Wifey: Part 2

“Work something out.”

At that moment it was as if Jasmine and Gosling had talked up Black Justice. Her phone began vibrating.

“It’s him right here.”

“Answer it.”

“Hello.”

“What’s good with your man?” Black Justice asked with his deep, gravelly voice.

“He just got in town today.”

“A’ight. That’s what’s up. So we still doing this or what? Speak to me.”

Jasmine paused because she wasn’t sure how she should answer. Her heart started pounding, but she thought quickly on her feet.

“Yeah, everything is a go. But what price you talking?”

“For nine, right?”

“You know what? I don’t like talking on the phone like this. He’s in town. I’ll hit you back, and we’ll figure out where we can link and talk face to face.”

“Jasmine, don’t take him to nobody else.”

“Jus, we good. Not on the phone, though. I’ll hit you back, or you can hit me back in an hour.”

“No doubt.”

Jasmine looked at her phone to make sure the call had ended.

“I bought you some time, but you gotta get money to make this shit go down. He’s going to call me back so we can meet up and talk about price.”

Gosling smiled, impressed with Jasmine and the way she was handling herself. For the first time he found himself looking across the table at Jasmine in another light. He had always kept things on the up and up and strictly professional, and he planned on keeping things that way, but he would have been lying to himself if he’d said that he wasn’t attracted to her.

“Why you looking at me like that?” Jasmine asked, feeling a bit uncomfortable.

“So love is cursed?”

“Oh, you looking at my tattoo? It’s fire, right?”

“No comment.”

“No comment? Yeah, okay. All I know is, you better step up your swagger before we meet with Black Justice. Don’t come looking as lame as you be looking,” Jasmine said with a laugh.

Agent Gosling had conducted many undercover assignments, so he wasn’t worried. He knew he would be able to pull off a meeting with Black Justice. He had to end the meeting with Jasmine so he could contact several of the North Carolina field offices to get some names of some of their confidential informants to see if they would be willing to vouch for him, just in case Black Justice started to sniff around and inquire about Gosling.

The meeting ended without Nico’s name coming up, nor with any talk of Lo’s death or the funeral home shooting. That was fine with Jasmine because she didn’t have anything on it. She was starting to think she was smart enough to pull off this confidential informant thing on a long-term basis.

Twenty-Six

They met up the next day near the Brooklyn Bridge, where Jasmine parked her car, got in the FBI-issued BMW 760 Agent Gosling was driving, and headed uptown to Manhattan. Jasmine had arranged for the two of them to link up with Black Justice at a Dominican storefront restaurant located off Broadway in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, of which he was part owner. Black Justice often used a small back office inside the restaurant to conduct business.

When Jasmine and Agent Gosling arrived, they parked their car on the opposite side of the street from the restaurant, crossed the busy street, and made their way inside.

“Hi,” a sexy Spanish waitress said to Jasmine and Gosling. “How can I help you?”

The place was small, and there were only six tables where customers could sit down and eat. Mostly it was a take-out restaurant.