Summer 2005
It had been a few months since my first brush with the law. Still that night in jail was on my mind constantly. I had spent the night behind bars. A night in prison is never easy and mine had been no exception. I was released at 7:30 AM the following morning. Charged with littering and minor in possession of alcohol. Since then my life had been quiet. I laid low. Partly to keep from acquiring a reputation with the law, but also because that night changed me. I truly thought I wanted to lead an honest, peaceful life. Apparently the fates had other plans.
I finished my first year at school and headed home to St. Louis for a summer internship with a law firm. I decided I would get to know lady justice from a different perspective. I had seen her firm hand, now I decided to examine her righteous mind. The lawyer I worked directly under handled my case from the spring. I got off light. The MIP was dropped and I paid a small fine for littering. I felt like that orange child rapist from Sin City. Above the law. That criminal urge inside me began to rise again. Working for the firm wasn't as enlightening as I thought it would be. My days were full of dull busy work. Each day I had to file away pictures and documents pertaining to murder cases, death penalty trials, serial rapists and so on and so forth. I once found a picture of a murdered black woman with a kitchen knife in her neck. The whole thing was incredibly boring. I spent most of my days sleeping in the file room in the basement. A hunger for action was slowly boiling within me.
But as dull as my knife wound filled days were at night I was still having fun. Almost every night I would head over to someone's house and hang out with friends and drink. I still had my fake ID. I was taking full advantage of it. After that close brush in the spring I told myself I would never take my fake ID for granted again. I didn't, I used it just about every night. Most of the time my friends and I would head over to a girl's house whose name will further more be known as Banana. She lived in Clayton. We would hang out on her back porch, drinking and having fun. It was great, not only was it a cool place to hang out but it was also only a 5 minute drive from my house.
Just around the corner from her home the city of Clayton had erected a new statue at the intersection of Wydown and Hanley. It was the ugliest statue ever sculpted. It was this.......
We all hated it. It was the talk of the town. Everyone thought this statue, Fat Man on a Horse by Fernando Botero was the ugliest thing ever created. It looks like Louie Anderson is being immortalized after winning an equestrian medal in the Olympics. When I first saw it I thought it was hideous like everyone else. Little did I know this statue would soon become another notch in my crime belt.
The night was humid, as so many St. Louis nights are. My friend Lennie was on his way to pick me up. After a long day of work I needed to unwind. We were heading to Banana's house for the night. After Lennie arrived we swung by my neighborhood Schnucks to pick up some beer. At this point I had the fake ID game down pat. I strolled in so confident in my ability to purchase liquor that I probably seemed 21 to the employees. I grabbed a 24 pack of Natural Light and headed to the cashier. Tareesha wasn't working that night. No matter, I thought, I had plenty of other options now. I purchased the beer and headed back to the car. Lennie was waiting. I got in and headed towards Banana's. We had to make one more stop along the way though. We drove to our friend Skinny's house to pick him up. The car pulled up to the curb in front of Skinny's house. After a quick phone call he was heading out the door and towards the car. He got in and we were on our way.
When we got to Banana's house several of her friends were already there. We sat down and began to converse. After a few hours the spirits had gotten to our heads. The group talked and laughed, enjoying the night. Then the subject of the statue came up.
"It is so ugly" Banana said.
"It looks retarded" I said in agreement.
"Who thought that was a good idea?" Lennie wondered aloud.
"The tail looks like a turd" commented another of Banana's friends.
The conversation continued. The theme circled around the group, each of us musing about what we would do with the statue if such a decision were ours. We wondered what could be done to show the city of Clayton how stupid that statue was. Suddenly an idea hit me like a bolt of lightening. Condiments, I thought.
"Let's fuck with it." I said. The group was silent.
"How?" Banana replied.
"Lets throw shit on it." I replied. Again the group sat silently.
".....Like what?" Lennie asked hesitantly.
