by Erica Hilton
“Nah, I’m about to bounce.”
Jasmine made sure she gave him a kiss. “I need you,” she said.
Homicide looked into Jasmine’s eyes and could feel her sincerity. “I gotchu. Don’t worry about nothing.”
Jasmine nodded her head, and then she walked Homicide to the apartment door to see him off.
After about five minutes Jasmine called Agent Gosling, who picked up on the fourth ring.
“Hello,” Gosling said in a groggy voice. It was clear that he had just woken up.
“You up?”
“No. But what’s up? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Listen, I just got word straight from Homicide that Ish might be using his crib as a stash house.”
“Okay,” Gosling replied. “How sure was he?”
“Gosling, he robs drug dealers, so whatever he knows, he knows.”
Gosling sounded like he was sitting up. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m just saying like I said already—Ish needs to be a priority.”
Jasmine was talking in circles and wasn’t really saying anything concrete that Gosling could work with. But she had called him to sort of pacify him and make out like she was telling him something about Homicide. She knew he couldn’t do anything with the information she was giving him.
“We need something more concrete before we can get a search warrant. Just keep your ear to the ground.”
“All right. I’ll start calling you more. I think Homicide is comfortable enough with me now where he’ll start opening his mouth, so I should have something soon that we can work with and that can get us an angle on him.”
Gosling went quiet for a moment.
“You still there?” Jasmine asked.
“Yes, I’m here. Jasmine, listen. What do you think about possibly setting me up and having Homicide rob me?”
“I think I could pull that off with Homicide, but not right now. Apparently my name is hot as hell on the streets, and if I walk Homicide into an arrest, I won’t be living for much longer.”
Gosling wasn’t sure what Jasmine was getting at, until she explained to him how Black Justice had branded her with the nickname Suicide Pussy.
“That’s the only reason I been moving real slow on Homicide. That nigga would kill me in a heartbeat if he even remotely sensed that I was snitching.”
Agent Gosling knew how dangerous a world Jasmine was operating in, so he completely understood where she was coming from.
Gosling yawned into the phone. “You have to stay alive. I get it,” he added with an even bigger yawn. He was dead tired because he had been putting in a lot of overtime hours lately. “Jasmine, I’m going back to sleep. It is Saturday.”
“Okay, no problem.”
Gosling thanked Jasmine for touching base with him, and like he always did whenever he finished speaking to her, he cautioned her to be safe and to be smart.
Thirty-Seven
Jasmine never went to sleep after she got off the phone with Gosling. She wanted to know for herself if Simone and Ish or anyone else had gotten hurt during the home invasion, but she obviously couldn’t just come out and ask Simone. So although it was too early to call her, she decided to send Simone a text message: Girl you won’t believe this. I heard after we left Sway that IDRIS ELBA showed up!
Jasmine knew how much Simone loved Idris Elba, so she was certain that she would hit her right back. She had no idea that Simone was in the Jamaica Hospital emergency room getting checked out and seeing if the doctors could do anything about her teeth.
***
Simone’s head was pounding, and her ribs and her jaw were killing her, so Ish had suggested that she get X-rays just to make sure nothing was broken. It was a good thing Simone was dark-skinned; otherwise, she would have had visible black-and-blue marks on her side and on her face.
Simone stood up and walked over to the single mirror in the emergency room. She looked at her face, and tears rolled down her eyes. “Baby, look at me,” she said, her lips swollen and three teeth missing.
Ish tried to calm her down by telling her that the swelling would soon go down and that she could get her teeth replaced. Ish felt horrible that he hadn’t been there to help her, but at that point there was really nothing he could do but be there for her, help her out with her medical bills, and reassure her that he wouldn’t let anything like that happen to her again.
Simone was in the same hospital that BJ was in. BJ was obviously in another section of the hospital, but Ish had gone up to his room to visit him. He had tried to explain to BJ what had happened, but BJ was too drugged up from another surgery he had just undergone. Things weren’t looking good for BJ. The doctors were now certain that he was going to have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. They had done all they could do to prevent it, but the bullets had just done too much damage.
Ish knew he couldn’t rely on BJ or Nico, or anyone else for that matter, to help him protect his own home or to seek vengeance for the way he had been violated. He was determined to find out who had run up in his crib, and he was going to make them pay with their lives.
“Simone, you sure nobody knew what was up?”
“I’m sure, baby. I know not to open my mouth.”
Ish looked at her and nodded his head as he slowly paced back and forth in the emergency room, while Simone sat on one of the hospital beds waiting for the doctor to come back.
Ish liked Simone, but not nearly as much as she liked him. He had been mainly using her to sign for FedEx packages that contained drugs. See, Ghetto Mafia had a group of corrupt FedEx employees in Miami and in New York’s JFK Airport who were able to get drugs on board FedEx airplanes for them and also get them on to specific FedEx delivery trucks.
