A $4,000 Breath of Fresh Air (cont.)
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I was placed in the obligatory orange jumpsuit and led to my cell holding a blanket and pillow. These were individual holding cells each separated by cement walls. There were about a dozen of them, only half were occupied. I sat on my thin mattress staring at the toilet and sink. This has got to be a dream, a joke of some sort. I had never been arrested for anything. I was far from innocent in some aspects of my life, but breaking and entering? That was not my kick at all. My mind began to reminisce about all the jail movies I had seen. Was I going to go to prison for real? Me? Suddenly I wasn't the cool, hip college kid anymore. I was scared shitless because I was starting to understand the system. The system didn't care whether I did it or not. The system didn't care that I didn't drink liquor, or hadn't been arrested before, or that I was just some college student from Jersey. The system cared that there was a crime committed, a witness to that crime, and an arrest made based upon that witness's identification of me. Who was the witness? Did I know them? Was it really someone at my party that broke into that place? Did someone have a personal vendetta against me? These are the things that run through your mind over and over when sitting in a jail cell at 4 a.m. And those are the good thoughts.
I eventually fell asleep, though half asleep at best. Every 15 minutes an officer would walk by the cells to check that nobody had killed themselves.
"What are you in here for?" He bluntly asked me.
"Wrong place at the wrong time." I grunted.
"Ha Ha. Yeah, buddy. You and everyone else in here."
Was this the motto of every single cop in this precinct? Did they actually think in their great wisdom that they could never make a mistake and arrest the wrong guy? Were they that confident in their abilities that they figured every single person in those cells were in fact criminals? They sure as hell acted that way.
I tried my best to fall back asleep. I kept wondering what my parents would make of all this. They didn't really have the right to be mad at me, except for maybe the pot. But they were no fools to that aspect of my life. After all, I was wrongfully arrested and they were going to have to believe me that I didn't do it. They knew me, and they knew it wasn't in my personality. I tried to fall asleep but the emotions and speculations of what awaited me grew more and more intense. I was in a fucking jail cell with an orange jump suit on. I should have been home passed out drunk. Instead, I was still trying to fall asleep on a concrete mattress.
When I awoke in the early morning they served up a horrendous breakfast and told me to get ready for my bond hearing. They double cuffed me—both hands and legs—and threw me in the back of the squad car to head to the courthouse. I walked into the courtroom to find my girlfriend waiting. She immediately came to tears upon seeing me in shackles. The entire proceeding seemed like a blur. All I recall is bail being set by the judge and my girlfriend having to post it with her graduation money she just got from here mom the previous day. As far as the judge was concerned, I was going to go to trial for this.
I was released after bond was posted. I walked out into the morning air and felt a hint of relief. My first move was to walk directly to the restaurant that was broken into. I figured since I knew some people who worked in the kitchen there I could plead with the owner not to press charges or to realize the cops had the wrong guy. When I arrived at the restaurant I could see that the front glass door had been smashed so that whoever broke in had easy access to the front bar and liquor. Besides some broken glass and missing bottles, there really wasn't any other major damage.
"I'd like to speak to the owner please." I asked the first person I saw.
Within a few moments, a 30-something beefy guy walks in, looking pissed off and not in the mood to deal with some random person.
"Can I help you?" he asked, sounding annoyed.
"I'm the guy who they arrested last night for breaking in here. And I want you to know that I did not do it. I live right down the street and work at the restaurant next door. I don't drink liquor and if you ask your kitchen employee (that I knew), he will tell you that I did not do this."
My pleading didn't seem to change his attitude.
"Listen kid. All I know is that
someone broke into my place last night and stole over $600 worth of liquor. You're the guy they arrested for it. So whether you did it or not is none of my concern right now. My concern is that someone has to pay for it. Since you're the guy they got, it looks like it's going to be you."
"Think about this. How could one person break in here alone, steal five bottles of liquor and walk out? How can one person carry all that at once?"
He just sat there looking over some numbers and his slightly depleted liquor stock.
"Someone's got to pay for it" was his only reply.
I walked out the door even more flabbergasted then before. I got the impression from the owner that he too wasn't necessarily convinced that it was me who did the break-in. He was only concerned that I was the person they got for the crime. Therefore, I was the guy who was going to pay him for the damages. The nightmare was about to reach monetary value.
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