“My doctor is wonderful. Once, in 1955, when I couldn’t afford an operation, he touched up the X-rays.”    

—   Joey Bishop

My education in the arms of a corrupt prosecutor who is now in a half-way house for obstruction of justice and essentially running a “criminal enterprise” out of the Hamptons D.A.s office gave me quite an education. And it was free. As long as you don’t count ‘A Civil Death’ — the loss of several hundred million dollars in cash, assets, employment, pension, and destroyed family life. Having trained as a psychoanalyst, drug counselor and therapist was an education that I thought I could rely on. Unfortunately, background checks make any employment impossible — despite the law. You can be President but getting a job as a therapist or dog-walker is off the table.

And, in fact, what I learned cannot be taught at Columbia or NYU — but it should be. Mental Health workers, in prisons and those dealing with former inmates, drug addicts and drug dealers, take note.

Here’s a little taste of what we’re all missing.

_______________________________________________________________________________

From Gulag, a five volume account of my prison esperience::

“Since I was called to see the nurse in the infirmary unexpectedly, I feared the worst. Being called to Medical made me very sympathetic to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany. It was the feeling that I had no control over what would happen to my own body. Since inmates were possessions of the State, they could do to us as they chose. Any objections? The Box.

In this case I was told by the nurse to “take your medication in the morning.” That was a nonsensical comment for her to make and it was a complete non sequitur. To call me down to see her to tell me this could mean only one thing. A Medical Trip. When asked if I was being sent on a medical trip she responded, “I don’t know.” Of course, since she didn’t expect me to ask her based upon this remark about taking my medication, she was clearly lying. All of this evasiveness was based upon the so-called security measures that an inmate should not know when or where, or even if, a trip was in the offing. 

This supposedly guarded against sudden escape attempts related to gangs of bandits that could be sent to rescue someone from a Corrections van. They watched too many movies. As if I were going to call my gang of mortgage felons to hover around the entrance to this upstate New York prison – hoping to free me from chains and spirit me away maybe to Rome, New York, where I would be debriefed.

In any event, I assumed that this little charade was about being sent on a Medical trip in the morning and that they either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me where. Of course, I already knew that this had to be about seeing the dermatologist and assumed that’s what this was all about. Tight security and all, notwithstanding. Besides, since the doctor told me that I’d be going to a doctor in Ogdensburg, about 40 minutes away, I wasn’t all that concerned. I’d wanted to check out the possible skin cancer and the rest of my Scotch-Irish skin.

The night CO, in keeping with the tight security, came to my cube at about 11:30 and awakened me to tell me that he would wake me in the morning for my medical trip. The  phones were now off, as they all were at 11 p.m., so it was now safe to tell me. Planning an elaborate escape with “the felons” waiting outside the gates was now no longer possible.

What I found humorous, of course, was the fact that the CO was awakening me to tell me he would awaken me. The logic here was circular, if not rational. So, naturally, I couldn’t get back to sleep and would now be sleep deprived for my trip.

John Milton named Pandemonium the capitol of Hell. But, he’d obviously never been in upstate in New York. Otherwise, he might have realized that Rome really was in New York. And that was where I wound up. Or, somewhere near there in a medical facility connected to Mohawk Correctional Facility called Walsh. It was about 3 hours away from where I was, which was itself one of the world’s numerous assholes.

Of course, the day started with a strip search, bending over to show off my sphincter at 6 a.m., checking out my “junk” — my testicles and penis. Most COs seemed to do this every day and I wondered if they had to pay the Homosexual Correction Officers Association to get the job. 

“Christ,” I thought.

I had asked to use the toilet twice before boarding the bus. Mainly, because when I first asked, the CO followed me into the toilet and stood there with the door open staring at me. Did he think I was faking the need to piss? Or, maybe I was carrying around someone else’s piss to switch and didn’t really need to go? Jesus. 

After being searched and chained, hands together, chained around the waist, hooked to the handcuffs and then feet chained together -­- the CO on duty in the Infirmary — where they prepared everyone for the trip — told the driver that I had gone to the toilet “about 25 times” so he now had it in for me. The cop hitched his pants over his 75 pound gut and sneered.

“Well, that’s it, if he has to go again he’ll have to piss in his pants.”

I conjured up a Rodney Dangerfield routine.

So, the three of us were loaded into a van. Me, Martinez and Zion. Martinez was about 50, Spanish, pleasant, and spoke virtually no English. He was about 5’7″. 

“Weh we gone?”

“What?” 

“We gan whey?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The showers, maybe?” 

