“Nervous Nerd Frank” aka Faisal Shahin and his Functional Forgeries As usual, I awoke almost to the minute around 2:15 am to take my nightly pee as my cellie Karlheinz Schreiber snored away in dreamland. I yearned to be home in my own bed with my beautiful wife, son, with Bruno my 115-pound Bull Mastiff standing guard over all three of us. Instead I was forced to endure yet another day of false imprisonment at the Metro West Detention Center, pending an insane “immigration investigation”. As I unloaded into the bowl I had to remind myself my dilemma was a created to coerce my silence and “cooperation” with two of the FBI’s most corrupt senior agents who had the full support of Division Five. As I contemplated my eventual fate, a guard working the night shift suddenly appeared at my door with keys in hand telling me to get dressed. “For 886
was a van waiting for me. I was truly puzzled since I had no court dates and my next immigration hearing was almost two weeks away. And they certainly do not release prisoners in the wee hours of the morning. I suddenly got a quick flashback to the three-month Magic Bus ride I took in America years ago, and now a bit of dread overcame me as I started to wonder if I was in any danger, being taken back to the U.S. or something more sinister. I remembered that earlier in the day Capt. Dvorak had asked me if I had a friend name Tracey Tyler and when I played dumb and said it didn’t ring any bells, she replied, “Well she came to see you today and she’s not an approved visitor”. Continuing my facade of surprise and ignorance I asked “Oh another lawyer?” Dvorak was straight up with me and said, “No, this woman works with the Toronto Star and covers legal matters”. I pretended to be surprised, but I knew damn well why she was coming to see me. I was told by one of the biker guards who spent a lot of time talking with me over my stay, that he was going to “get you some help” but weeks passed before he told me that he connected with a reporter from the Toronto Star. She finally showed up but I was not allowed to see her and only now found out she had stopped by. I always wondered who had a legal right to “approve” visitors of jailed prisoners? That mystery still remains. But right now I was being escorted to an unmarked van in handcuffs and far more than curious how this night would end – and where. As I sat in the back of the windowless van I could look forward and see we were soon on a highway headed out of Toronto but in which direction I could not tell . The driver was silent and when I started to ask him questions he turned on 680 News on the radio so he could drown me out and avoid a conversation. It started raining that made it hard to read the highway signs in between the slow swipes of the wipers. As the drone of the highway travel continued, I began seeing less and less lights to the sides of the road indicating we were headed into the countryside. Worry now began to accumulate in my mind and I was thinking we must be on the QEW headed towards Niagara where the 887
across the border, or a convenient place to make me disappear? I had made the Toronto-Niagara drive a few times so I figured we’d be there in another hour. The guard riding shotgun was a big guy who blocked my view to the right but to the left I could see nothing but the night darkness speckled with a handful of lights. We were certainly not on the QEW, so I figured we had exited maybe to gas up the van or for one of the two guys to take a leak or grab a bite to eat. Their mood was casual and nobody seemed to be in a hurry. But the drive continued and I concluded we were not going South at all and we were soon driving on a two lane paved road with plenty of wide open fenced fields and a few farms and what looked like an orchard that a full moon revealed. Every five miles or so there was an intersection marked with a flashing yellow caution light, and at this hour the traffic was non-existent I now started to think the worst, and my mind shifted from worry to fear mode. Was I going to be dragged into some remote cornfield or ravine and left to die or maybe even executed? No, they would not be using jail guards for such a task I assured myself. These guys were merely delivery boys. They would hand me off to waiting D5 agent who would have some creative plan for me. My head raced with all sorts of morbid thoughts. Maybe they would say I escaped and I was hunted down and killed in a gunfight. I learned in Miami not to ever underestimate the creativity of the D5 boys – especially Coleman. He was slicker than a greased snake in the mud. Whatever was happening, it was not anything good. But suddenly the van slowed down to about 20mph, we turned into a smaller road that led up to a locked gate which had a sole security guard sitting in a large booth and large building looming in the background that was sparsely lighted, but looked unoccupied or abandoned. I could barely make out a signed that read Peterborough County Jail. WTF? Now I was totally confused. The gate slowly opened as the elderly sentry gave some short instructions and then went back to his booth. Our driver switched on his high beams as we crawled slowly down the entrance road as he drove up to some large steel doors, and honked the horn. In what seemed like ten minutes the doors finally creaked open and two guards appeared and some greetings were exchanged. Now the van door slid open and I was led off by 888
paperwork related to me. “Welcome to Peterborough” the guard in his late 50s muttered to me as we waited for his partner to join us as the door closed and was double bolted and chained behind us. They anticipated my questions and no sooner than I asked one, the older guy just said. “Look we don’t know what you did and frankly don’t care, but this is your new home and so long as you behave yourself, we won’t have any problems” I asked why I was brought there and how long would I be there, and the younger of the two replied “Sorry pal, I left my crystal ball at home”. I then asked if I could make a telephone call and the answer was swift. “Negative” You will be kept in isolation while you are here and only legal visits are allowed by appointment. I never heard of a lawyer needing an appointment, but he explained that those were his instructions. “But if I can’t call my lawyer and let him know I am here, how will he know I am here or… make an appointment?” “Well hopefully you hired yourself a smart lawyer willing to make the drive” was the only reply I received We walked through the halls of this old sprawling stone and brick prison and I saw not a single prisoner in any of the cells nor did I hear any of the usual arguments or clatter of a fight always going on somewhere in a jail, nor the smell of tobacco. It was dead stillness so I figured this must be a peaceful prison and everyone is just asleep in their bunks. I would later learn the place was recently shut down following a prison riot. This added to my worry ten-fold. We walked almost 20 minutes through a maze of connected halls before the guard stopped at empty desk surrounded by some lockers and laundry carts. He unstuffed me and told me to undress and I did so. He reached into one of the carts and pulled out an orange jumpsuit and tossed it to me while his partner rounded up a pair of boxer shorts, two pairs of socks, some old slip on sneakers, a bar of soap and a roll of toilet paper. They promised to find and deliver me a toothbrush since they couldn’t find any there. They then slipped a blindfold over my eyes and led me by the arm down even more hallways, up and down a few steps with multiple turns. The place smelled as old as it looked – musty. One of my shepherds mentioned that the prison was built in the early 1800s, and had executed a few people there when they used to hang the condemned. prisoners but in recent years most offenders were being sent to Millbrook, but was now 889
