D.C. BROTHERS GROW UP ON THE EDGE (Part Two)

Stealing and Dealing

Although the Wallace and Moore boys were together a great deal on Buena
Vista Terrace, none realized that a romance was developing between their
mothers. In 1983, Carolyn Wallace unexpectedly kissed Harris, and the two
began a discreet affair.

The next summer, both mothers were called by a store manager at Iverson
Mall in suburban Maryland. Russell and Steve Moore, both 7, had walked two
miles to the mall, and according to their mothers, they were caught
shoplifting. Russell remembers his mother whipped him so hard with a strap
that he couldn't sit down the rest of the day.

About the same time, and at the same mall, Tyrone, then 8, was caught
stealing clothes. The lure of material possessions was particularly keen
for Tyrone. Even as a child, he admired drug dealers' fancy clothes, the
money they flashed and the girls they attracted. In the spring of 1984,
Tyrone confided to a teenage drug dealer that he wanted to go to the
Ringling Bros. circus at the D.C. Armory but needed ticket money. The
dealer gave him two small bags of loveboat. Tyrone said he peddled the
drugs for $20 at the bottom of the hill, across from the pretty white frame
house where his aunt lived.

The aunt took him to the circus, believing Tyrone's story that his mother
had provided the money. He even treated himself to a toy with a rotating
light and a big blue and pink tuft of cotton candy.

The darker side of drug usage played out at home a year later when Rufus
Denny passed out in the bathroom one afternoon from a heroin overdose. When
Tyrone and Carolyn managed to force the door open, Rufus was sprawled out
"butterball naked" -- Tyrone's phrase -- with a tourniquet around his left
arm and a syringe on the floor. Paramedics took Rufus to the hospital. He
was home before dark.

Rufus Denny said that his heroin dependence lessened after the overdose but
that his wine drinking increased. Domestic battles on Buena Vista Terrace
intensified. Once, according to Renee and Tyrone, Rufus pushed Ben's head
into a wall, marring the plaster.

In another fight, recounted by four family members, Carolyn stabbed Rufus
in the head with a knife after he swung a shovel at Tyrone. Rufus was so
drunk he seemed not to notice the knife in his skull.

Shortly before Christmas 1987, with the family facing eviction, Carolyn
packed up her four younger children and moved back to South Carolina --
without Rufus. Also without Ben, who at 16 had fathered a child, dropped
out of the ninth grade and was at a Job Corps training center in Virginia.
Carolyn and her children moved in with an old family friend, known to the
children as "Miss Cat," in Lincoln Shire, a suburb of Columbia.

Renee, Tyrone and Russell recall the year as idyllic. Their school classes
were smaller, the teachers more attentive. Their classmates didn't "Jone' "
on them about clothes. There were no fights.

Friction developed soon enough with Miss Cat, who threatened to evict them.
Ben had dropped out of the Job Corps and, by his own account, was back in
Washington selling crack around Christmas 1988, when he ran into Patricia
Harris. Harris had moved from Buena Vista Terrace into a row house at 1010
11th St. NE, convinced that the new neighborhood would prove safer for her
sons.

Now, hearing of the Wallaces' plight, she arranged for Carolyn and her
children to move back to Washington to live with her. From then on, the
couple's lesbian relationship was out in the open.

The Wallace children were confused by Miss Pat's new role in their lives,
despite Carolyn's efforts to explain. Renee remembers Russell, who was 11,
crying bitterly, "What about my daddy?" Around the neighborhood, the
Wallace children became the brunt of a different kind of "Jone'in" -- about
their mother's openly gay lifestyle.

Years later, Russell would simply say, "I was embarrassed."

A Cash-Greased Slide

Within days of moving into the row house, Tyrone began accompanying Miss
Pat's youngest son, Steven Moore, to a sidewalk drug market in the 1200
block of Wylie Street NE. Both boys were 12 years old.