“Huh?”

“Skin doctor, I think.” 

“Huh?”

“Skin — dok-tore,” I said, pinching my arm.

“Ah, okay,” said Martinez.

After being lined up on a wooden bench, sitting in the fluorescent-lit room at 6 a.m. with Martinez and Zion, I’d waited half an hour before one of the COs invited me into a changing room. To undress, naturally. How could I pass up the chance to show yet another North Country cop what my sphincter looked like? Not to mention showing off my hastily donned underwear and socks which had been turned inside out — my shirt and pants removed, standing naked for this high school graduate to check my testicles and size up my dick.

Then the chains came out and another hour wait until, after all of the morning COs sat around the Infirmary with coffee and donuts to clog their arteries. They sat with their 50, 60 and 70 pound paunches folded over their pants — joking about inmates and sharing retirement plans.

“Jake was down at Auburn and he finally packed it in.”

“Took it at 25. He actually took his vacation, came back and left. Nobody even knew he’d put in his papers.”

Lots of laughter. And, a lot of “no shits” all around and one, “Jesus.”

When we were finally loaded onto a van we still had no idea where we were going.

Zion was the quiet type. 

He was a black guy of about 27, 5’9″ with long dreads wound around together. He had a serious, unemotional face. He looked either bored or pissed off. Understandable. Who could be happy about being sent to the gas chamber?

Of course, there was no talking allowed in the van. 

No one wanted to cause a little “waffling” by the CO who was driving. With no seatbelts, handcuffs, chained to the floor at 55 miles per hour, real damage was possible if he had to stop “suddenly” to avoid an accident. 

The prison system was unconcerned about no-fault insurance coverage or murder by car accident.

We drove for half an hour before stopping at Riverview prison — where I had been taken on a previous Medical trip, where I’d seen the eye doctor. Today, I wasn’t seeing anyone there; they were just picking up more inmates. 

There were now six guys in the van and it was a tight fit with leg chains and handcuffs that are boxed into a little device that prevents the handcuffs from moving at all. Trying to find a position that doesn’t cut off the circulation in my wrists was not easy. After a few hours of this any help that the dermatologist could give them paled by comparison to the nerve damage caused by being sent there.

After three hours of this we pulled into Mohawk Medical Facility, also known as Walsh, for medical treatment. 

The cuffs and chains were left on in the waiting area where roughly 30 other inmates waited to see the doctor, having all come from three other prisons. My bus arrived last and we had to wait. I was the last inmate to be seen.

After having been driven around and then waiting, starting at 5:00 a.m., I finally was going to get to see the doctor. The waiting area was a 30 foot square room with roughly 30 guys sitting around watching a Glee knock-off – a T.V. show called Perfect Pitch. It was an annoyingly stupid show that featured lily-white teenagers singing in outfits that only a performer would ever be caught dead in. The inmates who were forced to watch this show were mostly black and to say that they were bored with everything about it, with the exception of the show’s minor tits and ass, was not an exaggeration. I would have preferred rap music rather than the insipid shit we had to watch.

Behind the waiting area which was cordoned off by metal railings whose purpose was to create a waiting space, there was a line of chairs that the CO drivers sat in — all along one wall behind the waiting area where they watched the inmates and also the T.V. show. 

From my view along that entire wall I could see them all sitting in a line. There were large, corpulent, adipose fat-filled bodies with fat spilling over their belts from one end of the line to the other along that wall — all of the COs watching the T.V. They loved Perfect Pitch. They were entranced by the dancing, the humor, and, even the music.

The inmates and COs were not just in a cultural divide.

It was a chasm. It was not just Country versus City. It was more like Mars versus Pluto.

Finally the nurse called me.

I got up and went into the doctor’s office where I was told to sit on a waiting room table by a CO.

The doctor came in. He was a European Jew who knew a good gig when he found it. He recognized that I was a bit different from the rest of his “clientele” and we spoke briefly. But, I was there for treatment and his opinion on whether my skin cancer was going to be a problem.

He looked at my arm and scratched his bald head. He was about 55 years old, had apparently decided to do his head like Bruce Willis before he lost his mind, and spoke with an accent.

He peered at the faded blotch that the doctor in the Infirmary had said was a sarcoma. He asked, “Did you treat this? It looks like it’s almost healed?”

I looked at him and wondered if he was delusional and said, “No, of course not, how would I treat it? The doctor in our infirmary said it was cancer.”

“Well, it looks alright to me.”

I stared at him. Quietly. My chains and handcuffs rattled a bit. 

