The Take Down

by Mark Anthony

  Supreme’s cronies followed his orders though one of them couldn’t help but acknowledge the obvious. “Yo, and um,… Pardon me, we ain’t mean to just interrupt y’all like that.”

  Normally I would have been beyond embarrassed but the liquor, the E pill, and the weed from earlier all had me on cloud nine and I didn’t even feel that much shame at all. As soon as the guys were out of the suite, Supreme took off his boxers again, and I got undressed, and like rabbits we were going at it again.

  Part of me felt bad about Chris, but another part didn’t care that he had been shot. And yet there was still a part of me that didn’t even care about the investigation anymore, I was more concerned about keeping this high that I was feeling.

  Supreme began stroking real deep and fast and I could tell that he was close to cuming. And although I was feeling real good, I wasn’t dumb enough not to remind Supreme to pull out.

  “Make sure you pull out … okay, baby?”

  I guess that I said that too late because all I heard was Supreme let out a long moan and he gripped me real tight around my waist.

  “Wheeew!” he said as he began laughing.

  “Supreme! Why didn’t you pull out?” I questioned as he laid his full weight on me.

  “I’m sorry but it just felt too good to pull outta that.”

  I pushed Supreme off of me and told him that he was gonna get me in so much trouble. At that point my phone began ringing again. It was Angela wanting to know where I was at, where I had disappeared to, and if I was okay. I answered her questions without going into too much detail and assured her that I was fine.

  “Jessica, we got a deal! We signed it about fifteen minutes before the shooting broke out.”

  “Angela, that is so good! Just don’t forget about the little people like me,” I joked.

  Angela told me that she would catch up to me the following day because she was going to go home with White Lines, her brother, and his friends.

  “Horse signed White Lines,” I excitedly told Supreme as I made my way to the bathroom to freshen up. Thankfully, after I’d hung up from Angela I was smart enough to turn my expensive cell phone to the video-camera function. I needed to get something concrete out of the whole ordeal and hopefully I would be able to get Supreme to run his mouth and say something incriminating before the night was over.

  “Yeah I know, he gave homey a million-dollar advance and I had to okay that shit,” Supreme replied.

  I was so glad that Supreme had gone there with his words. I was going to try to get some more information out of him, but I had to be careful not to appear too eager.

  I yelled from the bathroom, “You know, either you are really horrible or you are a fiend. Isn’t Chris your boy? You was so into trying to get with me that you didn’t even want to go check on your boy?” I said, making sure to put emphasis on the words “trying to get with me,” so that if it ever came up I could deny that Supreme and I had actually had sex and just state that he had tried to fuck me but I had warded off his advances.

  I could hear Supreme laughing from the other room. Then he appeared at the entrance to the bathroom and he said, “I’m cool with homey but I ain’t move that quick for duke ’cause he be on some shit.”

  I purposely kept quiet and didn’t say anything. And Supreme laughed again and paused for a moment before he said, “Yo, I had been hearing about you. Matter fact that nigga Chris was riling niggas up saying that you was a fucking federal agent and all kinds of bullshit! That’s just how stupid the nigga is. The nigga is a stupid muthafucka that don’t know how to play his position and keep his mouth shut.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t believe that! All I do is work on my company twenty-four-seven. And I couldn’t believe that my name would even be associated with something like that,” I replied as I began slipping back into special agent mode.

  “So I have to tell Angela that you are the one to be thanked for White Line’s deal? What exactly do you do? Are you like an A&R?” I asked, trying to sound really innocent.

  “A&R? Nah ma’. Gun Clap is my company. Fuck what you heard and what you see in the videos and all that,” Supreme exclaimed.

  That was what I needed to hear. Supreme had admitted to me that the record company was really his. To keep from raising suspicions, I didn’t mention anything else. I wanted desperately to ask him what he meant while we were having sex when he said that he already knew what was up. My gut told me that he had probably ordered a hit on Chris. In fact he had to know what was going to go down and how it was going to go down. Through my drugged-up state I had to make a mental bookmark to remind myself of Supreme’s exact words which were, that he already knew what was up. I knew that I would need to relay those exact words to my supervisor.

  As the two of us prepared to leave the suite and join the confusion and mayhem in the lobby I remembered thinking to myself how I could actually get used to this undercover life that I was living. The good sex and the partying was a major perk, but I still had to get my hands on some of that dough that Supreme and Horse were holding.

  CHAPTER NINE

  By the time I made it back to Howard Beach I was more than ready to just hit the bed and sleep off the sledgehammerlike headache that I had. After the combination of weed, liquor, and ecstasy had worn off I had one of the worst hangovers of my life! I actually think that death would have been a better option as opposed to experiencing the nausea.

