DC By the Book

Excerpt: He sounded his siren a few times and ran a few traffic signals and arrived at K Street about-9:20 P.M. Kennelly knew the neighborhood well. It was a block of noisy, smoky bars. The bars on the south side of the street filled early in the evening, with Negroes chiefly. All but one of the bars on the north side had signs in the window, saying "We cater to the white race only." Sometimes the customers from the two kinds of bars met on the street for raucous yelling matches, and occasionally a free-swinging fistfight ensued. Rarely was anyone hurt, because the swinging fighters were almost invariably so drunk they could not land an effective punch. Prostitutes black and white flounced along the sidewalks and did brisk business. They sewed little lead weights into the hems of their loose skirts, and when they pirouetted the skirts flew and exposed their underwear--and sometimes more because they weren't wearing any. Moralists maintained a shrill and constant demand that the block be more severely policed and the block of vice be cleaned up. But it was the alleys behind the bars that most concerned the Washington police. There, bar customers who stepped out the back door to relieve themselves were sapped and relieved of their money. There, in dark shadows, illicit substances were sold. There, in the light of dawn, a prone figure now and then turned out not to be just a very sick drunk sleeping off a hangover on the muddy ground but in fact a dead man.