I thought of the ordeal I’d just experienced getting to this shithole for treatment? 

“It looks alright to you?” I repeated, looking at him. 

“That’s it?” 

“Listen, I’ll take a few of these off, if you want?” he said, in mock sympathy, aiming at a minor keratosis while holding his Star Wars-styled nitrogen-gun looking like he was anxious to attack. No tests, no biopsies, just this “specialist” with his ray gun — which he apparently enjoyed using.

Looking again closely at my arm, the doctor said, “These things on your arm will last longer than you will,” he said as he zapped me repeatedly while wearing goggles and shooting off his vapor-spewing gun. It felt like a scene out of ‘Blade Runner, The Director’s Cut.’

I wondered if that meant he knew what the prison’s plan for me was – or just a friendly diagnosis meant to relax me.

Having miraculously been declared cancer-free, wondering why I had to make this stressful trip to be told that I was fine, we were all re-manacled and loaded again onto the van.

The trip back to my prison was more interesting and also more stressful. There were three additional guys in the back of the van. 

They were placed in the back because, of course, they were getting off first. There was a quiet 40-something slim, black guy who never said a word and never told anyone his name. Then there was Brown, a talkative medium height, 45 year old black guy who’d obviously had been to Hell and back. 

He was serious, constantly bitching and always looking for food. He had a point because the only food they’d gotten all day was a brown paper bag filled with an apple, two slices of fake baloney and cheese, obviously more soy product, and some juice in a little 4 ounce container. In reality, there was no juice in it but it had a chemical grape taste.

Mustard was included but, of course, making a sandwich that involved putting mustard on bread or meat with rigid handcuffs tied to your waist is like performing a vaudeville routine. Houdini could probably have done it but a guy from SoHo via the Dark Hamptons criminal justice system with an education but no stage experience would be at a loss to get it done. Rather than smear myself with yellow goop that I had no idea how I would remove for the rest of the day, I just slapped together the fake food onto slices of bread and ate it.

Brown was angry and was experienced at expressing it. He had facts to back up his thinly disguised rage. He’d done a few years at a Federal prison in Canaan, Pennsylvania.

“Place is bad news,” he said. 

“What?”

“The FBP place I was at.”

“What was it like?” I asked, murmuring while the van was moving to avoid being waffled.

“Didn’t think I’d make it outta’ there,” said Brown. 

“Why?”

“Mexican mafia, Aryan Nation, Bloods, Dominicans, Mexican cartel guys. Had to watch ya’sef alla time. The Latin Kings and Mexicans were bad there.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, it was bad. Killed a Federal C.O. when I was ‘ere.” 

“Why were you there?”

“Attempted murder. Was bullshit, though.”

I didn’t press it. He clearly was happy to have gotten out.

“Y’know ya get email, 180 minutes a month phone time, but it ain’t worth the stress.” 

“Any white collar guys there?” I said, trying to figure out how his situation would have played out if the Hamptons D.A. Spota hadn’t personally wanted to fuck me – and thrown me to the Feds.

“Oh, yeah, a few, y’know, guys who had 10 or 20 year bids. Dey theah. Dey got a tough time, tho’. Dey ain’t ready for dat place, I’m tellin’ ya.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Dey go to da Yard — they gotta have dey papers to show. You a chil’ molesta, forget aboudit. You fucked. But, snitches get the worser treemen’.”

“I thought snitches didn’t matter much any more?”

“In a Medium in State, maybe. But, in a Max or wid the Feds, you done, man.”

I remembered the Willie Sutton quote and kept it in mind. Here was a murderer, or attempted murderer, whatever, looking down at pedophiles – especially snitches. That was how it was.

As they rolled along listening to the cop’s classic rock, David Bowie came on after Pink Floyd. Layla played and I became aware of the fact that these COs were younger than me, talking about retirement after spending an entire lifetime looking forward to only one thing — NOT working. Certainly not doing this. They had huge guts and were walking heart attacks and their only pleasure in life was donuts and coffee and abusing prisoners.

As I listened to the classic rock radio, watching cows in the fields, I began to daydream about the gigs I’d played in Amsterdam and Mykonos, where free wine and girls flowed — as I entertained with my guitar. I looked forward to getting back to my things, my food, a shower, a change of clothes and a call to my family. We rode along for hours.

But, did not stop where we’d started out. 

It turned out that since the COs had not gotten the entire trip done by 4 p.m., apparently the prison union witching hour — after having waited nearly four hours to see the doctor – we were now going to be spending the night at yet another prison. 

