The Corner

by David Simon/Ed Burns

  The family was perfectly divided: a mother, slaving away with the starch and steam press up on Reisterstown Road; a father, trying to stretch a gangster hustle into real money. Two of R.C.’s older brothers, Ricky and Bug, took their father’s package—and later their own product—down to the corners, and were repeatedly wounded by gunfire. Nor did it end there: R.C.’s oldest sister, Darlene, had been the beauty of the family, but she was now in a shooting gallery on Mount Street, chasing what her brothers were selling.

  A third brother, David, fell all the way, losing himself in a heroin addiction that eventually wrecked both his body and his mind. Four years ago, on a warm October night, a pair of Western District police caught up to him in the middle of Franklin Street, near the McDonald’s, where the twenty-six-year-old was wandering in traffic, rambling incoherently. At one point, David jumped on the hood of a police cruiser; bystanders would later tell the Carter family that this single act resulted in a severe beatdown. Pounded by the arresting officers and tossed in the rear of a wagon, he was delivered still breathing to the Western lockup and deposited in a holding cell. A few hours later, the turnkeys realized they had a problem and rushed him down to the Bon Secours emergency room, where he slipped in and out of consciousness. Transferred to a better intensive-care unit at University Hospital, he died days later nonetheless.

  The autopsy was just ambiguous enough to take the police department off the hook. Citing as much physical damage from drug use as from the beating on Franklin Street, officials ruled the case a natural death. No one in authority ever contacted the Carters with an explanation, and when Carrie Carter went downtown to talk to someone in charge, she was shunted in and out of offices until a deputy commissioner told her simply that her son had died from drugs. But in the neighborhood, the death of David Sanford became local lore, a touchstone to be cited whenever the standing of law officers was at issue. On Fayette Street, no one—from older heads to gangsters to small children—ever spoke of the incident without acknowledging that the police had come across an addict in delirium, and with absolute impunity, had beaten the man to death.

  Of all the siblings, David had been closest to eleven-year-old Richard Junior. From Carrie Carter’s point of view, David’s death seemed to bring R.C. to a new level of frustration, to make him shout louder or rant longer in his struggle to be acknowledged. Though he was in many ways her brightest child, school had always been a problem with R.C., who had, from an early age, abandoned all initiative when it came to his own education. She had approached city school officials a dozen different ways, looking for the key to open her angry child’s mind; no one, it seemed, could touch R.C.’s basic insecurities. He was alive only on a ball court or in the streets, where he survived as much as a braggart as a fighter, a loud and profane voice constantly assuring the world of his talent and worth. He was one of the best athletes in the group, and he could carry himself in a fight, especially when he was younger and his thick, athletic frame was daunting to everyone in the neighborhood save DeAndre. But whereas DeAndre had sense enough not to talk up his game, R.C.’s wounded ego couldn’t contain itself. He abhorred silence, yet all of his protestations and declarations accomplished little. It was as if all the self-praise seeped out a hole in the bottom of his soul.

  When his father—the patriarch behind the family disaster—began hardcore drugging, things only got worse. For the last two years, Richard Senior had moved through life as an empty shell of himself, the tailored suits and full-length leathers giving way to the ordinariness of common addiction. By then he had little time for his youngest son. He had run the gangster hustle down to its last threads, messing up deals and packages as only a fiend can. Then, just before last Christmas, he crossed some Jamaicans and it was over. They found his body in the wilds of West Baltimore’s Leakin Park. He had been badly bludgeoned, his sweatshirt pulled up over his head to prevent him from fighting back, his head and torso black-and-blue from the blows. The murder was never solved; in fact, it wasn’t seriously investigated. Saddled with the possibility of an unsolvable drug slaying, city detectives convinced the medical examiner to list the case as pending, on the apparent presumption that the victim had wandered into the woods, pulled his sweatshirt above his head and then beaten himself into the ground. Again, as with David Sanford, the fact that there was heroin in the dead man’s system was explanation enough.

