Corruption Officer (12 page)

“…$700, $800, $900, a G,” said Hector Flocko’s brother.
 

I am sitting in McDonalds on 145th street and Broadway in
Harlem.
 
My time was running out and I
desperately needed to get this abortion done.
 
Tracy, a hood booga gets a name after she has a negro by the balls, had
called me and told me that she was feeling real sick and that the doctor told
her that if she went through with this pregnancy that it would be a difficult
one.
 
She was practically begging me for
the abortion now.
 
I was happy about that
but stressing it too because I had to make money in order to get it done.
 
Hector said “Good looking out, G.
 
We need more brothers like you on the inside
because sometimes a person
be
in there under all that
pressure and just needs help.
 
Ya’ know
what I mean?”
 
I am thinking, ‘I most
certainly do.’
 

“No prob.
 
You know
how far back we go,” I tell him.

“Cool, tell my brother I love him,” he says, finishes eating
his burger then shakes my hand and bounces.
 

I sit there for a minute and look around to see if I
recognize anybody in there.
 
Conscience
speaking, ‘Negro, you ain’t did nothing wrong yet.
 
You only have money on you and nothing
else.’
 
I realize this but I still have
the jitters.
 
Conscience, ‘Because you
know this shit is wrong!’
 
I shake that
feeling off and call Tracy up and tell her I am coming to get her so she needs
to get ready.
 
I borrowed a friend’s car
and took her to the clinic.
 
When we
park, she asks me for the money as if I am not going inside with her.
 
I let her know that I am not letting you go
in there alone.
 

“We did this together so we are going to handle it
together,” I said.

She looks at me as if to say the other guys never want to
come inside.
 
Then she smiles at me and
says, “Thank you.”
 
My thoughts are,
‘Woman, if you think that I am just going to hand you this money after all the
shit I am going through, to handle this situation, you must be crazy!
 
Besides, I need to see this all the way
through.
 
Shit, if I could be in there
when the procedure is done, I would!’
 

After it was all over, I felt relieved.
 
I felt that I had dodged a major bullet and at
all costs, it was worth it.
 
I was not
about to start another child support case and go through another 21 years of
terror.
 
I recently learned that they
raised
the age from 18 to 21, meaning that you have to take
care of the child up until that age no matter what they’re doing.
 
A lot of fathers, like me, thought that the
sentencing age for child support was 18 and then you’re free.
 
No-no-no!
 
It’s 21 or 26 if the child is ambitious and goes to college.
 

When we got back around the block, I gave her a-copula-dollars
to get her kids some food and she went upstairs.
 
I now had to muster up some more courage to
complete this mission.
 
I go get the
carton of cigarettes and go home.
 
When I
get to my apartment, I do the usual and check the mail on the table then I walk
into the living room and see that my momma has fallen asleep again on the couch
while watching television.
 
I stand there
and watch her sleep soundly and wonder what kind of ass whipping she would put
on me if she knew what I was about to do.
 
I shake my head to myself remembering when I first got on this job and
how happy I was and how happy and proud she was.
 
Now it has come to this, me smuggling in
cigarettes to an inmate, even though I know and trust him, to get myself out of
a dick dilemma.
 
I know that she would
not approve, but as a man, sometimes to keep things straight you have to do
what you have to do and not what you want to do.
 
I go to my room and this time there is no
dancing, no music and no drinking.
 
It’s
me, my conscience and a carton of Newport cigarettes.
 

The next day I am on my way to work I am nervous as hell and
very paranoid.
 
I am on the bus looking
at everyone in the face wondering if I am being followed.
 
I have this guilty feeling that everyone
knows what I am about to do.
 
I get to
work and I am at the main control building waiting for the route bus to take me
to my jail.
 
While I am waiting there I
see some Officers that I normally joke around with in the morning. I knew that
they were going to start in on me about them being senior Officers and how I
would always be a new jack to them no matter how much time on the job I
accumulated.
 
Well this morning I was not
in the mood for that or anything else so when they started in on me and had
everybody on the bus cracking up laughing.
 
I blurts out to one of them, “Mother fucker,
are you still beating your wife!?” …..dead silence.
 
Match, set, game.
 
He and everybody on the bus looked at me in
shock because we all knew that it was true but I guess they felt like what the
hell was wrong with me and that I did not have to put it out on
front street
like
that.
 
I gave him a sarcastic smile and
said, “Have a good day!”
 
Then I got off
the bus and went to my jail.
 
That little
episode eased my stress for just a few seconds because now I am standing on
line about to enter my jail with a carton of cigarettes tucked on my side in my
pants.

I purposely wore my uniform to work today so that when I
beeped going through the metal detector it really would not be a problem.
 
