S Street Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D.C. by Ruben Castaneda Page A

gunshots, ear-splittingly loud, maybe thirty yards away. The onlookers ducked and ran in the other direction. Three uniformed cops drew their guns and sprinted toward the source of the sound. I pulled out my notebook and ran with them.
    A block south, a middle-aged man was lying on a patch of snow on the sidewalk, writhing in pain. His forehead was bleeding; it looked like a graze. The uniforms and I arrived together.
    Two cops stood over the wounded man. The third paused and resumed sprinting down the street, looking for the gunman. One of the cops bent down to talk to the victim. I tore off my right glove, grabbed my pen, and began furiously taking notes.
    The standing cop seemed to notice me for the first time. “Hey, who are you?”
    “ Washington Post .”
    “You can’t be here.”
    I ignored him and kept writing.
    “You have to leave. Now. ”
    I backed away, disappointed at being shooed away, giddy that I was lucky enough to be there when a shooting broke out within yards of a half-dozen cops working a crime scene. I raced back to the car and called my editor. He told me to work the scene for another fifteen minutes, then get back and write it.
    About ten minutes later, I buttonholed a detective who’d been working the murder and who was now helping investigate the second shooting. He provided a quick rundown: The new victim and his attacker were in a group of men who were talking when an argument broke out, the investigator said. Someone pulled a gun and started firing. I began writing the piece in my head as I drove back to the office. Once I was in front of my computer, I knocked it out in twenty minutes.
    The following night, there was an envelope on my keyboard when I came to work. It bore the Washington Post seal and address in the upper left-hand corner.
    Inside was a handwritten note: “Amazing story in today’s paper, a shooting a block from a crime scene in full view of the police. Keep up the good work on the police beat.” It was signed by Don Graham, the paper’s publisher.
    I showed the note to Carlos Sanchez, the daytime police reporter. “You got a Donnygram,” he said. “He sends notes to people when he likes their stories. Congratulations.”
    All right then. How bad could things be if I’d just received a Donnygram?

Chapter 5
    “No One’s Out There, Babe”
    In the wake of the Barry bust, many people had wondered: Knowing that the feds were watching him, how could the mayor have put himself in that situation?
    I knew how. An addict doesn’t weigh risks and rewards the way other people do. When the drug of choice is offered, an active addict is powerless to resist. Taking the drug is as necessary as breathing. I became a regular drinker when I joined the Herald Examiner . Then I met Raven and took up crack. During those first months on the drug, my mind became more alert, and I had more energy than ever. It was a blast—until it wasn’t.
    My tolerance for alcohol and crack increased—slowly at first, then exponentially. By the time Marion Barry was arrested, I was on the downward slope of my alcoholism and drug addiction. I needed more drinks to get buzzed. I needed more crack to achieve not quite the same high.
    Nonaddicts don’t understand the deep sense of denial that’s an integral part of being a junkie. Barry surrounded himself with sycophants who enabled his addiction. I convinced myself that I was fine because I was doing my job well. But in fact, my carefully compartmentalized double life was collapsing.
    Three weeks after receiving my Donnygram, in February 1990, I struggled to stay awake near the end of an unusually quiet Friday-night/Saturday-morning shift. As I leaned back in my chair, David Lindsey, the weekend-night city editor, sat at his desk ten feet away and aimed a remote at the TV suspended from the newsroom ceiling. He channel surfed and settled on a comedy show. The police scanners on both our desks were as quiet as big paperweights. Maybe it was the