Tyrone remembers Steve hanging out on Wylie Street almost every day. Steve
declined to be interviewed. Although neither boy was hustling drugs yet,
Tyrone was anxious to explore the possibilities. He needed money to buy
clothes and look sharp.

One Saturday, an 18-year-old hustler wanted to go to a rap music concert at
the Capital Centre. He asked Steve to hold a bag containing 80 rocks of
crack, each worth $20. Other dealers also had gone to the concert, leaving
the street untended.

"Wasn't nobody out there because all of the older dudes were gone to the
rap show," Tyrone recalled. Pipeheads showed up, looking for crack. Steve
and Tyrone briefly debated what to do, then agreed to try their hand at
selling. When the hustler returned a few hours later, Steve told him all 80
rocks had been sold. As the hustler began to berate them for lying, Tyrone
reached into his pocket and handed him a fistful of cash. The dealer
methodically counted the stack of small bills, warning what he would do to
them if the tally was short. He was shocked when he reached $1,600.

"We weren't short a penny," Tyrone recalled with a smile. "I ain't never
going to forget it."

Each boy collected $100 -- a nice bit of change for a pair of 12-year-olds.
For Tyrone, that Saturday marked the beginning of his long, cash-greased
slide into prison.

Into the Battle Zone

Carolyn Wallace did not notice Tyrone's drug dealing or the clothes he was
buying with his profits until police called to say he had been arrested for
peddling crack near Ninth and I streets NE in March 1989.

"That's when she found out I was dealing drugs," Tyrone said. "I told her
and Miss Pat I found the drugs, but they didn't believe me." A family court
judge gave him probation.

A month later, Steve Moore was arrested at the same corner drug market with
19 rocks of crack and $160. He also said he had found the drugs; no one
believed him either, and he was sentenced to three months at the Oak Hill
juvenile detention center, according to his mother.

By July, cars with pipeheads eager to buy crack would line up in the alley
behind the 11th Street row house as if at a drive-through restaurant. The
boys sold rocks from the basement door. After neighbors complained, the
rental agency raised Patricia Harris's monthly rent from $650 to $1,150.

Furious at the boys, Harris turned the basement upside down and found $680
in cash. "I spent the money on the household," she said. "Bought food, paid
a bill." A few days later, Harris recalled, she found a bag filled with
crack rocks and flushed it down the toilet, despite wails from Ben and
Steve that "you're destroying money!" Harris issued an ultimatum: Ben and
Steve must stop dealing or get out. The two boys stayed away overnight but
returned the next day. Steve was arrested again for crack dealing a few
months later and was sentenced to three months in a juvenile facility, his
mother said.

The rent increase forced the two women to look for a cheaper apartment.
Harris had been hired in March as a corrections officer at the D.C. jail.
Carolyn was still on welfare. In October 1989, they moved into the
one-bedroom apartment at 1104 21st St. NE in the complex known as Carver
Terrace. The monthly rent was $415.

The neighborhood seemed to inspire nicknames, most with a combat motif: In
addition to Little Vietnam, the area sometimes was called Porkchop Hill or
Little Beirut. The sound of guns "busting off" was routine on the narrow
streets, where a weapon could be had for as little as $50. On the day they
moved in, Russell saw the body of a boy being carried out of 1108 21st St.;
he had been shot.

By Christmas, Ben and Tyrone were boldly dealing drugs in front of the
building. Carolyn and Harris would confront them, demanding that they move
out. They would decamp for a while, then move back home. Another
confrontation would simply start the cycle anew.

In April 1990, Tyrone and Ben were arrested for dealing at Ninth and I
streets NE. Ben, 18, eventually pleaded guilty to drug charges, received a
five-year sentence under the Youth Rehabilitation Act and served 21 months
at Lorton Correctional Complex's Youth Center.

Tyrone, 14, was charged as a juvenile. On the day of his arrest, a
court-appointed lawyer called Carolyn Wallace and asked her to come get
him. She refused. The lawyer insisted, but she was weary of trying to
reform her sons.

