S Street Rising

by Ruben Castaneda

  A little more than forty-eight hours after the quadruple killing inside the nightclub, it was business as usual on the block. Slingers dressed in heavy coats, boots, and knit hats stood at their usual spots on both sides of the street. I handed the cash to Champagne. She stepped out of the car and was quickly surrounded by dealers.

  Champagne made the buy and strolled back to the car. As I watched her return, I noticed something odd a few feet behind her: four makeshift wooden crosses resting against the wall of John’s Place.

  Well, I thought, that’s different. The usual street-killing memorial consisted of a pile of flowers and teddy bears.

  Champagne plopped into the passenger seat. I pulled away from the curb and drove past the crosses, the slingers, and the church.

  Copping crack on the same corner where I’d covered a quadruple killing less than seventy-two hours earlier was brazen, even reckless—maybe as reckless as going into a hotel room to smoke crack when you know the FBI is watching you.

  I viewed my encounters with strawberries in purely transactional terms. In exchange for cash, which they used to buy crack for both of us, the women made the buy and provided sex. Most of the strawberries working in my neighborhood were white, but a handful of blacks and Latinas also roamed the streets, exchanging sex for crack. I didn’t think much about them as people until I saw Stacy on the front page of the Post. She had gorgeous eyes and a nice smile. But she wasn’t Stacy. Her real name was Sherry K. Larman.

  The headline read, “Fateful Links of Seven Slain Women.”

  Sherry was twenty-six, the story said, and one of several prostitutes who’d been murdered in D.C. or nearby Arlington, Virginia, over the previous fourteen months. Most of them had used drugs. The story appeared on the first day of June 1990. Sherry’s mother, Sandra Johnson, was quoted at length.

  Sherry had grown up in suburban Maryland. She’d had a decent life before she got hooked on crack, her mom said. Sherry’s father was a retired D.C. cop. In high school, she won trophies for track.

  Johnson said she’d warned Sherry that she was living dangerously and pleaded with her to give up drugs and prostitution. “She got caught up in this street life and it had a hold of her,” Johnson said. “She knew what she was doing was wrong, and she wanted to get out, but the pull was just too strong.”

  Sherry’s body had been found a few days earlier on the top deck of a parking garage in Arlington. She’d been suffocated, as had one of the other victims. All the others had been shot.

  I absorbed the details of Sherry’s life. I hadn’t physically harmed this woman, and I’d never intended to hurt her. But there was no way around it: I’d helped destroy her.

  The Sherry described in the article was a nice suburban girl who was loved by her parents. The Stacy I knew rented out her body to strange men in exchange for crack. I’d helped put her in a place where a man with bad intentions could place his hands around her throat and squeeze the life out of her.

  Until I read about Sherry, I thought that my habit affected no one but me. But the details of her crack-addicted life seemed like an indictment. I dropped the paper and sank to the floor.

  By now I’d covered hundreds of homicides for the Post, but I hadn’t known any of those killed. I usually thought about the victims as long as it took to report and write my stories or news briefs. For most of them, that amounted to no more than a couple of hours. I hadn’t had any of them into my home. I hadn’t asked any of them to buy crack for me.

  Stacy was different. I’d picked her up a couple of times when I couldn’t find or reach Champagne.

  My thoughts turned from self-recrimination to self-preservation: Did Stacy have a pager? I couldn’t remember. If she did, and the cops recovered it, would my number be in it? Would a detective knock on my door? Suddenly I felt nauseated.

  I rushed to the bathroom and vomited.

  It wasn’t the first time the sight of Stacy had prompted me to worry that my double life would be exposed. Six months earlier, just before Christmas, I’d almost run into her while on a reporting assignment.

  I’d volunteered to work a double shift on a Saturday, a couple of days before the holiday. It meant a fat, overtime-enhanced paycheck and a guaranteed byline. I’d be covering a holiday party at Lorton Correctional Complex. Through a prison fellowship program, 150 female inmates would be visiting with their kids in the gymnasium. It would be an easy, heartwarming feature.

