by Erica Hilton
***
All of the cop cars caught the attention of BJ, who was about ten feet away by the passenger curbside pickup. He watched in disbelief as Nico was stuffed into the back of a squad car in handcuffs. BJ got as close as he could to the police car, trying his best to get Nico’s attention, but Nico never looked his way. Bbefore long the squad car pulled off. BJ ran back to his car and immediately dialed the lawyer and told him what happened.
It was still early in the morning, and Nico’s lawyer sounded as if he had just woken up. But with as much money as Nico had been paying him, he didn’t hesitate to get on things. He told BJ he had to get dressed, but that he would be in touch with the Port Authority police within fifteen minutes.
“Keep your phone on, and I’ll get back to you when I know something.”
“Ok.” He got in his truck and headed to his cousin Lorenzo’s house to fill him in on what just went down.
BJ couldn’t believe Nico had just gotten arrested, but like a true soldier, he stayed focused. He had to find out where Bebo was. Dominoes were stating to fall left and right, and he was determined to not get caught slipping.
Eight
Jasmine lay on the floor motionless, her right hand numb from the gunshot wound, her jaw throbbing from being slapped with the butt of Bebo’s gun, and her neck literally on fire. Everything happened so fast, she didn’t know if she was dead or alive. She felt like she was in a scene from a horror movie. The room was eerily quiet, and the silence freaked her out. She didn’t know if she was about to see that bright light that people talk about seeing when they are on the verge of death, or if she was going to see Jesus or the devil.
Paranoia started to grip her, and with her face down on the ground and her eyes closed, she had to tell herself not to panic and to stay calm. It seemed as if the silence in the room was getting louder and louder, and at the same time her neck seemed as if it was getting hotter and hotter. She knew she had to do something because she was starting to get extremely light-headed.
She began to call Narjara’s name. “Narjara,” she said in a whisper, sounding like an asthma patient struggling to breathe and talk at the same time. She still hadn’t moved her body.
When she didn’t get any response, her adrenaline kicked in, and she called out the name a second time. She still got no answer.
She finally had the courage to open her eyes. “Narjara, you all right?” she asked. Again she got no response.
Jasmine still couldn’t feel her right hand, but she needed both of her hands to help her sit up. So she placed her palms on the floor, sort of like she was preparing to do a push-up, and tried to push herself up. As soon as she did that, the blood coming from her hand caused her to slide forward, and in the process, she lost her balance and fell forward on the floor. The sight of her own blood scared her.
She struggled to sit up, and when she did, she realized that the sight of her own blood was nothing compared to the huge hole in Narjara’s head.
“Oh, my God!” Jasmine screamed in fear as she looked at Narjara lying on the floor dead with one of her eyes wide open, one still swollen shut, and her brains splattered everywhere.
With her heart pounding and her adrenaline flowing, Jasmine saw that the door to the house was wide open. Fear instantly gripped her as she thought Bebo was going to come walking through the open door at any moment and finish her off.
“Where’s my phone? Where is my phone?” she said out loud, scrambling around. While looking for the phone, she brought her left hand up to her burning neck, and all she felt was her own hot blood. That freaked her out even more.
Jasmine finally found her phone. Something told her to go lock herself in the bathroom and call the police. She quickly headed up the stairs to the bathroom, staining the walls and the banister with the blood on her hands. As soon as she made it to the bathroom, she locked the door, and with her bloody, trembling left hand, she dialed 9-1-1.
As the phone rang, Jasmine did a little dance like she had to pee, but she was just nervous and couldn’t believe that 9-1-1 hadn’t picked up on the first ring.
The operator answered the call, “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
Jasmine looked at her reflection in a mirror in the bathroom, and she was a bloody mess.
“Hello. Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
“I’ve been shot. I need an ambulance right away.” Seeing herself in the mirror brought the horrors more to life, and it made her feel like she was going to faint.
“Ma’am, did you say you’ve been shot?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, miss, what is your location?”
Jasmine gave the operator her address.
“Who shot you? Was this an accident?”
“Someone broke into my house and shot me.”
“Okay, are they still in the house with you now?
“No, but I’m afraid they might come back. Please hurry and get someone here. I’m bleeding, and I’m feeling like I’m gonna die.”
“Okay, try to remain calm. We have units on their way to you right now. I just need to get more information from you that will help you and help the people who are coming to assist you. Is that okay?”
“Okay. I’m just so scared, my body is trembling. And my friend is downstairs. They killed her.” Jasmine broke down crying into the phone.
“What is your friend’s name? Is it a male or a female friend?”
“Narjara; she’s a girl.”
“Okay. And you said she was killed. Was she also shot?”
“Yes.” Jasmine could hear the operator typing away as she spoke. “Miss, please hurry.”
“They’re on their way right now. They’re about three minutes away, okay, sweetie? You’re gonna be safe. I’m going to stay on the phone with you until they get there.”
“Okay.”
“Ma’am, what is your name?”
