Vehicles behind it. A large, toothy dog with a chain around its neck guarded the front. I

had not planned on poking around rusty old cars, and the dog made the decision to keep

going an easier one. We figured she lived in an area between the dinic on Fourteenth and

Naomi's on Tenth near L, roughly from Logan Circle to Mount 1 Vernon Square.

"But you never know," she said. "I'm constantly amazed at how mobile these people are.

They have plenty of time, and some will walk for miles."

We observed the street people. Every beggar came under our scrutiny as we drove slowly

by. We walked through parks, looking at the homeless, dropping coins in their cups,

hoping we would see someone we knew. No luck.

I left Megan at Naomi's, and promised to call later in the afternoon. Ruby had become a

wonderful excuse to keep in touch.

* * *

The congressman was a five-termer from Indiana, a Republican named Burkholder who

had an apartment in Virginia but liked to jog in the early evenings around Capitol Hill.

His staff informed the media that he showered and changed in one of the seldom-used

gyms Congress built for itself in the basement of a House office building.

As a member of the House, Burkholder was one of 435; thus virtually unknown even

though he'd been in Washington ten years. He was mildly ambitious, squeaky clean, a

health nut, forty-one years old. He served on Agriculture and chaired a subcommittee of

Ways and Means.

Burkholder was shot early Wednesday evening near Union Station as he jogged alone. He

was wearing a sweat suit--no wallet, no cash, no pockets with which to carry anything

Valuable. There appeared to be no motive. He encountered a street person in some

manner, perhaps a collision or a bump or a harsh word given or received, and two shots

were fired. One missed the congressman, the other struck him in the upper left arm, then

traveled into his shoulder and stopped very near his neck.

The shooting occurred not long after dark, on a sidewalk next to a street filled with late

commuters. It was witnessed by four people, all of whom described the assailant as a male black homeless-looking type, almost a generic description. He vanished into the

night, and by the time the first commuter could stop, leave his car, and rush to the aid of

Burkholder, the man with the gun was long gone.

The congressman was rushed to the hospital at George Washington, where the bullet was

removed during a two-hour surgery, and he was pronounced stable.

It had been many years since a member of Congress had been shot in Washington.

Several had been mugged, but with no permanent damage. The muggings typically

provided the victims with wonderful pulpits to rail against crime and the lack of values

and the general decline of everything; all blame, of course, being laid at the feet of the

opposing party.

Burkholder wasn't able to rail when I saw the story at eleven. I'd been napping in my

chair, reading and watching boxing. It was a slow news day in the District, slow until

Burkholder got shot. The news anchorperson breathlessly announced the event, giving

the basics with a nice photo of the congressman in the background, then went Live! to the

hospital where a reporter stood shivering in the cold outside the ER entrance, a door

Burkholder had passed through four hours earlier. But there was an ambulance in the

background, and bright lights, and since she could not produce blood or a corpse for the

viewers, she had to make it as sensational as possible.

The surgery went well, she reported. Burkholder was stable and resting. The doctors had

released a statement which said basically nothing. Earlier, several of his colleagues had

rushed to the hospital, and somehow she had been able to coerce them into appearing

before the camera. Three of them stood close together, all looking sufficiently grave and

somber, although Burkholder's life had never been in danger. They squinted at the lights

and tried to appear as if it was a major invasion of their private lives.

I had never heard of any of them. They offered their concerns about their buddy, and

made his condition sound far worse than the doctors. Without prompting, they gave their

assessments of the general decline of Washington.

Then there was another live report from the scene of the shooting. Another goofy reporter

standing on the Exact Spot! where he fell, and now there was really something to see.

There was a patch of red blood, which she pointed to with great drama, right down there.

She squatted and almost touched the sidewalk. A cop stepped into the frame and offered

his vague summary of what went on.

The report was live, yet in the background there were flashing red and blue lights of

police cars. I noticed this; the reporter did not.

A sweep was under way. The D.C. police were out in force cleaning the streets, shoveling

the street people into cars and vans and taking them away. Throughout the night, they

swept Capitol Hill, arresting anyone caught sleeping on a bench, sitting in a park, begging on a sidewalk, anyone who obviously appeared to be without a home. They

charged them with loitering, littering, public drunkenness, panhandling.

Not all were arrested and taken to jail. Two van loads were driven up Rhode Island, in

Northeast, and dumped in the parking lot next to a community center with an all-night

soup kitchen. Another van carrying eleven people stopped at the Calvary Ntission on T

Street, five blocks from our office. The men were given the choice of going to jail or

hitting the streets. The van emptied.

________________________________________________________________

Thirty-two