Living the life of a Thug - Not my style

When I offered to help Barry, I invited more drama into my life than I cared to imagine. While he had his own set of issues, his former room mate was a  walking time bomb waiting to explode.  The whole reason she kicked him out was because I bought groceries and she was under the impression there was more between the two of us than there ever was.

She did not believe people did nice things for no reason. While she couldn't stand to have him around, she couldn't stand to not have him around. She was married to her husband, Steve, who had held a good paying job in Colorado, but got mixed up in the cocaine scene and lost his job.  She met Barry at a party and they "hooked" up.  They had an affair and her husband was fine with this as he had his own little quirks about himself that she accepted.  It was a tit for tat kind of marriage, if you want to call it a marriage, legally on paper, they were married, but their behavior did not support a healthy relationship.

She called Barry constantly and the conversation would start out fine, but she knew where to push his buttons and then the match was on. I grew tired of her emailing me with stories about him and calling my home leaving long winded messages that were hateful.

After the first stint of the "missing money," I called her and told her to come get him.  He was missing in action again and I was  tired of the drama.   She wasted no time coming to get his things and I was more than happy to return to my boring life.  She stood in my driveway and wondered how he would know she had his belongings. I told her to call him and tell him, she had a better idea, she stripped off her dress, in my drive way, removed her bra and left it on the trash can where he could see it and would know she had been there.  

My mouth dropped to the ground.  She had had a boob job that she was quite proud of, so I discovered any time she could flaunt them, she did. She was right, when he rode up on his bike and saw her bra, he knew exactly what had happened.  Perhaps it was a secret message between the two of them.

He was angry that I had given her his stuff, but I was angry that he had used me.  We had made a deal  and he didn't stick up to it. It lasted less than a week, he called me, she had thrown him out again and he had no where to go.  This went on for a couple of months and it had to stop. My parents were coming for a month as they always did in the summer.  My mom does not understand my giving nature and this would put her over the edge.

After the incident with the car, I started demanding he give me his money so that I could make sure he would not blow it. He had a job on the west side of Indianapolis that his boss would pick him up and take him to the construction site.  I placed him in a motel near the intersection where he caught his ride. He was making six hundred a week under the table. He was a hard worker, but with jobs like that, one day they are there and the next day they aren't.

He needed money to pay his "rent" at the motel. He was paying by the day as he didn't have a steady income.   He called and asked me to bring him some money and I refused.  I had helped all I could.  The next call I received was from him a day or two later. He was calling from a local grocery store.

"Sue, (that was his nickname for me) I need your help. I got busted at the Marsh store on Washington Street. Guess I'm not  good at shop lifting.  They are taking me in for processing and I need you to come get my bike.  They won't let me keep it in the store so I've locked it up outside. Please?  I need you to do this for me cause otherwise some one will steal it.  Sue?  Pick up?"

He turned to ask the officer the address of the store and proceeded to tell me where the bike was at. I was just getting off of work so I swung by the house to pick up some cable cutters  

On my drive over, I called the motel.  I had become acquainted with the desk clerk, we were on a first name basis.  "Hey Rodney, it's Cindy.  Barry just got picked up for shop lifting and I'm headed over to get his bike.  Can I swing by and have you open his room so I can put it in there?"

"Sorry, I can't open the room unless your name is on the paperwork. I saw him leaving this  morning. He didn't have money for his room for tomorrow so he was headed out on his bike. He was going to pawn some tools he had."

"Really?  Well, can I drop it off and you keep it in the lobby for him?"

"Nope, can't do that either."

Well, so much for making this easy on me.  I found the grocery store and just as he had said, it was chained out front. I went inside to talk to the manager and inform him that I was there to get the bike.  He said Barry was a nice guy, but had gotten caught stealing an eleven dollar steak.  The interesting thing was the steak was on clearance.  If you are going to steal a steak, go for the one that is fresh, hell, why go to jail for meat that is hours from creating a case of food poisoning for you.

I had on  a turquoise dress, three inch heels, jewelry and looked unlike your typical thug that day.  As I pulled up in my Lincoln, the rain came down  in buckets.  I jumped out of the car and grabbed my cable cutters.  They make it look so easy in the movies, one snap and the bike was mine, but there were no camera crews filming, just customers filing in to the store to pick up their groceries. I could not cut through this cable. I cut through the plastic, but the cable was twisted and difficult to cut. I must have stood there for fifteen minutes working on this, struggling to cut through the cord.

I found it peculiar that no one stopped to confront me.  Here I was "stealing" this bike, but perhaps the way I was dressed or the car I was driving didn't reek of gangsters. I was soaking wet.  Finally a  black man stopped by and asked if he could help me. He took the cable cutters and in one click, snapped the cable, put the bike in the back of my car and wished me a happy day.  No questions, just happy to help a fellow human in need.

I jumped in my car and realized I needed to buy a birthday cake for one of my staff members who was celebrating her birthday the next day. I parked the car and went inside, stopping in the restroom to wash my hands. I picked up a cake, paid for it and headed back to my car.  As I stepped out of the store, a police car was driving slowly by, as if they were looking for someone and as I looked in the other direction, I discovered several police cars scanning the lot.
I am not stupid, I knew who they were looking for.

I got in the car and drove out towards the police car that was parked in the front of the lot.  Rolling my window down, I asked if he was looking for some one who "stole a bike?" As a matter of fact, he was.  They had gotten several phone calls from customers entering the store.

I introduced myself and explained the circumstances of the bike  heist.  He happened to be the officer who arrested Barry, so he knew a phone call had been placed to me.  He requested my identification and noted it on his pad. This really could not be happening to me, but it was.

He told me what I could expect the rest of the night.  What is involved in processing a person, bail, time frames.  It was all quite new to me.  I thanked him for his time and left.  If Barry thought I was bailing him out, he had another thing coming!  I drove back to the seedy motel and considered leaving his bike.  I knew he had some girl staying with him off and on to help pay for the room, so I had hoped that I would find her there.  Outside of his room was a ceiling camera.  I don't know why I noticed this, but I am just always aware of my surroundings.

His room was  on the ground floor and I had seen him crawl through the window when he had forgotten his key. The window was not secured at all, so I thought I'd slide it open and drop the bike inside.  Unfortunately, he had blocked it so I couldn't. I did glimpse inside and took note of the condition of the room, again, don't know why, just did.

I headed home, bike in tow and waited for the call.  I would have to deliver this some time sooner than later.  The call came at two in the morning.  Barry was beside himself.  He said he had been sprung from the joint at midnight and hitched a ride with some chick who took him to the Marsh store to pick up his bike and "some one stole it!" He went on to tell me some one had tossed his room and stolen all the tools I had bought him. He was weaving quite a tale and I let him.  When he was all done, I suggested he go to the front desk and have them watch the surveillance camera and he'd catch himself taking his tools out to the pawn shop that afternoon at two.  I described the condition of his room and suggested that no one had tossed it when I had been there several hours before.

"Sue, do you have my bike, man, I knew some one would steal it!" I should have played with his mind, but it was two in the morning. I reminded him he had called and I had done what he asked of me.  I told him about my close call with the officer who arrested him as well.

He on the other hand got off without a slap on the hand. The Judge had been called for midnight court and was running late.  I told him I already knew this as the processing unit had called me to confirm the information he had given them.  It was quite an exciting night at the Klebusch Kabin. They let him go as the Judge didn't have time to hear every case, just the ones over a certain dollar amount.  I knew this as well too.  I told him I'd bring his bike over in a couple of days and hung up.

My life was not boring, that is for sure. I learned more that summer about the ins and outs of lifestyles that I would never want to resort to, but so many live it every day.