Criminal That I Am (11 page)

When I make my way to the attorney room lobby, I'm directed by the officer on duty to an attorney room precisely behind him. As I often do, I put down my papers and pen and walk out of the attorney room to survey the vending machine. I purchase the regular fare: water for Cameron, diet Coke for me, and a bag of pretzels that we share.

Once I'm back in the attorney room, I open the bag of pretzels. I put my hand in my pocket, put the pills into my cupped hand, and then put these into the bag.

As I wait for Cameron to arrive, I'm perfectly calm. Perhaps too calm. I'm stunned by my own conduct, incredulous at the ease with which I have completed this set of acts.

It isn't too late, I tell myself. Just throw out the pretzels and this will have never happened.

But I don't. A minute later, Cameron enters the attorney room lobby.

Last chance, I tell myself.

I don't move.

When Cameron sits down, I say, “I bought you some pretzels.”

“Thanks, Jen,” he says flatly.

“No,” I say. I nod my head toward the pretzel bag and change my wording. “I
brought
you some pretzels.”

He looks at me for a moment, confused. I nod my head toward the pretzel bag again.

He opens the bag and sees the two pills. He looks up at me, his face full of shock.

I say nothing. We stare at each other for a moment, silently acknowledging what has happened. What is happening. What is about to happen.

He pulls out a pretzel along with the pills and places both in his mouth.

After a minute or two, he does seem less anxious. And it is perhaps
my guilty imagination, but I think I see the hives on his arms reduced from red to pale pink.

We say nothing for a while. And then he says quietly, “Thank you, Jen. Thank you so much.”

I'm glad at the relief I see in his face. But his emphatic thank-you only emphasizes the magnitude of what I've just done. “You're welcome, I guess,” I say. “I'm sort of disgusted with myself.”

“Please don't say that.”

“Look, it was my choice. I decided to be disgusting. I just couldn't stand any of this anymore.”

I'm not proud of what I've done, but I've done it. And when I walk out of MCC, I'm surprised to find I don't feel any shame or regret. I feel relief.

When I get home, I sit on my sofa and watch TV. In many ways, it feels like any other evening. But of course it isn't. Even though I feel relief that Cameron could take his medication. Even though I can try to justify what I've done. The undeniable truth is that I have committed a crime. And after this, my life will never be the same.

I
have a bad habit of doubling down on bad behavior. It manifests whenever I am trying so hard to be good, but then slip and fall down. Rather than pull myself back up, I figure that since I am already on the ground I might as well stay there.

I have already had one slice of cake; I might as well have another.

I'm already late; I might as well call and cancel.

It's based on a warped and self-serving logic: you can break a glass only once. After that, there is nothing to do but look at the pieces.

I've already broken the law; I might as well do it again.

When I next see Cameron, I follow the same protocol. Once again, it proceeds flawlessly.

After I place the pills in the pretzel bag, it dawns on me that I should have some kind of endgame. How long is this going to go on? Am I just going to keep this up until the case is over?

I have no exit strategy.

After Cameron takes the pills, I tell him that while I think it's fine for him to have the medication, it's risky for me to bring it so often. I suggest that I bring it to him one last time before his sentencing, after which he can tough it out until he is finally transferred.

“I was going to talk to you about that,” he says. “I was thinking, why can't you just bring me enough medicine until sentencing all at once, just one more time?”

He seemed ready with that, I think to myself.

“All at once?”

“Yeah, just bring me enough for a few days and then you only have to do it once.”

I have been very sympathetic to Cameron's condition, but for the first time I feel uncomfortable. By asking me to bring him a dozen pills—three days' worth—he is changing the game, turning my role of makeshift nurse into a smuggler. A mule. He is trying to make an ass out of me.

“Cameron, I can't bring you a whole bunch of pills all at once.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“Because you think I am going to take them all at the same time?” His face looks hurt.

I don't care. “Maybe, yes.”

“Why would I do that when I need this medicine every day?”

Because you're an addict, I think to myself. But I say, “Cameron, you could get sick.”

“You don't trust me?”

“I guess I don't,” I say.

I continue the train of thought, how bad this idea is. “And anyway, what are you going to do with a bunch of pills on the unit? Isn't someone going to ask you where you got them?”

“I'll put them in the bottle with my other meds.”

“That's really risky.”

But he is insistent that it's better for me to do it this way; I just have to bring it one last time, and it is all over. He will space them out, and he will not ask me to bring any more to him again.

“Cameron, even if all of that's true, it feels like you would get caught.”

“How? I won't tell a soul. And even if I get caught I won't bring your name into it.”

“Even if you don't tell anyone, how would you even take the pills from here to your unit?”

“You just put them in a balloon.” He says this like the answer should be obvious.

At this, I am floored. “And what, Cameron? You're going to swallow it and poop it? If it doesn't explode in your stomach first?”

“No,” he says matter-of-factly. “I will just put it up my ass.”

I stare at him and shake my head. How did I get here?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.

“Cameron, this isn't an episode of
The Wire
. This is real life. I'm sorry, I just can't do this for you. It's dangerous.”

“Please, Jen—”

“Look, I think you should have your medicine. But not like this. You could get caught, I could get caught. You could get sick.”

“But this is better for you,” he pleads. “You just bring it once, and then I won't ask for it again. Even if I ask, you can say no.”

Does he mean I can't say no right now?

Have I ever said no to him?

“Just one more time, Jen.”

I sit in silence.

“Just one more time, to get me through to sentencing, and then it's over.”

I say nothing.

“Jen, please, this is it.

“Just one more time.

“Please.

“I won't ask again. Just one more time.

“Please.

“I won't tell anyone.

“Please.

“It'll be all on me.

“It would never come back to you.

“I promise.”

