by Erica Hilton
“That’s Black Justice.” She reached in her bag, put an ounce of cocaine on the table, and pushed it across the table to Gosling. “I made that purchase from him, which by the way, you need to reimburse me for, and I got him on tape basically admitting that he got the New Rochelle cops in his hip pocket.”
Gosling smiled a huge smile because he definitely wasn’t expecting the kind of bombshell like the one Jasmine had just dropped on him.
“Wow! Excellent work, Jasmine! This is powerful, very powerful. Much more than I was expecting.”
“I know what I’m doing out here. But I just have to say this, and I need you to really hear me. You need to talk to Agent Battle or whoever you got to talk to and get me that apartment ASAP. I mean, on one hand you tell me that under no circumstances am I to fuck anybody, and I’m good with that. But, on the other hand, I need the right tools. I mean, I was going everywhere with Black Justice. He was parading me around town like he was my man and shit. He drove me past one of his stash houses, and he even had me all up inside his own house and all that. So it gets to the point where him or any nigga is gonna want the pussy.”
“Please tell me you didn’t go there, Jasmine.”
“No, I didn’t. But what I’m saying is, if I had my own spot, I could control the rules of the game better.”
“Give me three days, and you’ll have the apartment.”
Now that she was giving the FBI what they wanted, it made it much easier for them to give her what she wanted. Gosling was certain that Agent Battle would finally sign off on the apartment paperwork.
“So you said you know about a stash house?”
Jasmine nodded as she ate some more of her food.
“Did you actually go inside the stash house?”
“No, but I’m confident that it really was his stash house. He runs his mouth like a chick, I swear to God.” She chuckled.
Gosling nodded in contemplation.
“What are you thinking about?”
Gosling ignored Jasmine’s question, shaking his head.
Jasmine then let him have it for not letting her know that the phone he had given her had a North Carolina number, but Gosling insisted that he had informed her of that fact.
“You didn’t,” she said emphatically.
Gosling didn’t fight with her.
“Well, anyway, I did what you told me to do. I made the first purchase and set it up where you are my man from North Carolina and you’re looking to buy nine kilos. I also told him you got all the colleges in North Carolina on smash.”
“So do you think he would meet with me, or does he want everything to go through you?”
“No, he trusts me. But if we don’t meet with him soon that could spook him, and he’ll think I’m bullshitting.”
“Okay, so nine kilos?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re talking several hundred thousand dollars.”
“And?”
“What I’m getting at is, there is a process before I can get that kind of cash allocated to me.”
“Oh, my fuckin’ god!”
“We can get the money, but we need some time.”
Jasmine shook her head. “And meanwhile he’s going to keep pushing up on me, trying to fuck me.”
“Work something out.”
At that moment it was as if Jasmine and Gosling had talked up Black Justice. Her phone began vibrating.
“It’s him right here.”
“Answer it.”
“Hello.”
“What’s good with your man?” Black Justice asked with his deep, gravelly voice.
“He just got in town today.”
“A’ight. That’s what’s up. So we still doing this or what? Speak to me.”
Jasmine paused because she wasn’t sure how she should answer. Her heart started pounding, but she thought quickly on her feet.
“Yeah, everything is a go. But what price you talking?”
“For nine, right?”
“You know what? I don’t like talking on the phone like this. He’s in town. I’ll hit you back, and we’ll figure out where we can link and talk face to face.”
“Jasmine, don’t take him to nobody else.”
“Jus, we good. Not on the phone, though. I’ll hit you back, or you can hit me back in an hour.”
“No doubt.”
Jasmine looked at her phone to make sure the call had ended.
“I bought you some time, but you gotta get money to make this shit go down. He’s going to call me back so we can meet up and talk about price.”
Gosling smiled, impressed with Jasmine and the way she was handling herself. For the first time he found himself looking across the table at Jasmine in another light. He had always kept things on the up and up and strictly professional, and he planned on keeping things that way, but he would have been lying to himself if he’d said that he wasn’t attracted to her.
