S Street Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D.C. (16 page)

Apartment 32 was a few feet to the right of the staircase. I raised my fist and hesitated.

Bad things happened in joints like this.

An image popped into my head: Carrie smiling, taking her top off, then leaning toward me as I lit up a crack pipe and moved it to my lips.

Aw, the hell with it. I gave the door two quick, firm knocks.

Nothing.

Come on, Carrie.

I gave the door another rap.

The door swung open. For a heartbeat, the doorway was empty. Suddenly a large man with a wild, uncombed Afro popped out from behind the door. He was wearing a wifebeater and old jeans.

“What you want?” His eyes were bloodshot. His expression was suspicious. He was north of six feet tall and weighed at least 220 pounds. I was five feet eight, 150.

My eyes went to the plastic number on the door.

“Maybe I’m in the wrong place,” I said. “I’m looking for Carrie.”

Big Man’s expression softened.

“Oh, you know Carrie? She inside, in the bathroom. Come on in.” He stepped back and waved his arm like a used-car salesman beckoning a mark.

The apartment was empty save for a wooden desk against the near wall, to my right, and a worn beige sofa in the middle of the living room, fifteen feet in. The hardwood floor was scuffed and dirty. The place smelled of takeout french fries.

My gut told me something was wrong. But my mental image of Carrie overruled my instinct. I stepped forward.

With lightning quickness, Big Man grabbed my shirt collar, yanked me into the apartment, and slammed the door shut. He gripped the epaulets of my trench coat and pinned me against the door while calling out, “Slick!”

Like an apparition, a thin older man with short salt-and-pepper hair silently rose from behind the sofa.

“Get the thing, Slick, get the
thing
!” Big Man called out. The thing—a gun or a knife. A gun would be quick. A knife could mean torture.

“You don’t have to do this,” I croaked.

Big Man didn’t respond. Slick shuffled toward the desk.

“You don’t have to do this,” I repeated, my voice cracking. “It’s not worth it.
I’m
not worth it.”

Big Man remained silent. Slick closed in on the desk. My eyes swept the apartment.

There was a window five feet behind the sofa. If I could break free, I could sprint to the window and .
.
. what? Crash through the glass and swan-dive three stories to the asphalt?

Slick opened the desk drawer, reached in, and pulled out a handgun. It looked small; it might have been a .22.

Slick turned and stepped toward Big Man and me.

My fear flipped to panic. I went from pleasantly drunk to sober in a heartbeat. I had to get away
now
.

I rotated my right shoulder backwards, wrested my right arm free, and balled my hand into a fist. As best I could, I reared my arm back and slugged Big Man squarely on the chin. But I had no leverage, I was unable to move my body forward to generate power; the punch was all arm.

Big Man took it like a pro. He didn’t budge. He didn’t blink.

Uh-oh.

His beefy left hand went to my throat. The viselike grip said,
That’s enough
. I realized he could snap my windpipe without breaking a sweat.

Slick shuffled behind Big Man, who took his right hand off my shoulder and reached behind his back, like a relay runner getting ready for the handoff of the baton. Slick placed the gun in Big Man’s palm.

Big Man raised the gun and pointed it between my eyes, two inches from my face.

I thought of my parents, my sister, and my brothers in California getting the news. Would one of my homicide detective sources catch my case? Would Phil Dixon let my death be noted by a news brief buried inside the Metro section, or would he assemble a squad of reporters to find out how I ended up dead inside a combat-zone apartment building? Phil was a consummate pro. He would go after the story, bless him. Damn him.

My will to fight left like an exhaled breath. I was exhausted, defeated. I hung my head, stared at the floor, and waited for the darkness.

Whack!

Big Man slammed the gun against my left ear. Shock waves of pain radiated through my skull. I looked up. The pistol was back in my face. “I want answers—
now
! Who are you?” Big Man demanded, fury in his eyes.

A light went on inside my throbbing head:
Here I am in my work getup—decent trousers, dress shirt, trench coat. Big Man’s probably high and paranoid; he must think I’m a cop or a fed.

I had to kill those suspicions.

“Carrie cops rock for me on S Street,” I said. “Check my shirt pocket.”

As he kept the gun pointed at my head, Big Man released his left hand and reached into my pocket. He fished out my crack pipe, held it close to his face, and eyeballed the gray residue caked inside the cylindrical stem. The res was confirmation of previous use. Crackhead credibility.

His face relaxed. Casually, he stuck the pipe behind his ear. He kept the gun pointed at my face. He needed a nudge.

“I’ve got money,” I said. “You can have it.”

Big Man nodded.

Slowly, I pulled out my wallet and opened it. He removed the two $20 bills inside, stepped back, lowered the gun, and pointed it at the door.

I was turning to leave when Big Man said something that stopped me cold.

“Say, you have a car?”

Without thinking, I nodded.
Nice response. Here comes the carjacking.

“I know a place we can score good weight, but I got no way to get there. If you give me a ride, I’ll split it with you.”

It was an absurd invitation. For a heartbeat, I considered it.

“No, thanks,” I said.

I pivoted and raced down the stairs. By the time I hit the ignition and roared away from the curb, terror was morphing into elation.

The worst was over. It had to be. I was done with crack. I would stay away from it—and S Street—for good.

I stayed away from S Street for two days after my run-in with Big Man.

The Friday after Thanksgiving was the beginning of my weekend. By midafternoon I’d knocked back four rum and Cokes. I stood at my bay window and watched a gentle snowfall. I had $20 in my wallet. I was determined to make it last the entire weekend.