"I don't know like....some ketchup or something." I knew this would convince them. "Any takers?" I asked. There were none at first.
"Come on it'll be hilarious. They won't catch us we'll just run right back here, no one will ever know. Skinny lets do it." I pleaded. Skinny agreed.
"Okay." He said.
We headed into Banana's kitchen to create our condiment arsenal. I grabbed a bottle of Super Smokers BBQ Sauce. Skinny grabbed a jar of mayonnaise. Banana walked into her kitchen to watch us prepare. It didn't take us long. Skinny and I went over the plan. Run through the alley out onto the street, throw our respective condiments, run like hell back to Banana's house. The plan was flawless.
Skinny and I headed down the alley to Wydown. The alley was lit by a few lights on telephone poles. We were the alone except for a group of young professionals gathered in the adjacent park. We walked out to the street acting as inconspicuous as possible. We stood on the sidewalk for a moment staring down our foe. Perhaps it was the liquor, perhaps the importance of our cause, but at that moment I was ready.
"Throw it." I said to Skinny.
Skinny threw. His jar flew across the statue littering it with mayonnaise. I was next. I stood for a moment. Considered my target. Adjusted for wind and drunkenness. Then I stepped forward, wound up and threw. The bottle exploded on impact. The noise was tremendous. What I hadn't realized is that the statue was hollow and bronze. The impact echoed up and down the street. Skinny and I were too drunk to care. We stumbled back to Banana's house, our laughter screeching through the night air. We came up on Banana's back porch, everyone's face was stunned. Skinny and I were still laughing. Soon everyone else began to ease and laugh as well. We had pulled it off. I never thought I would commit a crime again. But I had, and this time I was in the clear.
After about 20 minutes Lennie decided it was time for him to go home. Skinny, Lennie, and I said our goodbyes and headed to Lennie's car. The whole drive to Skinny's house we laughed about what we had just done. We hoped this would teach Clayton a lesson. As we pulled up to Skinny's house my phone began to ring. It was Banana calling. I answered.
"Hey what's up?" I said curiously.
"You guys need to come back and clean up the statue" Banana said, her voice a little shaken.
"Um no, why would we do that?" I said defiantly.
"The police are here." Banana said. I paused. I shot of adrenaline went through me. Then I remembered who I was talking to. Banana liked to fuck with people sometimes, I was sure this was a joke.
"Whatever no they're not." I replied.
"There is a police officer on my back porch right now you guys need to get back here." She said annoyed.
"Okay if there's a cop let me talk to him." I said cleverly. Lennie and Skinny were now watching me with interest.
"No, just get back here." Banana said even more annoyed than before.
"Just let me talk to him" I insisted, proud of my clever ploy to unravel her rouse.
"No just get back here now." She demaned, now angry.
"Whatever, good night." I hung up the phone.
I told Lennie and Skinny about Banana's attempt to fool us. We laughed. Skinny exited the car and we said goodbye. He began to walk across the lawn towards his house. My phone rang again. It was Banana. I laughed and answered.
"Hello?" I said lightheartedly.
"This is Officer ***** ******** of the Clayton police department are you Foxxx?" Said a man's voice I didn't know from the other end of the phone.
"Uh yeah." I replied, skeptical of if this was actually a police officer. Before we left Banana's house she had told us some guy friends of hers from her school were coming over.
"I'm not entirely convinced this is actually a police officer, what's your badge number?" I asked, thinking I was clever.
"How about you come back to the statue and I give you the badge number then. I have your address if you'd like we can come to your home and pick you up." Replied the man sternly.
At this point I was pretty convinced it was a police officer. Even if it wasn't I did not want to take the chance of having a police car come to my house at 3 AM and wake up my parents to arrest me. I called Skinny who was now in his house and explained the situation. He snuck out of his house and came back to the car. We asked Lennie to take us back to the scene of the crime. He was not happy. He had been drinking a bit so the prospect of driving up to police officer under the influence was not pleasing to him. Understandable.
