At the time I couldn't even figure out how I got busted. One minute I think I've made the score, I've got the stuff in my pocket, I'm home free, and the next minute two Gestapo thugs are throwing me against the wall and frisking me. When I think back on it, it was all very humiliating. I mean, all those people walking by looking at me like I'm some kind of circus oddity. Maybe I'm just self-conscious.

What I was really worried about was that someone from the office would see me. God, I knew it was probably the end of my career, especially if my boss just happened to have left the office for lunch that day to get a slice of pizza and a soda. What If he just happened to walk by right at the same moment I was getting busted? I imagined the unlikely conversation;

"Hello Andrew, what is going here on?" he would ask in his stilted heavily eastern European accent.

"Oh, hi there Mr. Lieberman. I've just been arrested buying drugs to support my habit".

"Oh," he would reply incredulously," will you have report on desk this afternoon?"

What was going to happen when I didn't show back up after my lunch break. I would have to use my one phone call to tell the receptionist I was feeling sick after eating Chinese and had decided to head straight home.

One cop introduced himself, "NYPD" and the other one frisked me, and none too gently either. The palms of my hands were glued to the wall supporting my body at an angle, and the brick felt cold and gritty. I was afraid to look back at them, so I just stared straight ahead. The mortar filling between the blackened bricks looked crumbly like beach sand. The remnants of a pasted flyer advertised 'Two Men and a Van'. I wasn't wearing any long johns and the wind was whipping past me. It made my legs feel like a popsicles in a cold freezer. The talkative cop read me my rights.