CHAPTER 11
RIKERS ISLAND
“It is said that no one truly knows a
nation until one has been inside its jails.”
— Nelson Mandela
I must have slept for three days in the cell. My body was detoxing and my soul was unraveling. Every nightmare I ever earned came back to collect: the gunshots, the party, the betrayals, the blood, the lives I’d touched, the robberies—OttoShine, Cadien, Crazy, Flayco, Derrick, Eggy, and Sherwin. I saw the shaking hand of the Vodouist trying to touch me, his mouth full of Haitian Rum, spraying it out as drums pounded and Haitians danced barefoot— feet moving to the rhythm, the sacrificed chicken, the blood, and voices chanting, calling on the spirits, the lwa. It was a Vodou ceremony—and I felt calm, as if passing through another dimension. My ancestors were telling me I was going to be okay. The Houngan’s hand touched my forehead. He said:
“Bondye beni nou, lwa yo ale an pè. Se pa nou ki fè mirak, se Ginen.” (God bless you, the spirits go in peace. It is not we who perform miracles, but Ginen.)
A reminder to stay on the right path. That I am the master of my fate—I am the captain of my soul.
The adolescent ward of C74 on Rikers Island had functioned since its 1972 opening as a facility for 16- to 20-year-olds. Holding 800 or more teenagers, it was where lost souls ended up to become more lost. A breeding ground for the crime wave that hit New York in the late ’70s and ’80s. I was in prison with teenagers who believed in violence just like I did—most worse than me. After a few weeks, I thought, “Hell must be empty because all the devils are here with me.”
I was eighteen, but the weight I carried aged me fast. I was coming off a cocaine habit I hadn’t even realized I had—sleepless nights, mood swings, raging fits where I kicked and screamed at the steel door until my throat gave out and my legs collapsed beneath me. Someone offered me heroin to calm the storm. I tried it, thinking sometimes poison equalizes poison. I threw up all over the tier. That wasn’t my kind of poison I needed, heroin would surely kill me. I went cold turkey. The nightmares got worse. More ghosts visited me, and I thought I was losing my mind or worse dying.
I was known the second I walked in.
“Where’s your 9mm now, Jimmy Ace?” they mocked in the receiving room. The Veer name was hot. The rep I’d built carried more hate than respect inside. Within days, three dudes tried to cut and rush me. If it wasn’t for King Tut stepping in—who I’d met with Rat (Harold) during our East New York stickup days—I might not have made it out of the mess hall with a cut or stab wound. Rat and Tut were locked up too, busted for robbing a Jehovah’s Witness temple of its gold ornaments and goblets. King Tut took on two, so I could fight the third. That’s how we handled it—one-on-one.
Most of that first month, I stayed locked in. Paranoid. Plotting. Counting screws and shadows. I didn’t hit the yard. I knew better. My enemies grouped up like wolves, waiting to slice me into fame. I wasn’t walking into a trap to be butchered like Julius Caesar—stabbed 23 times in the Senate in 44 BC to save the Republic. But these men? They weren’t trying to save anything. No Republic. They just wanted glory off my blood.
Meanwhile, Cadien had gone upstate—to Elmira, then Auburn. Word was, he made brutal examples of people just to keep the Vanderveer and Untouchables’ name alive. He lost all his good time doing it. What could’ve been two years became six. Some others folded—outnumbered, outgunned, or out of heart. They signed into protective custody to save themselves. I couldn’t and wouldn’t run. I’d earn my scars by fighting if I had to.
Then came the Puerto Ricans—FTW (Fuck The World) and FMD (Filthy Mad Dogs)—gangbangers out of Bay Ridge, Park Slope, and Fort Hamilton. They wore motorcycle boots and leather jackets with tags. They saw me for who I was. They said, “Let’s go to the yard, we got your back.” And I did.
I finally had a crew. I was from Veer, ran with Jamaicans and Trinidadians, but now I had 15 Puerto Ricans with me—Blue Boy included. I stood in the yard, in a cypher—enemies opposite me. I held a razor in one hand, an ice pick in the other.
“Box cutter to box cutter, knife to knife, or hand to hand,” I said, eyes locked on one man. the man that carried one of my bullets in him and was giving me all the problems. “However you want it.”
No one stepped up.
They were tough in packs. But I’d been fighting all my life—slap-boxing with big brothers, scrapping in school yards as a kid. I was done avoiding. I had arrived. Afterward, when we got back to the cell block, my new crew pulled off a sweaty boot, poured Tang orange juice powder and water into it, stirred intensely and passed it around for consumption. When it reached me, I drank from it with pride. A ritual that let me fit in. I wasn’t alone anymore.
OttoShine never touched a max. He skated through upstate untouched. Norm had already gotten life for a juvenile murder behind Spangler’s case—the same one Leslie claimed he committed. Paul and Gary, original Veer men, were serving nine years. Rikers was full of names—Bush, Bogard, Homicide, Redbug, Tony Rome, Lil Marky, Animal Jeff, Steppa, Duquan, Aloe Spangler, Surfield, George Chang, the real 50 Cent, Cadet, Tuba, Lou Simms, Skip. Some had murder raps, others just carried weight. Most of us weren’t monsters. We were boys who needed help, not cages.
