Previously: I was comin’ from the BP station where I got me a pack of Newport cigarettes. This unmarked gray Impala pulls up with a white boy and a black boy in it. They jump out. I know immediately they’re undercover police. They tell me to come and put my hands on the car. Me being so high—I knew I had the cigarettes in my hand, but I forgot I also had ten bags of heroin in my hand. Soon a paddy wagon came around the corner.
It was a nice warm April day outside, but inside the paddy wagon, it was dark and shadowy. I was seated in the cage behind the two cops—one who was driving and the other his partner. They had my hands cuffed in front of my body and locked shackles around my ankles.
We rode for around 10 or 15 minutes to the 5th District Precinct. After we got there, they asked me my name, date of birth, and took fingerprints—all that stuff they always ask and do when they booked you. And they ask me did you ever be in prison before.
They also make me change into prison clothes. They give me an envelope to put my watch and wallet and things like that in.
They escort me to a cell with around 20 other guys in it, all waitin’ to get transport through the system. When I first hit the cell, a few of them knew me. They were like, “Damn they got my man Orleans. We saw you on the news!”
I told them, “I don’t feel like talkin’ to nobody right now.” I was mad about bein’ caught so what I got to talk about?
Around one o’clock in the morning, they got homicide police detectives coming to the cell, askin’ people do they want to talk about the crime in they neighborhood. Like askin’ us to be snitchin’.
One of the detectives asked me, “What you in here for?”
I told him, “Conspiracy and drug traffic.”
He said, “We need to talk to you. This is what we got causin’ a lotta crime on the street.” Police always tell you that drugs causin’ all the trouble. Really, though, some of the trouble come from people commitin’ crimes, like stealing. And, sure, some commit crimes to buy drugs, but some commit crimes to take care of they family.
I told him, “No. If I did know anything, I wouldn’t tell you.”
He say, “I bet if you get two or three life sentences you would tell.”
I told him, “Man if you only knew. I got more time bein’ in prison than you got bein’ in that suit. I never was a rat. Never gonna be a rat.”
That’s when he say, “Oh yeah? You gonna be a smartass?”
To be continued . . .
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