  At 7:30 in the morning following the Underworld anniversary party, I found myself on my white-tiled bathroom floor literally hugging the toilet bowl, or as they say in the ’hood, worshiping the porcelain god. I had already vomited once and it did help me feel a bit better but my body was not done rejecting the poisons that I had put inside of it the previous night. I was sweating like I was inside of a sauna and the last thing I wanted to do was speak to anyone. But as I was throwing up for the second time that morning, my cell phone began to ring off the hook.

  Ahh shit, I thought to myself as I realized that the blocked number might be my supervisor, Andrew. Quickly trying to wipe the spit and chunks of regurgitation from my mouth, I sat up against the bathtub and answered the call.

  “Hello,” I mustered up in the most groggy-sounding voice.

  Never forgetting to refer to me by my undercover name, my supervisor’s voice seemed to fill up the entire phone as he spoke uncharacteristically loud. “Jackson, what the fuck are you doing to me?”

  “What?” I asked through my splitting headache.

  “Didn’t you tell me that you would be at that magazine party last night?”

  “Yes I was there but—” I said as my supervisor cut me off in the middle of my sentence. I could sense a stern tone in his voice and I couldn’t figure out why.

  “And where the fuck are you now?”

  “I just got home.”

  “Jackson, are you alone?”

  “Yes and I was—” Again I was cut off by my supervisor.

  “Jessica, this is what we have to get straight. When you’re conducting an investigation and you’re at an event where one of our informants gets his fucking head blown off, your first thought needs to be to contact me! I don’t need my goddamn boss hearing about it on the news and then calling me on it with me having no idea what the hell he’s talking about!”

  At that point, in spite of the way I felt and in spite of my headache I had to come back strong and get my supervisor to respect me.

  “Andrew, once again, with all due respect I need you to hear me out. First of all, I am fully capable of conducting this investigation and I’m making progress. Did it ever occur to you that I might have a plausible explanation as to why I didn’t immediately contact you? Of course not! You and every other sexist, racist-ass male agent doesn’t want to see me succeed and you’re all looking for the first reason to pull the plug on this whole thing—”

  “Jessica—”

  “Wait, please, I listened to you, now you hear me out … I am risking my life for this government
and this investigation and you have the balls to come at me? You are more concerned with this piece-of-shit informant than you are about your fellow agent! Did you ask if I was okay? Did you ask if I almost got my head blown off? Did you think that maybe I couldn’t call you because I was busy warding off sexual advances from Supreme?”

  My supervisor was quiet because he knew that he was in the wrong. And I sarcastically spoke up again. “Andrew, this is the explanation that you can give to your boss: while your beloved and dear criminal informant was getting his head blown off, your unrespected, unqualified female agent had to endure hours of exposure to marijuana smoke being blown in her face and she was practically raped by Supreme, yes the same Supreme that this Bureau so desperately wants to take down. And let him know that she not only witnessed firsthand Supreme in the possession of enough narcotics to send him away for thirty years but she also managed to videotape Supreme telling her from his mouth that he is the one that really pulls the strings at Gun Clap Records and that it is his company! And in reference to your beloved informant, tell your boss that Supreme, in his own words, let me know that the Chris Mims murder was a planned hit…”

  “Jackson, you’re shitting me,” Andrew said with a totally changed attitude.

  “I’m not shitting you! I’m telling you the facts. I will get you the evidence that you need on Supreme and Horse—that is not a problem. And I’m close to getting you Paulie Calvino but you and everyone else in this testosterone-driven FBI better support me and not undermine me if you want this to work!”

  My boss had heard enough and I knew that I had gained his respect. He felt good about what I had told him simply because now he could look good in front of his boss since the investigation was making progress. He also told me that even with my video-camera evidence, which was in his words “phenomenal,” that he didn’t want to rest on just that. We would have to step things up in terms of getting Supreme to incriminate himself on a tapped phone or on a wire of some sort. We would also have to step up the video surveillance so we could make sure that we had more than enough evidence to bury Supreme and Horse underneath the jail.

  See, I was hungover but I was not stupid. I had purposely planted seeds in my boss’s head that would later help me out if needed. Seeds like telling him that the FBI cared more about their criminal informant than they did me. Seeds like saying I’d practically been raped by Supreme and that I had had marijuana smoke blown in my face all night long. I did that because I had to have outs. I knew that the surveillance would be stepped up and the last thing I wanted was Supreme on tape talking about how he had fucked me after giving me an ecstasy pill.

  But if something ever came up I could always revert back to the conversation that I had with my supervisor and let him know that I had not actually had sex with Supreme. If Supreme boasted about such a thing it would be him trying to talk and look good in front of his crew.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Tell Snoopy that I said hello.”

  “Snoopy?” Supreme asked with a huge question mark in his voice.

  “Yeah, wasn’t that a picture of Snoopy on that E pill from the other night?” I asked as Supreme started to laugh through the phone.

