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DESPERATE MEASURES

‘No. I’ve been here longer than you. I’m telling you, you just can’t do it that way.’

‘Why not? It’s a business arrangement. And normally in business you pay an up-front deposit and then the rest on delivery. Bribery should be no different.’

Eventually I agreed to try his suggestion. I wanted to send the money to the judges with one of the inmates’ wives, but Rusty was worried that it mightn’t arrive. He said he would take it himself. However, the last time he had tried to bribe anyone, he had been arrested. As a compromise, he accompanied the inmate’s wife and together they handed over the money in two separate envelopes. At first, the judges didn’t want to accept it. They had already agreed to halve the original amount and now required the whole lot in a single payment. Rusty insisted, promising them that they would receive the rest before the day of the judgment, even though we didn’t have it. The judges postponed the hearing date to give us more time. When we didn’t get them the money, they postponed it again.

Three days before the final court date was fixed, one of my contacts in the prison received a phone call to say that the judges couldn’t postpone the trial any longer. We still hadn’t paid the outstanding amount. I kept trying everywhere and hoping that something would work out, but all my options were exhausted. The judges sent word that they had no choice but to proceed to judgment. I was done for. Rusty wanted to keep trying, but I knew there was no use. We had both tried every person we knew.

The night before the verdict, Roberto came around to keep me company. I tried to be friendly at first, because I knew that he wanted to help take my mind off my trial, but I was still angry with him for breaking our pact. Roberto had never come to see me to admit that he’d broken it. He had avoided me and I’d avoided him back. I didn’t want to be friends with someone I couldn’t trust. We were supposed to have been brothers.

‘Do you want one?’ he said, reaching for a CD case and holding up the phone card that he would use to cut up the lines of coke. I wasn’t angry with him for wanting to take some that night. We both knew he had already broken our pact. Doing coke in front of me was his way of admitting it. At first I just shook my head and didn’t say anything. Right then, sniffing cocaine was the last thing in the world I wanted