"I don't have to do anything but stay black and die," she recalled telling
the lawyer. "I'm not coming to get him."

Six hours later, Tyrone strolled into the apartment, released on personal
recognizance, according to Carolyn Wallace. Eventually convicted of
dealing, he was put on probation.

Patricia Harris also was tired of the incessant battles with her boys. She
had expelled Nick from the household in 1987, when he was a 17-year-old
11th-grader at Anacostia High School. Nick moved into his own apartment
nearby without complaint, she recalled, and dropped out of high school in
1989. He declined requests for an interview.

About the time Nick moved out, his brother Paul moved in. Paul had lived
with his father in New York, but after his sophomore year in high school,
he decided he wanted to graduate from Dunbar High School in the District,
his maternal grandmother's alma mater.

Paul was different. He didn't care about name-brand clothes and adamantly
opposed drugs. He didn't own a car or a gun, and he didn't hang out on 21st
Street. He graduated from Dunbar in June 1990 with a B average and took a
summer job as an usher at the AMC theater in Union Station, hoping to go to
college in the fall.

About 8 p.m. July 12, 1990, a day after Ben was sentenced to Lorton for
dealing crack, Nick Moore, then 20, pulled up in front of his girlfriend's
apartment in the 2100 block of I Street NE, according to D.C. Superior
Court records. He saw two men, Robert Harris Jr., 18, and Calvin V.
"Redtop" Johnson Jr., 19, snatch a woman's purse.

Nick got out of the car and told the two men to return the purse. Harris
and Johnson squared off to fight. When Johnson passed a pistol to Harris,
Nick fled into his girlfriend's building with Harris in pursuit. Once
inside, Nick telephoned his family's apartment, two blocks away.

Paul answered. He listened calmly, put down the receiver and said simply,
"I'll be back," Tyrone recalled. Patricia Harris asked where he was going.
Paul, evidently not wanting to alarm her, told her he was going to the
store to buy a honeybun.

Paul saw Redtop Johnson waiting on I Street outside the building into which
Nick had fled. An argument flared into a fistfight. Paul had some karate
skills and was more than holding his own, according to subsequent accounts,
but when Robert Harris joined the fray, Paul was overmatched.

As Johnson held Paul, Harris shot him in the chest, a police report said.
The two assailants then stomped and kicked him.

Paul was pronounced dead at D.C. General Hospital. He was 19. Patricia
Harris identified her son's body.

"I never had any problem with Paul," she recalled. "None! Just one out of
three comprehended and tried to make something of himself. You wouldn't
believe they were brothers."

Robert Harris and Johnson surrendered to police that night, apparently
fearing retaliation.

In 1991, Harris was convicted of second-degree murder and gun charges. He
is in prison, serving 14 to 42 years. Johnson was convicted of carrying an
unlicensed pistol and was sentenced to a year.

On Feb. 6, 1992, seven months after his release, Johnson tried to rob two
men he took to be crack dealers on 21st Street NE. They were undercover
cops. He shot and wounded both officers before being shot and killed by 19
bullets fired by other police officers staking out the street.

Nick Moore, according to his mother, feels responsible for Paul's death. He
knows that if he had not interfered in a robbery, Paul would not have been
killed. In retrospect, his mother said, Nick believes it was ill-advised to
call Paul -- who was never armed -- into the street. Virtue provided scant
protection in Little Vietnam.

When Patricia Harris came home from the hospital after identifying Paul,
she found 13-year-old Steve crying. Paul had tried to convince his younger
brother that there was no future in drug dealing. Steve drew a different
lesson from Paul's death.

"No man is ever going to walk up on me and shoot me like that," Steve told
his mother.

