“So what’s the deal with you and Shabazz?”
Jasmine responded quickly, “I hate him,” a sound of disgust in her voice. She continued to rub on the left side of my stomach, her face on the left half of my chest.
“You said you trust me, right?”
“Yeah, I do,” Jasmine replied. “Why you keep asking me that?”
“I’m asking you because I want you to do something for me, but I need to know that you trust me and that we’re on the same page.”
“OK, what’s up?” Jasmine asked.
“I want you to murder Shabazz for me.”
“What?” Jasmine said as she sat up.
“You heard what I asked you.”
“Whoa. I was not expecting that at all.”
Jasmine looked at me, I think, to determine if I was serious or if I was just testing her. And I kept quiet.
“You serious, aren’t you?” she asked me.
I nodded my head.
Jasmine sat fully up and then she got out of the bed and walked to the other side of the room. She reached in her bag and got a blunt, and she asked me, “Do you mind if I smoke this blunt?”
“Nah, not at all. Do you. No judging, ever, from me,” I declared. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I wasn’t down for you. You do this for me, and I got you on whatever it is you want.”
I got up and held her. I could literally feel her heart beating a mile a minute.
Jasmine lit the blunt and, as she started to smoke, walked closer to the window. I followed her, and we both looked out onto the bright lights and the rich New York City skyline.
“Why though?” she asked me. “Why me?”
“Because I want you, and I gotta know that I can trust you, no matter what. And if I’m gonna keep it real, I just got word that an indictment is about to
come down on me, and if they get Shabazz to talk, then I’m done. Everything I built is done, and me and my whole crew will be doing football numbers in prison.”
Jasmine was quiet, and I kept quiet as she smoked her weed.
“But how you know for sure that he’s snitching?”
“That’s what I pay my lawyer and his investigators this big money. They find the shit out for me.” I walked over and grabbed my phone, and then I came back over to her. “This is how good they are. One of the investigators took this.” I handed her my phone for her to look at the picture I had just opened up.
“Oh my God! When was this?”
I had just showed her a picture of Shabazz fucking some chick in his truck. The picture was old, and Shabazz had sent it around to his boys a while ago bragging because he’d fucked a rival drug dealer’s chick.
“I’m just saying; trust what I’m telling you. This nigga ain’t never been down for you or for nobody else. He only been down for self, and he gotta go, or else we all lose.”
Jasmine put out her blunt and placed it in an ashtray that was on top of a table near the window, and then she went and sat back down on the bed.
I sat down next to her. “So what’s the deal?” I asked her.
“I can’t kill anyone! I just know I can’t, Nico. Can’t you find someone else? Why do I have to do it? You got a whole army out there.”
I began massaging her shoulders, which were stiff. “Jasmine, you don’t gotta do anything you don’t want to do. I asked because you’re the only one I can trust. The fewer people who know, the better. I just told you those peoples are right around the corner and they don’t knock on doors—they kick them in.”