S Street Rising

by Ruben Castaneda

  “Could you shut that thing off?” Loraine snapped.

  Sheepishly, Lou reached up and flipped off the TV. The doctor and the nurse slinked away.

  Moments later, Lou’s pager went off. He took out his cell phone and made a call. Loraine shot him a look. Lou cut the call short.

  The following day, Lou drove Loraine and newborn Jack home from the hospital. Lou and Loraine gave Jack the middle name Henry, in honor of Henry “Hank” Daly. Their other two kids—Megan, four, and Billy, two—squirmed in the back.

  Loraine could barely walk. She held Jack as Lou helped her into the house. Megan and Billy scampered inside, bouncing off the walls, excited to have a baby brother.

  The phone rang. Lou picked it up. He listened.

  “Yeah, I’ll be right there,” he said.

  Loraine glared at him, thinking, Oh, no you don’t!

  He did. Lou headed toward the front door, muttering something about a D.C. Council member wanting to hear the Soulsby tape, something about defending his name. He flew out the door.

  Loraine managed to place Jack in his crib. Then she collapsed.

  The pain was too great. She couldn’t walk. Megan and Billy chased each other around the house. Loraine crawled to the nightstand and picked up the bedroom phone. She called Lou’s sister, who said she’d come by to take Megan and Billy off her hands.

  Loraine shook her head in disgust and disbelief. She thought, When he gets home, Lou’s going to have bigger problems than Soulsby.

  While Lou drove toward Washington and Loraine fumed, Soulsby lied. Twenty-five miles north of Lou’s home in Charles County, Maryland, inside the District Building, William Lightfoot, the same D.C. Council member who’d gone after Roach Brown’s job in February, summoned Soulsby to his office.

  Four months later, the Post would publish a story in which Lightfoot related what Soulsby said to him about the controversy. The chief claimed that he’d told me and the other two reporters that the U.S. attorney was investigating a fatal shooting by a uniformed D.C. cop and that the results of the probe would reflect poorly on Lou. The homicide squad investigated all officer-involved shootings. Soulsby implied to Lightfoot that the homicide squad’s investigation into the incident was, at the least, seriously lacking.

  Soulsby’s explanation was another lie. He’d never said anything like that to me and the other two reporters he’d talked to off the record. He’d said that Lou was the target of a criminal investigation. Soulsby had lied twice to me: once when I was with the two other reporters and again when he and I were alone in the elevator. In neither instance had he said anything about a questionable shooting.

  In the article, Lightfoot said Soulsby admitted that entering into his secret deal with Lou, which prevented Lou from testifying at his D.C. Council confirmation hearing, was a “serious” lapse in judgment.

  Lightfoot said he took Soulsby at his word. But he added that if he learned the chief had lied to me and the other two reporters, or to him, “I’d call for his resignation. That’s where I draw the line.”

  A few days after Gartlan broke the Soulsby story, I was driving back to the office from a murder scene in Northeast Washington. Things seemed to have returned to normal. In response to Gartlan’s reports, the Post assigned one of my co-workers to write a couple of brief stories about the controversy. The articles didn’t mention my role in the mess. Soulsby refused to authorize the release of the audiotape of Lou berating him. He issued a brief public apology for the secret deal. The story seemed played out.

  Then Marion Barry went after me.

  As I headed toward the office, I turned on the radio and tuned to a local talk show. Barry’s distinctive voice boomed from the speakers. The host asked the mayor about the Soulsby–Hennessy brouhaha.

  My entire body clenched.

  Barry defended Soulsby. Then he attacked me.

  “Ruben Castaneda was off the record,” the mayor said. “He was unethical by telling people about this.” Barry repeated: Ruben Castaneda, unethical. Ruben Castaneda, unethical. Ruben Castaneda, unethical.

  I pulled over to the curb as Barry verbally pummeled me. I dropped my head onto the steering wheel.

  This was far from over.

  The next day, Keith Harriston appeared at my desk. The boss wanted to see me about the Soulsby thing, he said.

