“So, for the past year you haven’t seen me much because I’ve been hiding, running and hiding. I worked with this kid at my Wal-Mart job, one of my many crappy jobs, and he was a nice guy, a good guy, or so I thought. He wanted to spend time with me—I thought—as a mentor, because he was trying to change his lifestyle, stop getting high, and make new friends. I understand, from Boy Scouts, how important it is to be friends with the right kind of people, and how difficult it is to change your behavior for the better when you are still hanging around with the same people, doing the same self-destructive things.

“Well one day, I’m driving him down into Dundalk, around Holabird—the Sollers Point area up from Old Dundalk—I forget what for right now. I’m coming to a rolling stop when someone starts shooting at us—shooting at us from a car!

“I’ve always been a good quick driver and I was glad of it—I was out of there. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even see who was shooting at us, but he did. Eventually we lost them, and had a talk—they were in a car chasing us! It was insane!

“I asked him what this is all about, since he was obviously not surprised and recognized whoever this was. He did come clean with me. I have to give him that. Of course, there was a caveat. Now that they knew me and my car, and I didn’t know what they even looked like, we needed to stick together so he could be on the lookout. And guess what, numerous other chases followed. Eventually I moved and stopped having anything to do with him.

“So, the fact was, he had not been a drug addict, but a drug dealer, the drug dealer, the king pin! He owed all kinds of people money and drugs. I was shocked. The kid—a white kid—was an 18-year-old Wal-Mart employee!

“So, anyways, that’s why you haven’t seen me, and why I moved out of Baltimore.”