DC By the Book

Excerpt: At dusk he said he was hungry, and he told me to call the boss and order soup from the Methodist Mission at L Street and Seventeenth, Northwest. They put more vegetables in the broth, Mister said. And the bread was not as stale as in most kitchens.

Excerpt: “Where is he now?” “Probably in the city morgue at D.C. General.” “If there’s no family, what happens to him?” “The city buries the unclaimed. On the books it’s called a pauper’s funeral. There’s a cemetery near RFK Stadium where they pack ‘em in. You’d be amazed at the number of people who die unclaimed.”

Excerpt: I passed the handsome homes and cozy rowhouses, where I saw real families eating and laughing and enjoying the warmth, and moved onto M Street, where throngs of those suffering from cabin fever filled the sidewalks. Even a freezing Friday night on M was never dull; the bars were packed, the restaurants had waiting lines, the coffee shops were filled.

Excerpt: The bodies had been taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which also housed the morgue. It was a two-story brown aggregate building at D.C. General Hospital. They would be held there until claimed.

Excerpt: In Leon’s opinion, a good place to live right now, but this could change in six months, he warned me, was Adams-Morgan, north of Dupont Circle. It was a well-known district, one I had been through many times, never with any desire to stop and browse. The streets were lined with turn-of-the-century rowhouses, all of which were still inhabited, which in D.C., meant a vibrant neighborhood. The bars and clubs were hot at the moment, according to Leon, and the best new restaurants were there. The seedy sections were just around the corner, and of course one had to be extremely careful.

Excerpt: Since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped for soul food at the Florida Avenue Grill. Mine was the only white face in the crowded restaurant, but I was coming to terms with my whiteness.

Excerpt: We were downtown. He pointed, and said, “See those trailers stacked on top of each other. That’s Mount Vernon Square.” It was half a city block, fenced high to hinder a view from the outside. The trailers were different shapes and lengths, some dilapidated, all grungy. “It’s the worst shelter in the city. Those are old postal trailers the government gave to the District, which in turn had the brilliant idea of filling them with homeless.”

Excerpt: The CCNV was founded in the early seventies by a group of war protesters who had assembled in Washington to torment the government. They lived together in a house in Northwest. During their protests, around the Capitol, they met homeless veterans of Vietnam, and began taking them in. After the war, they turned their attention to the plight of the D.C. homeless… CCNV found an abandoned junior college, one built with federal money and still owned by the government, and invaded it with six hundred squatters. It became their headquarters, and their home. *CCNV, or the Community for Creative Non-Violence, is the largest homeless shelter in the Washington DC area.

Excerpt: I drove Ruby to her next stop for the day. Naomi’s Women’s Center was a four-level rowhouse on Tenth Street, NW, in a block of similar structures. It opened at seven, closed at four, and during each day provided food, showers, clothing, activities, and counseling for any homeless woman who could find the place.

Excerpt: My new neighborhood coffee shop was a tiny all night bakery run by a rowdy family of Pakistanis on Kalorama, in a section of Adams-Morgan that could go from safe to treacherous in one small block.

Excerpt: My next stop Saturday morning, after Naomi’s, was the Mount Gilead Christian Church near Gallaudet University. According to my map, it was the kitchen nearest the intersection of New York and Florida, where the warehouse had once stood.

Excerpt: The Pylon Grill was an all-night coffee shop in Foggy Bottom, near George Washington University. It was known as a hangout for insomniacs and news addicts.

Excerpt: It was twenty minutes past nine when I arrived with my lawyer at the Carl Moultrie Building, on the corner of Sixth and Indiana, downtown… I had never been near the Moultrie Building, home of civil and criminal cases in the District.

Excerpt: I drove to the Georgetown Law School near Capitol Hill. The library was open until midnight. It was the perfect place to hide and ponder the life of a wayward lawyer.

Excerpt: I turned and went northeast, past Logan Circle, into the rougher sections of the city until I found the 14th Street Legal Clinic. Fourteenth at Q, NW. I parked at the curb, certain I would never again see my Lexus.