CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
2000- The Aftermath
A week after I received that unsettling reading, I was once again sitting around the pod trying to come up with a way to fill my time. Journaling was out of the question- I was so tired of recording my droning interior monologue.
Just as I was about to see if I could scare up a card game, a C.O. came over and told me my public defender was there to see me and that I had to go to room 34.
My public defender? Que? You never hear from your public defenders after you’re handed your sentence, especially not for something so stupid like this. But I said, “Okay,” and went over to room 34.
My lawyer stood up when I entered. He told me to have a seat.
When I was seated, he was like, “Look, I never do this, but you're still pretty young and you're obviously kind of dumb. I have no idea why, but I see something in you and I believe you might learn something if I walk you through what happened, so you understand.”
I nodded, slightly disoriented. My lazy ass public defender came all the way out here because he “saw something” in me? I guess.
“And while you're in here,” he continued, “you can start to make better choices and come up with a plan to put your life together. By the time you get out, you'll be close to twenty-seven and twenty-seven is pretty much crunch time for figuring out if you're really going to get your shit together or not.”
I just looked at him like, “All right, go on.”
Maybe this nerdy looking man would be the one person in this world who could answer all my thousands of burning existential questions.
He then said, “I’m going to walk you through all of your sentencing papers so you understand how you got here, why you got here and what you can do while you're here. And maybe you can start thinking about what you could do when you get out.”
I nodded again, this time slightly more clued in to what he was trying to get at.
He spent almost an hour guiding me through everything. In general, it lined up with what I had understood when I went before the judge.
I’d received a four-year sentence that would be taken down to include time served in Rikers.
I'd already been in Rikers for about three months.
It would probably take them another three months to transfer me to prison. So, six months total time in Rikers. At that point I'd officially have three and a half years left on my sentence, but if I behaved myself and the probation system didn't get too backed up, I could probably get released from Beacon in about two and half years.
Doing the math, it came out to serving three years locked up, best case scenario. Two and a half in prison and six months in Rikers.
That would suck, and it would mean that I'd be about twenty-six years old by the time I got my release date.
Then he looked at me all seriously and said, “Listen, I really never do this, and I'm probably not supposed to do this, but I'm going to give you a transcript of that voice message to your friend, uh, Cabrón… Cabrón, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’m going to give it to you so you can read what you said and think about why you said all of that. Hold on to this, and anytime you feel like doing something stupid, look at it.”
I nodded in agreement. I didn’t get the vibe that he wanted me to account for myself. It seemed like he’d already figured me out.
And then he looked at me and asked me a super crazy question. “Who are these guys to you that you were yelling at on the answering machine?”
“Associates,” I replied with a shrug.
‘Assholes,’ I thought to myself.
“Do you think that your associate, Cabrón, even picked up your call to listen to the voicemail after you left it, or do you think he just automatically deleted it?” he asked.
I immediately replied, “Oh, I know he deleted it. Trust me, I've already thought about that.”
Then he asked me, “Are these guys that you held stolen EBT cards and guns for, these friends that you’re now doing a four-year bid for- are they putting money on your books?”
I said, “No, that's another problem.”
“Do you even know where they are right now?”
“Yes,” I responded. “As a matter of fact, they're staying in my crib.”
“They’re staying in your crib?” he asked, dumbfounded. “You mean, your apartment?”
“Yes, they're staying in my apartment in Brooklyn,” I confirmed.
He looked so confused. “The men who ran an EBT fraud ring out of your apartment and hid guns there are staying in that same apartment?”
“Yep,” I replied. “Well, some of them are.”
Who the fuck knew where ‘Brón was these days? Maybe he was in Honduras with Doe.
But my lawyer was not finished yet. This man was not gonna let it go.
“Soooo,” he continued, “These men are not putting money on your books, and they're staying in the apartment that got raided because they had EBT cards and guns there.”
I said, “Yes, that's correct. That’s what's going on.”
He asked me if they were paying my rent for me while I was locked up.
“I damn well hope so,” I replied.
Then he asked me, “What happens if they don't?”
“I'll probably be evicted and lose all my shit,” I told him.
I think that’s the point where he had enough of my dumbassery.
“Hmmm,” he said in a deeply ironic tone. “You should really think about that.”
Then he stood up and said, “Okay, then. I wish you luck.”
He slid the papers towards me and walked out.
That meeting forced me to really examine my current situation. I recognized it was beyond shaky, so I stepped up my efforts to get a grip on what was going on in my crib.
I got ahold of my downstairs neighbor- a weird older guy who lived in the basement apartment. He told me that my so-called crew had started to run amok. “They’re always making noise on the stoop until late at night, there’s always girls in and out, muhfuckas always on the sidewalk yelling up at your window. And the worst part is the landlord’s been sending people around to try to get control of everything. You’re gonna want to get it under control or you’re not gonna have a place to come back to. And I know what that can be like, firsthand.”
I thanked him for the intel and told him I’d keep in touch.
I kept calling Biz and Lucci and they kept refusing to accept my calls. My only other viable option was to call the weird guy in the basement once a week to get a status update.
A few weeks later the weird guy in the basement let me know that I got served with an eviction notice. I started to panic and called June, begging him to rent a U-Haul, drive down to my apartment and move all my shit out. I had gorgeous clothes in there, a collection of punk rock coffee table books and a huge record collection. Some furniture that I’d hate to lose. My parents’ brandy snifter.
June told me he had mad love for me but he just couldn’t do it this time. “Remember, Eula- I already moved all of your shit out for you when you lost your Hartford apartment, that time they locked you up in Newburgh. I gotta draw the line somewhere.” I told him I understood and still loved him regardless and hung up.
A few weeks later, the locks were changed and it was a wrap.
Biz, Luciano and the other randoms were on to the next one and all of my stuff was gone. All of it.
To this day, my mother still curses me out at least once a year, over an antique curio cabinet that she’d received from my great grandmother, that I lost during that eviction. She will never let that go.
