by Erica Hilton
“No problem. I don’t mean to rush you, but I have one other stop to make before ten a.m., or else I’m going to hear it from my boss,” the FBI agent said convincingly.
“Yeah, well, I thought Simone was in the house, but she’s not home right now.”
The FBI agent had already gone over the different scenarios, so he was prepared. He looked at his computer and pressed a button, then another.
“Oh okay. I was just double-checking. Well, this will require a signature. I don’t know if you want to sign for it. If not, I can take it back, and someone can pick it up tonight after six o’clock at our JFK facility.”
Ish nodded his head. Everything seemed all right to him. The FedEx worker seemed legit and didn’t seem antsy or overly eager for Ish to take the package. Ish had never had any packages go back to the FedEx facility for later pickup, so he wasn’t feeling good about that option. He had no idea what the screening process was like if the packages went back to the facility. He could hear Nico in the back of his mind.
“It’s a package for my tenant. I had some issues with her, so I’m not really sure if I should take it or not. You know what I’m saying?”
“No problem.” The undercover FBI agent reached for a door tag. “Take this door tag, leave it for your tenant, and just have her pick it up later tonight. And if she can’t make it, we’ll automatically redeliver it tomorrow.”
“A’ight, you know what? Fuck it. I’ll sign for the shit.”
The FBI agent placed the packages on the steps and handed Ish the handheld device and the small pen that went with it and showed him where to sign. Ish thought about asking for the normal FedEx guy, but that would have seemed somewhat weird so he said nothing.
“What’s the last name?” the FBI agent asked.
“Jameson.”
“Okay.” The FBI agent touched something on the computer screen right before picking up the packages and handing them to Ish.
Ish’s phone started to vibrate just as he took hold of the packages. It was Simone calling him back. His hands were full, so he couldn’t pick up, and it went to voice mail.
He went back inside his house and closed the door, feeling somewhat relieved. It seemed like seconds later he heard a noise at his front door, but he was distracted by looking at the missed call on his cell phone.
The noise he’d heard was the sound of the FBI agents’ hydraulic rabbit prying open his metal security screen door. Twelve FBI and DEA agents were lined up on his front steps. The lead agent had pried open the screen door and held it open so the second agent could have free access to Ish’s main front door.
The second agent hit the front door with a battering ram. BOOM!
The front door burst open, and the federal agents stormed the house.
“Shit!” Ish dropped his phone on the ground and went for his gun.
“Gun!” one of the agents yelled.
BANG!
The agent leading the attack had fired his gun before Ish had a chance to fire his own. The shot hit Ish in the right shoulder and caused his gun to fall out of his hand and on to the living room floor. The force of the gunshot caused him to lose his balance and fall backwards, but he didn’t fall to the ground.
Two of the agents grabbed hold of Ish and slammed him face first to the living room floor before handcuffing him.
“Errrgghh!” Ish grimaced in pain on the floor.
Agents flooded the rest of the house looking for others to also arrest.
Outside Ish’s house, the block was now crawling with New York City police, FBI, and DEA, and the sound of an ambulance could be heard approaching the block.
Ish was bleeding from his shoulder and still face down on the living room floor grimacing in pain. His pain wasn’t only coming from the gunshot wound, but also his jaw that broken when the agents slammed him to the living room floor. With his face on the floor and turned sideways, he could see his cell phone lighting up and vibrating. He could also see it was Simone calling him back.
As the phone rang, one of the agents planted his boot onto Ish’s neck to make sure he didn’t try to move. It was the ultimate sign of humiliation, but it was a small thing compared to how fucked up Ish was feeling as he laid there on the ground wondering if Simone had set him up.
Thirty-Nine
The raid on Ish’s house and his arrest made the television news and the local newspapers. It was becoming clear to everybody that Ghetto Mafia was falling apart and was at risk of becoming extinct.
Homicide read some of the newspaper stories about the raid and couldn’t believe how fucked up his luck was. But the story had energized him to continue to target Ghetto Mafia. He knew they were vulnerable, and he was just waiting to see who was going to step in with Ish now locked up.
During the two weeks that followed the raid on Ish’s house, Homicide spent a lot more time with Jasmine. He was genuinely starting to like her, so he wanted to be around her more. And the feelings of love were definitely mutual and growing on Jasmine’s part.
Homicide also wanted to stay close to Jasmine because he wanted to know everything about Ghetto Mafia as soon as she knew. His trust in Jasmine was growing with each passing day, but part of him still wondered just how much loyalty for Nico remained in her.
To test Jasmine, one day out the blue, he had her take him to Nico’s house in Long Island. Homicide wanted to see if she would put up any resistance to him, and also what vibes he could get from the house. He wanted to know if Nico really had been out of town in Miami. Homicide figured he would be able to tell if the house looked like it had been lived in recently.
Jasmine was caught off guard but didn’t resist. “You want to go there now? As in right now?” she asked, as they sat inside the Shark Bar eating.
“As soon as we leave here,” Homicide replied.