The ride back to Banana's was silent. We all hoped it was a joke. As we approached the back of her house on Wydown we found out that it was not. There were six police cars waiting for us. Lennie was pissed. I took out my wallet and put my fake ID in his glove box. At first he was against it but I assured him the cops would just let him pass. Skinny and I got out of the car and headed up to the police officers.
"Hello. Officer." I said trying to get someone's attention. "We're the idiots who messed with the statue." A police officer turned to us.
"Come here." He said.
Skinny and I walked over to him and gave him our information. I was worried. I thought I'd be going to jail again for the second time in four months. The police told us we needed to clean the statue. We called Banana. She answered.
"Hey can we get some cleaning supplies from your house, we have to clean up the statue." I asked.
"Yeah. I guess" She sounded angry.
Banana opened her back door and let us in. The three of us went down to her basement. Skinny and I began to grab cleaning supplies.
"So thanks for telling the cops my name." I said to Banana, a little disappointed in her.
"Well they came up to my back porch, which had beer cans all over it. They said if I didn't I would have gotten an MIP. So considering this is all your fault I figured it was fair to give them your names." Banana retorted.
".....I guess." I replied.
I wasn't too upset Banana turned us in. The table on the back porch was covered in beer cans. On top of this she had just had some legal troubles of her own. I could understand her not wanting to be in any more trouble than she already was. I was essentially in a similar but much shittier situation. I'm sure had $150 dollars worth of alcohol not been strewn across her back porch she would have lied for us.
After gathering the cleaning supplies and a hose Skinny and I headed out to the street. The police were there waiting for us. Just as the TP'ing incident was in the spring, this apparently was the crime of the night. Half the department had shown up. Again I marveled at how little police actually have to do. As Skinny and I walked up to the group of cops they discussed what to do with us.
"I say just have them clean the statue, get their info, and let them go." Said one cop.
"Fuck that lets arrest 'em!" Another, much douchier cop suggested.
"Eh it isn't a big deal lets just make them clean it and let them leave." An older cop, presumably the one in charge replied.
"Fuck 'em, lets take 'em in." The douche cop again declared. I have never wished so hard for someone to literally drop dead as I did right then. Thankfully the other officers did not agree with the douche.
The police told us we could just clean up the statue and head home. This was a relief. Skinny and I didn't even care that we no longer had a ride and would now have to walk home. Skinny's house was about a 20 minute walk from Banana's, mine was more like 40 minutes. We began to clean. I marveled at how much mayonnaise was on the statue. All my BBQ sauce was concentrated in one place but the mayo was everywhere.
"Dude this was a miracle throw." I observed. Skinny laughed.
As we were cleaning a girl I knew drove by. She saw me mopping the statue and stopped in the middle of the intersection. She rolled down her window and yelled.
"What are you doing?"
Since she was probably drunk and there were about nine police officers standing around me I figured it was a good idea to send her on her way.
"Don't worry about it, just get out of here, you don't want to be here, I'll call you tomorrow." I yelled back.
"Um...okay....call me." She said confused, she then drove off.
Skinny and I continued to clean the statue. At this point in the night it was probably about 2:30 AM. I had to be at work at 9 AM the next morning, we had probably an hour of work left. I began to scrub the BBQ sauce off the statue while Skinny concentrated on his mayo. As I scrubbed away at the BBQ sauce I noticed what I thought were odd brown stains underneath the sauce. I soon realized that they were scratches. Scratches from the glass bottle hitting the bronze statue. I knew we were screwed. No longer was this some condiment stains. I had severely damaged a very expensive statue. I had no idea how much damage I had done monetarily speaking. For all I knew this could a felony. I began to freak out.