‘Here we go,’ I thought to myself as my
breathing got louder in my head and my heart rate increased. When it was time
for me to pass through, the Captain that was standing there to oversee the
searching
process,
stopped me!
 
I thought, ‘Shit!
 
I knew it.
 
I knew it was too good to be true!
 
I am caught.’
 
He then yelled to the other Officers behind me,
“Now see this is what I am talking about an Officer that comes to work already dressed
and ready to start the day!”
 
He then
patted me on my back as I walked through beeping.
 
I didn’t waste any time going to my locker I
go straight to roll call because all I want to do is get these things off of
me.
 

Now I am standing there at roll call and the announcements
of the day appear to be taking longer than usual. I am looking around at the
other Officers because I swear that everybody knows what I am doing.
 
After we’re dismissed I go straight to my
post, no joking around, no staff kitchen, no nothing just straight to my post
so that I could take my count and get rid of the midnight Officer and take care
of my business.
 
I get to my post and
make a tour, not really count inmates just counting how many bodies are in
cells.
 
I
gets
to Flocko’s cell and he is already up and on his door I wink as I go by and he
nods.
 
I tell the Officer, “Full house.”
 
Then I sign the count slip that verifies this
and they are out the door.
 
When they
leave, I lock the gate behind them and now I am alone because my partner, the
“B” Officer, has to go to the morning search and won’t report to post until it’s
done.
 
I quickly crack Flocko’s cell and
he comes out talking loud asking me to open the broom closet because he and I
know that there is always another inmate watching everything that goes down
morning, noon, and night.
 
I start to
talk loud telling him what I want cleaned and as he steps inside the utility closet
I wipe off the carton with a wet napkin then hand it to him leaving no finger
prints of mine on it.
 
He puts it under
his shirt, picks up the equipment and goes back to his cell.
 
He knows that if for some reason the search
comes now and he gets caught, that that’s his loss.
 
The rest of the day I was a nervous wreck and
every time someone yelled, “On the gate!” so that I could let them in my area,
I would jump on the inside thinking that it
was the
authorities
coming to get me.
 
When
I got home and retrieved my mail off the table I went to my room.
 
I lay back on my bed and thought about what I
just had done, I mean the whole thing from the abortion to the move with Flocko.
 
As I was thinking, you know I was also
sipping and it felt good.
 
The stress and
the paranoia had gone because I pulled it off and no one jumped out from behind
my bed to bust me.
 
I go through my mail
and see nothing but bills and guess what…..I had the money to pay them.
 

“47, 48, 49 50,” I was counting out the number of Tops
tobacco pouches that I was stuffing inside my stab proof vest.

I was heavy-set and it was bulky, so it was the perfect
cover up.
 
It also helped that it was
mandatory that everyone wears one.
 
So, I
did not stick out.
 
Going through the
front entrance was now a breeze because that post was the one no one really
wanted.
 
It was the most tedious and was more
repetitious than manning a housing area.
 
At least in a housing area an Officer could
relax a little and maybe get some sleep if needed.
 
Not on the front entrance post.
 
You had cameras watching you, had people
coming back and forth all day; no rest time from start to finish.
 
A lot of times if it was not the Officer that
was permanently assigned to that post, you had an Officer half-ass doing it
because they were upset that they had to work that post all day.
 
This allowed me to get by a lot of times just
agreeing with the Officer that was bitching about the post.
 

I’ve been rocking for a minute.
 
Flocko had now put me onto this hustle because
due to the cigarette tobacco ban it became high demand.
 
Also sometimes his brother would be out of
town and would not be able to deliver the money on time.
 
With this new venture, I was slowly getting my
life back.
 
No thanks to child support,
because I was still going back and forth trying to get an adjustment.
 
And every time, I would end up with the same Judge,
it would be the same results.
 
The last
time I was in court, I managed to put a little smile on my face after he
shitted on me only because I knew that due to my new found hustle that my bills
were getting paid on time and I kept money in my pocket.
 

Flocko, was my first lieutenant, he had recruited some loyal
workers that did most of the dirty work for us.
 
I am very cautious about
who
he deals with and
I do a background check on them by looking at their charges and talking to
other inmates that may know them from the streets to make sure that they are
here for the reason that they say they are.
 
The profit from the cigarette trade in jail outweighs that of any drug
hustle on the street.
 
For one $2.00
pouch of Tops tobacco you can make $200 to $300 dollars depending on how
desperate some of these inmates are for a smoke.
 
Don’t get an inmate who just came into the
system and has been smoking all his life.
 
That’s a cash cow, as long as his people
support him from the outside.
 
I was
amazed when Flocko brought back cash to me from inside of the jail!
 
I thought to myself how the hell do these
inmates get so much cash inside the jail and he explained that money like that
comes straight from the visitor’s floor and that very seldom can you slip it
through the mailroom.
 