“Why you looking at me like that?” Jasmine asked, feeling a bit uncomfortable.
“So love is cursed?”
“Oh, you looking at my tattoo? It’s fire, right?”
“No comment.”
“No comment? Yeah, okay. All I know is, you better step up your swagger before we meet with Black Justice. Don’t come looking as lame as you be looking,” Jasmine said with a laugh.
Agent Gosling had conducted many undercover assignments, so he wasn’t worried. He knew he would be able to pull off a meeting with Black Justice. He had to end the meeting with Jasmine so he could contact several of the North Carolina field offices to get some names of some of their confidential informants to see if they would be willing to vouch for him, just in case Black Justice started to sniff around and inquire about Gosling.
The meeting ended without Nico’s name coming up, nor with any talk of Lo’s death or the funeral home shooting. That was fine with Jasmine because she didn’t have anything on it. She was starting to think she was smart enough to pull off this confidential informant thing on a long-term basis.
Twenty-Six
They met up the next day near the Brooklyn Bridge, where Jasmine parked her car, got in the FBI-issued BMW 760 Agent Gosling was driving, and headed uptown to Manhattan. Jasmine had arranged for the two of them to link up with Black Justice at a Dominican storefront restaurant located off Broadway in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, of which he was part owner. Black Justice often used a small back office inside the restaurant to conduct business.
When Jasmine and Agent Gosling arrived, they parked their car on the opposite side of the street from the restaurant, crossed the busy street, and made their way inside.
“Hi,” a sexy Spanish waitress said to Jasmine and Gosling. “How can I help you?”
The place was small, and there were only six tables where customers could sit down and eat. Mostly it was a take-out restaurant.
Jasmine smiled. “Hi, we’re here to see Black Jus.”
The waitress nodded and turned around and screamed out something in Spanish to another sexy Spanish lady at the cash register.
“You can have a seat. He should be right out.”
Jasmine and Gosling thanked her, and they took a seat inside the tight restaurant.
After about five minutes, a muscular brown-skinned dude standing six foot five and looking like he could play on the defensive line for the New York Giants emerged from the back of the restaurant. Jasmine thought the guy was black, so she was surprised when she heard him speak to the waitress in Spanish. The waitress looked annoyed, and she responded in Spanish with an attitude. She pointed out Jasmine and Gosling, who looked in the direction of the tall dude, and he motioned for them to follow him.
When they made it to the back of the restaurant, he introduced himself as Poppy an
d shook Jasmine’s hand.
“Hi, I’m Jasmine.”
Gosling held out his hand for a pound. “Jimmy,” Gosling replied. Gosling was a second generation Jamaican who didn’t have the slightest bit of a Jamaican accent, yet he’d decided to go with the street name Jamaican Jimmy.
“Watch your step. This floor is slippery,” Poppy said as he led them through the kitchen and down a narrow set of metal stairs that led to a basement.
As soon as Jimmy opened the door to the basement, the sound of loud hip-hop could be heard bouncing off the walls, and a strong smell of weed smacked them in the face.
When they made it to the basement, Black Justice was sitting at a metal rectangular desk in front of a huge cage made out of chicken wire with two large pit bulls inside. Both of the dogs had the hugest heads that Jamaican Jimmy had ever seen on a pit bull before. He was certain that somebody had been injecting the dogs with steroids.
Black Justice was eating a plate of Spanish rice and chicken. He nodded to Jasmine and Jamaican Jimmy and motioned for them to have a seat at the two chairs positioned in front of his desk. Poppy stood off to the side.
Jasmine had her recorder on, but with the sound of the music blasting, there was no way it would pick up any conversation. Jimmy didn’t tell Jasmine, but he also had a recording device strapped to his ankle inside the brand-new construction-style Timberlands he was wearing.
