“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?”