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kids to be lookouts for ’em. Give these kids beepers and cells to warn them off when the five-O comes around. Entry-level positions. Some of the parents, when there are parents, participate, too. Let these drug dealers duck into their apartments when there’s heat. Teach their kids not to talk to The Man. So you got kids being raised in a culture that says the drug dealers are the good guys and the cops are bad. I’m not lying. It’s exactly how it is.
    The trend now is to sell marijuana. Coke, crack, and heroin, you can still get it, but the new thing is to deal pot. Here’s why: up until recently, in the District, possession or distribution of marijuana up to ten pounds— ten pounds —was a misdemeanor. They’ve changed that law, but still, kid gets popped for selling grass, he knows he’s gonna do no time. Even on a distribution beef, black juries won’t send a black kid into the prison system for a marijuana charge, that’s a proven fact. Prosecutors know this, so they usually no-paper the case. That means most of the time they don’t even go to court with it. I’m not bullshitting. Makes you wonder why they even bother having drug laws to begin with. They legalize the stuff, they’re gonna take the bottom right out the market, and the violent crimes in this city would go down to, like, nothing. Don’t get me started. I know it sounds strange, a cop saying this. But you’d be surprised how many of us feel that way.
    Okay, I got off the subject. I was talking about my night.
    Early on I got a domestic call, over on Otis Place. When I got there, two cruisers were on the scene, four young guys, two of them with flashlights. A rookie named Buzzy talked to a woman at the front door of her row house, then came back and told me that the object of the complaint was behind the place, in the alley. I walked around back alone and into the alley, and right off I recognized the man standing inside the fence of his tiny, brown-grass yard. Harry Lang, sixty-some years old. I’d been to this address a few times in the past ten years.
    I said, “Hello, Harry,” Harry said, “Officer,” and I said, “Wait right here, okay?” Then I went through the open gate. Harry’s wife was on her back porch, flanked by her two sons, big strapping guys, all of them standing under a triangle of harsh white light coming from a naked bulb. Mrs. Lang’s face and body language told me that the situation had resolved itself. Generally, once we arrive, domestic conflicts tend to calm down on their own.
    Mrs. Lang said that Harry had been verbally abusive that night, demanding money from her, even though he’d just got paid. I asked her if Harry had struck her, and her response was negative. But she had a job, too, she worked just as hard as him, why should she support his lifestyle and let him speak to her like that…I was listening and not listening, if you know what I mean. I made my sincere face and nodded every few seconds or so.
    I asked her if she wanted me to lock Harry up, and of course she said no. I asked what she did want, and she said she didn’t want to see him “for the rest of the night.” I told her I thought I could arrange that, and started back to have a talk with Harry. The porch light went off behind me as I hit the bottom of the wooden stairs. Dogs had begun to bark in the neighboring yards.
    Harry was short and low-slung, a black black man, nearly featureless in the dark. He wore a porkpie hat and his clothes were pressed and clean. He kept his eyes down as I spoke to him over the barks of the dogs. His reaction time was very slow when I asked for a response. I could see right away that he was on a nod.
    Harry had been a controlled heroin junkie for the last thirty years. During that time, he’d always held a job, lived in this same house, and been there, in one condition or another, for his kids. I’d wager he