Plea Bargain

To Whom It May Concern:

Think about this: Dick Cheney never spent a day behind bars, and never will. Henry the K either. But my neighbor Sidney Crenshaw, who never started a war or tortured people that I know of, has served five years out at Chino already.

Isn't that enough? I'm not saying Sidney was innocent. He did what the cops said he did, which was sell prescription drugs on the streets of North Long Beach, which is illegal, and so he got busted. Somebody dropped a dime on him. Isn't it funny how we still say "dropped a dime," as if that's what a call still cost and you could still find a phone booth with a coin slot in it? Anyhow, Sidney's wife, Kelly, asked me to write you folks. She says there's a provision under Proposition 47 in which nonviolent offenders who have served more than half their sentences can get turned loose, the prisons being overcrowded and all. She asked me to be a character witness, you might say. So here goes.

But first I want you to think about Cheney and Kissinger and the people who ran those "black sites" for the cia and the Nationwide folks who foreclosed on my condo in '08 and left me in the situation I'm in today, which I won't go into. They all went scot-free, every last one of them. So how is it fair that Sidney Crenshaw gets nine years? Oh, I know, I know. Shit walks and money talks—or is it the other way around?—and he was a two-striker already, so "fair" didn't even enter into it. Right? But it's not like Sidney was running a criminal empire out on Long Beach Boulevard by Eddie Jr.'s Liquor. He was a black ex-con with a family, and this was the only "job" he could find that paid for the rent and groceries and a big-screen tv and a used Camaro. He probably knew his luck would run out someday, but in the short haul what else could he do?

Yes, Sidney Crenshaw broke the law. He pushed dope. But you might also say he was doing a public service for people who needed those pills and couldn't get them any other way. People like me.

You might even say he saved my life.

I won't go into that either—how my surgery for prostate cancer went all wrong and it got infected and months later I was still in pain. How much pain, one to ten? Who can say? You can't ever know what another person feels. But the point was, it didn't let up. Think about the last time you stubbed your toe on the leg of your bed on a cold night. Hurts like a sonofabitch, doesn't it? You yell and cuss and hop around like a madman. But in a little while it goes away. Just imagine if it didn't—if it went on and on. How could you live? That's what got me to thinking about those black sites, where they'd make damn sure it didn't stop till you spilled the beans on some isis plot, even if you had to make one up.

Eddie Jr.'s was where I first met Sidney Crenshaw. I won't lie. I was buying booze. Next time you go to a liquor store or a supermarket—even a high-end place like Gelson's or Boston Market or Whole Foods—take a good hard look at all the booze they've got. Especially the bottom shelves, where the gallons of wine and the jumbo bottles of whiskey and vodka are. Do you ever wonder who drinks all that stuff? Add it up and there's enough liquor in Long Beach to float the Queen Mary. And the stores wouldn't stock those big bottles if people didn't buy them. Right? So who are these people? I never thought about it much till I was one of them. Now I'll...