At first he was going to splurge on her with the bank money this morning, but once again, she put her greedy foot in her mouth. Now, he’d drive to the Diamond District, but he knew he wasn’t going to buy shit. He couldn’t wait to see the frustrated look on her face once she realized she was walking away with nothing.
André decided he was going back to New Jersey to live with Anita and his son and to chill from the drug business for a while. Just lay low until he needed to resurface. He knew there wasn’t shit Olivia could do about his disappearance. He was a grown-ass man and could bounce if he wanted to. He’d leave Olivia to fend for herself and get a taste of her own medicine. Let her see how it felt to pay the mortgage or the note on her Maserati. Once she realized all he’d done for her, she’d be one sorry bitch. And there wasn’t any way she’d go to the cops. What could she say? That her husband took her million dollars that wasn’t hers? She’d implicate herself in a crime, and they wouldn’t believe her anyway.
“Yo, hurry up! You got five minutes, or I’m leaving!”
“Wait! Let me just put on my earrings—”
“Nah, you don’t need any of that. We’re going to buy all of that, so why are you going to put on jewels. Damn!”
“OK, well—”
“Bye! I’m out.”
Olivia came bolting right behind him, her hair still wet, her clothes not fastened properly, and her shoes in her hand. Inside André was laughing his ass off.
The warm summer afternoon with the sunny skies put André in the zone. He was bumping Trey Songz’s last CD. He liked the song, “Can’t Be Friends.” He thought about all the women still mad with him for marrying Olivia. He was ready for his second divorce. He was a street dude. Who was he fooling? Next time around there’d be no next time. There wasn’t any way he was taking another wife. Once you got hitched, women thought they owned you. He realized that he liked his freedom, the kind that Anita afforded him. Why can’t more women be like her?
“You stopping at Jacob’s or Manny’s?”
“Nah, let’s go and see Tito first,” André stated. “I heard he got some new shit in.”
André parked his Yukon in the No Parking Zone.
“You parking right here?”
“I just parked right here, didn’t I?”
André jumped out, and Olivia followed, both thinking hateful thoughts.
“Police! Police! Don’t fuckin’ move! Put your fuckin’ hands up! Both of you!”
In a nanosecond both André and Olivia were surrounded by NYPD—at least eight police cars—the FBI, and SWAT. A lot of things went through André’s mind, some good, most bad. But his main thought centered on the 9mm Glock tucked in his waist. If nothing else, he was about to catch a gun charge.
Chapter 23
Do you know why you’ve been arrested?”
“No,” Olivia replied, her body shaking uncontrollably.
“But you never asked.”
“Excuse me?”
Agent Peterson said, “We slapped the cuffs on you and your husband, haul you down to the precinct, have you sitting in a dirty interrogation room for hours, yet you never ask why you’ve been arrested.”
“Because I know I didn’t do shit.”
“And that means what?”
“It means, I ain’t do shit!”
“Or it could mean the opposite. It could very well mean you did a lot of shit, but you’re not sure which shit you’re being busted for.”
“Look, I’m a businesswoman who owns my own hair salon, Olivia’s, off 145th. You can check it out.”
“Cut the crap!” Peterson bellowed. “Tell me about the heist!”
“The heist?” Is that what they’re calling it?
“You better start talking, or I promise you, I’ll make sure you do life!”
“How am I gonna talk about something I don’t know about? I promise you, sir, I don’t know about no heist.” Olivia was less combative. She kept willing herself not to panic. André had tried to convince her that what they’d done was harmless, but deep down inside she knew better. No one takes losing a million dollars lightly but to have a dozen police officers, SWAT, and the FBI pulling guns on you seemed a little extreme. She thought that what they did was white-collar crime. Weren’t they supposed to be treated differently, with more respect?
Agent Peterson tossed a few glossy 8 x 10 photographs at her.
Olivia looked down and saw nothing but dead bodies. Could André have killed these people? She truly was at a loss for words.
“Don’t get quiet now,” Sergeant Aponte said. “You see those men? They all had families, and now they don’t.”
“I told you I don’t know anything about this!” Olivia screamed, suddenly frustrated.
Agent Peterson inched his chair toward her and leaned in, finger pointed in her face. “Where the fuck did you get a million dollars? Huh, bitch?”
Olivia’s stomach did a flip-flop. The FBI agent was intense. She honestly didn’t know about any murders . . . well, at least not those murders.
The money, on the other hand, was a completely different story. Olivia figured that taking the money was small stuff compared to murder. And since she didn’t kill anyone nor knew about the murders in question, then her only crime was spending some free money that was deposited into her account. White people did that shit every day. And, actually, it wasn’t even that serious because she didn’t put the money in her account. She wasn’t the mastermind.
Olivia figured that she would’ve been in more trouble had she got caught boosting in Bloomingdale’s. They didn’t have shit on her.
“I want a lawyer.”
Sergeant Aponte piped up. “This is your last chance to give us your side of the story. Are you sure you don’t want to talk to us?”