  I tried to steel myself as I walked into the Metro editor’s office. It was on the South Wall, in the middle of the newsroom, with a glass door and glass walls. Everyone could see us.

  In her forties, Jo-Ann was petite, with short dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She often wore a pinched expression that suggested she’d just taken a slug of sour milk. I could kid around with some editors. I couldn’t imagine trying to joke with her.

  “Close the door,” she said. I shut the door and settled into a chair in front of her desk.

  “You’re fired,” she announced, deadpan.

  My heart stopped.

  Jo-Ann smiled.

  Ha, ha, ha. Didn’t know she had a sense of humor.

  The smile disappeared. My heart resumed beating.

  Jo-Ann sat down. “Tell me about your role in this Soulsby–Hennessy situation,” she said.

  I recounted: Soulsby said what he said. I ran into him in the elevator and gave him a chance to take it back and he dug in deeper. In a total coincidence, I ran into Lou moments later. I hadn’t intended to disclose the chief’s comments, but I responded to Lou’s question with a question, and he figured it out on the spot.

  “It’s a problem,” Jo-Ann said. “Off the record means off the record. You’re not supposed to disclose off-the-record information to anyone. If sources can’t trust us, we won’t have any sources.”

  “I know,” I said. “I didn’t intend to reveal anything.”

  “You violated Post policy,” Jo-Ann said. “It’s a problem.”

  The word policy was ominous. I sat up straighter in my chair.

  “Look, I knew Soulsby was lying,” I said. “In my mind, I wasn’t violating any off-the-record agreement. Are we supposed to protect lies? Besides, suppose he was telling the truth—I’d have to check it out.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “You put the paper in a bad spot.”

  “What I did was a misdemeanor,” I argued. “Soulsby’s getting away with a felony. What about that?”

  Jo-Ann was unmoved. “Makes no difference,” she said.

  We looked at each other.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “No, that’s it. For now.”

  This isn’t good, I thought as I got up and left her office. For the next couple of hours I tried to work, but I was too anxious to get much done. I decided to try to get ahead of whatever Jo-Ann might have in mind.

  Some ambitious reporters and editors wore out the carpet walking to the offices of the Post’s top editors along the North Wall, getting face time with the people who could boost their careers. I hadn’t been on that side of the building since my job interview, but I decided I needed to make a foray.

  I walked to the office of Len Downie, the executive editor. I asked his secretary if I could see him. A couple of hours later, I settled into the chair in front of Downie’s desk.

  “What’s on your mind?” Downie asked.

  “I want to explain this Soulsby–Hennessy situation,” I said. I recounted how I had run into Lou by coincidence. “I want you to know I never intended to violate an off-the-record agreement,” I said. “I made a mistake, but I had no intention of violating any agreement with a source, even if Soulsby was lying, which I was pretty sure he was.”

  Downie listened, his face expressionless. “You know you made a mistake, but you had no intention of violating any agreement with a source, even if Soulsby was lying,” Downie echoed. “And you believe he was lying.”

  “Yeah, that’s basically it,” I said.

  “Okay,” Downie replied.

  I left his office having no idea where I stood.

  Two
months later, 60 Minutes aired a piece on the situation.

  In the segment, by Ed Bradley Jr., about a dozen of Lou’s detectives stood up for their former boss. They lauded his command and attested to his integrity. Lou was interviewed. So was Soulsby.

  Lou came off as calm, dedicated, and competent.

  Soulsby seemed confused and shady. When Bradley asked if he’d release the reporters from the off-the-record agreement so they could reveal what he’d said about Lou, the chief hemmed and hawed and finally sputtered, “No.”

  I watched with a mixture of satisfaction and horror. It felt good to see Soulsby exposed nationwide as an untrustworthy buffoon. But the Soulsby thing wasn’t just back from the dead. It was on the move. Fast. And I was standing helplessly in its path.

  A few weeks later, Jo-Ann called me into her office. No warm-up jokes this time. She stood behind her desk, her arms crossed. I stood across from her.