Black Justice motioned for Poppy to lower the volume on the music, and Poppy turned the music off completely.
“I said turn the shit down, I didn’t say turn it off,” Black Justice hollered. “That was my shit right there.”
Poppy turned the music back up, but not as loud as before. Agent Gosling was glad that Poppy had turned the music down because he was certain his recorder could pick up everything being said.
Black Justice took a pull on the blunt he was smoking and began nodding his head to the music. He then stood up and took another pull before passing it to Poppy.
“Black Justice,” he said to Jimmy and extended his hand for a pound.
“Jimmy,” Agent Gosling replied as he clasped Black Justice’s hand.
“What’s good, Jasmine?”
Jasmine smiled. “Nothing. You see we here and we ain’t front on you.”
Black Justice nodded, and then he sat down and ate some more off his food.
Poppy passed the blunt back to Black Justice, who held it out for Jimmy, but Jimmy held up one of his hands and waved off the weed. Jasmine wanted to cringe, but she held it together. Then she reached over and took the weed from Black Justice and took some pulls on it.
Black Justice asked Jimmy, “You don’t smoke?”
Jimmy shook his head.
“He’s Jamaican and he don’t smoke weed,” Jasmine said, trying to ease some of the tension that had suddenly filled the room. “Can you believe that shit?”
“Jamaican Jimmy, I like that,” Black Justice said. Then he asked Jimmy if he knew an Italian dude name Joey from North Carolina. “The Italians call him Joey Six-Pack.”
“Yeah, I’m cool with him,” Jimmy replied.
Joey Six-Pack was an FBI informant the Raleigh, North Carolina field office had briefed Jimmy on.
“Why you ask?”
Black Justice asked, “How you know him?”
“From the fuckin’ streets! What the fuck is all these questions for, my dude?”
Black Justice cocked a half smile, and then he asked Jasmine and Jimmy if they wanted anything to eat.
Jimmy said, “Nah, let’s just talk business,”
“Jimmy about that bread! My muthafuckin’ man.” Black Justice stood up, took the remaining scraps of food on his plate over to the dogs, and spilled it into their food bowls. “So what kind of whip Joey pushing now?”
Jasmine was feeling very uncomfortable. She finished the weed and dropped the last of the blunt on the basement floor and stepped on it.
“Joey always switching up cars. The last thing I think he was pushing was a white Range Rover.”
Black Justice nodded. “And what about you? I see you got the seven sixty parked outside. What else you got?”
Jimmy and Jasmine both were surprised that Black Justice knew what kind of car they had pulled up in because they hadn’t even parked directly in front of the restaurant, and it wasn’t like Black Justice or anyone else for that matter had ever seen Jimmy driving around New York.
Jimmy was starting to wonder if Joey Six-Pack and Black Justice had spoken. And with Jimmy not fully knowing Joey Six-Pack’s credibility, he wasn’t sure what to make of Black Justice’s questions.
“I got the NSX. But my main toy is my muthafuckin’ sixty-foot Viking Sport Cruiser. Y’all New York niggas ain’t up on that shit.”
Jasmine had no idea what the hell Jimmy was talking about.
Black Justice looked at Poppy, and he got no response from him.
“The fuck is that?”
“That’s my yacht. You need to come down to North Carolina, and we can party on that shit. Bring some New York bitches wit’chu, and trust me when I tell you them bitches will be taking off their panties as soon as they step on that muthafucka.”
“Ahhhh shit! Okay. Fuckin’ yachts and shit. That’s what’s up. What that cost you?”
“Seven figures brand-new.”
Black Justice sat back down at his desk. He went into the top drawer and pulled out what looked like a pound of weed and sat it down on top of the desk.
“A’ight, so Jasmine said you lookin’ for nine kilos.”
Jimmy nodded his head. “Nine, maybe more, depends on what price we talking.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Thirty-five? I got niggas that can beat that.”