Jasmine put a forkful of food in her mouth and nodded. Jasmine was starting to come to grips with the fact that Nico had probably written her off for Mia, and therefore she didn’t care where she was seen with Homicide or who was reporting what back to Nico. As far as Nico was concerned, Jasmine had nothing to lose. Agent Gosling really trusted her now because she was making him look so good, so he had lowered the pressure on her to hurry and get information on Nico.
It was about ten o’clock on a Thursday night when Jasmine and Homicide left the Shark Bar in Manhattan and headed out to Long Island. Homicide had a gold Yukon Denali with dark-tinted windows that he always drove, but whenever he was going out with Jasmine, he always preferred for her to chauffeur him around in her BMW truck. So Jasmine drove while Homicide reclined in the front passenger seat, his snub-nose revolver in his waistband.
At that time of night, the roads were not congested, so it didn’t take any time at all to get to Nico’s Long Island estate. She pulled up into the circular driveway and turned off the engine. The house was pitch-dark.
Homicide was used to being in the city where there was always some kind of lights on. But at Nico’s remote estate there was no streetlights to help illuminate the property. It was so dark, Homicide could barely see his own hands when he held them up in front of his face.
“It’s black as shit out here,” he said to Jasmine.
It was also eerily quiet. Jasmine was used to the darkness and the quiet because she had experienced it so many times. She could have walked to the front door of the house with her eyes closed if she had to.
She made it to the front door, let herself in with her key, disengaged the alarm system, and turned on the light. Homicide was thankful for the light that came from inside the house because it allowed him to see where he was walking.
“This shit is like living out in the country or some shit.” Homicide walked inside the house and looked around.
“You ain’t lying,” Jasmine replied, wondering why Homicide wanted to come ther
e. She scooped up the pile of mail that had accumulated and placed it all on the kitchen counter.
Homicide took notice of that. He also took notice of how good Nico appeared to be living. Having finished a five-year prison sentence just over a year ago, he knew he couldn’t come close to balling on Nico’s level. Homicide felt the envy starting to build up inside of him, but he didn’t say anything derogatory about the house.
While Jasmine looked through the mail, Homicide opened up the refrigerator and looked around. He saw that the refrigerator wasn’t that full and the expiration date on the gallon of milk had long since passed, giving him further confirmation that the house had not been lived in as of late.
“You want a drink or something?” Jasmine asked.
“I’m good.” Homicide walked out of the kitchen and walked into the den and looked around in there.
While Homicide was in the den, Simone called Jasmine. Jasmine wondered about Simone’s timing, but she dismissed it as just a coincidence.
“No sob stories,” Jasmine said to Simone. She was getting tired of Simone calling her and telling her how much she missed Ish, how Ish wasn’t calling her from jail, how he had flipped out on her when she went to visit him in jail three days after he had been arrested.
“No, I promise. No more ‘Depressed Debbie talk’ from me,” Simone replied.
“Thank you. You understand what I was saying, right?”
“Yeah, I get where you’re coming from.”
Jasmine had been telling Simone that death and jail was part of the game; if she was going to mess with drug dealers, she had to get used to that. She reminded Simone how her ex-boo Shabazz had been killed, and she quickly got over it and moved on to Nico.
“So we hanging out tomorrow?” Simone asked.
“Yeah, if you want to.” Jasmine smiled, glad that Simone finally seemed like she was ready to move on.
“And we ain’t going back to Sway. I don’t care what celebrities be up in there. I just don’t really click with that environment.”
Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Now let you be the first one who found out about Sway and you had took me there, then Sway would be the bomb and you would be loving it and wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.”
“That is not even true, and you know it.”
“Whatever. I ain’t even gonna argue with you. So how are your teeth? They look good?”
“They look amazing! Oh, my God! I went back the other day and got the veneers bonded. Wait until you see me. I look like a Hollywood actress.”
“Okay, so you pick the spot, and we’ll go wherever you want to go. And, no, we’re not going back to Sue’s Rendezvous, so get it out your mind.”
“I ain’t even thinking about Sue’s.”
“Okay, so just call me tomorrow.”
***
Simone was mad at herself for not having the courage to mention to Jasmine what she really wanted to tell her. Regardless of the front that Simone was putting on, it was really bothering her that Ish didn’t trust her and that he really thought that she’d staged the home invasion as a setup to him getting busted by the feds.
As much as she had pleaded with Ish and sworn to him that she had nothing to do with either the robbery or the raid, Ish wasn’t buying it, and he promised Simone that he was going to handle her. He also reminded her that it was her name on the FedEx package.
Simone was desperate to prove her innocence and would stay up at night trying to figure things out. She would brainstorm things on paper. She would replay events in her head, but she kept coming up blank. But three nights ago, she had finally come up with something she thought was concrete.
Simone figured that the masked gunman who’d had his hand around her mouth had to have a full, bushy beard because she remembered seeing what looked like black hair sticking out from the base of the ski mask he was wearing. She also remembered that Ish had told her that BJ was saying that Jasmine was playing Nico by going to a Knicks game with Homicide.