  That was five months ago. Now R.C. is in freefall; he no longer even bothers to maintain any pretense. Charged with truancy from the previous semester at Southwestern, he began the new semester promising a juvenile hearing officer he wouldn’t miss a day if his transfer to Francis M. Woods was approved. With only a month to go, he has amassed a near-perfect attendance record—he has not been seen at school save for the first two days of the spring semester. He makes no show of looking for a job, nor does he have need of one. His mother has been giving him a portion of his father’s social security death benefit, enabling R.C. to indulge in consumption that outpaces that of his contemporaries. For the poorest of the C.M.B. crew, Nike and Reebok, Timberland, and Tommy Hilfiger are components of a basic philosophy of life. To Tae or DeAndre, the worst insult is to have anything attached to you—your jacket, your high-tops, your girl, your hair—labeled as off-brand. But R.C. is a step beyond. In his bedroom, there are close to thirty-five pairs of brand-name athletic shoes, some rarely worn, others still in the original boxes. And yet the mall purchases, too, leak uselessly from that hole inside him.

  In the end, it’s a matter of degree: All of them—DeAndre, Tae, Manny Man, Brooks, Dinky—are slipping slowly into the corner world. But most are at the same time clinging to the last leavings of childhood, still making the effort in their minds to assemble the fragments of school, family, and hope into vague, improbable futures. But R.C. can no longer manage even a show of reluctance about the corner. He doesn’t fight it; he seems to be going there deliberately.

  For R.C., basketball is the only thing in his life that hasn’t imploded, that can be trusted to remain a constant. On the court, he is gifted. Too short to dominate, but capable of playing within himself as the others are not, he has strong moves, good court vision, a physical game, and—most important—he understands instinctively what a basketball team is supposed to do with or without the ball. That he is playing with so many who don’t is enormously frustrating. Still, the rec center team is precious to him.

  The contradiction here makes R.C.’s effort in the Francis Woods gym seem transcendent: As the rest of his life settles inexorably onto the corner, a place where only the most self-centered and temporary passions are gratified, R.C. nonetheless takes the time three days a week to dedicate himself to the communal requirements of team basketball. He rebounds without reward; passes the ball without hope that it will come back; takes only those shots that offer a high percentage. The Hilltop boys notice, of course, but for the others—DeAndre, Tae, and the rest—their time on the court is mere play.

  To R.C., the rest of the crew are profaning his god. Beneath the generalized fantasy that every city kid carries in his head, R.C. knows his athletic career will end with playground ball. He will never play for a school varsity squad because he can never find a school. But still, he can’t give up on the idea of himself as a ballplayer. Nor can he indulge himself on the court as he does at every other point in life. Such is the power and mystique of this sport that for a few hours a day, it can socialize the likes of Richard Carter. Not that he can carry lessons about teamwork, selflessness, discipline, and hard work back into the street; they exist only within the baselines. R.C. will never follow through with an academic effort, or training regimen, or diet. For him, only the act of stepping onto the hardwood matters, and on those frequent occasions when the others show that it matters not at all, R.C. can be provoked to rage.

  Arriving early during the next week’s afternoon practices, he gives himself over to the pickup games with absolute abandon. It’s R.C. on the boards, R.C. leading the break, R.C. diving into
the bleachers for loose balls.

  The Hilltop boys play well with him, but those in his own crew can’t keep up. With Brooks and Boo, DeAndre and Manny Man, R.C. shows less patience and more fury. Soon, he’s alienated everyone save for the newcomers.

  On Tuesday, he jumps on Dewayne for dribbling too much. On Wednesday, he rants because DeAndre wouldn’t play defense and because Brian is easily stripped of the ball. On Thursday, the target is again the impish Brooks, who answers by clenching his fists and putting his scowling face directly below R.C.’s chin, daring the bigger boy to hit him, then threatening to run home for his gun when R.C. does precisely that.

