Confessions of a Webmaster (1/3) By Mo

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

I'm not sure what year it was, somewhere mid winter, I had been dragged in to work as a consultant developer for Smith Barney, to work on a rather hairy problem they could not solve themselves. A reporting problem, to deliver reports on cross currency swaps, derivative products with complex accumulators outside the scope of their existing software products and they were in a hurry to produce this for their top management.

It took me a week just to understand what the problem was, not to mention interfacing to several of their databases in order to extract the required information.

Anyway by the end of the second week the Friday, I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself having designed and deployed a solution meanwhile spending 3 days and 2 nights nonstop, successfully using beautiful object oriented software to produce their required solution. My employer was delighted having been on full billing the whole time. Every few hours during the night I would roll a joint in the men's loo, pass security to the back of the building and have a lovely smoke. That was what probably kept me going through the long night hours.

I was not alone in this habit, with many friends in the business into far more serious and harmful drugs. Anyhow, this particular Friday it was my turn to go downtown, meet up with a big beefy Italian bloke called Tony. I pulled up a bar stool next to Tony, handed over 250 bucks in an envelope, in exchange for a larger brown one, we continued with pleasantries as he assured me how good my 2.5 ounces of weed was. Cool, we had another pint, and my mind was on returning home to give it a try and later split it with my work buddies. So I finished my drink, said goodbye to Tony and slipped out the door, brown package nicely packed inside my suit jacket.

I slipped my token into the machine and began to push forward the barrier to enter the 14th Street Union Square subway station proper. Before I had a chance to become aware of it someone was pushing behind me to enter on the same click through, it was Tony. Seconds later we were on the floor with 5 or 6 plain clothes cops pointing hand guns at us (yes these were the days of that Nazi Rudy Guliani). They gleefully threw us against the wall and proceeded to vigorously search us. I remember commenting to a female cop, "You are enjoying this aren't you?".

On me they found my brown package and 5 bucks I had left from the transaction, on him the found 13 balls of cocaine and 20,000 dollars in cash (yes you read that right).

In the holding cell I asked the officers for a pee (2 pints was awaiting an exit) but it was several hours before they would allow this. Soon they transferred us to underground City Hall, a long dark tunnel full of the dregs of people they had collected from the streets that night, probably 200 of us, all men. We were told to strip naked and await a group of police thugs who duly bent us over and prodded us whilst bent over. I believe Tony and I were the only 2 white guys in the whole tunnel; even the cops were enormous, black men.

Sometime later, in groups of 25 men the tunnel began to empty as we were led to the cells under City Hall.

Continued .... Next Page (2/3)

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