty much a losing battle. It's containment, at best. OUT OF CABRINI flip-flops between the efforts of the Mickey Cobra crew to find the car and the reactions of the Tac Team to the mayhem that Boo and his pals leave behind them. There is the security guard who is shot several times and left for dead because he didn't have the sense God gave a rabbit. Wendell Chaney's wife is convinced the gang bangers have killed Wendell because he played a small part in putting some Mickey Cobras behind bars a few months back. There is the businessman found dead in a snow bank on the Dan Ryan -- he shouldn't have bought that Beemer under the table, not Lonnie's Beemer, anyway. There's what's left of Latricia, who boasted to Lonnie about her role in putting him behind bars. Macbeth and his crew seem to be always at least two steps behind Boo. Which is probably the way it really is. OUT OF CABRINI is not for the faint of heart. It is a gritty, fast-paced, in-your-face police procedural about life as it really is in Cabrini Green. Yes, the police swear. Yes, they don't always play it strictly by the book. More than one might expect, considering that this is fiction, but the constraints placed upon the police by the courts have made a real difference in police work and thus in police fiction. Yes, the gang bangers are stone killers, mostly. That's what Case is writing about, so don't expect to see much hope in the lives of the people living in Cabrini Green. It just isn't there. OUT OF CABRINI is a very good police procedural. The bad guys are very bad. The good guys are doing the best they can in a bad situation. I look forward to reading more about the 18th Tac team, Macbeth, and his compatriots.
Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, May 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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