  I walked into the building and froze the moment I spotted Stacy underneath the basketball goal at the opposite side of the gym. She was striking, with long legs and hazel eyes. Like Champagne, she worked the edge of downtown. But I hadn’t seen her in weeks. Now I knew why.

  She was with three other inmates. The other women were all holding little kids. Stacy was talking to one of the children.

  I wouldn’t have been so alarmed if I’d spotted Champagne in the gym. Champagne was a pro. I’d never told her or Stacy what I did for a living, but I was confident that if I ever ran into Champagne in the real world, she wouldn’t expose me as a fellow user.

  Stacy was a wild card. What would she say if she saw me? Would she blurt something out in surprise? Would she try to leverage what she knew about me to her advantage?

  The inmates and kids were clustered in different parts of the gym. I made for a small group gathered near the goal opposite Stacy’s. I turned my back and started interviewing.

  Quickly, efficiently, I obtained quotes from three inmates and the fellowship director. Each of the women was locked up on a drug charge.

  Without looking behind me, I nearly ran out of the gym and drove back to the Post.

  The close call was unnerving, but I quickly regained my bearings. And learning from a front-page Post story that Stacy/Sherry had been murdered rattled me far more, but not to the point that I changed my behavior. Things could be worse. At least I hadn’t been videotaped smoking crack by the FBI.

  Barry went down—barely. On August 10, 1990, a jury convicted the mayor of one count of cocaine possession. The jury didn’t convict him in connection with the Vista Hotel bust, which he’d been lured to by Rasheeda Moore. Instead it found him guilty of using cocaine at the Mayflower Hotel, in downtown Washington, with another woman, two months before the Vista episode. The jury acquitted the mayor of a second drug possession charge, and was unable to reach a verdict on twelve counts.

  On the night of the verdict, my editors had me drive through the eastern part of the city looking for signs of civil unrest. It was business as usual. There were no riots. Drug corners continued to do a brisk business.

  On my way back to the office, I drove through S Street, where the slingers were out in force.

  As long as I was holding it together at work, I told myself, I was fine.

  For about a year, I held it together at work, more or less. I showed up for my shifts and knocked out news stories and longer feature articles, which often ran in the Sunday edition. On my days off, I’d pick up Champagne and smoke crack. Instead of using two rocks at a time, Champagne and I began ingesting three, sometimes four rocks per encounter.

  In June 1991, one year after the story of Sherry Larman’s death was on the front page of the Post, I went to Los Angeles for a family dinner. I was getting worried about my increasing crack usage and figured the visit would be a good chance to clear my head and regroup.

  On the day of the dinner, I joined some old pals at the Hollenbeck Youth Center, in Boyle Heights, for a few pickup basketball games. Then I cruised over to one of my favorite burger stands on Olympic Boulevard for lunch. I had less than $20 in my pocket and no intention of seeing Raven. But her motel was so close. I could at least say hi.

  It was a warm day. Raven was rocking tight shorts and a sheer, plunging short-sleeved top. She sauntered toward my rental car and smiled broadly when she saw me.

  “Hey, stranger. Good to see you again. I’m holding, if you want to party.”

  The family dinner wouldn’t start for five hours. Plent
y of time. I hit a nearby ATM and met Raven in her room. Fifteen minutes later, I exhaled the last of the residue as Raven worked on me. I wasn’t anywhere close to getting off.

  “Can you get a couple more rocks?”

  Raven’s head popped up.

  “You know I can, babe.”

  I handed Raven the cash. Her dealer was camped out in another room. We went at it again. I failed to launch. I went back to the ATM. We did no better on the next try. We kept going. Three, four, five times I hit the ATM and returned to the room. I found a pay phone and called home to say I was running late but would be at the dinner. Night fell.

  Raven said she needed to clear out of the motel.

  “But I haven’t finished,” I whined. I was this close.

  Raven slipped on her bra. “I know another place nearby where we could get a room by the hour,” she said.

  I handed her $50 for three more rocks.