"That's when Steve started carrying a gun," Patricia Harris said. "He used
to be a fighter. He would fight with his fists, but he said, 'Momma, they
don't fight any more. I'm never going to be caught without a gun.' "

Three years later, on May 10, 1993, Steve Moore, then 16, allegedly shot
and killed Michael Oliver, 28, an alleged crack thief, 100 feet from the
Wallace-Harris apartment at 21st and Vietnam. Steve has pleaded not guilty.
Oliver, known for trying to "rough off" dealers by stealing part of their
stash, was found face down on the sidewalk with seven bullets in him, his
Walkman still playing and an unopened beer can in his pocket.

Russell Wallace would subsequently testify that he watched Steve Moore gun
down Oliver. But Steve had yet to be arrested six weeks later, when Russell
murdered Anthony Davis.

A Pang of Conscience

After killing Ant Davis, Russell Wallace spent the summer working in a
neighborhood day camp for elementary school children. He smoked marijuana,
drank rotgut wine daily and got into occasional fistfights. With the 21st
Street Crew, he also participated in numerous shootouts, mostly with the
arch-rival I Street Crew from two blocks away.

Russell didn't know why or when the two gangs had become enemies. He didn't
much care. Sometimes he shot at people when he was high and then didn't
recognize them when they came looking for revenge.

In September 1993, Russell reported to Spingarn High School and learned
that the "social promotion" he had received from ninth grade did not
suffice to let him enroll in 10th grade at Spingarn. After several confused
days, he was directed to Phelps, a nearby vocational school.

Russell attended all his classes at Phelps the first day. On day two, he
started hooking to sell drugs on 21st Street. The only class he liked was
brick masonry. Reading remained a problem.

The school year passed and still the police did not connect him to Davis's
slaying. Russell didn't think about the killing much anymore; he'd felt
torn about it, but his ambivalence never evolved into real remorse.

The summer of 1994 was as aimless and reckless as the previous one -- a
season of guns, drugs, shootouts.

One night in August, 23-year-old Johnathan "John John" Ray started shooting
into the air after smoking some loveboat Russell had sold him. Ray lived in
Maryland but was a regular on 21st Street. He had survived being shot four
times in an incident there just seven months earlier.

Ray behaved bizarrely after smoking loveboat, and Russell had concluded
that he was a menace. Russell resolved not to sell him any more drugs.

At 3 a.m. on Sept. 14, 1994, Russell and some friends were shooting craps
on 21st Street. Ray appeared -- pistol in plain view -- and circled the
group, patting each player's pockets.

To Russell, Ray's behavior suggested an intent to rob the group; more
important, it was a sign of gross disrespect. Russell got up and walked away.

"What, you're going to get your gun?" Ray called after him.

Russell didn't answer. He walked to a friend's apartment and retrieved his
eight-shot .45 semiautomatic pistol.

When Russell returned, Ray was sitting on his 10-speed bicycle. He again
asked Russell if he had gone to get his gun.

Russell said nothing. He kept his hand on the .45 in his pocket, turned and
began to walk away.

According to Russell, Ray pulled his gun out and said, "You fake-ass
nigger. You bitch-ass nigger."

Russell swung around and shot Ray once in the abdomen.

"Now, who's talking?" he shouted, as Ray slumped to the ground. As he had
with Anthony Davis, Russell walked over to his victim and emptied the gun.

He ran to his mother's place, hid the gun, then took refuge at a friend's
apartment. He subsequently gave the .45 for safekeeping to a boy who lived
across the street. A week later, Russell dropped out of school.

Russell was hardly given to introspection, but he convinced himself that
killing Ray was justified: Patting down pockets, he reasoned, violated the
street code by which drug dealers at 21st and Vietnam lived. If Ray had
gotten away with such behavior, Russell said, others could have challenged
him, too.

"He knew me personally from around there," Russell later said. "Why is he
going to pat my pockets?" If killing Ray seemed justified, Russell still
felt occasional twinges about the shooting of Davis 15 months earlier. One
night, after a bout of heavy drinking, he returned to the corner of Benning
Road and 18th Street. There he poured liquor on the spot where Davis had died.

It was the closest he had come to regret.

Checked-by: derek rea