Ghetto Mafia had been able to get drugs delivered to almost any location in Queens they wanted. They would always switch the drop-off locations to lower the risk of getting busted. They would also always have the package come in the name of a chick that they trusted, and they would have the girl sign for the packages. Just in case they ever got caught, they could always plead that the package wasn’t in their name, and therefore they weren’t responsible for it.
With BJ in the hospital, Bebo and Lo dead, and Nico laying low in Miami, Nico had been forced to have the FedEx packages go to Ish. Nico never wanted to tell anyone other than BJ exactly where his stash houses were. And even with BJ laid up, and although Nico was running out of options, he still didn’t take the chance on telling Ish the location of the stash houses. Instead, Nico had the FedEx re-up packages come directly to Ish’s house, so if anything went wrong, Ish would be without excuses.
Nico started having the FedEx packages delivered to Ish’s house right after Ish and Simone had met at the strip club. Right from the jump, Ish knew that Simone was real needy and that she was on his dick, so he was easily able to convince her to have her name on the packages. He also convinced her with no problem at all to be at his house on a regular basis to accept the packages and sign for them.
Ish was thankful that the robbery hadn’t happened forty-eight hours later, because had it happened on Monday instead of early Saturday morning, the robbers would have made off with a couple of bricks of heroin and coke that would have been in the house. The fact that the masked intruders had only taken the two pounds of weed and a relatively small amount of cash made Ish believe that Simone sincerely didn’t have anything to do with the robbery. It would’ve been very tempting for her to set up the home invasion for the same day that he expected a re-up shipment.
Ish disregarded the hospital rules against talking on cell phones and spoke to Nico on his brand-new prepaid phone. He knew to never use his regular cell phone when talking with Nico, and he also knew to never give out Nico’s number.
“Ish, I don’t give a fuck what you gotta
do, but you gotta find out who those muthafuckas were and handle that shit!” Nico ordered.
Ish tried to explain, as he had done before, that the two dudes had masks on and that Simone hadn’t seen their faces.
“Ish, that’s your fuckin’ problem! We got ten ki’s coming on Monday, and you already know that I can’t have the shipment stopped. Yo, word on everything, Ish, don’t fuck up this re-up!” Nico ended the call by hanging up on Ish.
“You believe this nigga Nico is upset with me over this shit?” Ish said to Simone.
Right at that point the emergency room doctor walked in.
“Okay, so we have good news. The X-rays were negative, no fractures or broken bones of any kind.”
Ish’s mind was somewhere else, so he paid the doctor no attention.
Simone had questions about her teeth and getting cosmetic surgery done, but since the doctor wasn’t a dentist, he explained to her that he wouldn’t be able to give her any real answers. He then told Jasmine that she could get dressed and that he would write up a prescription for her for painkillers.
“The nurse will be right out with the prescription and to sign you out.”
Simone thanked him, and she started to get dressed so she would be ready to go as soon as the nurse got there.
***
“Don’t let Nico stress you, baby,” Simone said to Ish while they pulled into the parking lot of Walgreens so she could get her prescription filled.
“Fuck that nigga! He on the phone talking that gangsta shit while his pussy ass is hiding out in Miami.”
Simone was feeling a little bad. She was down on herself because she felt like, had she been a little more observant of her surroundings, maybe they wouldn’t have got robbed and then Ish wouldn’t have been feeling any stress. But there was nothing she could really do.
After they left Walgreens, Simone was too afraid to go back to Ish’s house alone. So she asked him to drop her at her own apartment and told him that she would only stay at his house while he was there. Ish dropped her off and headed straight to the barbershop that Bebo had owned while he was still alive.
Ish was determined to find out who had robbed him. He figured, if the streets were talking, then he knew he could count on finding out what was being said by just listening to what the people in the barbershop had to say.
***
As soon as Simone locked the door to her apartment, she went right to her bathroom mirror and stared at her face. She couldn’t believe how horrible she looked, but she knew she was lucky to be alive.
After she finished looking at her face in the mirror, she popped one of her painkillers into her mouth. As soon as she did that, her cell phone started vibrating.
“You don’t how to text me back or call me?” Jasmine asked.
Simone sucked her teeth. “So you didn’t hear what happened?”
“What happened with what?”
“Last night I got robbed.”
“When? After you left Sway? And you just telling me now?”
“No. Well, yeah it was after I left Sway, but it happened at Ish’s house.”
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I was.” Simone sighed. “Yeah, two dudes pushed their way in and beat me and tied me up and robbed the crib.”
“Oh, my God! Simone, are you serious? Where are you right now?”
“Jasmine, I’m dead serious. Ish just dropped me off from the emergency room.”
“Emergency room? Where are you at?” Jasmine asked with what sounded like genuine worry.
“I’m home now.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“No! I can’t let anybody see me like this. My face is swollen, and I got three teeth missing. I look crazy.”
Jasmine covered her mouth even though Simone couldn’t see her through the phone. Jasmine really felt bad when she heard Simone say she was missing three teeth because she was sure it was Homicide who caused those teeth to go missing.
