“I’m not saying you may be benefiting,” Ms. Cartwright said. “I’m saying you are benefiting. You get that new TV on your own, Ms. Bailey?”

This produced some more “oohs” and a round of outright giggling.

“Let me remind you,” Ms. Bailey yelled, trying to reestablish order, “that we ain’t had no harassment, no shooting, no killing for six months. And that’s because these young men are getting right. So you can help them or you can just sit and moan. And about my TV. Who was the one that give you fifty bucks for your new fridge? And you, Ms. Elder, how exactly did you get that new mattress?”

No one answered.

“That’s what I thought. You-all can keep up the bitchin’ or you can realize that every one of us is benefiting from me helping these young men.”

The rest of the meeting was similarly animated and followed this same pattern. Tenants accused Ms. Bailey of going easy on J.T.’s gang and personally benefiting from her alliance with them. She replied that her job was to help the tenants, period, and if that meant finding creative solutions to a multitude of problems, then she needed to be allowed such flexibility. To nearly every resident who complained, Ms. Bailey could cite an instance of giving money to that person for rent, for a utility bill, or to buy food or furniture. She plainly knew how to play the influence game. I’d been to her apartment a few times and, although she never let me stay for long, it was a testament to her skills: There were photos of her with political officials, several new refrigerators from the CHA, and cases of donated food and liquor. One bedroom was practically overrun with stacks of small appliances that she would give to tenants in her favor.

At one point during the meeting, Ms. Bailey mentioned the “donations” that she regularly procured from the gang, to be applied to various tenants’ causes. J.T. had repeatedly told me that he had to keep Ms. Bailey happy-having his junior members carry out her orders, for instance, and paying her each month for the right to sell drugs in the lobby. But this was the first time I ever heard Ms. Bailey admit to this largesse. In fact, she discussed it with a measure of pride, highlighting her ability to put the gang’s ill-gotten gains to good use. Although none of the tenants said so, I also knew from J.T. that some of them received payoffs from the gang-in exchange for their silence or for allowing the gang to stash drugs, cash, or weapons in their apartments. For a poor family, it was hard to turn down the gang’s money.

“Why are we even talking about J.T.?” asked an older man. “Why don’t we just go to the police? Can you tell me what you get from taking their help-or their money?”

“You-all want this place clean,” Ms. Bailey said. “You want this place safe. You want this and that. And you want it right away. Well, the CHA ain’t doing nothing. So I have to find ways to take care of it.”

“But we can’t walk around safely,” the man said. “My car got the windows shot out last year.”

“Right,” Ms. Bailey countered. “That was last year, and sometimes that happens. But you see this place getting cleaned up. You see people getting rides to the store. Who do you think is doing that? Before you go yelling at J.T. and the rest of them, you better understand that they’re family, too. And they’re helping-which is more than I can say for you.”

That a tenant leader-one who was respected by politicians, shop owners, the police, and others-would praise a crack gang and work so closely with its leader made me realize just how desperate people could become in the projects. But I was learning that Ms. Bailey’s compromising position also arose out of her own personal ambitions: in order to retain her authority, she had to collaborate with the other power groups, in this case the gangs, who helped shape the status quo. This resulted in the bizarre spectacle of Ms. Bailey’s publicly defending the very people who were shooting and causing trouble for her tenant families. Even though it was obvious that tenant leaders had few good choices, I still wasn’t convinced that they needed to operate in such murky ethical waters. Nevertheless I found myself wondering how much Ms. Bailey’s actions were actually a response to hardships that limited her options and how much arose from her own desire to have power.

As the meeting broke up, people approached Ms. Bailey for one-on-one conversations. They all had their grievances: no hot water or a broken sink, a child getting in trouble, prostitutes taking clients into the stairwell, crack addicts partying the whole night.

Afterward Ms. Bailey motioned me into her office. Catrina was looking over some notes she’d taken at the meeting. Ms. Bailey asked her to get together with Millie, the LAC secretary, to prepare a list of tenant concerns to pass along to the CHA.

Ms. Bailey opened a small refrigerator and took out sodas for all of us. Grabbing a small blue rag, she wiped her sweaty forehead. “Did that live up to your expectations?” she asked me with a wink.

“Well, I thought you were just going to make a few announcements!” I said, laughing. “What do you do with everything you heard? I mean, a lot of it was directed at you. They were saying some pretty harsh things.”

“We tell the CHA that things ain’t working in the building, and we try to get them to fix it. That’s it.”

“And do you tell them about residents accusing you of taking gang money?”

“We tell the CHA that things ain’t working in the building, and we try to get them to fix it.”

She smiled cunningly and looked over to Catrina, who returned the dutiful glance of an ever-loyal junior officer.

“Sudhir, you have to remember something,” Ms. Bailey continued. “In the projects it’s more important that you take care of the problem first. Then you worry about how you took care of the problem.” I opened my mouth to object, but she stopped me. “If no one dies, then all the complaining don’t mean nothing, because I’m doing my job. If all I got to worry about is a few people wondering where the money’s coming from, then around here that’s a good day! No one dies, no one gets hurt, I’m doing my job.”

“That’s an awful way to live,” I blurted out.

“Now you’re starting to understand,” she said in a tone somewhere between pedantic and patronizing. “Maybe you’re even starting to learn.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Ms. Bailey got up to answer it. Catrina leaned in toward me. “Watch how she helps people,” she whispered. “She says it don’t matter, but she’s amazing. Have you seen how she gets apartments fixed around here?”

I told her that I hadn’t.

“Have you seen how she helps women around here?” Catrina pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and kept her voice low. I felt as if we were in high school and I was sneaking a conversation with the teacher’s pet.

“Well, Ms. Bailey gives away food to the mothers, right?” I whispered back.

Catrina shook her head and inhaled deeply, looking disappointed in me. “That’s not what I’m talking about. You watch what she does when she helps women. Pay attention to that.” Her voice was insistent, but she offered no more details. “She is the most amazing person I know.”

As I spent more time with Ms. Bailey over the coming months, I found that most tenants were less suspicious of me than they’d been in the past. Sometimes, when a tenant came into Ms. Bailey’s office to talk about a problem, the tenant would say, “It’s okay, I don’t mind if Sudhir listens.”

Like J.T., Ms. Bailey seemed to enjoy the fact that I was interested in her. Perhaps she, too, thought I was going to be her personal biographer. I could see why she might make this assumption. I took every opportunity to express my fascination for her life, which seemed more fascinating the more I hung around.

One cold winter morning, I sat in Ms. Bailey’s office with Catrina. It was a slow day, and only a few tenants visited. Ms. Bailey asked if I would go out and get her some coffee, and Catrina came with me. We bundled up and trudged through eight inches of fresh snow. The wind was nearly strong enough to blow you over; it was too cold for even a conversation. Catrina and I just concentrated on stepping in the footprints of people who’d made a first pass in the snow. Catrina wondered aloud what kind of God would make the earth so cold.