The police weren't paying close attention to us. It turned out that they didn't really care about what we had done. They also hated the statue and thought that what we did was hilarious. The only reason they came was because some people who were hanging out in the park (the young professionals) called the police. Since they weren't too concerned about what we had done I knew I might be able to lie about the scratches if I disposed of the evidence. I began to pick up the pieces of broken glass and put them in my pocket. After it all was collected I probably had about 20 pieces of jagged broken glass in the pockets of my shorts.
When Skinny and I finished cleaning we walked over to police to inform them we were done. They spoke with us for a while. We bummed cigarettes off one cop. Then they got our phone numbers. They asked for both home and cell numbers. Since I was working for a law firm I figured I might be able to take care of this without my parents ever knowing. I gave them my cell phone number and then gave them my brother's cell number, claiming it was my home number. The police then inspected the statue. Everything seemed fine at first. I hoped they wouldn't notice the scratches. Of course they did. We played dumb. I said that it was a stain but I couldn't get it off. Skinny said he had seen it on there before today. The police weren't convinced. They said they would have to turn this over to a detective.
We left the police and began to walk home. We were exhausted and just wanted this night to be over with. On the way home I reached into my pocket to grab my cell phone, forgetting the shards of broken glass I had recently stashed in them. I pulled my hand out of my pocket cut to shit. I was bleeding everywhere. That sucked. I had to use my shirt to try and stop the bleeding. I finally got home at about 4 AM, I had work at 9 AM the next day. I went to sleep though safe in the knowledge that my parents wouldn't find out about this.
I awoke the next day to my mother standing over me. She looked angry. This was going to be a long day.
"Why did a Clayton police detective just call your brother's cell phone?" She asked with a curious rage.
Apparently my plan to give the police my brother's cell phone number as my own backfired. My brother had left his cell phone downstairs when he went to bed. My mother happened to be getting ready for work when the phone began to ring. She looked at the incoming number and recognized it as the Clayton police department (my mom is a lawyer and worked in Clayton for some time as both a lawyer and judge). She answered and from what I can imagine had a very interesting conversation with the detective.
"Don't worry about it, it's a big misunderstanding." I said, too tired to think of a good lie.
"You need to call him back." She said, really really pissed off sounding.
I was exhausted, angry, scared, ashamed, and on top of all this drunk. I know I said that the fear of police had sobered me up the night before but the alcohol didn't leave my system. Actually the only thing to leave my body that night was a decent amount of blood from my severe hand wound. So I was still drunk when I awoke. To go along with being drunk my mother woke me up at 7 AM, an hour before I was going to wake up.
I got in the shower, tried to jack off, probably failed due to drunkenness and a preoccupation with a pending arrest. I then got out of the shower, got dressed and went downstairs. My mom was waiting for me. I tried to make breakfast but she insisted on bothering me about why the police were calling my brother's cell phone asking for me. I explained what happened the night before. The look on her face was a level of dumbfounded that I had never seen before. It was the kind of face I would make if I met someone trying to poop in their own mouths.
After that lovely conversation I returned the Clayton detective's phone call. He was all business. He told me to come down to the station so that I could recount what happened the previous night. I got off the phone and called Skinny, he said he was about to leave to talk to the police. I then told my mom I was heading to the police station before work to talk with this detective.
"Are you an idiot, if you go down there they'll arrest you!" My mom said quickly.
"They didn't say they were going to arrest me. The cops last night were cool I think I'll be fine."
"No, you're not going down there. They'll arrest you." She said matter of factly.
"Skinny is going down there right now, it's fine." I pleaded, not wanting to anger a detective.
"What!?!?" She yelled.
My mother then called Skinny's mom, who she was friends with, she told her not to let Skinny talk to the detective. My mother, as I said before, is a judge and a lawyer, so I figured she knew what she was talking about. She eventually convinced me, there was no way I was going to get arrested this morning. So I headed into work. However there was still one complication. The detective was expecting me. My mom said not to even call him back until I got to the law firm. Unfortunately the detective called first.
"Are you coming down to the station?" He asked me, a little annoyed.