Simone had never said anything to Jasmine about what Ish had told her. She wanted to see if Jasmine would voluntarily bring it up. Since Jasmine never said anything, she kept her mouth shut about it because she didn’t want it getting back to Ish that she couldn’t hold water.
Simone was now convinced that it was Homicide who had robbed her. She had asked around about how Homicide looked, and people who knew of him all knew that he rocked a full beard. Simone couldn’t wait to tell Ish exactly what she was thinking, but she was debating if she should first try and get more confirmation somehow.
Ish was all Simone thought about day and night. She had to have him back in her life. She was even willing to do his bid with him if he was to get convicted. That’s just how strongly she felt about him.
Simone felt equally confident about the other concrete thing that her brainstorming had revealed to her, and that was that her friend Jasmine’s hands were dirty. Simone couldn’t exactly put her finger on it, but she knew that Jasmine wasn’t a psychic. Yet to her it was like Jasmine had warned her that Ish’s crib was going to get raided.
She replayed Jasmine’s words in her mind. “Simone, trust me. Let things cool off first before you go back to Ish’s house. Don’t be hardheaded.” She knew the only reason Jasmine had said to trust her was because she knew what was about to go down the next day. Simone had played detective by agonizing over all of the details. She was certain that she had come to the right conclusions. She knew she had to relay that information to Ish and then hope that he would relent and forgive her, and start to trust her again. She couldn’t wait to vindicate herself.
***
While Jasmine was on the phone with Simone, Homicide had taken himself on a tour of Nico’s crib. Homicide had a photographic memory and was memorizing the entire layout. He didn’t know when, but he was definitely going to pay another visit, and he wanted to make sure that he first knew the lay of the land.
Forty
The day after Homicide and Jasmine were at Nico’s house, Jasmine was kicking herself for forgetting to bring some more clothes to her SoHo loft. She and Simone were going to be hanging out later that night, and there was a brand-new outfit and a pair of brand-new shoes she had over at Nico’s house that she wanted to wear. Although Jasmine would have wanted to spend her Friday afternoon sleeping and relaxing, she decided to drive back out to Long Island during the early part of the afternoon to avoid the crazy Friday rush-hour and late-night traffic.
She hopped in her truck and made her way out to Long Island by herself. The ride alone did her a lot of good because it allowed her some time to just think about things and to clear her head. It was rare for Jasmine to get quality time by herself because her life was in constant turmoil.
Jasmine made it there relatively quickly. After she parked her truck and went inside, she instantly had a flashback to the time she almost got killed in the house by Bebo. Though a good amount of time had passed, she was still afraid to be in the house alone, even during the daytime.
After closing the door behind her and making sure it was locked, Jasmine quickly went upstairs and grabbed the outfit and the shoes she had come for. She also grabbed a couple more outfits to take back with her to Manhattan and threw them on the bed.
Jasmine entered her walk-in closet and searched for more shoes to take with her. While looking around, she heard the front door close. Her heart dropped, and then it quickly started beating again. She froze dead in her tracks and kept still, not wanting to make a sound.
Jasmine was certain that her snitching had caught up to her and that either Ish, Black Justice, or even Nico had someone following her, and they had followed her to the house to kill her as payback for all of her snitching.
“Fuck! Shit!” she said softly. She cursed herself for being so stupid to come alone and without a weapon. She could hear the person downstairs
moving around. She felt that she had no choice but to hide in the closet.
As quietly as possible Jasmine started taking clothes off the racks they were on and created one huge pile about three feet high. She sat down in it and pulled clothes over her so that her face and body were completely covered. The whole time, her heart was racing a thousand beats per second. Now that her head was covered and her heart was beating so fast, it made it very hard for her to breathe, and she started to feel claustrophobic. Even though the claustrophobic feelings were making her panic even more, she knew she had to keep her head under the clothes if she wanted to stay alive.
Jasmine heard someone coming up the stairs, and it was like right at that moment she saw her life flashing before her eyes. She knew she was going to certainly die.
“JASMINE!”
Jasmine heard a booming voice yell out her name, but she stayed perfectly still.
“JASMINE! Yo, you up here?”
With all of the clothes surrounding her, Jasmine could barely make out the voice. After a few seconds, she didn’t hear anything. Then she heard a cell phone ringing. She wanted to die. She was so stupid; she had left herself phone in the kitchen when she had first entered the house.
“Yo, this me. I just touched down about an hour ago. I’m at the crib.”
Jasmine heard every word being spoken, and then it all hit her. That was Nico’s voice. She quickly popped her head through the mountain of clothes, so she could get some air in her lungs. She then stood up and left the clothes on the floor. “Nico?” she said, pushing open the closet door.
Nico had only stuck his head into the bedroom to see if Jasmine was in there when he had called her name, so when he heard her, he came back into the bedroom from the hallway.
“You scared the shit out of me!” she said to Nico.
Nico didn’t say anything and just stared at Jasmine. He hadn’t seen her in so long, he was captivated by her.
She looked at Nico and noticed that his skin was real even-toned and that he had gotten two shades darker. He looked as sexy as she ever remembered him looking.