You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The boy liar.
His face is young, deceivingly tainted.
His eyes are dark, foreboding like something evil swirls in the background.
I stare at his features. There is a little tear drop tattoo by his left eye.
It’s dark green, almost blue. It seems sinister, symbolic of a life that is crying for help.
The 23 year old wears a goatee and a little soul patch below his pouty lip.
I stare at the little fuzz that dances on the edge of his chin.
The inmates hair is perfect, almost sylized.
I look at his doo and wonder whose doing hair in the jail house.
If this kid wasn’t in a bright orange jump suit, I’d have thought he was a male model.
But the moment he opens his mouth, I know he is a lying bastard.
This is a story about smuggling drugs and cigarettes into the county jail.
Detectives say the accomplished criminal seated before me is the mastermind of the contraband pipeline.
But how?
How does he get xanex and cigarettes into the facility?
Detectives tell me that the little soul patch perp knows when fellow prisoners are scheduled to go to the dentist.
That’s when he reportedly calls his girlfriend on the outside and has her deliver contraband to the dentist office.
According to authorities, on the day in question, the girl reportedly walks into a dental office and asks about a procedure.
She is not a client. She has no appointment. She simply is inquiring about dental surgery.
When is the last time you walked into a dental office you had no relationship with?
She walks in like it’s a thrift store.
“How much would it cost to have oral surgery?” she asks.
The staff eye balls her like she’s crazy.
Detectives say the young woman, 21 years of age, gets nervous and asks to use the bathroom.
She’s in there a few moments and leaves.
The staff grows suspicious and searches the bathroom.
What do they find under the toilet tank? Drugs and cigarettes packaged tightly together. The assorted contraband is ready for pick up.
But instead of prisoners using the John and stashing the drugs inside their person, detectives take possession of the contraband.
Detectives tell me they listen to jail house phone calls made by soul patch and his jail house cronies.
Ultimately soul patch and 3 others are indicted and charged in connection with trying to smuggle contraband into a penal institution.
“This jail ain’t the best jail,” the hardened man-child before me says. “If they had E cigs in the commissary, there wouldn’t be a problem with people wanting cigarettes and stuff.”
I stare at the man. He was all ready in jail from a parole violation where he almost stabbed a man to death.
He is hard. He is obdurate to my questioning.
The soul patch wearing model in the bright orange jump suit is a bad boy, willing to shank someone who threatens him and his jailhouse livelihood.
“This case is still open. I’m not going to say nothing,” he tells me.
Soul patch sounds like a jail house lawyer.
“Let me be blunt”, I respond. “Did you ask her to set up a deal to bring drugs into this jail.”
He stares at me. His lip quivers. His soul patch pulses as he thinks.
I look at his face. He eyes me angrily. He has no heart beat. He has no emotion.
I wonder why he even agrees to this interview. What purpose can it serve?
Television wise; I win the moment his dumb ass shuffled into the room wearing shackles and a bright orange suit with prisoner stamped across the back.
He ponders my question, then simply smirks. “No. So why don’t you come back and talk to me after the case is closed.” he says.
I wanna slap the soul patch off his dumb face.
I have a 23-year-old son.
He’s nervous about graduating from college and getting a job and paying back his college loans.
He’s not worried about how contraband will be packed into a body cavity and brought into the jail where someone will smoke it or snort it.
“OK I’m done with you,” I say. “I have nothing more.”
Soul Patch looks at me like I have wasted his time.
I look at him like he’s a pile of soiled human that is bad to the core.
He gets up and walks out. I smirk at him as his chains bang the hard floor with every step he takes.
He looks at me and he is angry.
I see his soul patch and I hope that someone rips each hair out of his face and smokes it through a toilet paper roll dunked in a urinal.
My camera man follows soul patch down the hall.
He seems aggravated, like we are invading his criminal space.
I don’t care. Soul Patch didn’t say anything the detectives can use to further incriminate him.
I on the other hand have a perfectly good story about jail smuggling and this guy is all the B roll anyone could hope for.
The heavy metal door slams shut.
Clank.
Soul Patch stops, turns and stares at us through the thick glass.
If he could stick a shank in my neck, I think he would.
Just then my camera man turns to me.
“Got it.”
I think about the 23-year-old liar who is going to spend a lot of time in jail.
I think about what causes someone like him to choose the path he’s on.
At what point does a life become hiding contraband in a body cavity?
“We good,” my photog asks.
I stare at the jail door now closed.
Soul Patch is now heading back to a world that he understands and I never will.
“Yeah. We’re good. Let’s get out of here.”
Life’s Crazy™