“Jasmine.”
“Jasmine, do you know who shot you?”
Jasmine paused in gripping fear.
“Jasmine?”
“No, I don’t, but it was three people, three men.”
“Okay. And where did you get shot?”
Jasmine was getting tired of all the questions, but the operator was a comforting voice to her, so she just dealt with it.
“I can hear sirens now,” Jasmine said, feeling tremendous relief at that point.
“Okay, but I need you to stay on the line with me until they are in the house, okay?”
“Okay.”
A minute later Jasmine heard cops inside the house. “The police are here. Can I go downstairs?” Before the operator could respond, Jasmine disconnected the call and started to scream out to the cops to let them know where she was at in the house.
Two cops ran upstairs to her, while one cop remained in the living room with Narjara, and another checked all of the first floor and the basement.
Jasmine was never so happy to see a police officer in her life.
“Are you alone?” one of the cops asked her.
“Yes, I think so.”
One cop escorted Jasmine to the living room and handed her off to two paramedics, who had just entered the house, and he ran back upstairs to assist his partner in checking the second floor.
The paramedics had Jasmine sit down to evaluate her, and they did their best to stop the bleeding to her hand and neck. Within minutes they had an oxygen mask on her face and had her lying on a stretcher, which they wheeled to the waiting ambulance in front of Nico’s house. They whisked her away, sirens blaring.
“Am I gonna die?” Jasmine asked the paramedic who stayed with her in the back of the ambulance, her words somewhat inaudible due to the oxygen mask.
“Are you gonna live?”
Jasmine nodded h
er head to indicate to the paramedic that he had heard her correctly, and at that moment a tear rolled out of the corner of her eye and stopped near her ear.
The overweight white male paramedic wiped away Jasmine’s teardrop. “Just relax.” He grabbed hold of her left hand to comfort her.
Jasmine squeezed his hand firmly, and at that moment another tear rolled out of the corner of her eye just before both of her eyes calmly closed.
Nine
The Port Authority police ushered Nico into a holding cell, took his handcuffs off, and slammed the steel cell doors shut.
“I need to make a call,” Nico said to the cop who pushed him into the cell.
“Shut the fuck up and sit your nigger ass down!” The cop then walked off upset that he had to do lengthy paperwork and even more pissed off that his shift wouldn’t end until the Nassau County Police Department detectives arrived and took custody of Nico, so they could question him about the shooting at his Long Island estate.
Nico smiled at the racist remark, but he didn’t respond.
“Jimmy, can you fingerprint that black nigger for me? I don’t want to have to whip his nigger ass,” the cop said to one of his fellow officers. He was purposely talking loud so that Nico could hear him.
“Jimmy, your boy don’t got no swag. Tell him it’s nigga, not nigger.” Nico smirked. He wanted the racist cop to know that nothing fazed him.
The cops looked at Nico and shook their heads. Nico couldn’t believe how mentally weak they were.
Officer Jimmy came over to the damp cell that smelled like a wet cat and unlocked it, and then held Nico by the arm and walked him over to a computer cart and began to fingerprint Nico.
“So how much they pay y’all to do this job?” Nico asked.
The cop didn’t answer.
“At least six figures, right?” Nico asked. “I mean, with overtime and all that, you making at least a hundred grand, right?”
The cop methodically continued to fingerprint Nico and also took his mug shot. When he was done, he walked Nico back to the holding cell, slammed the door shut, and made sure it was locked.
“We make an honorable living. We work for everything we get, and we don’t sell poison to our communities,” Office Jimmy said to Nico.
Nico nodded his head with a smirk, but he didn’t reply. He knew that he had won the mind game with the weak-minded officers. He sat down on the benches and wondered what he was being held for, and he also wondered how long it would be before they let him make a phone call.
An hour and a half later, two Nassau County cops came to his cell accompanied by the racist cop.
“There’s your black nigger right there,” the Port Authority cop said to the Nassau County detectives.
The detectives introduced themselves, and then they placed Nico in handcuffs and escorted him to an empty room.
“Yo, what the fuck is up? Port Authority arrests me, but Nassau DTs are questioning me?” Nico asked as he took a seat at the table.
“Do you want anything to eat or drink?” one of the detectives asked.
“I wanna know what the fuck I’m being held for,” Nico shot back.
At that moment, a Port Authority sergeant knocked on the door and whispered something into one of the detectives’ ears. The detective got visibly upset, his face turning bright red. And he told his partner to step out into the hallway with him.
“His lawyer is here,” the detective told his partner.
“What the fuck?” He looked at the sergeant for answers. “We told you guys not to let him lawyer up until we had a chance to question him.”
“We never let him use the phone,” the sergeant replied.
“That’s bullshit! How the fuck is his lawyer here if he didn’t make any phone calls?” The lead detective shook his head in disgust.
The larger police departments like the NYPD and Nassau County all looked on smaller police departments like they were inept. And that was definitely what the two detectives were thinking about the Port Authority police at that very moment.
