Two hours after Jarvis's shooting, a pistol-wielding gunman in shorts plugged a 30-year-old drug dealer named Mark Couch at point-blank range inside the Fast and Friendly convenience store on NW Seventeenth Avenue and 52nd Street. Police at first thought the two shootings were related, but now they're not so sure.
Three days after Jarvis died, Miami police launched Operation Draw the Line, which involved massive police presence in Liberty City. Eight days later, on January 5, a team of FBI agents busted into a Days Inn in West Palm Beach and nabbed Fail, who was eating pizza and watching TV when they burst in. On January 7 the U.S. Attorney's Office indicted 26 members of the John Does and Cloud Nine. The feds announced the seizure of a cache of weapons, including machine guns and hand grenades.
These days the city is struggling to cope with the legacy of its murdered children.
On January 16 politicians and prosecutors gathered for the groundbreaking of a memorial: a black granite wall similar to the one erected in Washington, D.C., as a tribute to those killed in Vietnam. This wall, however, contains all the names of those younger than age eighteen killed by gunfire in Miami-Dade County since 1980. It was the idea of Wazirah Brown, a Florida State freshman, who lost an eighth-grade friend to a bullet. There were 446 such deaths through June 1998.
On January 18 the Martin Luther King Day Parade was held on NW 54th Street, not far from Jarvis's spot. Politicians rolled by in shiny convertibles, followed by police cars and fire trucks. Then a van bearing the placard "Stop the Violence" appeared. A photo of a young girl was posted on its side. It showed Judy McCollum, who was crippled by a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting in 1996, when she was nine years old. In the crowd a fleshy woman with long braids comments, "Aren't they ever going to let that poor girl rest? Every time they have a parade they drag her out. Let the poor child rest." From the back of the van, Judy, strapped to a wheelchair, waves to the crowd.
The makeshift memorial remains at the spot where Jarvis was killed. The flowers are dried stalks. The teddy bears are still there, but the T-shirt, drawings, and balloons are gone.
Hilbert can't find a photograph of Jarvis. "He didn't like pictures much," she says. "I was meaning to get a photo taken at Christmas." At his funeral the only photograph displayed was his mug shot.
The family plans to visit his grave in Dade Memorial Park on Valentine's Day. By then Taccara hopes to have paid off the $115 gold chain she has on layaway. It was to have been Jarvis's Christmas present. Now she'll wear it in his memory. "I want to throw him a sweet sixteen," she adds.
J-Bo intends to graduate high school and get a job as a longshoreman. Loco is thinking about joining the military to earn money for college tuition. Low-So works after school at a Burger King.
Police have changed their minds about some of the Liberty City killings. Although they at first blamed Fail's feud on the John Does, they now believe that an unknown group was robbing drug dealers. Police are not sure whether the robberies were related to the John Does.
Not long after Jarvis was shot, Det. Orlando Silva drove by Jarvis's spot on 48th Street. One of the boy's friends was doing business there. "He said he needed to work the corner to make money and help pay for Jarvis's funeral.