  “The Soulsby story isn’t going away,” she said. “We have to deal with it. We have to explain the Post’s role in these events.” She said she was assigning another staff writer, someone who didn’t know any of the history, to report and write the story. The reporter, Paul Duggan, would ask me for an interview.

  “All right, fine,” I said. “What should I say to Paul?”

  Jo-Ann uncrossed her arms and put her palms out. “I can’t tell you what to say,” she replied.

  I thought we were on the same team. I guess that’s changed. “So there won’t be any repercussions for me, will there?”

  “I can’t say,” she shrugged.

  I thought of my old editor, Phil Dixon, now at the Philadelphia Inquirer. During my first six months at the Post, I’d written a story about a convenience store in Northeast D.C. that posted photos of suspected shoplifters. Somehow, I’d screwed up the first name of one of the store managers I quoted. I didn’t merely misspell it; I simply got it wrong. Phil was apologetic when he told me I had to write a correction.

  “I couldn’t save you on this one, man,” he’d said.

  A few months after I started the daytime police reporter job, Phil actually did take a hit for me. The Washington Times had a story about a controversial police shooting in Southeast—a story we didn’t have. Downie called Phil into his office to ask why. Instead of blaming me, Phil explained that I was working on an enterprise piece about a series of burglaries in a well-off section of Northwest, and that he’d advised me to remain focused on that assignment.

  It was clear to me that Jo-Ann was worried about the ongoing coverage of the Soulsby incident. I was certain Phil would have handled it differently. I don’t think he necessarily would have taken the hit for me. How could he? I was the one who’d talked to Soulsby and Lou. But if Phil thought I’d screwed up badly by revealing Soulsby’s lies to Lou, he would have dealt with me right away, based on my actions alone. He wouldn’t have waited for the fallout. He wouldn’t have left me with a sense of uncertainty about my fate.

  I knew that I wasn’t one of Jo-Ann’s favorite reporters. Maybe she didn’t like me because she saw me as one of “Phil’s people.” It was true—I was loyal to Phil. And though no one involved in the decision ever asked my opinion, I also believed that he would have been a better Metro editor. Phil was the rare editor who was equally great with copy and with people. Still, I worked every bit as hard after he left as I had before.

  “All right,” I said to Jo-Ann. “Paul knows where to find me.”

  Two or three days later, Paul and I walked to a table in the Post’s cafeteria.

  “So are you our version of internal affairs?” I said as we settled into our chairs.

  Paul shook his head. “Yeah, it sort of feels that way,” he replied. “This is a weird story. Sorry you got caught up in this. Let’s just get through this.”

  Paul asked me about Soulsby’s remarks and my subsequent encounter with Lou. I answered as best I could without revealing exactly what Soulsby said to me and the other two reporters. I was careful not to say anything that hadn’t already been reported elsewhere. I figured Jo-Ann would pounce on anything that she believed was too revealing.

  A week or so later, I woke up at dawn and picked up the paper from my doorstep. I sat on the edge of my living room futon and read the story. Including a reference to me in a quote by Jo-Ann, my name appeared twenty-two times. I winced every time I read it. In the story, Downie said that reporters shouldn’t repeat off-the-record statements unless they have clear understandings with their sources. Jo-Ann said that I’d put the paper in an awkward spot.

  It was in this article that Lightfoot related Soulsby’s fabricated explanation involving a police shooting and said that he would call for the chief’s resignation if he learned Soulsby had lied.

  The moment I stepped into the newsroom that morning, Linda Wheeler, a fellow reporter, approached me.

  “I read the story,” she said apprehensively. “If I were you, I’d lay low.”

  “My knees hurt when I crouch,” I joked.

  Fuck it. I stood up straight, walked past my desk to the middle of the Metro section, lingered for a few minutes, then marched back to my desk.

  They’d killed Lou’s police career. This was nothing.

  Marion Barry’s fourth term in office wasn’t nearly as successful as the campaign that got him there.

