“Dude, this is all I can get with two-eighteen, ‘cause I got no money since the arrest. At two-thirty in the morning the cops come to my place, wake me up, cuff me, tell me I’m arrested for a robbery at Harbor Hospital—which I don’t even know where it is. The cop tells me it’s like down near Cherry Hill, and I’m like, ‘That’s a black area I only been to once, like ten years ago and it’s like fifteen miles away and I don’t drive.’ How exactly do I commit that crime? So I’m arrested by County Cops for some shit in the city that I didn’t do.

“I spend three days in county lockup and get transferred to city lockup. Down there the black dudes—its all black dudes—they tell me they don’t believe for a minute that I did it, that the only white people in the area work at the hospital.

“After ten days I get out on bail, six-hundred up front and a hundred a week. My disability—from having seizures after being in prison—is only seven-hundred. So all of my money is going to the bail bondsman.

“Some white lady who worked at the hospital said she got stuck-up by a white guy for the two-hundred dollars in her bra. I’m like, ‘What, that’ so gross?’

“Besides, I don’t rob people, I sell drugs. Why do I want to rob people? I’m not a violent offender. I don’t even sell drugs anymore since prison. That really messed me up.

“I get along okay with blacks. I grew up in Remington and Hamden—white areas, but lived in Turner Station which is all country black. But prison was rough—I have these seizures attacking my brain.

“The public defender—a lady—was like, ‘You did a robbery, it’s on your record.’

“But no, that was a burglary. My buddy and I just walked off with this lottery case and scratched off the tickets and cashed them in and got caught. We never threatened nobody, just took this roll of tickets that was—pretty stupidly, actually—sitting out on the counter, in this plastic roller case.

“So I got the number to this lawyer for suing the police for this false arrest. They just had that lady pick a face out of the book, and she picked me. I was home in bed, across town, with no car. This lawyer said I get maybe thirty thousand. But the public defender, she said she has a lawyer that will get me sixty, so I’m going with him.

“You know what man, I’m so sick of all the jail and prison, I gave up on dealing drugs. I used to cut and move two-three keys a week out of a house I had in Middle River. The first time I got just a year. But the second time, the judge was like, ‘Naw, I got something for you,’ and gave me three years. I’m retired, sir, just want to get my settlement and collect my disability—and eat this microwave pizza! You have a nice night.”