Book Review: The Compound

Book Review: 'The Compound' by William Gale

3 / 5 Stars

Gimme the broom….

Late November, 1973. On a cold night in the urban wasteland of the South Bronx, a drag queen named Jocelyn (real name William Battles) is out on the town, hitting the parties at the gang hangouts. Jocelyn decides to stop in at a party held in the clubhouse of the Black Spades. She soon discovers that the Spades aren’t fond of drag queens – ‘Faggot ! Faggot !’ -  and she flees for her life.

Gimme the broom…. 

As she frantically tries to run away from the grounds of the apartment tower, teetering on her high heels, a mob of Spades emerge from the clubhouse. They knock her to the ground…….and begin beating her.

Jocelyn screams as her dress is torn off, and hands grip her legs, holding her immobile…….

Gimme the broom…. 

 As of 2024, no one has been arrested for the murder of William Battles.

 

The South Bronx became a pop culture touchstone in the early 1980s thanks to films such as ‘Wolfen’ (1981) and ‘Fort Apache: The Bronx’ (1981), but the decay of the borough actually began in the late 1960s.

By the early 1970s, the New York city media were touting the South Bronx as a hellhole, an exemplar being the March 27, 1972 issue of New York magazine, the cover of which showed an array of gang colors, along with the blurb ‘Are you ready for the new ultra-violence ? The return of the New York street gang.’

And in fact, the South Bronx indeed was a hellhole. One particular site in the hellhole is the subject of this investigative report by William Gale, first published in hardcover in 1977 by Rawson Associates, and as a Ballantine Books paperback a year later.

‘The Compound’ was, in reality, a complex of five apartment buildings on Bryant Avenue in the Bronx. From 1971 to 1973 hundreds of black and Puerto Rican youths, affiliated with gangs such as the Savage Nomads, the Mongols, and the Latin Diplomats (in real life, the Ghetto Brothers), used the complex both as a clubhouse, and as a drug-dealing emporium. That the gangs were able to commandeer an apartment complex and use it for criminal purposes, with little interference from the city government, shows how dysfunctional mayor James Lindsay’s administration had become by the early 1970s.

Over the 242 pages of ‘The Compound’, author Gale relates the (mis)adventures of some of the residents (who are given pseudonyms). These are a colorful lot, and include the endearing teenaged lovers ‘Amelia’ and ‘Slick’, whose affection for each other was tested by Amelia’s pregnancy. There is ‘Carlton Williams’, aka ‘Brother Sunshine’, an idealist whose advocacy for peace ended when he suffered Severe Head Trauma while trying to defuse a confrontation. There is ‘Sex Machine’, president of the Angels gang, whose unrestrained priapism was curtailed to some extent after his sentencing to 25 years to life for first-degree murder. And let us not forget ‘Black Bongo’, supreme leader of the Savage Nomads, and his wife, ‘Big Mama’, ‘….a chunky, thick-featured Puerto Rican who wore her mahogany-colored hair frizzed over her ears like a pair of electrified ear muffs.’ And then there is the fifteen year-old ‘Popsicle,’ whose maltreatment of suspected turncoat led to the imposition of ghetto justice at the hands of Black Bongo.

One thing ‘The Compound’ is vague about, is exactly how author Gale observed, or paraphrased, the actions and conversations of the individuals profiled in the book. The book has no source notes, citations, or footnotes. What role the book’s two co-authors, city detectives Ed O’Rourke and Vito Moles, played as sources for the described events is not clear. Presumably some of the dialogue and actions are reconstructed from courtroom testimonies and documents, but Gale provide no indication as to whether this was the case. These failures of sourcing limit use of ‘The Compound’ as a historical narrative.

If you are interested in the social pathologies and criminal culture of New York city during the early 70s, then you will find ‘The Compound’ an engaging, if at times alarming, read. Just keep in mind that external documentation of the events portrayed in the book is lacking.