“The fuck outta here. Ain’t nobody beating that price for fish scale.”
Jimmy ran his hand across his face. “Do it for thirty.”
“You saying you got muthafuckas that’ll sell you a kilo for thirty? You full of shit.”
Jasmine was getting nervous because she had no idea where Jimmy was going with everything. She couldn’t understand why he was haggling like he was at a fucking flea market or something.
“So you got the cash?”
“I wouldn’t waste your time.”
Black Justice went inside his top drawer once again and this time he pulled out a vanilla Dutch Masters cigar in a plastic clear wrapper and tossed it to Jimmy. He then pushed the bag of weed across the desk toward Jimmy.
“Do me a favor—Twist that up for me,” Black Justice said to Jimmy. “I need to think on your price. My mind functions better when I smoke.”
Jimmy put the cigar on the table and reminded Black Justice that he didn’t smoke.
Jasmine knew that Black Justice was testing Jimmy, who was making one false move after another. Her heart was in her throat.
Black Justice looked over at Poppy, who smiled and motioned his head in Jimmy’s direction before gesturing toward his own waistband. Black Justice shook his head to indicate to Poppy that he didn’t want him to do anything at that moment.
Jasmine said, “I’ll roll the shit up,” and she reached for the cigar. She knew in her gut that Jimmy had never rolled up any weed and was hesitating because he didn’t want to look stupid.
Black Justice went into the bottom side drawer of his desk and pulled out a chrome .44 Magnum and placed it on top of his desk. “Nah, Jasmine, I want this nigga to twist that shit up for me.”
Jimmy didn’t know what to say or do.
Black Justice reached forward and grabbed hold of the gun and held it sideways and pointed it directly at Jimmy and Jasmine. “Roll that shit up right now if you and Jasmine wanna walk outta here alive.”
Jimmy stood up to his feet and pushed the cigar and the we
ed off the table and onto the basement floor, and Poppy immediately made a move toward him.
“Nah, Poppy, I got this shit,” Black Justice said, his gun aimed at Jimmy.
The pit bulls sensed their master was angry and began barking violently.
“Jus, come on, chill,” Jasmine pleaded.
“The fuck this nigga think he is?” Jimmy squinted his eyes, trying to muster up the meanest screw face he could.
Black Justice was watching Jimmy’s hands to see if he was going to make a move for a gun and if he did Black Justice was going to blast him.
“You gon’ shoot me ’cuz I won’t roll your fuckin’ weed up? Come on then. Shoot me, nigga!” Jimmy yelled, his open right hand pounding on his chest. “You got big balls! Shoot me, nigga!”
Jasmine’s heart was racing more than on the night when Bebo had tried to kill her.
“Jimmy, shut up!” Jasmine pleaded. “Jus, please, come on, this ain’t necessary.” She stood up.
“Jasmine, who the fuck is this muthafucka?” Black Justice stood up.
“He’s my man!”
“Poppy, turn that music all the way up!”
Jasmine was ready to shit and piss on herself.
“What? You think I’m a cop? You think I’m fuckin’ five-o?” Jimmy lifted up his shirt to show that he had no gun on him and that he wasn’t wearing a wire.
Poppy turned the music up so loud, the sound of the dogs barking could no longer be heard.
Jimmy’s heart was racing as his life flashed before his eyes. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled his shirt all the way up and over his head until he was standing there shirtless. Then he reached for his pants and unbuckled the belt and quickly unbuttoned and unzipped his pants and pulled them down to his ankles.
“I ain’t no muthafuckin’ cop!” Jimmy yelled as he walked around in circles with his pants pulled down to his ankles, exposing his black briefs, and his hands raised above his head.
Jimmy looked as stupid as anyone could look, but he did that to convince Black Justice that he wasn’t strapped or wearing a wire. The move was brilliant because, in the process of making himself look like an absolute fool, he still managed to hide the wire strapped to his ankle on the inside of his Timberland boot.