Wifey: Part 2

Agent Gosling nodded and, without asking for permission, took hold of Jasmine’s drink and sipped some of it. Jasmine felt like a bull that’d seen red. She wanted to reach across that table and slap him for putting his lips on her drink. She had already told him that she would let him have some of her drink, but she was planning on pouring him some in a separate glass. Jasmine was definitely going to order another drink and give him the one he had just put his backwash in.

“But you have hung out with him since you’ve been home?”

Jasmine knew about the GPS feature on the BlackBerry, so she knew she couldn’t lie but so much.

“We didn’t hang out, like go out anywhere, but I did see him. He came by my mother’s house to check on me.”

Gosling nodded his head. “When did you last see Nico?”

“Yesterday I saw him. I’ve seen him pretty much every day since I came home from the hospital.”

“So what is he saying about the Bebo murder that I’m sure you’re aware of?”

Jasmine smiled and ate one of her French fries. “See, you have to understand—The streets isn’t a game of show and tell, where little Johnny comes to school every day and just starts opening up about what the fuck him and his friends did the day before.” Jasmine paused. “What I’m saying is, I can’t just start asking, ‘So, Nico, did you kill Bebo?’ I have to bring things up in the natural course. But, don’t worry, I’ll get you your info.”

“So you’ve seen him every day since being discharged from the hospital?”

Jasmine nodded.

Agent Gosling cut his eyes at Jasmine the same way he had done when she had first come into the restaurant late for their meeting.

“What?” Jasmine nervously took another bite from her cornbread.

Agent Gosling reached into a dark brown folder and he took out four glossy photos and handed them to her.

“That one right there, that’s Mia meeting Nico at the airport in Las Vegas,” Agent Gosling said. “And that one right there, that’s Mia and Nico having dinner together, also in Las Vegas. And this one, this is Mia and Nico shopping together in Las Vegas. And if you’ll notice, each day they have on different outfits, and you’ll also notice the date and the time on each photo.”

Jasmine could feel sweat forming on her brow. She was beyond embarrassed for being busted in a lie, and at the same time she was also heated with Nico.

“Those dates, Jasmine, they cover the past few days right after Bebo’s murder, and you just told me that you saw Nico every day at your mother’s house. Kind of hard to do that if your mom lives in Queens and Nico is thousands of miles away.”

Jasmine knew there was absolutely nothing she could say.

“Let me explain something, Jasmine. I want to go home alive every night. So therefore I have to be able to trust you, and your lies could get me killed out here. So if I wasn’t clear a few minutes earlier, let me be perfectly clear now—If you lie to me one more time—No, as a matter of fact, if I even suspect that you’re lying to me, I am locking your ass up, and you’ll be doing twenty-five years in a federal pen somewhere out in South Dakota with a bunch of lesbian white butches. Is that understood?”

“Yes, it’s understood,” Jasmine humbly replied.

“So are you getting the picture about how we need you to operate and cooperate with us? No lies. You do as you’re told, and you get us the information that we need. You help us, and we help you.”

Jasmine nodded her head, tired of being chastised. She was ready to move on and get the meeting over with so she could figure out how she was going to deal with Mia.

“Now we need to discuss what’s going on, and we need to formulate an action plan.”

“Okay,” Jasmine replied. At that point Jasmine’s French fries were cold, the cornbread was cold, and she no longer wanted anything to drink. What she wanted at that moment was some high-grade weed to smoke.

“Before I speak about Nico, we both know that Bebo was murdered two days ago.” Gosling paused and waited for Jasmine to speak. “Are we on the same page?”

“Mmm-hmm. Yeah, I obviously heard about Bebo. We mentioned this already,” Jasmine replied, not knowing exactly what Gosling wanted to hear.

“So what are your thoughts on it?”

“I don’t know,” she replied with a nonchalant attitude.

Gosling gave her that stern look again.

“Look, you seem to forget that my hand is going to take another week or so to fully heal, and as you can see, my neck is not fully healed yet either. So it’s not like I’m just out and about running the streets. I withdrew from school, and I wanted to take a little time to just heal physically and emotionally, and it’s like you don’t seem to realize that. All you seem concerned about is just doing your job.”

Agent Gosling knew that Jasmine had a point, but he didn’t care. He went back into his folder and pulled out more photos—three to be exact.