CHAPTER SIXTEEN
So, my days in prison were spent learning, trying to constantly improve my craft. I worked on increasing my knowledge of cars; old as well as new. I studied all of the great painters and sculptors. I knew which furnishings were valuable antiques and which were just garbage. I had all of this ‘down-time’ from life, and I made sure to take advantage of every second of it. Using it for my benefit.
The prison on the other hand, tried to give the illusion of training and rehabilitation of the inmates. That was a joke! The names of their programs were designed to fool the outside world. To fool people (and the government that gave them money) into believing that the state really gave a crap about its’ prisoners.
‘Pro-Social Skills’ or ‘Release for Success.’ Nice names for programs that did nothing to change the way a man dealt with his problems. It is just not enough to tell a man not to turn to drugs, or not to resort to violence, without some kind of practical application to back it up. Goes back to what I said before about knowledge.
Men (or women) need to be taught new ways, shown real life examples of those other inmates who went down a different path and became successful. But, the problem there is that there are not many of those.
Why?
Well, I found out that prison is a racket. A money-making business. Crime does pay. It pays the Judges, the lawyers, the police, and a lot of other people.
Crime justifies state and federal budgets. It helps fund agencies and organizations. It gets leaders elected.
Does that shock you? It should!
Crime and prisons are just business. No one cares about eliminating crime. It’s too profitable! Equally, they don’t care about the victims of crime, only using them for publicity purposes.
The really sad thing is that many times, the Judges or Lawyers know who the really guilty or innocents are, but they just don’t care. They shirk their sworn duty to uphold justice and truth. I really believe that there will be a special place reserved in Hell for these people.
Anyway, things went along smoothly for me for a while, then, I started getting in fights, mostly because of idiots. Most of the men there knew I was into martial arts because I practiced every night and I guess they just felt they just had to try me, to see if they were better.
Now, no one was so stupid as to challenge me to a fight man-to-man in my cell, where there were no cameras or guards to break things up.
No, they always waited until there was a crowd of people around and guards were close enough to save them. They were a bunch of cowards, trying to look good for their buddies or for the gang they were in or wanted to join.
So, I ended up spending a lot of time in the hole; about half of my time altogether which was close to four years because the parole board kept putting me off because of my actions. I ended up serving almost the whole eight years of my sentence day-for-day.
I was twenty-six when I went to prison. I was a thief, but knew almost nothing about life. When I walked out, I was thirty-four years old, but now I was not only wiser but a much more well-versed criminal.
Upon my release, I had nowhere to go. I could have looked up Albert and Christina, my friends from the shelter, but I didn’t want their help. I didn’t need anyone’s help.
The day I left, I found a pry bar in the back of a pickup truck parked at a shopping center, waited till evening fell, then walked to a few laundry mats and car washes, where I broke into the change machines to help get me on my feet, then I bought a gun, some clothes and a ski mask.
I broke into some businesses and homes, looking only for cash. After a week, I had over fifteen-thousand dollars.
I bought a conversion van and fixed it up inside, making it real comfortable to live in. My goal was to get some travelling money. Once I got enough, I would leave good ole’ Arkansas behind me.
While I was in prison, I’d met a guy from Russia, Bruno, one of my brethren, I guess. He told me about a large community in Florida that was teeming with Russian immigrants and wealthy retirees. He said the Russian Mafia had planted a lot of people there and had invested a lot of money in the town.
Because of my family, I knew most of the language and was also Russian myself. I could blend in well, so, my plan was to relocate there and make some real money.
After getting enough money, I took a drive down to Florida to see if it was all Bruno had said it was.
Wow! When I got there, I found out that he sure hadn’t exaggerated things. Nice homes. Nice cars. Lots of retired folks who were just rolling in money. I heard them described as blue-hairs, referencing their grey hair, or snow birds because they spent the summers in New York or wherever, and the winters in Florida to keep out of the cold.
I liked what I saw in Florida, so I needed to set up there with a quickness, as my buddy Neville liked to say.
A little while after I got there, I called up Caesar Molina, my gun contact. Caesar had been supplying guns to people all over the world. Well, not really. But he pretty much had Central and South America sewn up. He had definitely moved up in the world since I’d last seen him.
So, I gave Caesar a call and set up a meeting. He told me he’d heard from Julio that I’d gotten out, and when we met, he kind of embarrassed me by kissing me on the cheek. He then told me that I was a man who had earned his respect and that he thought when I was arrested that he might have to kill me, that he had had people ready too, just in case.