We had a system we used to throw other inmates off from
finding out where he was getting his supplies from.
 
He didn’t distribute large amounts at a time
and most transactions went down either at recreation or when they go to eat at
the feeding.
 
The purpose of this is that
there are too many inmates at one time for the Officers to be able to watch
them all.
 
This is also why nothing can
be done about fights or slashing until after the fact.
 
If a riot breaks out in the mess-hall while
feeding inmates, the Officers are out-numbered 20 to 1.
 
And, they’re locked in there with the inmates,
so that they can contain the situation to one area.
 
Flocko also never carries a large amount on
his person and often breaks the pouch down into little cigarettes called
rollies, which he can get up to $20 per or a lot of commissary for himself
depending on the drought.
 
Most of the
money is made on Wednesdays because there are no visitors on Mondays and
Tuesdays.
 
Inmates get straight cash on
the visitor’s floor as if it was out of an ATM but by the time it reaches me, I
have to use gloves because one can only guess how it got transported.

So far it was so good.
 
I would deliver the pouches and by the end of
the day I would have my money.
 
The day
went by smoothly.
 
There were no
incidents to report especially since Flocko happens to be some sort of general
in one of the many Spanish gangs that we have in the jail.
 
I could never keep track of what inmate held
what rank because it was a high rate of turn-over due to the fact of each
individual had a different case and different charges.
 
I finished my tour and jetted home because I
was tired and wanted some sleep.
 

When I arrived to my Projects via M60 bus and taxi cab, I
ran into my mother coming from the corner store.
 
She had groceries in her hands and just handed
them to me before she said a word.
 
Then
she began to speak as we made our way to our building walking through the
graveyard.
 
I called the path that due to
the multiple makeshift memorials that we had to pass along the way.
 
There were pictures of a lot of young people
in their prime at parties or posing when they were at their best with nice
clothes on and you know that there were a half a dozen liquor bottles and
candles that were posted up in front of the pictures, I guess to show that
people celebrated this or that individual’s life.
 
My mother seemed unfazed about all of the
death that was around us.
 
I guess at her
age and the number of years that we have been living here has made her numb to
senseless deaths.
 
When we walk into the
lobby the elevator was about to close so I ran and caught the door and held it
until my mother caught up and got on.
 
I
knew that somebody was on it already but did not look to see who it was because
me
holding the door only took up a minute of
time.
 

When my mother stepped in the elevator I heard a familiar
voice say, “Hey girl, where you been?”
 
And
when I looked it was Ms Daniels and by her side stood Biz.
 
Our eyes locked.
 
I was a little shocked because I had not seen
him since the incident in jail and did not know that he had come home.
 
His eyes were ice cold and unmoved by my
presence and I saw the marks of healed wounds on his face.
 
Obviously he did not tell his mother what had
happen because her and my moms were chatting away as the door closed and the
elevator started up.
 
They were going on
about the happenings in church this past Sunday mentioning Pastor Johnson’s toupee
coming off during singing rehearsals and that Deacon Jones was messing with one
of the ushers.
 
All the while me and Biz
never said a word to each other and remained staring at one another.
 
I saw that he had the grill face on so I
matched his intensity.
 
My thoughts were
that at the time I did not know that it was him under that hoodie and that my
job was at stake.
 
I knew that trying to
explain that to him was futile so didn’t even try.
 
Then he made a move and lifted up his shirt
exposing a snub nosed thirty-eight!
 
I
was caught off guard by this for a second.
 
Then I looked at him then at our mothers, who were oblivious to what was
happening.
 
The fact that he could care less
that our mothers were there, angered me, so at that point I gave him an evil
glare and zipped down the jacket that I had on, pulled it to the side to expose
my 9 mm Smith and mother fuckin Wesson!
 
This time I looked at him then at my mother only then back at him
indicating you not caring about your moms is on you, as for me I am going to
die for mine right here, right now!
 
Then
I unclipped the holster that secured my weapon.
 
He saw the look on my face, a look that we have both seen on each other’s
face since we were kids growing up.
 
With
that, he decided to make the best move he could make for the both of us, and
put his shirt back down indicating to me another time and another place.
 
I, on the other hand, stood undeterred by his
move, kept my hand on my gun letting him know I will be ready at all times negro.
 
The elevator stopped and as they got off, Ms
Daniels says bye to my mother and looks at me and winks.

“Take it easy, Ms. Daniels,” I say.

 
“Bye, Ms. Heyward,”
Biz says and gets off the elevator.
 

The door closes and my moms
turns
and looks at me.
 
I look at her and
wonder if she had a clue as to what just happened.
 
Then out of nowhere, she takes her thumb,
licks it and wipes something off that I had on the side of my face.