But in the ’80s, cold cases got thrown on anyone just to clear the desk of some over worked detective or malicious prosecutor trying to make a headline. False confessions, planted guns, murders or robberies—it was all part of the game. Some of the men I’ve mentioned would take decades to clear their names.
Eventually, I found my rhythm. I got my weight up, started building influence. But the adolescent ward was fire and gasoline — chaos waiting for a spark. One day, in the middle of a melee, someone sliced me with a box cutter. From my forehead to my upper lip — split me wide open. When the warden saw my face, they threw me straight into the Bing. But the guy who cut me? He stayed in general population.
That ate at me.
So I planned. I knew my trial was near, and I needed to settle this score before I left. I found out the guy who cut me went to visits every Sunday morning. I planned with the precision of my “jukes” (robbery) days and told my Veer people to bring me two scalpels. “Come early,” I told them. And we waited. When he showed, it didn’t matter that he knew I was there already—we blitzed him in the visiting room. Blood spilled—but none of it was mine.
During a call with one of my young Veer men who had brought the scalpels that visiting day told me, “I only know two crazy men,” then he paused so I could guess who, then finished, ”you da two of dem!” We laughed haughtily— I, because I settled a score and he, because he was afraid. My cut was just part of the game, but my reputation was solid, my enemies were put on notice.
In the Bing, something else happened.
Solitary silence forced me to listen — not to others, but to myself. I read the Qur’an for the first time, cover to cover. I went to Jumah, not just to get food from population, but to learn. It reminded me of my old days studying the Torah with the Rastas. My candle lighting and prayers to saints and statues were long behind me. Now I was learning Tawhid — the oneness of God. Islam started whispering to me in that silence. But I wasn’t ready. Not yet. I still had scores to settle.
My trial loomed. I faced several cases. The murder charge? Weak. Because I didn’t do it. But when your name carries weight, so does every crime in the vicinity, I wasn’t just another face— I was Jimmy Ace. They offered me ten years for use and possession of a firearm—not the murder. I took it. I would be eligible for parole in 5 years. I was looking forward to seeing Cadien again.
I was just shy of twenty years old.
But I was alive. Scarred, changed, and ready for whatever came next. I was heading upstate and sent enough warning shots that fear didn’t live in me.
CHAPTER 11
RIKERS ISLAND
“It is said that no one truly knows a
nation until one has been inside its jails.”
— Nelson Mandela
I must have slept for three days in the cell. My body was detoxing and my soul was unraveling. Every nightmare I ever earned came back to collect: the gunshots, the party, the betrayals, the blood, the lives I’d touched, the robberies—OttoShine, Cadien, Crazy, Flayco, Derrick, Eggy, and Sherwin. I saw the shaking hand of the Vodouist trying to touch me, his mouth full of Haitian Rum, spraying it out as drums pounded and Haitians danced barefoot— feet moving to the rhythm, the sacrificed chicken, the blood, and voices chanting, calling on the spirits, the lwa. It was a Vodou ceremony—and I felt calm, as if passing through another dimension. My ancestors were telling me I was going to be okay. The Houngan’s hand touched my forehead. He said:
“Bondye beni nou, lwa yo ale an pè. Se pa nou ki fè mirak, se Ginen.” (God bless you, the spirits go in peace. It is not we who perform miracles, but Ginen.)
A reminder to stay on the right path. That I am the master of my fate—I am the captain of my soul.
The adolescent ward of C74 on Rikers Island had functioned since its 1972 opening as a facility for 16- to 20-year-olds. Holding 800 or more teenagers, it was where lost souls ended up to become more lost. A breeding ground for the crime wave that hit New York in the late ’70s and ’80s. I was in prison with teenagers who believed in violence just like I did—most worse than me. After a few weeks, I thought, “Hell must be empty because all the devils are here with me.”
I was eighteen, but the weight I carried aged me fast. I was coming off a cocaine habit I hadn’t even realized I had—sleepless nights, mood swings, raging fits where I kicked and screamed at the steel door until my throat gave out and my legs collapsed beneath me. Someone offered me heroin to calm the storm. I tried it, thinking sometimes poison equalizes poison. I threw up all over the tier. That wasn’t my kind of poison I needed, heroin would surely kill me. I went cold turkey. The nightmares got worse. More ghosts visited me, and I thought I was losing my mind or worse dying.
I was known the second I walked in.
“Where’s your 9mm now, Jimmy Ace?” they mocked in the receiving room. The Veer name was hot. The rep I’d built carried more hate than respect inside. Within days, three dudes tried to cut and rush me. If it wasn’t for King Tut stepping in—who I’d met with Rat (Harold) during our East New York stickup days—I might not have made it out of the mess hall with a cut or stab wound. Rat and Tut were locked up too, busted for robbing a Jehovah’s Witness temple of its gold ornaments and goblets. King Tut took on two, so I could fight the third. That’s how we handled it—one-on-one.