But I was drunk, on autopilot. I put on my coat and drove straight to S Street. The slingers were out in force, undeterred by the snow. I didn’t bother to check the street for cops. I lowered my window and made the buy from the first dealer to reach my car.

I’d met with my employee-assistance program counselor for the first time the day after Phil and Milton confronted me, a couple of weeks earlier. The counselor, a kindly middle-aged woman, had handed me a pamphlet with a list of support-group meetings throughout the Washington area.

I needed to attend the meetings; it was the only way to get sober, she said. Any further drinking or cocaine use would risk disaster.

“You’ve been going to meetings?” she asked when we met a week later.

“Yes,” I lied.

“That’s excellent, Ruben!” the counselor said. She seemed genuinely pleased. “And how are you doing with the drinking and the cocaine?”

“I haven’t had any cocaine for nearly two weeks. I did have one drink a few nights ago, a rum and Coke.”

Her face registered alarm. I wondered how she’d react if I told her the truth: Three nights earlier, I’d gotten drunk and picked up Champagne. We’d split three rocks. It wasn’t even about sex anymore; I was just chasing a high I could no longer capture.

“Slips like that are common,” she said. “Do you feel you’re on solid ground now?”

“Yes. I don’t have any desire to drink or use cocaine right now.” A lie, in essence: I didn’t want to light up or drink at that moment, in the counselor’s office, but I couldn’t imagine stopping and staying stopped.

“Good,” she said warily. She was clearly bothered by my “slip.” She said I should tell her right away if I slipped again. I wasn’t sure she bought my assertion that I didn’t want to use cocaine or drink anymore. I wouldn’t have if I were her.

“You have a lot to live for. You’re healthy, intelligent. You have a good job,” she said. “See you next week.”

Big Man had taken my crack pipe, but that wasn’t going to stop me. When I got back home from making my solo buy on S Street, I snapped off a six-inch piece of metal from an umbrella handle. It was a trick Champagne had shown me. I went into the bathroom, where I stuffed some copper mesh into one end of the metal tube, loaded it with the entire rock, and lit up. I smoked the crack in less than a minute. It barely registered.

I walked to the mirror and stared at my face. My eyes were bloodshot, my forehead sweaty. I’d never uttered the A-word to Phil or Milton or my EAP counselor, but now, as I stared at the anguish in my eyes, there was no denying it.

I’m an addict.

This thing has got me.

I’m looking at a dead man.

Three weeks crawled by.

Every night felt like an eternity. On weekends, I got drunk, drove to S Street, bought a couple of rocks, and lit up by myself, to little effect.

On work nights, I battled the urge to keep smoking. Each shooting announced on the police scanner provided a tiny reprieve. Saddling up and racing to a crime scene kept me focused and occupied, more or less, for an hour or so.

I continued lying to my EAP counselor. I told her I was going to support-group meetings and staying clean. I felt bad deceiving her, but admitting that I was lighting up every weekend and that I’d almost gotten shot while trying to meet a strawberry didn’t seem like the way to go. Our sessions were supposed to be confidential, though I wasn’t sure whether that covered illegal activity, such as crack possession. Of course, the counselor was not there to bust me; the confidentiality I had with her was as sacrosanct in that regard as a doctor-patient relationship, I would realize later. But at the time, all the crack I’d ingested made me paranoid, even on days when I wasn’t using.

Five nights before Christmas, Phil wandered to my desk shortly after I settled in for my shift and sized me up.

My eyes were bloodshot and glazed. My clothes were wrinkled and disheveled. My face was covered with a full day’s worth of stubble. My breath reeked of alcohol. That afternoon, I’d run into Champagne as I was walking home from my noontime pickup basketball game at the downtown YMCA. At my apartment, we split three rocks from S Street.

The crack didn’t get me high, but it made me wired, edgy, sweaty. To even myself out before going to work, I knocked back two rum and Cokes and chomped a pack of breath mints. I thought I could get through my shift.

As he stood by my desk, Phil made no effort to hide his disappointment. It was written on his face with all the subtlety of a front-page banner headline. Later I learned that a news aide who was worried about me had alerted Phil to my condition.

“You’re in no shape to work, Ruben.”

“I’m all right,” I protested. “I can work.”

“I can’t let you work.”

“I’m fine, really.”

Phil shook his head.

“What if you have to go out on a story? I can’t let you check out a company car. Not tonight.”

He was right. I was in no condition to drive. I looked straight down at my desk, humiliated.

“What now?” I said, my eyes on the Formica desktop.

“Take the night off. Go home. Get a good night’s rest and we’ll regroup tomorrow.”

I straggled home, thinking,
If I can just stay clean for a week or so .
.
. 

The following night, Milton made for my desk the moment I sat down. “Come with me,” he said as he led me toward the stairs.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see your EAP counselor.”

She was standing behind her desk, waiting. Milton closed the door behind us. The counselor got to it: “We’ve made arrangements for you to be admitted to the rehabilitation unit of Suburban Hospital. There’s a bed waiting for you now. Milton will take you and make sure you check in.”

I looked at Milton, stunned. His expression was neutral. He was focused on the EAP woman. He was deferring to her. I turned back to the counselor.

“Why do I have to go to a hospital? Can’t I do an outpatient program?”

“That won’t be enough,” she said. “Your behavior right now is unpredictable and dangerous. You don’t know when or where you’re going to use or where it may lead you.”

Everything she said was true, and she didn’t even know about my Big Man encounter and my strawberry habit.

“You’re addicted at the
cellular
level,” she continued. “You can’t help but drink and use. And there’s no telling what might happen the next time you go out drinking or using.”