  Sharon Pratt Kelly had inherited a financial mess from Barry when she became mayor, in January 1991. Barry inherited a financial disaster from Kelly when he returned to the mayor’s office, in January 1995.

  On February 1, after meeting with members of Congress, Barry announced that the city owed $355 million in debts it couldn’t pay during that fiscal year. The deficit would grow to at least twice that amount in the following fiscal year, the mayor said. The two-year deficit represented nearly 22 percent of the city’s $3.2 billion budget.

  Massive spending cuts would be needed to keep the city from falling into bankruptcy, congressional Republicans said. Even with austerity measures, a federal takeover was possible, the legislators warned.

  During his first three terms as mayor, Barry had won the loyalty of thousands of voters by growing the D.C. government payroll. In some neighborhoods, everyone seemed to either work for the city or be related to someone who did. This approach had helped create a flourishing black middle class, Barry’s supporters said. His critics said it had created a bloated, unresponsive government.

  As he announced the huge deficit, Barry acknowledged that he would have to make painful cuts to the city’s workforce of 45,000. Congress, he said, wanted him to come up with a plan to attack the deficit. “They want recommendations from me,” Barry said. “I get the impression they’re not going to take any action unless I act, and I intend to act.”

  The mayor didn’t act fast enough. On April 17, President Clinton signed a law creating the D.C. Financial Control Board. The board consisted of five presidential appointees who would run the city’s finances as well as its nine largest agencies, including Public Works, Human Services, and the police department. That year, the Control Board would cut four thousand jobs from the city payroll. It would also take away much of the mayor’s political power—though Barry would still have the authority to appoint the police chief, and that chief would still have the power to choose his commanders.

  On April 27, 1996, a Saturday, two months after Barry had announced that a further ten thousand city positions would need to be cut and four months after he’d undergone prostate surgery, the mayor suddenly issued a written statement announcing that he would be taking a leave of absence. “I see tell-tale signs of spiritual relapse and physical exhaustion,” Barry said in the statement. He would begin his sabbatical at the Skinner Farm Leadership Institute, a retreat in rural Maryland where Barry had spent some time following his release from prison in 1992. After a few days at Skinner Farm, Barry would go to the Thompson Retreat and Conference Center, near St. Louis.

  Again Barry invoked language familiar to people who participate in suppor
t groups. He referred to the fourth step of the twelve-step Alcoholics Anonymous program, which suggests that “every person should take a ‘fearless personal moral inventory’ of oneself.” That inventory, the statement noted, should include a level of “rigorous honesty.” Barry and his supporters denied that he’d relapsed during his recovery from drug addiction. But many Washingtonians believed that the mayor was being less than honest about the reason for his sudden departure.

  Barry returned to his duties in mid-May, proclaiming himself rejuvenated. But it wasn’t long before he was embroiled in more controversy. In June, Secret Service agents raided the Logan Circle home of Roweshea Burruss, a self-proclaimed minister and ex-con who allegedly ran an illegal after-hours club that Barry reportedly frequented. Barry acknowledged that he’d been to Burruss’s home, though he denied that it was for any nefarious purpose.

  “I’ve probably been at his house a half-dozen times this year,” he said. “That’s about it. Sometimes I run by there to change clothes. I went by to have a quick sandwich.”

  Barry limped through the remainder of his term, powerless to launch bold initiatives or hand out city contracts because of the Control Board. By early 1998, political observers wondered whether Barry would even contend for a fifth term.

  On May 21, Barry ended the suspense. He announced that he wouldn’t be running for reelection. Without citing the Control Board directly, he decried the “restrictions” placed on the mayor. He vowed to keep fighting for the betterment of D.C. “Those who think I’m going to a rocking chair someplace, I’ve got news for you. You’re not going to see me doing that,” he declared.

  Barry’s decision left the race for mayor wide-open. In September, voters in the city’s Democratic primary chose relative newcomer Anthony A. Williams over three veteran D.C. Council members. Williams had served as the city’s chief financial officer for three years and was widely credited with balancing the District’s books so effectively that it had a $185 million budget surplus by 1997.