  The other place was a few blocks east on Olympic, on the western edge of downtown. I almost laughed when I saw the sign: EXPERIENCE MOTEL. It was an L-shaped, two-story hot-sheet joint with a faded pink paint job and a small parking lot. Flashing neon spelling out the motel’s name was mounted above the tiny first-floor office. The O was burned out.

  Twenty bucks got us an hour. We could have the room until the morning for an additional ten, Raven said. I handed her a twenty and a ten, just in case we needed more than an hour. She paid the clerk and we headed up the stairs. A Latino gangster in a white wifebeater, khakis, and pointy black dress shoes leaned over the second-floor railing, eyeballing us.

  The gangbanger was about my height but stocky, with broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms, which were covered with tattoos. He looked to be in his early twenties. He was either MS-13 or 18th Street. He stood between us and our room.

  We reached the top of the stairs. The gangster pushed off the rail and turned toward us. The walkway was narrow; there was no room to slip by. Homeboy stared at me. I glanced at Raven, hoping she would register recognition. If she knew the gangster, she could ask him to stand down. Raven returned my glance with a look that said I was on my own.

  The vato stepped up and crowded my space. He smelled of beer and cheap cologne. The gangster pointed at my wrist.

  “Nice watch, homes.”

  “Thanks,” I replied warily. The timepiece was simple and probably cost no more than $25. But it had been a gift from my uncle Victor, my pop’s oldest brother.

  “Give me the watch,” the gangster said as he reached for it.

  I didn’t think. I slapped his hand away and shouted, “No!”

  It was a stupid, potentially suicidal move. If it had come to a fistfight, the vato would have pummeled me. He was probably carrying—if not a pistol, then a knife. And he no doubt had fellow gangsters nearby to provide backup.

  Raven’s jaw dropped. Homeboy’s eyes went big.

  I curled my fingers into fists, preparing to defend myself against an onslaught of blows. Instead, to my relief, the gangster snickered, waved dismissively, turned his back, and resumed leaning on the rail. Maybe he thought I was too crazy to mess with.

  “That was stupid,” Raven said when we got to the room.

  We sat on the bed. She broke out her pipe, her lighter, and the three rocks. I grabbed the pipe and reached for one of the rocks.

  About ten hours later, I pulled into the driveway of my parents’ house in the last moments of predawn darkness. Raven and I had smoked our way through the night. Over and over, I’d driven from the motel to the ATM and back. At around 5:00 a.m., Raven said she had to go. The rocks were gone. She let me keep the pipe, the lighter, and a six-inch piece of coat hanger wire.

  I drove home horrified at what I’d done. I parked and staggered to the side of the garage, near a wooden gate that led to the backyard. I turned my back to the street. Using the wire, I scraped the last of the res from the inside of the pipe, onto the bottom of the copper filter. Carefully, I used the wire to push the filter to the other end of the glass stem. I lit up and greedily inhaled the last hit. It barely registered.

  The sun started to rise.

  The dinner I’d missed wasn’t just a family gathering. It was a wedding-rehearsal dinner. I was supposed to be my brother Javier’s best man, and I’d gone AWOL. I looked at my watch: The wedding was in less than three hours. I was twitchy and sweaty—all that crack had bumped up my body temperature. I’d fucked up, monumentally, decisively, spectacularly, unforgivably.

  Some birds chirped. The cloudless sky became bluer by the moment. It was going to be a gorgeous June day.

  Shame and remorse overwhelmed me. If I could have flipped a switch and erased myself, I would have. Exhausted, I fell to my knees and wept.

  “What happened?” Javier asked, plaintively, when I stumbled into the house. I had no answer.

  “It was humiliating not having you at the dress rehearsal,” he said. Javier spoke matter-of-factly, without anger, but each word stung.

  After the ceremony, I joined Javier and dozens of other relatives at a backyard-barbecue reception.

  The bar was open. I quickly killed three beers. I wanted to get numb. It didn’t work. My tolerance was gargantuan. The beers barely got me buzzed.

  My two-year-old niece Nastasia appeared. She toddled onto the back porch, dressed all in white, looking cuter than a box of kittens and puppies.

  I stepped toward her, knelt, and opened my arms.

