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The coroner who examined Walt found scar tissue under the skin of the boy's arm, indicating that he had shot heroin before. There was no evidence of the needle tracks common to hardcore addicts. Still, Walter weighed only 80 lbs.; so a double injection of heroin —the suspected dosage—would have been enough to depress his breathing and kill him. Was he deliberately given too powerful a dose? Maybe he had threatened a pusher, many of whom are his own age. Or did he perhaps know exactly what he was doing?
One thing is certain—Walt had no trouble getting the stuff. Take a ride down 116th Street sometime; see the pushers openly peddling heroin to young blacks for $2 a bag. If you go on a mild gray day, you will see doped youngsters nodding listlessly in doorways. This was Walt's Main Street; it was all he ever knew.
When he was found on the bathroom floor of a neighborhood rooming house, he was wearing one of those Snoopy sweatshirts so popular with kids of his age. It bore the inscription: "I wish I could bite somebody ... I need a release from my inner tensions!" It was not just heroin that killed Walter. Maybe, like many another child born black in the ghetto, he died of his whole life.