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balling my eyes out, but once I was up and in that man’s arms, it was all I ever needed. To be cradled by his love. He would lift me up and my back would straighten, and, according to the uncles who later played my fathers, I would instantly become a preening Queen of Sheba. To some he might have just been a big-talking con, barking orders while coke fell out of his nose, but to me he was the King of Diamonds, my Ace of Spades. And later, when I too became a big-talking con, barking orders while coke fell out of my nose, I thought I might actually be him. I would imagine him standing at the head of some table, leading his men into the next job, and I would try desperately to feel him in me even when he was far away. I would look for him in the lines of blow, in the shots of whiskey, in the loose memories I had of him all before I was five.
     
    After the big arrest in 1981, I remember the police coming and taking the car away from my young and confused mother. She was begging them not to leave us stranded, and then when they threatened to take the Hartmann suitcases and the Louis Vuitton carry-ons, she began to cry because we would be left in this motel parking lot, with no way home, with the last things we owned laying in a pile on the pavement. I remember running up a green, grassy slope because I just wanted to get away, I just wanted to put space between me and the pain that had been struck into our life. Everyone knew the odds, including my mother, but I know that they were also hoping that my father was being honest when he promised that he was bringing in the last big load. The one which would allow him to retire and invest in legitimate businesses, and those years in the illegal drug trade would become a dark, distant memory for us all. But things rarely go that way, and so instead, I remember the nice police officer leading me back to my mom as she watched the very shaky deck of cards that had been our life fall all around us in a motel parking lot in South Florida.
     
    I know that I went to the hearing, though I don’t remember much besides running off again and walking back in through the wrong door, positioning myself between the judge and the lawyers’ tables. I remember people laughing and being led back to where my family sat. I’m not even sure if these are real memories. Or if somehow, I had fantasized it all at such a young age and still carry it as truth. This image of me standing innocently between the judge and my father, making some sort of stand about the injustice of it all.
     
    My father was initially sentenced to sixty-six years with no parole because whatever one might be able to say about his success rate as a smuggler, he had been more than successful at pissing off every US Marshall, DEA, and FBI agent along the Eastern seaboard. Because the fact is, my daddy is a career criminal, a drug-smuggling con, an outlaw and a cowboy, and he isn’t going to stand for anyone telling him what to do. And if you want to find an archetype that creates a romantic figure that forever leads you into impossible romances and irresponsible love, well, there you have him. When my dad was officially sent away, I would catch my mom crying while she drove me in her Buick Regal. She would hear some song like “Desperado” by the Eagles, and I’m sure she would wish that this man with whom she had naively fallen in love would come to his senses, would stop riding fences, would let someone love him, before it was too late. But it was too late, and he never came home again.
     
    Twenty-six years later, my dad sits in yet another federal penitentiary. Lompoc. Danbury. Allenwood. I know them all. You wouldn’t think to look at me that I would. It always comes as a surprise to people that an educated young woman with preppy clothes and a deceiving set of dimples could carry such baggage, but I do.
     
    My dad still thinks the big load is on its way and that the only reason he wears an orange jumpsuit everyday is