Wifey: Part 2

Jasmine looked at him and rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a huge sports fan, but there was nothing else on TV worth watching. Plus, she didn’t know who he was, so she kept her mouth shut and ignored him.

“May I?” Agent Battle said, reaching for the remote control.

Jasmine didn’t answer her, nor did she object when Agent Battle took it upon herself to turn off the TV.

“Jasmine, this is Agent Gosling. I asked him to come with me, so I could revisit what we spoke about when we last saw each other.”

Jasmine looked at her and didn’t say anything.

“Jasmine, let’s be straight up with one another. I don’t know if you believe in miracles, but I think you would admit that your being alive and able to talk to me right now is pretty much a miracle. Would you agree?”

Jasmine had a nightmare the night before in which she relived the moment when Bebo fired the two gunshots at her. It woke her up in a panic about twelve hours earlier. She slowly nodded in response to Agent Battle’s question.

“So tell me—how many more miracles do you want to live through?”

Jasmine wondered why Agent Battle was the one doing all the talking. She asked the black man, “You a cop too?”

Agent Gosling nodded his head. “Yes, I’m a federal agent.

“Cop, federal agent, po-po, fed—it’s all the same shit.”

“Jasmine, we can talk, right?” Agent Battle asked her in a tone that was trying to get her to lower her guard.

“Yeah. That’s what we’re doing, right?”

“No. I mean, can we talk black woman to black woman, black man to black woman, no holds barred?”

“Yeah . . . I guess.”

“Jasmine, the people who came and shot you, you do know that wasn’t just some random shooting, don’t you?”

Jasmine wondered if Agent Battle had some specific information about the shooting that she didn’t have. She shrugged.

“You can shrug your shoulders, but let me just tell you, when you got shot the other day, please understand that that was a targeted hit on you. There was nothing random about it. There was no other motive behind that shooting other than to take you out. Hits aren’t random; hits are planned. You do follow me, right?”

Agent Battle’s words confirmed the thoughts Jasmine had been having about if Nico had tried to have her killed for snitching. Still, she made sure not to show her hand to Agent Battle.

Agent Gosling added, “So whoever did this to you will be coming back to finish the job.”

“Okay, and? Tell me something I don’t know.” Jasmine shook her head. “Cops make me laugh. Y’all never around to arrest nobody when shit happens, and y’all never know who did shit after it happens, and then y’all always come around after the fact, talking about the obvious. How about walking in this room and telling me that y’all arrested the muthafucka who shot me?”

Agent Battle looked at Agent Gosling, and in her heart she knew where Jasmine was coming from. “In many ways you’re right, Jasmine, and that’s why we’re here. We can’t effectively do our job without sources.”

“You mean, snitches,” Jasmine interjected.

“No, I mean sources. Snitches do crimes, and then to get their own asses out of a sling, they tell on the people involved with the crime. That’s not what our sources do.” Agent Battle reached into her jacket pocket and handed Jasmine a photo of Narjara lying naked on a silver coroner’s table with a huge hole on either side of her head.

“Why are you showing that to me?” Jasmine hollered. Her blood pressure rose, and her chest began to heave up and down. She dropped the photo on the floor.

“Jasmine, who is that in that photo?”

“You know who it is.”

“No. Who was she to you?”

“She was my friend.”

“No, she was more than your friend. Yeah, she was your friend who didn’t have a felony record, she was your friend who was in college trying to better herself, she was your friend who had all kinds of potential to be whoever she wanted to be. She was your friend who would have been a nurse, and a wife and a mother some day. But you know what?”