Watertown was the upstate hub where all of the buses and vans transporting prisoners across and down the state had to stop for at least one night.

I would now have to stay at Watertown overnight after a full day excursion to see a doctor. We disembarked at a gothic location that made my prison look like Shangri-la. The dorms were old, the floors were worn gray-streaked tile, the lockers were banged up and scraped with peeling paint, and the dorms were nearly empty. It was like being taken to an old airplane hanger to spend the night. We were given ratty blankets that were paper thin, a couple of sheets, a tiny green towel, a fleabag hotel bar of soap, a roll of toilet paper, a 10-cent toothbrush and a tube of nondescript toothpaste. No change of underwear or shower sandals, and nothing with which to comb hair. It was bare bones even by prison standards. 

And, no phone calls.

“You know there’s no movement on Wednesdays, right?” said some guy in the Rec room attached  to the dorm. 

We’d had our chains removed and sent to the “Draft” dorm, meaning that they were there for only a short time. Sort of like a non-person in a non-existing existence system where no one knew they were there. This was how life was for those incorrigible inmates placed on “the merry-go-round.” The Hell of an existence where constant transfer was life for problem cases where no one could ever find you. Not even your lawyer.

“What do you mean?” I asked, now getting upset at this land of limbo he was in just to see a doctor who looked at my arm for thirty seconds. It was a two-day trip to Hell and  back for a thirty second glance and a Star Wars shooting. The treatment surpassed the disease by far.

“Christ,” I thought.

“You guys may be here for a coupla days — they don’ move anythin’ on Wensdees.” He was a small, emaciated, 40-something white guy who mopped the dorm floor. He looked like he enjoyed being the bearer of good tidings. Why he mopped I couldn’t figure out. No one would ever know whether he did or didn’t.

I stared at the Sylvester Stallone movie on the T.V. screen. 

He’d apparently gotten well past his Rocky period and now looked like he’d  been in a couple of automobile accidents based upon the amount of plastic surgery that he’d had done. It looked like he’d done it himself. It was scary to look at.  It was no longer Rocky Balboa. More like the Steroidal Retiree.

The rest of the day was long. Nothing to read, no phone calls, no talking in the large, mostly empty barracks-style dorm used for “draftees” but a drafty room with the window open and torrential rain to make sure that they needed their wet coats on to keep warm. At least there was a T.V. to stare at if the boredom became too intolerable. Of course, since there were guys that actually were doing their bid in that  dorm, THEY got to choose what played on the T.V. And, of  course, THEY ran the show. I’d made the mistake of asking one of the guys in the bunk next to me to lower the sound on his Walkman, fearing that he would keep the sound high all night. He went off.

“You come ‘ere and you tellin’ me what ta do?” 

He glowered at me and kept the volume up on his Walkman with the earphones on.

“Sorry,” I said. Which, of course, he couldn’t hear since he had the headphones on and turned up to peak volume. But, whatever, I figured, he wouldn’t be hearing much at all in a few years. So, Fuck him.

The hours dragged. The five hours until lights went out was an eternity. And, the thought of having to kill yet another day because there were no vans moving on Wednesdays, the next day, was making me nuts.

But, as was not unusual in prison, the inmate who’d told me that there would be no movement the following day, was wrong. At a little after 8 a.m., after visiting Mess Hall for a piece of very sugary cake and some form of Wheatena cereal, eaten while being stared at by an overly conscientious young CO looking for someone to pick on, we were all advised to get our things and follow an officer to the Draft Office. We were going back to our original prison in the van after all.

I was manacled, handcuffed, boxed, chained waist and feet again, and loaded onto the van. While being handcuffed, the driver, a 58 year old CO who looked visibly tired at doing this for a living, confided that he was retiring. I briefly chatted with him and wished him luck after mentioning that I was a journalist and that this bid was what writers got for exposing corruption and believing in Freedom of the Press. The cop looked at me and, with a wry smile. 

“Well, we all fell for believing in that, didn’t we?” He smiled intelligently and added, “Don’t forget to mention me in your memoirs.” 

I said I wouldn’t forget — especially, if he’d loosen the cuffs a bit so that my arthritis wouldn’t kill me and I could feel my fingers on the ride back. We struck a deal. 

I wondered if Hemmingway, Bukowski or Thompson had to put up with such chained degradation in order to be appreciated. I doubted it.

