A Knock at Midnight(58)
“I don’t give a shit about your other job,” Ray said. “I care about this store. You’re on the night shift starting next week.”
Frustrated, Donel kept working his liquor store night shifts, refusing to show up at Kroger. Three weeks later, he was fired for abandoning his post.
Bills got tough to keep up with, and then behind. At the liquor store, he asked for more hours. “I can’t afford it, man,” the owner told Donel. “Things are real tight as it is.”
When his old friend from St. Anthony’s, Mike Wilson, came through one Friday night, buying cases of Miller Genuine Draft for a party on the lake, Donel saw the jet skis on a small trailer hitched to the back of his truck, the pretty Demi Moore–looking girl in the front seat, the bottles of champagne Mike grabbed at the last minute to add to his purchase, already several hundred dollars. It was like a solution had just pulled up in the parking lot.
“Mike,” Donel said, “you gotta hook me up, man. I need some work. Let me come help you out. Just until I can get caught up.”
Mike shook his head, smiled at Donel. “This life ain’t for you,” he said. “You’re not cut out for this.” A few weeks later, Donel saw Mike again, this time at the carwash. “You gotta let me work for you, Mike. The liquor store is closing. I’m gonna lose the house. Let me do something. Just till I get on my feet. If it’s not you, I’m gonna have to work for somebody. I’d rather it be you.”
Mike tried to deter his friend again, but Donel pleaded with him until he agreed. Mostly, Donel cooked, staying up all night, rocking up powder cocaine. He’d almost leveled up on his house payments after just a few short months. He was grateful to Mike for helping him out when he needed it most. Not many would take a chance on someone as green as him.
After a few months, Donel worried about getting too comfortable in the business. He knew he didn’t want to get trapped in the game forever. He was up to date on his payments, no longer in danger of losing his house. Forever was short in the drug business, Donel knew that. And he was still a square, in truth. He went to see the union, hoping to get his job back at Kroger, bringing his meticulous records of all the times he’d been pulled away from his job, all the times he’d requested additional assistance and been denied. The union lawyer was blunt. “Man, if you’d brought this to us at the time, you would’ve had these guys over a barrel. But too much time has passed. It’s policy. There’s nothing we can do for you now.”
When Donel looked into other supermarket jobs, the pay rate wasn’t even half of what he’d been making at Kroger, let alone his weekly earnings working for Mike. He still owed the hospital for bills incurred during his son’s birth. He had three dependents, and house payments that would be a lot easier to fall behind on than they had been to catch up. And Mike had just doubled his salary to a thousand dollars a week, three times more than he’d been making at Kroger. So Donel kept cooking.
For Donel, as for all of my clients, an error of judgment turned into a virtual death sentence. He and Mike and the rest of the crew were picked up two years later, in May 1992. Mandatory minimums, conspiracy laws, ghost dope, and ruthless prosecution by the federal government sealed his fate.
I decided to pay Donel a visit. Previously, I’d communicated with him, Mike, Wayland, and Terry through Corrlinks email and phone calls. With De-Ann’s help, I had gotten to know them each as individuals this way. Now I wanted to meet Donel to discuss strategy with him in person. Donel was always thoughtful in our phone calls and email exchanges, always impressing me with his incredible memory for nuance and detail, but it was important to me to meet my clients face-to-face. How could I make certain that the Office of the Pardon Attorney and the Department of Justice understood Donel as a whole, unique person if I didn’t truly know him that way?
There was another reason, too. Donel had essentially put his life in my hands, ignoring my relative youth and inexperience, and the fact that I wasn’t even a criminal lawyer. In truth, I had no idea what I was doing in regard to clemency, and I suspected my clients knew that. I wanted to let him know that I would be putting my heart and soul into his petition, that I felt honored to be trusted in this way. And I wanted him to be able to look me in the eye when I told him so.
When I visited Donel at Seagoville Federal Correctional Institution just east of Dallas, he’d already served twenty years of his thirty-five-year sentence. My first impression of him was one of impeccable neatness. In his late forties, he entered the visiting room in his neatly pressed khaki prison uniform, his deeply waved hair cut low and clean, hairline razor-sharp. When he shook my hand, his eyes, set deep in his acorn-brown face, were as gentle and kind as his manner.
“Thank you for coming, Brittany,” he said as he sat down across from me at the small table. “I’m not the greatest fan of lawyers, but in your first email to me, you signed off with ‘And this too shall pass.’ You just don’t know what that simple sentence did for my morale. I thought—this woman is different.” He spoke with confidence, his manner calm and collected, but I could still feel the weight of the past twenty years behind every word.
“This is a privilege,” I said. “Thank you for trusting me.”
Donel’s face broke into a wide smile. He seemed so familiar to me, calm, avuncular. The rest of our meeting felt natural and relaxed.