  “Man, let Brooks be,” says Tae, tired of the bickering.

  “He greedy,” R.C. insists. “He always goin’ hawk.”

  He’s right: Brooks has trouble giving up the ball. But it’s equally true that brutalizing your fellow players every day won’t do much to instill a team concept. With Brooks gone for the last hour of the Thursday practice, R.C. settles into his game and the boys are soon running a quickbreak offense at flank speed. They end on a beautiful double-clutch, no-look pass from Tae to R.C., who goes past Twin and underneath the rim for a backhanded layup.

  “We gonna beat Bentalou next time out,” says Boo, confident.

  But any sense of team can’t survive the walk up Fayette later that same afternoon. The talk then is all about what happened the week prior, when Boo, R.C., Brian, Tae, and a few others went a few blocks to the southeast to check out the video games at Mt. Clare Junction. Boo had words down there with one of the white boys from Stricker and Ramsay, who asked him if he wanted to step outside.

  Boo thought it was an invitation to a one-on-one, but when he started out the door of the shopping pavillion, he realized that the entire Stricker and Ramsay crew—white boys, black boys, even some of the adults—was following him. The C.M.B. contingent was badly outnumbered, with no other option but to throw a few quick punches and run like hell across Baltimore Street. Now, thinking on it, Boo wants to go back.

  “I ain’t tryin’ to hear that,” says Brian. “Some of those white boys down there hit like niggers.”

  “Sheeeet,” says Tae. “We was outnumbered. We need to go back with all our peoples.”

  “DeAndre wasn’t there,” says Dinky.

  “DeAndre always ready for a fight,” says Boo, with admiration. “He was the only one that stayed when we got to fighting with the police down at Mt. Clare.”

  It was true. Last summer C.M.B. had tangled with the Stricker and Ramsay boys down at the shopping center. When the police showed, they took the side of the white boys and started chasing down the C.M.B. crew. DeAndre jumped on one Southern District police, just as the cop was trying to handcuff R.C.

  “Andre crazy as shit,” agrees Tae.

  “What the fuck you talkin’ ’bout?” R.C. asks bitterly. “I stayed and fought that time. I was there.”

  Boo shakes his head. “It was just me and Andre.”

  “And me,” says R.C. as they cross Fayette near Gilmor.

  “You wasn’t around.”

  “Okay,” says R.C. He pivots abruptly, cocking his right arm and firing a sucker punch into Boo’s jaw. Boo crumples into the fender of a parked car.

  The rest of the team laughs uproariously.

  Gary McCullough nods, flustered, looking out at the Wabash Avenue courtroom for some better truth, or some better way of telling it. From the middle of the third bench, his mother covers her frown with both hands, terrified at the image of her son’s life hanging in the balance. Gary catches her eye and tries to smile, then loses his train of thought.

  “It’s like… judge, please, this is just crazy.”

  Judge Bass, sensing the panic, tries to put the defendant at ease. “Take your time, Mr. McCullough, I’m listening to you. I just need you to speak louder.”

  “Okay.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “All right.”

  Where to begin? What to say? What to leave unsaid? So much to worry about now that all that foolishness with Ronnie is getting its day in court. Gary has taken a charge behind this nonsense; he’s seen the bullpen on Eager Street because of it. And now, when he should be speaking up for himself and putting it all to rest, he’s a stammering wreck. It’s hell getting the God’s honest truth out of your mouth when the damn thing is wrapped up in lies.

  “We had an argument …,” says Gary.

  True enough.

  “… about some money.”

  Lie.

  “An’ Ronnie, I mean, Veronica began yelling.”

  True again.

  “So I asked her to leave …”

  Still true.

  “… but she kept cussin’ me and telling me she wasn’t going to go without the, ah, the, um … the money.”

  The lie again.

  “Mr. McCullough, you’ll have to speak up.”

  “Um …”

  “You’ll have to talk louder so I can hear you.”