Most of that first month, I stayed locked in. Paranoid. Plotting. Counting screws and shadows. I didn’t hit the yard. I knew better. My enemies grouped up like wolves, waiting to slice me into fame. I wasn’t walking into a trap to be butchered like Julius Caesar—stabbed 23 times in the Senate in 44 BC to save the Republic. But these men? They weren’t trying to save anything. No Republic. They just wanted glory off my blood.
Meanwhile, Cadien had gone upstate—to Elmira, then Auburn. Word was, he made brutal examples of people just to keep the Vanderveer and Untouchables’ name alive. He lost all his good time doing it. What could’ve been two years became six. Some others folded—outnumbered, outgunned, or out of heart. They signed into protective custody to save themselves. I couldn’t and wouldn’t run. I’d earn my scars by fighting if I had to.
Then came the Puerto Ricans—FTW (Fuck The World) and FMD (Filthy Mad Dogs)—gangbangers out of Bay Ridge, Park Slope, and Fort Hamilton. They wore motorcycle boots and leather jackets with tags. They saw me for who I was. They said, “Let’s go to the yard, we got your back.” And I did.
I finally had a crew. I was from Veer, ran with Jamaicans and Trinidadians, but now I had 15 Puerto Ricans with me—Blue Boy included. I stood in the yard, in a cypher—enemies opposite me. I held a razor in one hand, an ice pick in the other.
“Box cutter to box cutter, knife to knife, or hand to hand,” I said, eyes locked on one man. the man that carried one of my bullets in him and was giving me all the problems. “However you want it.”
No one stepped up.
They were tough in packs. But I’d been fighting all my life—slap-boxing with big brothers, scrapping in school yards as a kid. I was done avoiding. I had arrived. Afterward, when we got back to the cell block, my new crew pulled off a sweaty boot, poured Tang orange juice powder and water into it, stirred intensely and passed it around for consumption. When it reached me, I drank from it with pride. A ritual that let me fit in. I wasn’t alone anymore.
OttoShine never touched a max. He skated through upstate untouched. Norm had already gotten life for a juvenile murder behind Spangler’s case—the same one Leslie claimed he committed. Paul and Gary, original Veer men, were serving nine years. Rikers was full of names—Bush, Bogard, Homicide, Redbug, Tony Rome, Lil Marky, Animal Jeff, Steppa, Duquan, Aloe Spangler, Surfield, George Chang, the real 50 Cent, Cadet, Tuba, Lou Simms, Skip. Some had murder raps, others just carried weight. Most of us weren’t monsters. We were boys who needed help, not cages.
But in the ’80s, cold cases got thrown on anyone just to clear the desk of some over worked detective or malicious prosecutor trying to make a headline. False confessions, planted guns, murders or robberies—it was all part of the game. Some of the men I’ve mentioned would take decades to clear their names.
Eventually, I found my rhythm. I got my weight up, started building influence. But the adolescent ward was fire and gasoline — chaos waiting for a spark. One day, in the middle of a melee, someone sliced me with a box cutter. From my forehead to my upper lip — split me wide open. When the warden saw my face, they threw me straight into the Bing. But the guy who cut me? He stayed in general population.
That ate at me.
So I planned. I knew my trial was near, and I needed to settle this score before I left. I found out the guy who cut me went to visits every Sunday morning. I planned with the precision of my “jukes” (robbery) days and told my Veer people to bring me two scalpels. “Come early,” I told them. And we waited. When he showed, it didn’t matter that he knew I was there already—we blitzed him in the visiting room. Blood spilled—but none of it was mine.
During a call with one of my young Veer men who had brought the scalpels that visiting day told me, “I only know two crazy men,” then he paused so I could guess who, then finished, ”you da two of dem!” We laughed haughtily— I, because I settled a score and he, because he was afraid. My cut was just part of the game, but my reputation was solid, my enemies were put on notice.
In the Bing, something else happened.
Solitary silence forced me to listen — not to others, but to myself. I read the Qur’an for the first time, cover to cover. I went to Jumah, not just to get food from population, but to learn. It reminded me of my old days studying the Torah with the Rastas. My candle lighting and prayers to saints and statues were long behind me. Now I was learning Tawhid — the oneness of God. Islam started whispering to me in that silence. But I wasn’t ready. Not yet. I still had scores to settle.
My trial loomed. I faced several cases. The murder charge? Weak. Because I didn’t do it. But when your name carries weight, so does every crime in the vicinity, I wasn’t just another face— I was Jimmy Ace. They offered me ten years for use and possession of a firearm—not the murder. I took it. I would be eligible for parole in 5 years. I was looking forward to seeing Cadien again.
I was just shy of twenty years old.
But I was alive. Scarred, changed, and ready for whatever came next. I was heading upstate and sent enough warning shots that fear didn’t live in me.