DC By the Book

Excerpt: It was a diner, not a coffee shop, but coffee shop sounded better, "more high-class," Calliope said. Around the family, John just called the store the magazi. It sat on N Street, below Dupont Circle, just in from Connecticut Avenue, at the entrance to an alley. Inside were a dozen stools spaced around horseshoe-shaped Formica-topped counter, and a couple of four-top booths along the large plate glass window that gave onto a generous view of Connecticut and N. The dominant colors, as in many Greek-owned establishments, were blue and white.... There was a short breakfast flurry and a two-hour lunch rush and plenty of dead space, when the four employees, all blacks, talked, horsed around, brooded, and smoked

Excerpt: "Deon Brown watched Baker walk west on Fairmont Street, his collar casually turned up, his hands swinging free. Deon drove east, then swung a left on 11th Street and headed uptown. Charles Baker went to the middle of the block, a strip of row houses with turrets, and cut up a walkway to the front of a building that held multiple apartments. He stepped into the foyer and pushed one of the several brown buttons set beside pieces of paper fitted behind small rectangles of glass.

Excerpt: Just before Fairmont, Deon cut the Mercury to the curb and let it idle. Two blocks up ahead, at Clifton Street, young white people in business clothes were walking over the crest of the big hill running along Cardozo High School, coming up from the Metro station toward their condos and houses. "Look at that," said Baker. "The think they can just move in here....They don't even know where they at or what can happen to 'em. Walkin all confident and shit. They think they gonna take over our city."