"Yes, I'm on my way, but I had to walk because I don't have a car here." I lied, it bought me like a half an hour while I waited for my lawyer to come into work. Still the phone calls came.
"Where are you?" The detective asked, now angry. "You better not be hiring a lawyer, because if you are I will arrest you. I just want to talk."
At this point I'd just like to comment on how full of crap so many people associated with the law are. First, my mom thinks the detective is lying to me. She thinks if I go into the station, he will arrest me even though he said he wouldn't, isn't that entrapment? Secondly this detective said he will arrest me if I hire a lawyer? Don't I have a right to legal counsel? People just like to make shit up when talking to people who they think have no idea what's going on. Anway.....
At this point I was in the office of the law firm with my lawyer, again I recounted my actions from the previous night, again I got that pooping in mouth dumbfounded look. By now I was freaking out because the detective was really pissed off and said if I wasn't at the station in the next 15 minutes I was under arrest. My lawyer decided to call him. Remember the detective told me not to hire a lawyer. I sat and watched as my lawyer called the detective.
"Hello, detective, I'm calling about my client who you're expecting at your station in a few minutes. He was one of the young men involved with the statue on Wydown and Hanley last night..........no he did not hire me as legal counsel, he works for me, he is my legal clerk..........no he did not hire me"
I couldn't hear what the detective was saying back to my lawyer but it didn't sound good. Luckily my lawyer is a smooth motherfucker and can talk his way in and out of anything. Interesting side note about the lawyer I worked for, he is a stud. He is about 35 and is good friends with Jamal Mayers of the St. Louis Blues. These two liked to hit the town and have lots of sex with lots of really hot skanks. How do I know they were hot you ask? Well that's because my lawyer liked to catalogue his conquests with the camera on his phone. He one day guided my through about eight different naked pictures on his phone while he had nothing to do. That was a good day at work.
My lawyer hung up the phone and told me I needed to go down to the station. Gee fucking whiz isn't that what I was going to do in the first place? I thought. So now I headed over to the Clayton Police Department to speak to a really pissed off detective. I arrived and was guided to the detective's desk. I waited for a moment while he interrogated/motherfucked a car thief. He then turned his unpleasent attention to me. He spent the first 10 minutes of our meeting bitching me out for stringing him along. I tried to explain that several different lawyers, including my mother, told me it was a bad idea and that he was going to arrest me.
"I told you I wasn't going to arrest you." He said angrily.
Fucking great advice I thought. He told me that I caused a lot of damage to the statue. He also told me that the mayor was really pissed off about Skinny and I vandalizing the statue because this was the second time in a month the statue had been fucked with (apparently the first time Clayton High's class of '05 used the statue as a forum to let the world know that they ruled). The mayor was also pissed off because the statue apparently cost a lot whole lot of money. It cost a lot of money because apparently Fernando Botero is a world famous artist. A lot of things were made apparent to me during this meeting. The detective gave me my court date and just as I was about to leave he stopped me.
"Wait." He said cleverly "Let me see your wallet, you said you were drinking, I want to see if you have a fake ID."
I gladly handed over my wallet since my fake was still in Lennie's glove compartment. I had once again committed a crime, gotten caught, and somehow despite having awful luck with everything else managed kept my fake ID away from the police. There was no way I was ever losing this thing. I had court a few months later, the Clayton prosecutor knew my dad and cut me a deal. I basically had a little bit of community service and a year on probation. Not so bad considering I caused a few thousand dollars worth of damage to a priceless piece of art.
This was even bigger than the TP'ing, I was now a full fledged criminal. I was on probation. And I was famous too. Skinny and my's escapade was covered (briefly) by both the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and according to a friend of mine it was mentioned in an art textbook as well. Our names were never mentioned, but our tools were. Both publications made a mention of the BBQ sauce and mayonnaise. It seemed that after only 19 years of life I had already carved out a little piece of immortality for myself.
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