He then said that he had gotten word from his superiors to go ahead and kill me, but he told them he was willing to take a chance on me; that he believed I was an honorable man. A man who could be trusted not to snitch. When I confirmed his belief by serving my time while asking nothing from anyone, he said that he would be proud to do business with me again.
He met me in a night club, using the pounding beat of the music to drown out our conversation. We had a few drinks and talked about nothing for a little while, just getting comfortable with each other again. He didn’t ask me anything about my prison time, and I was fine with that. Leave the past in the past.
I told Caesar what I had planned. He asked me if I had any plans to settle down; to maybe start a family. He advised me to make my money and get out. He said to get married, have some kids, use what I accumulate to start a legitimate business, then go make myself a real life.
He seemed to genuinely care.
But you know, that was all nice maybe, for those who were suited for that type of life, but not for me. I was focused on catching up. I spent eight years in prison thinking about what I was going to do. Not just about recovering my money, but also how I could get even with the person who believed he’d gotten over on me.
I told Caesar about the break-in and theft of my money. I told him who I suspected. He suggested I let it go, to chalk it up as a life experience and to learn from it. He mentioned that there were ways to stash money without anyone finding it. He said that he could get me false I.D.’s, that, everything would look legitimate but the person would never really exist.
He then told me he could help me hide it, invest it using the phantom identities. He would put it into mutual funds, real estate, off-shore accounts and in safe-deposit boxes, keeping it spread around so it would be harder to trace.
It all sounded pretty good to me. When I was ready, Caesar had his people make me a few phony personas. It cost me a little bit of money, but it was money well spent.
However, knowing where and how to hide my future earnings did not make up for the fact that someone had robbed me and that they were thinking that they had gotten away with it.
Caesar and I moved back into our business of buying and selling guns. Of course, learning from my prison knowledge, I wasn’t about to risk driving a load of guns from Florida all the way to Arkansas, so Caesar arranged for one of his other cousins, Marco, to come down and pick up the loads then drive them to where Caesar wanted them. Marco was already making runs from down in Miami and the Keys, so it wouldn’t be any big deal for him to come to my city. I was ok with that.
Everything would be pretty much the same as our previous dealings, only now I fax a list of the weapons I compiled to Caesar, then he would fax me back a price. If everything was cool, I would either mail or Fed-Ex the parking garage ticket to a P.O. Box in Orlando and Marco would take things from there.
I always kept a photo copy of the ticket, just in case there was a screw up with the mail, and cash payments were delivered to me by way of a private courier. This allowed me to not only track my money but also keep it out of the hands of government employees.
I purchased a nice gun from Caesar, a .44 Caliber Super Red Hawk capable of taking down an elephant or lion with a single shot. With its’ thirteen-inch barrel, it was a really intimidating piece of hardware.
I had no intentions of really shooting anyone, but in my line of work, I had to be prepared; there was always the chance of stumbling upon a homeowner or worse, some homeowner getting the drop on me. I wanted a weapon that made people think twice about challenging me.
My next step was to find a high end fence in Florida to help me move and sell some of the more difficult items. I already had a guy in Arkansas that I had taken my jewelry to, but I didn’t want to use him because he probably couldn’t handle the volume I was going to be generating, or the actual value of some of the items. He was strictly a mid-level operator.
Now, I needed someone that could handle rare art, antique jewelry, and antique furnishings. I spoke to Caesar about it. He seemed a little hesitant at first, as if we were about to tread in very dangerous waters.
He thought about it for a couple of minutes, then slowly nodded his head and said yes. He then told me the man to talk to was named Miguel DeFriese. He was an art dealer in Miami who handled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art every year.
Caesar said that now I would be swimming with sharks, that there was no room for errors, that, any mistake could get me killed. He said that if I really wanted to step in that direction, he would introduce me to DeFriese. But, before he did that, he would give me a little bit of the man’s history, then, let me make a careful, informed decision.
He then told me that DeFriese worked for a man named Tommy Zuuca, who was a big time crime boss from Chicago. He put Miguel DeFriese in charge of the territory for Florida and parts of the Caribbean. If there was anything going on in Florida, you’d better know that DeFriese had his hands in it. He could move all of the expensive art pieces, jewelry, and antiques I picked up by selling them through phantom collectors. He had a very extensive network throughout the Caribbean and other parts of the world, set up to specifically move all of the goods he came into contact with.
That all sounded good to me. We talked about it for about fifteen minutes or so, then, he was through. I asked him if he had any idea who had cleaned me out and gotten away with my money.
His whole demeanor changed. He said he would have some people check into it for me, but he thought I should just let it go; to be a man and just accept the costly lesson. I asked him if he could.
A faint smile came to his face, then he nodded his head and I knew he would take care of it.