The Sing Sing Connection

April 12, 1994

Arturo Sanchez, the driver of a Star Provision Company truck had been admitted through the rear entry security checkpoint of the Forensic Unit without any difficulty.  This was his first delivery to this client on his new route and he was slightly apprehensive about it.  He parked the vehicle in the Unloading Zone, adjacent to the building and in accordance with security procedures, rang the rear doorbell to alert them to his presence.  No one responded.  He’d been told by the company dispatcher that someone would immediately acknowledge the inquiry, but they didn’t.  He checked his watch impatiently.  It was six a.m.  The sun was slowly making its insidious entrance into the parking area highlighting the fact that his vehicle was the only one in the lot.

Sanchez had been working for the company for several years.  He’d been clean since released from prison, but the thought of Pepi Orlando and Lenny Sanders, his two x- partners in crime who later turned on him like mad dogs and tried to kill him, caused Sanchez to unconsciously grit his teeth and his face to contort.  The continuous pain he felt in his legs and right shoulder from their gun shot wounds was a constant reminder of his loathing of them.  He was pleased to learn thru the ex-con grapevine that they were in the Forensic Unit.  With that intelligence in mind, he made arrangements with the company to take over the route that serviced that institution.  Sanchez was unable to put the matter between them to rest, and walk away from the incident.  He wanted revenge in the worst way, but not prison.  It wouldn’t have mattered if he were younger.  It mattered now.  He was married and had a wife and two young children whom he adored, but the level of domestication he attained was still unaffected by many years of exposure to the code of street justice, and that spelled revenge.  He was going to retaliate, but in a way that he wouldn’t be detected.  The fact that he now had a beard, and had gained forty pounds were conscious indicators of the drastic changes in his appearance.  He planned to utilize his physical modifications to his advantage under appropriate circumstances to hurt them.  If the conditions were not conducive to completing his mission successfully, he would wait until they were released, track them down, and finish the job.

Sanchez had thought carefully about the things he should be observing during his first contact inside the Forensic Unit.  Up until the moment he struck, his deliveries would focus on continuous intelligence gathering.  He wanted to know what Orlando and Sanders looked like.  Would they recognize him and would he recognize them?  Did they have a schedule, if so, at what location and what did it include?  Where did they sleep, eat and hang out inside the unit? Were they ever isolated and if so where and, at what times? What were the security arrangements inside the unit as relates to them? Under what conditions where they medicated, by whom, where and at what times?” Other related questions would also surface which he would have to address.

It was five minutes past six when the door was finally opened, and Sanchez was admitted by a security officer.  He was over six feet tall, white, and heavyset, with a shaved baldhead.  A small gold earring was screwed into his left ear lobe.  A PR-24 baton dangled from his belt.

He looked Sanchez over carefully.  “Got some I.D.? he said.  “I never seen you here before.”

“It’s my first time,” he replied as he reached into his pocket and displayed his driver’s license and company identification.  The officer checked it over.  Sanchez put it back into his pocket.

“What happened to Jerry?” he asked.

“We changed routes.  I’ll be comin here from now on.” he replied.

“ I’ll be lettin you in when you come in the mornings.  I’m Mike,” he said extending his hand.

“Arturo,” Sanchez replied as he made direct eye contact with him and shook hands.

“How much stuff you got for us,?” he asked.

“Twenty- one cases of food, coffee, paper goods .....you name it,” he said.

“Be easier for you if you back up your truck to the loading dock.  It’s near the kitchen where you’ll be unloadin it,” he said.

“Thanks,” he replied,