  Nastasia looked right through me. She turned her back and walked away. She might as well have reached into my chest with her tiny hand and ripped my heart out.

  A couple of days later, I flew back to Washington. I’d be okay once I got back to my routine, I thought. And a big day in the history of the Post, of American journalism, was imminent. I was looking forward to being a small part of it.

  A little more than a month after I returned from Los Angeles, on the last day of July 1991, Ben Bradlee stood in front of his glassed-in office along the North Wall, the most prestigious part of the newsroom. An all-star cast flanked him: Bob Woodward, publisher Katharine Graham, her son Donald.

  Bradlee was retiring as executive editor. Len Downie Jr. would take over as newsroom boss, effective September 1. Bradlee was taking August off before getting kicked upstairs to a VP post.

  The room was packed. Hundreds of staffers stood shoulder to shoulder, crammed into the spaces between work cubicles. Some people stood on desks. Woodward and the Grahams delivered speeches.

  In a prearranged tribute, dozens of male reporters and editors wore striped dress shirts with white collars, the kind Bradlee favored. I joined in the fun, rocking a casual, short-sleeve light-blue polo shirt with a white collar.

  The ceremony was in the late afternoon, a couple of hours before the start of my shift. I arrived just before it started and stood way in the back, not far from a bank of elevators.

  This is history, I thought as the speeches wound down. Bradlee wrapped it up with a brief, heartfelt oration, which was met with sustained applause.

  Bradlee told someone to cut the big cake sitting on a nearby desk. The handshakes and hugs commenced. Staffers surrounded the journalistic lion to say good bye.

  Though I’d been working at the Post for nearly two years, I’d never met the man. He was on vacation when I interviewed for my job. We’d shared an elevator a handful of times, but I hadn’t even tried to make small talk. What could I have said to him that wouldn’t have sounded fanboyish? “Nice work on that Watergate thing”?

  But now he was happily greeting everyone. What the hell? It wasn’t like I would run into him at the Y, or at 7th and S. I wasn’t likely to get another chance like this.

  I began to maneuver my way toward the North Wall.

  A few feet in, I bumped into a copy editor. She worked nights, too. During slow shifts, we talked about books or city politics. We were casual work friends.

  “Hi, Ruben. Are you okay?” Her face registered genuine concern. “Are you coming in to work tonight?�
�

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “You don’t look so good. If you have a fever, you should just call in and stay home. We’ll get by.”

  I doubled back, slipped into the men’s room, and stood in front of the mirror.

  A sheen of sweat covered my face and neck. A patch of perspiration marred the chest of my blue polo. I looked as if I’d just run a series of sprints. Or, maybe, I looked wired.

  In fact, I was wired. A couple of hours earlier, I’d run into Champagne as I was walking home from my lunchtime hoops game. I hadn’t planned on picking her or anyone else up, but she looked good, and I had a few hours before my shift. I took her to 7th and S and handed her fifty bucks for three rocks, which we split. I didn’t even bother trying to get off. I figured I’d be fine for my night shift. But the rock intake had spiked my body temperature. I was like a car that was running hot because of a busted radiator.

  “Damn,” I muttered as I splashed cold water on my face and wiped myself down with a paper towel. I stepped out of the restroom and lingered on the south side of the room, watching Bradlee from a safe distance.

  The famous editor smiled broadly. He serial-hugged staffers.

  I pivoted toward the elevators and headed home.

  The envelope appeared in my work mail slot in early October, a little more than two months after Bradlee’s newsroom retirement bash. My eyes lit up: Washington Post stationery. I ripped the envelope open, hoping, hoping, hoping …

  Yes! I clenched my fist, more in relief than in triumph. A reprieve from financial doom.

  The envelope contained a check for $730. The money covered additional hours that I’d worked during the previous quarter. The Post gave staffers a choice: time off or cash. I always opted for the cash.

  The payout covered June, July, and August. I needed the scratch.

  I was now picking up Champagne or Carrie, a pretty blonde strawberry I’d met that spring, two or three times a week. And I was using more, dropping $50 to $100 for rock instead of $35.