Drew was going home in the morning, so my cubie and I compared notes.
Drew told me the parole board had recommended drug rehab at Kpep as part of his parole conditions, because he had let slip that the parents of his girlfriend drank alcohol, and he was paroling to their house.
Drew had often regaled me with tales of his drug-dealing exploits, but he had been vehemently anti-drug and sober as long as I knew him so the Kpep recommendation seemed like another instance of parole board overreach, recommending needless programs to fulfill quotas and get kickbacks.
But Drew revealed to Tom that he had already known he was going to Kpep before the parole board interview. He had had an interview with the psych the week before; the psych informed him that he needed the most intensive therapy possible.
(Drew responded in typical Drew fashion, saying he was gonna sue the psych.)
It was at this point I suspected almost everything he had said was a lie.
Kpep is a rehab for parolees. It has a substance abuse program, but mostly serves as transitory housing for sex offenders to reintegrate into society. A psychiatric recommendation for intensive therapy has all the hallmarks of a CSC case.
I decided to investigate the matter the following morning. Tru showed me the master bunk sheet, which contained every inmate’s name and prison number.
He asked who I was looking for.
“Drew,” I said.
“Oh that fucking chomo who went home today?! That shit pissed me off so much it ruined my morning.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“He came up here this morning talking all this bullshit about how he was here on some CSC case. He tried saying he was having a threesome with his girlfriend and her cousin and the cousin freaked out…yeah, right! He prolly tried raping her.”
Tru gets irrational about chomos but I spotted the kernel of truth in the story. It had all the hallmarks of a Drew story, which always made him seem either brilliant or irresistible to women.
Drew told me his girlfriend’s cousin told the cops he had an ounce of coke sitting around. Because he had only been down a year, I figured the truth was something as simple as this: he creeped the shit out of the cousin, who may have been underage.
Later that day, I interviewed his bunkie about he knew about Drew, which was more than I did. He ran his number months back.
Drew had a history of CSC cases. Weird ones. Shit like “Coercing a 13 year old.”
Which makes sense.
I thought he was a cho when I first met him. But after spinning laps and teaching a class together, he told so many stories about his drug-dealing past with such incredible detail, I started to believe some of it. At least, the fundamental drug-dealing aspect.
He told some interesting stories:
Working with the cartels. Smuggling drugs in Jamaica. Running the dope game in Muskegon.
I just thought they were embellishments, not outright lies.
He repeatedly told a story about how he copped drugs from one of the biggest drug dealers in Muskegon. They became close. After some years, he realized this dealer was a CI, who had some elaborate scheme with the police where’d they set up young black men to send to prison in exchange for immunity on all sorts of crime. The CI, with this protection, got away with the worst sorts of crimes, like rape, assault, etc. Eventually, the CI approached Drew about joining him with working the police.
Drew called this the momentous decision of his life. The police and the CI assumed he would agree to help. Drew declined. As a result, they turned the screws, referred him to the prosecutor, and sent him to prison.
I probably heard this story a dozen times. He even wrote it down in narrative form, sent it to the ACLU, and then asked me what other publications would be interested. He said the cops were still in the force, still setting up innocent minorities.
I should’ve know it was a little too convenient,a little too appealing to PC sensibilities.
I know now the whole story was a hoax. He was never convicted on a drug crime.
Now I’m playing detective, peeling back the layers of his stories, separating truth from fiction and not knowing which is which.
I forgot the lessons I learned in Prison 101: if someone boasts about being a successful businessman or a gangster, they’re not. Sometimes, the most convincing person is a nutcase with a high IQ.
Easy Trouble 