was closed what the hell was I doing there, I thought to myself, and then had to ask. “Well son, you must have pissed someone off or they want to keep you away from the media folks.” I guess I fell into both categories, so for now all I could do was go with the flow and hope I would be at least given old newspapers to read to combat the boredom that was surely ahead. I knew that my immigration hearings would require my presence back in Toronto in almost two weeks. Peterborough County Jail was where I was hidden away in 2001 by the Canadians I arrived at the end of my hike and the blindfold was removed and I was ushered into an ancient very narrow, arched brick cell and the old iron bar gate that closed behind me with their trademark “Thunk” The mattress on my bunk was thin, stained, and looked like it was issued when the prison was opened with several side slits where hundreds of prisoners before me would hide their shanks, shivs, and maybe some cigarettes. Matches, or other contraband. I hoped the sheets were clean and bug-free because I would have to mummify this mattress before I dare to lay on it. Fortunately, the two sheets 890
no modern cameras in this old dungeon but all along I felt as if I was being watched. When to two guards bid me good night and walked off and closed the steel hall door behind them I discovered I was right. My tiny cell was one of maybe 12 split by a 15-20 foot aisle way running right down the middle lit by four light bulbs spaced about twenty feet apart to provide a dim glow down the hundred foot cell block which was occupied by only one prisoner – moi. Or so I thought. Reserved until I am safely reunited with my family in Canada 891
make out the silhouette of a short thin figure standing silently at the bars looking in my direction. Apparently the clatter of my arrival woke him up. “Sorry for the noise my friend” I said, glad that at least I would have someone to talk with during my stay. He said nothing and returned to his bunk. So I assumed he did not speak English and repeated my apology in Spanish “Lo siento por mi ruido amigo”. Again no reply. Fuck him, I need to get some sleep I thought, so I used the sheets to wrap up the filthy mattress, kicked off my shoes, and lay me down to sleep. The sheet would shield me from the bed bugs and lice, but not the smell of the blood and urine stained mattress. Still I was off to dreamland, which was always a more pleasant place for me since childhood. When I awoke in the morning, perhaps about nine or ten am, I immediately noticed three things, the relative brightness of the morning sun which came in through the sole hall window, two mice eating off of my breakfast tray that was left for me on the floor, probably delivered an hour ago while I slept, and my neighbor across the aisle just staring at me, silent and without any expression on his face. He made me uncomfortable with his stare so I asked him directly “Can I help you with something?” His eyes nervously darted around 892
shook his head and then sat down on his bed averting eye contact with me. He clearly was not a Latino but a fair-skinned thin white guy about 30 years-old wearing wire-rimmed glasses with large lenses. He seemed frail to me as his jumpsuit hung on him like a cheap wire coat hanger. Either that, or his jumpsuit was an extra-large rolled up at the ankles. He was maybe an inch or two taller than myself with dark blond sandy brown hair that appeared not to have been washed in a week, but still with slight waves and combed to one side. During waking hours, I noticed this guy was continuously pacing in his cell and would only sit down to take a dump, and that was always a humorous event because instead of sitting on the bucket, he would squat over it with his feet on the rim of the rim, and then open a newspaper in front of him to shield him from view from only me and the occasional guard who check on us with his clipboard every hour during the day, and every two hours at 10pm when half of the lights were turned off. I guess I could best describe this unusual prisoner as a quirky nerd who would be unable to defend himself in the general population of any prison and quickly be taken by some gorilla as his “bitch” and sodomized on a regular basis. But since he still walked normally, I could see he must be new to the prison system. But the more I looked at this guy, I realized I had seen him someplace before at least once, but I could not place him where nor when. But he was certainly nobody I knew or ever spoke with until this morning. The law required that all prisoners in Ontario be given 893
two prisoners in the entire wing, or perhaps the entire prisoner, we were only taken out of our cells and allowed to walk back and forth in the long hallway outside of our cells. I decided I would use that opportunity to befriend my geeky neighbor. While awaiting that opportunity I spent over an hour reading all the graffiti carved or written in pencil or marker all over the brick walls that were painted over with thick coats of white enamel paint with dates going as far back as 1947, which was probably the just the last coat of paint. The comments ranged from humorous to desperate scrawled by angry, desperate, or horny inmates. A few that I had memorized to kill the boredom; “Finally got myself a vacation – Julian/1953” “No regrets the bastard had it coming – I caught him in her cumming!” “My dog wouldn’t eat this food” “Of course I’m innocent – Aren’t you?” “God please take me” “Don’t talk to me, Unless you have a 8 inch cock, And if you do, Your world I’ll rock!” “I’d do it again if another tries to rape my daughter” “Judge Davis wants $5,000 for me to go free. Justice is for sale can’t you see?” “Have no fear – God is here. Just pray from your heart - He’ll give you a fresh start. No need for lies – Forgiveness He never denies.” “Only the rich can afford to buy just-us” “In God I trust – All others fuck off!” “Breem is a rat.” “One way or another I will be free even if I die in this cell. Goodbye all - See you in hell” 894
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