After being loaded onto the van, the ride back to prison was almost tolerable. It was the first time I had ever seen the town where my prison was located after passing innumerable run-down houses, trailers, dilapidated barns and open farms and fields along the route. What I saw made me much more aware of why these prisons existed. Without the prisons there would be nothing. Maybe not even cows.

The town basically existed along the highway and the Main Street reminded him of the fictitious villages that existed on sets created in Hollywood. It looked almost like nothing  was real beyond the storefronts that ran for about half a mile. There were no pedestrians going in and out of stores and only a few cars. There was a car lot with no one walking around — and  of course, there was a McDonald’s with only two or three cars and a variety of mom and pop stores with no sign of life. 

For the most part it was a ghost town except for TWO Kinney drug stores. It was the pharmacy on the prison prescription labels. This was a town that existed because of the prison. No prison, no town. It was that simple. Upstate, for all practical purposes, was a gigantic State Welfare system of support for meaningless, useless and repetitive efforts. THAT was why the Parole Boards continued to hold inmates long beyond their minimum sentences. It was the land of the body-snatchers. 

The prison-industrial complex.

The stores were empty, the houses were run-down and decaying, the roads were full of potholes, the older buildings were boarded up, and there was little sign of business or activity. It was all a front for the prison and the COs who made $60,000-70,000 PLUS overtime per year — who had huge bellies and children which they had to feed — thanks to our incarceration.

*****

“Welcome back,” said Mac, “you look like Hell. Enjoy your trip?” 

“Thanks, man, it’s good to see you too. Miss me?”

“Absolutely, and in another day, Joe would be poking through your cube looking for your stuff — assuming you’d died and weren’t coming back. He’s the dorm vulture, you know?”

“It’s good to be missed.”

“Your friend’s going tomorrow, you know?” 

“Who? You mean Animal?”

“Yeah, he’s outta here at 6 a.m.,” Mac winked at me. 

“Jesus, finally,” I said.

“You know he was a Trinitario, right?” 

“A what?”

“A Trinitario,” said Mac. 

“You got the Latin Kings, the Dominicans and the Trinitarios. Supposedly, he was high up in that gang. Retired, though, You know Chucky?”

“Who?”

“Chucky, the Spanish guy in the cube by the bubble?” 

“No.”

“Well, he’s the leader of the Spanish guys here. He’s a Latin King. Then you got Vegas, or Diandre, who’s the head of the Bloods. These are the guys that run the blacks and Spanish in this dorm,” he laughed, “and you know Boom?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s their shooter.”

“Their what?”

“The shooter. Bloods tell him what to do. To cut someone, stab them, or shoot them. He just does it and doesn’t ask.”

“Jesus.”

I thought about some of his comments or dealings with these characters and realized that it was not good to not know. I remembered Animal and the snorting and spitting and the mimicking I’d done.

I wondered if I would have some unexpected problem with Chucky, the local Latin Kings leader who’d once told me that the “old guy,” meaning Animal, or Reyes, had done 20 bags of heroin a day and that was why he was so disgusting. Of course, 20 bags a day doesn’t train you to snort and blow your nose in the sink, but it at least explained why he did it so often. Now I found out that he’d had a lot of juice at one point and I had  been making fun of him. Fuck.

“It’s the MS-13’s you have to worry about,” said Mac. “They’re the most feared gang in this country. The Mexican Mafia and the Cartels are all about on par, but the MS-13’s and Jalisco are the ones everyone fears.” 

This was from a Hell’s Angels biker.

“A guy who was in Canaan. A Federal prison — said that he’d been in for attempted murder and had worried about making it out alive. He also said that there were white collar guys there also. Not good.”

“Yeah, a bad spot. That’s a Max, not a camp. They have High, Medium and Low plus camps. Camps are for white collar guys who make a deal with the Feds. If you go to trial or blow it with the Feds, you go anywhere in the U.S. that they send you and any level prison they send you to.”

As Mac was talking to me a couple of guys came up to him. He was standing in his cube looking over the divider and by his locker as I was sitting up on my bed. He was talking to me and then turned to the guy who came by who wanted four rolling papers. 

He made his deal for a stamp to be delivered in a couple of days and walked off. Then, as they continued to talk, he started rolling joints for future customers.

“You wouldn’t have a problem even there, though.” 

“Why?” I said, incredulously.

“Well, your age for one thing. Spanish guys especially respect older inmates. They leave you alone. And, if you came in to a place like a Federal prison they’d ask you for your paperwork first — if you have no rape or pedophile rap you’re good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you’d have no problem there.” 

“What happens to pedophiles?”

“You pay.”

“For what?”