“I said I want a lawyer. I ain’t got shit to say. Comprende?”
Aponte gave it one last shot. His voice was bordering on whining. “OK, if you want it that way, but we’re gonna have to book you with conspiracy—”
“Charge me with whatever you want! I want a lawyer!” Olivia put her hands over her ears, a childish gesture, and began humming, ticking everybody off.
“You know what?” Peterson’s voice rose in aggravation. “You better start talking, or that’s it. I’m charging you with five counts of felony murder, nineteen counts of attempted murder, armed robbery, conspiracy, wire transfer fraud, bank fraud, and whatever else I can think of!”
***
“I told you, I don’t know nothin’ bout none of the shit you talkin’!”
André was frustrated. This was way over his head. He did drug deals, sold that pure Colombian uncut cocaine to his associates and made a profit. Simple shit. Shit that niggas growing up in the hood learned at an early age. The shit Agent Scott was talking about, conspiracies and masterminding crimes, takes years to pull off and was over his head. He truly had a headache.
The tap on the door stopped the line of questioning. A uniformed cop walked in and whispered something into the detective’s ear. André, never the optimist, wanted nothing but good news. He hoped that he was there to tell the detective that they’d caught the wrong people.
“We just intercepted a FedEx package addressed from Rosario Ortiz to you. In that package it has a few personal items—baseball cap, T-shirt, jeans—and in the jeans pocket is a Bellagio memo pad. Are you telling me that if we do a DNA sample on the men’s clothing we found, it won’t match you?”
“Hell muthafuckin’ no, it won’t match my ass, cuz I wasn’t there! I don’t know who this bitch is! I’m married!”
“What does that mean? You’re married? Come on, a handsome guy like yourself don’t cheat? You’ve never cheated on your wife?” Agent Scott asked. “And think about your answer because, if you want me to believe a word you say, then y
ou can’t lie about stupid shit.”
André thought for a second. “Yeah, I cheat on my wife, but I ain’t fuck no Rosario broad from Vegas! I don’t even know how she look!”
“So somebody is setting you up?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Who do you think would do something like that?”
André shook his head. He was confused. “I don’t know.”
“And where did you get the money again?”
“I told you my wife handle all the money.”
“So your wife could be setting you up?”
“Nah, she love a nigga.”
“But I thought you said you were innocent and being set up.”
“I am!”
“Then go over in your head the list of suspects. Where did you get the money? We found well over a hundred thousand dollars in your car, among other incriminating evidence.”
André weighed his options. Even though they’d caught him riding dirty with that gun, he felt he could fight that with a good lawyer. And even if he had to cop out, he’d do a one to three, easy. But if they tried to tie him into that money, money they’re saying came from some heist out in Vegas with dead bodies, with his record, they’d bury him. He’d be finished. He could rot in jail for years just fighting this case. And who the fuck was this Rosario chick? The only Spanish chick he knew was his wife and her family.
What if Olivia was setting him up to get knocked? She was the one who came to him with the one-million-dollars-just-appeared-in-my-account story. Could Olivia be working with the feds? He’d heard about shit like that. Right now he didn’t know what to think, other than Olivia was behind all this bullshit and he played right into her hands. And how the fuck could a FedEx from some unknown broad with evidence be sent to him?
“Then Olivia set me up. All I know is, she said she had almost a million dollars in her account.”
“Did you ask her where did she get a million dollars?”
“Hell yeah, I did. She said that her beauty shop been doing good.”
“You want us to believe that she told you that she made a million dollars from doing hair?” Detective Hernandez asked. “And you believed her?”
“I ain’t say I believed shit. You asked me what she told me. Of course, a nigga pressed her, and she kept to her story. Y’all in there interrogating her. I bet she ain’t said shit! She sticking to her story. Either that, or she throwing a nigga under the bus.”
“So where is the money? All of it?” Detective Hernandez asked.
“Ask Olivia. She runnin’ things right now. She’s gone on shopping sprees buying all types of expensive goods. Today was all her. She wanted to buy herself some more bling. Ask what a nigga bought outta the deal? Jack shit, that’s what!”
Agent Scott thought for a second. “You know we’ll check out your story, right?”
“That’s what I want y’all to do. Investigate this muthafucka! My name ain’t on shit. Olivia came to me on the basketball court talking about this dough. Olivia walked into the bank and made the withdrawal. Y’all feds and shit. Investigate this bitch, and you’ll have a bunch of witnesses to back me up. She’s tryin’ to set a nigga up.”
“Why?”
“She know a nigga ain’t faithful. Maybe she on some get-back type shit.”
“Why?”
“She never got over that I got married to my first wife while her and I were fucking around. I never even told her about Honey. She had to hear about us in the streets.”
“Honey like a nickname. Your honey, like slang?” Agent Scott asked.
“Nah. Her name is Honey. My ex-wife.”
Hernandez’s interest was piqued. “And where is she now? Your ex? This Honey.”