“You know I don’t care how you look! I’m coming over regardless.”
“Jasmine, really, I’ll be okay. I’m probably going to shoot back over to Ish’s house anyway. I have to be there tomorrow when FedEx shows up.”
“Fuck FedEx! You don’t know what’s going on right now, so you don’t need to be over by Ish’s crib until you find out what’s what.”
“But, Jasmine, I have to sign for FedEx. You know how that goes.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The re-up through FedEx.”
Jasmine went silent for a quick moment.
“Hey, let me call you right back,” Jasmine said, and then she hung up the phone quickly.
Jasmine had no idea what Simone was referring to about the re-up through FedEx, and she just sensed that she needed to have her recorder going while she spoke to Simone.
Jasmine retrieved her FBI-issued phone and started to record. She then called Simone back and put the call on speakerphone.
“Sorry about that,” Jasmine said when Simone answered the phone. “I thought I heard my doorbell, but it was nothing. So, yeah, you were saying something about the re-up.”
“Yeah, I was saying I just have to be there to sign for it.”
Jasmine wanted to press, but didn’t want to raise suspicion.
“Simone, trust me. Let things cool off first before you go back to Ish’s house. Don’t be hardheaded.”
“I can’t do that to Ish. Nico was already beefing with him over the robbery, so if this re-up don’t go right, then I don’t think Ish would let me forget it. I’m just so glad that the delivery didn’t come yesterday. Everybody would be sick right now!”
Jasmine kept quiet because she wasn’t sure how to respond.
Simone sucked her teeth and sighed. She told Jasmine that she couldn’t believe what she was going through.
“Let me go. I’m trying to find a dentist I can go to today.”
Jasmine reminded Simone to call her if she needed anything at all.
Jasmine sat down on the couch and thought for about five minutes about what Simone had just told her. “FedEx?” she said to herself in disbelief.
After thinking it through, she called Gosling.
“Got something for you.”
“Speak to me,” Gosling replied.
“This is the real deal.”
“What?” Gosling asked with real anticipation.
“FedEx is making deliveries to Ish that you might want to look into.”
“What kind of deliveries?”
“What do you think drug dealers are getting delivered to their house? It ain’t no e-commerce merchandise being delivered, I can tell you that.”
It instantly clicked with Gosling after Jasmine said that.
“Wow!” Gosling replied. “I’ll get right on this right now.”
Gosling was hoping that Jasmine was right about what she was telling him. It would make him look good. He was really starting to like the way Jasmine worked.
After he ended the call with her, he wondered why Jasmine, as talented as she was, never tried to get into the law enforcement industry as a career. He always thought that really good confidential informants would make the best cops and federal agents, and Jasmine was no exception.
Thirty-Eight
The FBI contacted FedEx, and they made arrangements to have drug-sniffing dogs check the two packages scheduled to arrive at Ish’s house for Monday morning before ten a.m. Based on Jasmine’s tip, and like Gosling had suspected, both packages came up positive for drugs, so the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, and the New York City Police Department all moved quickly to formulate a plan to raid Ish’s home.
FedEx allowed one of the FBI agents to pose as a worker and provided him wi
th a FedEx box truck, a uniform, and a hand-held computer. In the back of the box truck were FBI and DEA agents ready to storm Ish’s house as soon as the package was delivered. Sitting five blocks away and ready to provide immediate backup were New York City Police Department units.
Just before ten a.m., the FedEx truck arrived at Ish’s house. The middle-aged black FBI agent dressed as a FedEx worker got out of the truck carrying two ten-pound boxes and a hand-held computer. He walked up to Ish’s front door and rang the doorbell.
Ish answered the door and immediately suspected something was wrong because his normal FedEx guy wasn’t making the delivery.
“I have two packages for a Simone Simmons,” the FedEx driver said.
Ish’s heart was pounding as he looked around. Nothing looked out of place, but he could sense something wasn’t right. “Oh, okay. Let me go get her for you.” Ish went back inside his house and closed the door.
The FBI agent wasn’t expecting Ish to do that. The last thing they wanted was for Ish to be retrieving a gun. All of the agents inside the FBI truck looked on and waited anxiously.
***
Simone was at a dentist in Westbury, Long Island, preparing to get her teeth worked on. She had called around to a bunch of different dentists, and ended up choosing the one who could give her the quickest appointment at the most reasonable fee. One of his scheduled patients had called and canceled their appointment, so he was able to squeeze her in without her having to wait a week to see him.
Her cell phone rang, and she picked up on the first ring. “Hey, babe. Everything go okay?”
“Yo, there’s a dark-skinned, black FedEx dude. You ever seen him before?”
“Never.” Simone replied. Their normal FedEx guy was a Puerto Rican guy named Juan.
“Fuck!” Ish heard his doorbell ring. He told Simone he had to go and would call her back.
***
Ish went to his bedroom and got his gun. He tucked it into his waistband and pulled it over his shirt then ran back downstairs to the front door.
“Sorry about that,” he said after re-opening the front door.