“You mother fuckers are so incompetent,” the detective said to the Port Authority sergeant.
The sergeant didn’t reply because he wasn’t exactly sure if one of his officers had slipped up and allowed Nico to make a phone call.
“Don’t just stand there. Get the fuckin’ attorney,” the detective said with defeated disgust.
Nico’s attorney, Ron Thompson was a very well known and very powerful black attorney from Manhattan that most police departments both feared and respected. He was a former prosecutor who had started his own private practice, and he represented many high-profile clients.
The sergeant walked Ron over to the two detectives.
“Gentlemen.” Ron held out his hand for a handshake.
The detectives shook Ron’s hand, and then they all went into the room where Nico was sitting. The detectives took a seat, but Ron remained standing.
A relieved Nico was shocked to see Ron, but he made sure to keep a poker face after nodding to his attorney.
The lead detective was about to talk, but Ron interrupted him. “First thing, remove the handcuffs from my client’s wrists.”
The detectives complied, and then Ron asked them for a moment alone with Nico.
“How did you know I was here?” Nico asked.
“BJ called me from the airport after he saw you in handcuffs.”
Nico nodded.
Ron sat down across from Nico. “You didn’t sign anything or make any statements, did you?”
“I ain’t sign nothing, and I didn’t say anything.”
Then Nico went on to explain how they’d arrested him when he was about to step off the plane but never charged him with anything or told him why he was being arrested.
“Well, you know why?” Ron replied. “The shooting is dominating the news, and they are going to see if they can link you to it.”
“I ain’t have nothing to do with that shit. I was out of town.”
His lawyer nodded. Then he asked him where he went.
“I was in Vegas.”
“By yourself?”
“Nah. With my lady.”
Ron nodded. “And you don’t know nothing about this, right?”
“Only what the streets is saying. But I ain’t got nothing to do with that shit. I ain’t gonna sanction my own crib to get ran into and shot up.”
“All right.” Ron stood up and went to the door and motioned for the detectives to come in.
“You’re holding my client, and you didn’t charge him with anything? What the fuck is this?”
“We didn’t arrest him. We just want to question him,” the lead white detective replied.
“Don’t play games with me. I know who arrested him. They arrested him on your department’s request,” Ron shot back as he stood in his three-thousand-dollar tailor-made Italian suit, looking like he was about to give closing arguments in a courtroom.
“Ron, look. We got a murder that took place within our jurisdiction at your client’s residence. We want to ask him questions pertaining to that.”
“No. What you want to do is swoop down on my client while he’s getting off the plane and make a dramatic arrest and then question him and get him to confess to a crime that he had nothing to do with, just so you can have him do a perp walk out of this precinct with the news cameras flashing. That’s what you really want.”
Nico sat back. His lawyer was worth every dime he paid him.
The detective was about to say something, and Ron cut him off.
“Look, are you charging my client with murder or what? If not, then what the fuck are we doing here?”
“We just want to question him.”
“You lost that right with the dramatic way you guys
decided to handle things. My client isn’t talking.”
This was what the detectives feared, and that’s why they didn’t want Nico to lawyer up. The lead detective knew he was stuck. He looked at his partner for help.
“Ron, we’re not playing hardball, we just want to question your client. But we can play hardball and lock your client up on a conspiracy charge.”
Ron shook his head and smiled. “My client was nowhere in the vicinity of New York when the crimes in question took place, and he can prove that. Now, unless you gentlemen have direct eyewitness testimony and statements that implicate my client in a conspiracy of any kind, then I think he’s free to go.”
The detectives looked at each other, stumped.
“Nico, you’re free. Let’s go,” Ron said, and the two of them walked out of the interrogation room.
Nico wanted to retrieve his belongings before his lawyer drove him to meet up with BJ. He let the racist Port Authority cop, who was still sitting at his desk doing paperwork, know that he needed his stuff.
Now that an attorney accompanied Nico, the slick racist talk was no longer coming out of the cop’s mouth. The cop retrieved Nico’s things.
After Nico gathered his stuff and put away his cash and his wallet, he said to the cop, “Remember, it’s nigga, not nigger. You gotta add more ga into it, you feel me?”
He watched the cop turn red, then patted him on the shoulder. “I’m just fuckin’ wit’chu, man. Be easy,” he said, a sinister smile on his face.
Ten
While all kinds of drama was going on in New York, Mia was living it up twenty-five hundred miles away in Las Vegas. Although Nico wasn’t with her to help her enjoy the good life, that didn’t stop her. If she wasn’t at the Encore spa getting a massage, she was at the Wynn spa getting a manicure and a pedicure. And when she wasn’t pampering herself at the various spas, she was splurging on herself inside Alexander McQueen or buying a dress from the Chanel store. Between spending time at the Hermes, Dior, Graff Diamonds, and Louis Vuitton stores, Mia was in heaven and felt like a walking orgasm.