M
ore than any other, this is the portion of the story I wish I could write differently. I wish I could write that I leave MCC that day, pack my bags, and move to an ashram in one of India's lower provinces.

But I don't. Instead, I convince myself that this is not much different from what I've done before, and that while I am taking a sizable risk for Cameron, by agreeing to take the fall he is taking an even bigger risk for me. I don't really buy my own argument. I know that what I'm being asked to do goes well beyond what is reasonable. Still, I don't say no. Instead, I tell myself I just have to do this once and then it will all be over.

And in a way, I am right.

The next day, I purchase a bag of balloons from the dollar store. I measure out twelve pills, enough for three days. I select a long green balloon, the kind that is blown up and twisted into balloon animals at children's birthday parties.

I am not even sure how to do this. The most logical course of action—aside from not doing it, of course—is to stretch open the mouth of the balloon and slip the pills in one at a time, so that they fall one on top of another, like an illicit roll of candy.

I clear off my desk and pour out the pills onto a piece of paper. The tablets are perfectly round, tiny in diameter, the palest shade of pink. Piled together, they do present as something as innocuous as candy. For some reason, this makes what I'm doing a little easier.

When the last tablet has been dropped, I tie the end with a secure knot and observe my handiwork. I have packed the balloon so tightly that its green skin is taut against the curve of the pills. The resulting apparatus is about a quarter inch in diameter, two inches in length. Though I have no point of reference, I decide it will suffice in size and shape for Cameron's butt.

I put on my jeans and slip the balloon deep into my pocket, examining myself in the mirror to ensure it does not protrude or otherwise show. When I arrive at MCC, I follow the same procedure as I did two
times before. Predictably, the officer on duty pays my pockets no mind. When I get to the attorney room, I slip the balloon out of my pocket and place it in the bag of pretzels. Then I wait.

When Cameron arrives, he tells me to go to the restroom so that I'm not a witness to what is about to transpire.

I've been avoiding the restrooms in the attorney room lobby for months, but now I walk in and lock the door behind me. The bathroom is large, obviously meant to accommodate both an inmate and a corrections officer to observe the proceedings. There is a faint stench of urine in the air. The facilities are as filthy as I imagined them to be, which I suppose makes this an appropriate place for me to be.

I remain standing, not sure how long I should wait. I consider my reflection in the mirror over the sink. I examine myself as though I will be able to figure out why I have done what I have done, why I keep doing it, why I have let things go this far. My reflection has no answers.

When I look back on this moment, I am reminded of one of my favorite books from high school, John Knowles's
A Separate Peace.
Jealous Gene and the inimitable Finny, two boyhood friends in World War II–era New England, climb a tree together with the intention of jumping off its limb into a river. Gene watches as Finny makes his way out onto the limb, but does not join him. Instead, he remains by the base of the limb and suddenly jostles it, causing Finny to fall and to eventually die. Gene does not act with premeditation or overt maliciousness—he is not an “evil” character—and yet in that moment he chooses the evil thing, he acts in a way that he knows will bring harm to the friend that he both envies and loves.

In English class, we learn that the book is a commentary on war—the war on the battlefield and the war in man's heart. That because of man's propensity to choose the evil thing, even toward the people he loves, his worst enemy will always be himself.

As I stand in the grimy prison bathroom, my shoes sticking to the tile floor, I know that I, too, have done the evil thing and have chosen the wrong path, a path almost certain to cause harm to someone whom I ostensibly love. I am Gene. And I am Finny.

O
nce the unpleasantness of the balloon is behind me, I file it away in the nether regions of my mind. I decide that I have good cause to do so, given that Cameron's sentencing is in a matter of days.

I go over with Cameron the comments that he will deliver at his sentencing. He has put a lot of thought into these and is understandably nervous about delivering them in front of a global audience. He practices his remarks over and over again while I don the stern look of a judge.

I examine his appearance to see if he has abused the pills I've given him. I google the symptoms of Xanax abuse and scour his eyes for pinhead-sized pupils and monitor his conduct for anything erratic. It seems he has kept to his promise.

The spectacle surrounding his sentencing is unlike anything I've ever seen. The barrage of press is what one would imagine for a visit by the president, not the halfhearted drug-dealing son of a movie star. Reporters are lined into the jury box of the courtroom and spill out into the gallery. The courtroom is so overflowing with spectators that a second one is opened up for closed-circuit viewing.

Before the proceedings begin, I visit Cameron in the inmate cell adjacent to the courtroom. He's wearing the suit selected for him by his endlessly stylish mother. He looks like an entirely different person outside of his jumpsuit. “I told you I clean up nice,” he says with half a smile. But it's a vain attempt at lightheartedness; when I look at the hand holding his dog-eared remarks, it is trembling.

“It's going to be okay,” I say. “It's almost all over.”

He nods and gives a nervous smile. He says that he is ready.

Co-Counsel arrives to greet Cameron and let him know he's ready, too. He examines Cameron's appearance with an approving look. Through the bars, he helps Cameron adjust his tie. It's a touching gesture, one that Cameron seems to appreciate.

Soon after we return to the courtroom, a U.S. Marshal opens the door with Cameron at his side. The entire courtroom is straining to see. I give him a supportive smile as he takes a deep breath and sits down.

In sentencing proceedings involving cooperators, the government is required to make a motion asking the court to consider the defendant's cooperation in calculating his sentence. Where the cooperation is still
a secret, some judges perform this motion outside of the courtroom in chambers. Cameron's judge instead calls a sidebar, so that the motion can be made outside of earshot of the participants, unavailable for public consumption.

As all of the attorneys get up to approach the bench, I consider staying behind. There is nothing for me to say or do. But when I look over at Cameron, he nods his head toward the bench as though to indicate I should go, too.