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

weather. Several inches of snow had fallen earlier in the week, and it was a brutally cold night.
    A little before 2:00 a.m. , a familiar screech blared from the scanners. A woman’s dispassionate voice recited, “Attention. Units paged. Third District units at the scene of a shooting, the corner of 7th and S Streets Northwest.” The location got my attention. I leaned in, waiting for the dispatcher to provide further details. None came.
    David shrugged. We could slam stories into the same day’s paper as late as 2:00 a.m. Whatever this was, it was too late to get the story into Saturday’s paper.
    “Up to you,” David said as he glanced at the newsroom clock.
    Something in my gut told me this was worth a ride. And I wasn’t too worried about being recognized. The S Street slingers knew my Escort, but they’d never seen me in the company car, a Chevy Caprice. The dealers had probably scattered the moment the cops showed up anyway. If it looked dicey, I could simply drive past, come back to the office, and work the phones.
    “I’ll check it out,” I said.
    Less than ten minutes later, as I had dozens of times with Champagne riding shotgun, I turned left on Rhode Island Avenue and approached the corner of 7th and S. As soon as I made the turn, I saw four marked squad cars and an unmarked detective’s sedan parked directly in front of John’s Place. The streets were clean, but banks of snow lined the curbs on both sides. There were no slingers or spectators in sight.
    Sirens filled the air. Ambulances and more squad cars roared onto the scene. A patrol cop broke out yellow crime-scene tape and attached one end to a light pole near the club. He was taping off the entire corner.
    A friendly lieutenant was standing by one of the squad cars.
    “How many down?” I asked.
    He gestured with his fingers: six victims.
    Six people shot? Hello, front page.
    I called David. Work as long as it takes, he said. This would be for the Sunday paper. I stayed at the scene until 5:00 a.m. , interviewing street cops and detectives, watching as workers from the medical examiner’s office carried two bodies from the club.
    After a few hours of sleep, I went back to the office and double-teamed the story with another reporter. Three men had been killed inside the club, and a fourth had died on the way to the hospital. The other two victims would probably survive, a white shirt said. We wrote it up, and I stayed in the newsroom through my Saturday-night shift. At about 1:00 a.m. Sunday, a news aide dropped a copy of the early edition on my desk.
    Finally, there it was: my first page 1 byline.
    I made a little victory fist.
     
    Nine hours after I got my early edition, Jim drove past John’s Place as he headed to church to prepare for the Sunday service. Fragments of yellow tape were scattered across the sidewalk.
    All the kids in the Sunday-school program and their parents had to walk past the crime-scene detritus on the way to the church. The quadruple killing was all over the local TV and radio news and, thanks in part to me, was splashed across the front page of the Post . Only a couple of the victims had been identified. Jim didn’t recognize their names. He figured they weren’t S Street slingers. Baldie didn’t frequent the nightclub, and the neighborhood grapevine would have gone into overdrive if one of his guys had been killed.
    Inside the church, a little boy asked Jim what the tape was for. Jim crouched so he and the kid were face-to-face.
    “Unfortunately,” Jim said, “some people don’t know how to solve disagreements peacefully. They use guns and hurt other people. That’s what happened at the club. Instead of talking, someone used a gun, and four young men were killed. It’s sad, but you’re safe in here.”
    The boy nodded.
    Jim’s daughter, Rachel, helped out with the Sunday school. She was fourteen, a few years older than the dozen kids in the group. “We should do something to remember the victims,” one