“The hell if I know. We ain’t on good terms.”
Bingo! Detective Hernandez thought. The same name as one of his original suspects was inexplicable. And she works in the Bellagio, was having an affair with the armored car driver, and was married to André Robertson, who had a million dollars of the heist money in his new wife’s account. He needed to dig up more information on Honey, but right now, he didn’t want to get off his line of questioning.
“How long have you been divorced from Honey?”
“The divorce was final over a year ago.”
“What’s her maiden name?”
André frowned. “Why?”
“Because we asked that’s why!” Detective Hernandez snapped.
“Be easy, damn. Her name is Honey Brown.”
“André, we’re going to take a break and go and get lunch. We’ll bring you back something too,” Hernandez said.
“Nah, I ain’t hungry. You wanna help a nigga out, unclasp these cuffs and open up these doors.”
Detective Hernandez and Agent Scott left the interrogation room, but Scott was baffled.
“Why did you end the interrogation? We almost had him. I think at any second he would have confessed.”
“I need to speak with Sergeant Aponte. He just mentioned that he was married to someone named Honey.”
“Yeah, I heard that. And?”
“Well, Sergeant Aponte and I interrogated one of the blackjack dealers from the Bellagio. I had to call her back in when the wife of one of the murdered armored guards came in and said that her husband was having an affair with Honey Brown, something Ms. Brown failed to mention.”
Agent Scott nodded his head. “This team is expanding day by day.”
“Exactly. I’ll have NYPD run all they can on her alias, Honey Robertson, and see what they come up with. Meanwhile, I’ll fill Sergeant Aponte in on what we just found out. In the meantime we got what we needed on tape from André. I think we should pull Agent Peterson and Sergeant Aponte and send in two NYPD female detectives to interrogate his wife and let her listen to him sell her out. Once she hears about his cheating and also pointing the finger at her, I’m sure she’ll roll on him in a heartbeat.”
Chapter 24
As Detective Hernandez, Sergeant Aponte, Agent Peterson, and Agent Scott all convened in a small conference room so Hernandez could share the new intel he received, NYPD detectives Elise Fields and Alison Newton walked into the interrogation room where Olivia was seated.
“I don’t know why they sent you two in here!” Olivia was antsy and aggravated from sitting on a hard chair for hours. “I told them I want a lawyer.”
Speaking softly, Detective Fields began. “OK, we know what you want, and you know your rights. But did you know that your husband has rolled over on you, and we’re about to charge you with conspiracy, five counts of felony murder—”
“What the fuck you talkin’ ’bout, my husband rolled over? You expect me to believe that shit?” Olivia let out a mocking laugh. Her husband was a street dude. They didn’t snitch.
Both detectives took a seat.
“Olivia, we wanna play something for you, and when we’re done, if you tell us to fuck off, then we’re out of here and you’ll get your lawyer.” Detective Newton pressed play on the tiny device. André’s voice came booming through loud and clear, his words crisp and sharp, cutting Olivia like a knife. She couldn’t believe how easy it was for him to snitch. She’d given him over a decade of her life. All the ups and downs she went through with him, and he spoke about her like she was some side chick. April’s words began resonating in her head. André didn’t give a fuck about her. He was a disrespectful womanizer. She should have known better than to fall in love with a man who took his mistress to fuck on the bed he shared with his wife.
Olivia began singing like a bird. She admitted that they had the money but denied knowing anything about the heist—which no one believed. But the main objective was getting their hands on as much heist money as possible and then handing off all the evidence to the assistant distric
t attorney.
“He took the money to his mother’s house yesterday. She lives at A-134 E. 133rd Street and Lenox.”
Detectives Fields and Newton couldn’t leave the room fast enough. They told that information to the detectives and agents on the case, who then went to the judge to get a subpoena to search his mother’s residence, all the while André and Olivia sat.
***
Meanwhile, Detective Hernandez got Honey’s background pulled and, to his surprise, found out she was a former ATF agent who was fired a few years ago, and married André Robertson seven years ago. They’d divorced shortly after he filed attempted murder charges on her, which were ultimately dropped. As everyone read through her file they found out that she was dished a raw deal. She was fired from the agency after leaving the field while on duty. She’d claimed that her supervisor tried to rape her, but her claims were unfounded and she was turned loose. From there she moved to Las Vegas and had kept her nose clean ever since.
“She’s our mastermind,” Detective Hernandez exclaimed. “I can feel it.”
“Is that what you get after reading her file?” Agent Peterson asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Actually, it’s not. My read is that the ex-husband is the mastermind. Did you read his jacket? He’s been in trouble since he was a juvenile. Armed robberies, drug deals, and he’s been questioned on a slew of murders. He fits the profile. Honey Brown’s jacket is clean. She was a straight-A student, finished second in her class at the academy, and was on a good path until her run-in with her supervisor. And if you ask me, she didn’t make that shit up about what happened in the field.”
Dirty Money Honey Page 19