“Everything. You just pay. They never leave you alone. Not good. You pay to stay alive. Then you pay some more.”

“With what?”

“Everything.”

As they were talking, who showed up to see Mac at his locker, but Chucky. They spoke in murmurs and Mac shook his head and said, “I got you” and turned back to me.

“So, what’s your deal here, cigarettes?” 

“Drugs.”

“Holy shit,” I said, surprised not only at what his answer was but that he had no compunctions about telling me.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Okay, I don’t want to know, don’t tell me anything. Not my business,” I said.  He laughed but was completely serious. I did NOT want to know anything. Not what, how much, how frequently. Nothing.

Mac laughed, understanding me.

“I ever tell you about my drug deal?” he said, laughing. I was glad he veered away from what he was doing now and it deflected his nervousness about his business which, while I suspected what it was, he’d not been told the details. Like the mob friend he had who’d taken him on a guided tour of the real Little Italy in Manhattan. He’d made it clear that he did NOT want to  know. Anything.

“No,” I said, realizing that whatever he was about to tell him was history — not current affairs.

He began by laughing. “I had a girlfriend  over one night and we were in bed and I decided  to call a former girlfriend and ask her if ‘E’ was still available from her homo friend and she said ‘probly’ and she said she’d get back to me. Meantime I decided  to order a pizza from another girlfriend I knew who’d had a small pizza shop. She said she’d deliver it herself so I said, ‘great’ so I asked her to bring change of a $100 when she  came over. So she delivers the pizza and I give her the whole hundred in a bag for her since she was having a tough time and I figured ‘what the fuck’ and essentially gave all my money to her.”

“Then what?”

“So a little later the homo shows up and says he wants to buy some coke from me and I say, ‘What? I don’t have any coke, what the fuck are you talking about. You were going to  bring ME something.'”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, I’m scratching my head and thinking, ‘what’s this guy up to?'” 

“Yeah?”

“Next thing I know, it’s 6 a.m. and the doorbell rings and I think, ‘Okay, this isn’t going to be good. My girlfriend’s naked upstairs, I’m wearing shorts and who the fuck is this?'”

“And,…”

“I open the door and there’s a gun in my face and 6 guys in SWAT outfits coming running in and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’ and we go upstairs, my girlfriend is stark naked and standing by the bed and the cops are eyeing her and looking for drugs and cash. And, of course, they find nothing. No drugs. No cash. Nothing. Until one cop picks up an ashtray and there are a couple of empty bags that once had coke in them. You know, for me and my girl. I wasn’t SELLING anything.”

“Sure. Recreational, right?”

“Right,” he says, missing my sarcasm.

“So we get to the station and I start tellin’ the cops that they’ve got nothin’ and after a while I’m in the cell and one a them comes to me and says the judge wants to see you.” 

And, I say, ‘The judge?’ and the cop says, ‘Yeah, wiseguy, the judge.”‘

“No shit?”

“No shit. So, I follow the cop and, whadda y’know he takes me into the judge’s chambers. And, the judge is sitting there, pissed off, an’ he knew me an’ I knew him. I’d been in front of him before. An’ he says to me, ‘Okay wiseguy we got you now. you wanna plead this out now and we let your girlfriend go?’ and I say ‘What’d you have in mind?’ and he says, ‘How about 12 1/2 to 15?’– as in years.” 

“An’ I say, ‘How about you drop the charges?’ an’ he looks at me like I’m nuts.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said.

“I say, first, you got no cash. Second, you got no drugs, Third, you got no recording,’ — I’d learned that they recorded my conversation with the homo — ‘So, you got nothin’.’”

“No shit?”

He laughed. 

“So, the judge says to me, ‘What do you mean we have no recording? an’ I  say, ‘Play the tape, they’ll be nothin’ on it.'”

“What?”

“I bought this device at Radio Shack. It’s a $60 item. Worth its weight in gold.”

“So, what then?” I said.

“Judge says, ‘Tell you what, I’ll cut you 12 1/2 to 15 and we’re done here.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said,” as he laughed, ”How about 6 months and I walk outta here right now. You got no cash, no drugs, no recording, you got nothin’ cause they ain’t anythin’ on any tape.’ He  already knew that, though.”

I laughed, “Jesus, you have some pair of  balls.”

“The judge looked at me like he wanted to strangle me and then said, ‘How about 6 months and I cut you two months on that and then you owe us four months. Deal?'”

“Unbelievable.” I said.

“I had him by the balls. They had nothing. Everything they recorded was scrambled.”

It was good to have an education, I thought.

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