  Gary nods, agreeable. “She just wouldn’t leave,” he tells Judge Bass, “so I finally shoved her a little, toward the door, like. I didn’t hit her, I just pushed her to get her out of the house.”

  Truth, or close enough to it.

  “And she threw a brick at me …”

  Truth.

  “A brick?” asks Judge Bass.

  “And a knife,” adds Gary.

  Lie. A home run swing from Gary McCullough.

  “She threw a knife at you?”

  “I was standing in the doorway.”

  “What kind of knife?”

  “Kitchen kind. Had a big blade and all.”

  The judge can’t let that one go. He’s looking up at the acoustic-tile ceiling, giving words to the thought running through the heads of everyone else in the courtroom.

  “Where did she get the knife?”

  Gary shrugs, wondering what that has to do with anything. He’s sweating profusely, a prisoner inside his gray pinstripe church suit.

  “I mean,” says the judge. “Did she have the knife on her or did she go and get the knife from somewhere? She didn’t just find it lying in the street, did she?”

  Gary shrugs again, then scratches his ear, thinking about it. To look at him, to catch even a glimpse of the sincerity in his face, you’d think there might actually have been a knife involved. Who’s to say? With Gary McCullough, a man far too honest about most things, the occasional lie always takes on a life of its own. Today, on a bright May morning, eight months after the fact, he truly believes Ronnie tossed a knife at him. If she had a knife, she surely would have.

  Judge Bass raises an eyebrow, then glances over at the assistant state’s attorney, who lets the judge continue the redirect. “Do you know where the knife came from?” the judge asks Gary.

  “From Ronnie’s hand. She threw it.”

  Laughter breaks from the clustered humanity on the court benches. Even Judge Bass has to smile.

  “But you don’t know where she got it.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  Go on, Mr. McCullough. Tell the tale as best you can. But leave out the part about the vials of heroin, the part where you wouldn’t share a blast with Ronnie and she started to raise hell, calling you all kinds of names. By all means, mention the brick—the kitchen knife, even—but leave out the part where you ran out of the house afterward to confront her, grabbing her neck, and then shoving her down the sidewalk. Tell it in small pieces, as if it’s a broken puzzle. Tell it the way you think they might want to hear it.

  “I didn’t hit her,” Gary says.

  That this case is now being played out in court is, in itself, an incredible thing. That it couldn’t be stetted or nol-prossed or reduced to some unsupervised probation is testament only to the current political imperatives. Gary and Ronnie both had come to court today certain that they could make the thing go away; Ronnie would decline to testify and the prosecutors would shrug and toss the casefile into a tall s
tack of district court dismissals.

  But no. It wasn’t just the usual Western District prosecutor in court today, but an assistant state’s attorney from downtown somewhere. And this case could not be dismissed as everyone desired because of its status as a domestic violence complaint. In the eyes of the government, Ronnie Boice is no longer the quick-thinking, game-running, syringe-switching wonder of Fayette Street. Consciousness has been sufficiently raised so that now, by a policy new to the prosecutor’s office, all domestic assault cases are fully pursued—even when a wife or girlfriend has attempted to back away from her original statement. For today at least, Ronnie Boice will be representing battered womanhood.

  It’s a noble effort by the state’s attorney’s office, a worthy strategy in those cases in which abused women are too frightened or intimidated to testify against their assailants. In the present case, however, the new policy is a source of unintentional hilarity.

  Ronnie never had any intention of pursuing the case; she just wanted Gary to know that what was his—coke, dope, or both—was hers as well. But now she’ll have to testify or risk being charged with obstructing justice. And if she tells the truth on the stand—tells them that it was a shoving match over a blast—well, that will mean a charge of false statement or perjury for her original complaint. When Gary declined a plea offer of six months in jail followed by spousal abuse counseling, the court trial was the only option left.

  “Why would Miss Boice make a complaint against you if you didn’t hit her?” asks the prosecutor, picking up the redirect.