  “Yeah, yeah, it was. Yo, you a wild chick, you know that, right?”

  “I’m just being me that’s all. But I do wanna see you later tonight or sometime this week,” I said.

  “You wanna see me so we can hang out or are you just hooked on that E that quick?” he questioned.

  “Supreme?” I asked with a babyish puppy-dog question mark to my voice. “If I’m hooked on anything it’s that dick,” I said as we both started laughing. “I think your dick is possessed!”

  “Yo, you crazy,” Supreme replied.

  I knew that if there was any way that a woman could quickly get to a man’s heart it was by boosting his ego in the sexual performance area. If you let a man know or think that he is a king in the bedroom then he will genuinely be pulled to you and more than likely trust you because all men think with the head between their legs and not with the one on their shoulders.

  “I don’t know why I am telling you this but it’s true. I never came harder than I came the other night when I was with you,” I said as Supreme again started laughing.

  “What the fuck is so funny? You don’t believe me but it’s true! The next time we do it I want you to do me the same way, but I want you to choke me while you’re doing it to me. Act like you’re raping me! Okay?”

  “Whoa! Whoa! What did you just say?” Supreme asked.

  “You heard what I said. I want you to just rip my jeans off and rip my panties off and just rape me! Make sure you do it real hard and rough and choke me while you’re taking it.”

  “Wowww! Jessica you a wild girl! But I ain’t into that kinky shit like that.”

  I assured Supreme that I wasn’t some crazy whore and that I was deathly serious about what I was saying. I had to be careful though. Based on what I had witnessed in the hotel, in terms of the drugs, it was enough to get a judge to grant us permission to tap Supreme’s phones. I couldn’t be incriminating myself the way I was. What was funny was that I had just indirectly let Supreme into a past that I had rarely, if ever, let anyone into, and that being my incestuous past.

  See, one of the demons that had repeatedly plagued me all of my life was an incest demon. The fact was that I had been a victim of incest since I was seven years old up until my junior year in high school. My father had consistently and repeatedly forced himself on me for a period of ten years. And during that time, my self-esteem became rock-bottom low and my sexuality and view of sex became totally warped. In fact, having a form of power and catching serial rapists and child molesters were not my number-one reasons for wanting to join the FBI but those certainly were motivating forces.

  So when I became of age when I could engage in sexual activities with another consenting adult it was hard for me to separate the rough and forceful actions of my father with the actions that my sexual partner would be performing on me. And although I hated what my father did to me, in a sick way, now years later as an adult what he had done to me years ago sort of became my only normal view of sex.

  I would also have to say that my incestuous past kind of prepped me for my undercover work as an FBI agent simply because I got so used to being two people when I was growing up. On one hand I knew how to hide pain and show my friends and the public that manufactured good side, so that they would think that my siblings and I were part of this picture-perfect all-American family, but on the other hand while I was hurting inside I knew how to hide that hurt and be this person that did everything right in order to please and protect my father. It was like I sort of learned how to be my father’s wife when I had to and how to turn that switch off and be his daughter when I had to.

  That incestuous past and the emotional pain involved with it is what led me to alcohol at an early age. It was like I could ease the pain when I drank alcohol and later on when I tried stronger drugs like marijuana it helped even more to ease the pain. It was like alcohol and marijuana and cocaine became my ways of escaping the unfortunate realities that my father had put me through. I had never become an addict, but I had become more than just a recreational user of drugs. Drugs became the thing that helped me feel normal and feel good about myself.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Following the death of Chris Mims, the media had a field day with the fact that here it was, another incident of violence surrounding the record label whose name seemed to endorse violence. Horse was still under pressure because the murder weapon of rival rapper Frank Nitty had been found in his home along with illegal narcotics, so needless to say the Chris Mims murder was the last thing that Horse needed.

  Although Horse and Supreme were delinquents at heart and Supreme had a lengthy rap sheet, they were smart businessmen and master promoters. Horse especially knew how to take the worst incidents and turn them into promotional genius.

  Horse had a dynamite Manhatt
an publicist by the name of Nina Terry and I was certain that some of his promotional genius could easily be attributed to her. She more than likely was the one that called the press conference to discuss the recent Gun Clap Records shooting incident. This time, I was actually present at the packed media event, as a guest of Supreme and Horse, and I laughed on the inside as I listened to Horse spin the whole Chris Mims incident.

  Draped again by his son, Horse spoke and denied that he or his company had had anything to do with the unfortunate and untimely death of one of his closest and most trusted bodyguards. Also present at the press conference were Angela Calvino and White Lines.

  “But Horse, what about the allegations that Chris Mims was killed because he might have been providing information to the police? Was his murder really a professional hit by you and your organization?” a reporter asked.

  Horse charismatically replied, “You know, the old me would have flipped on you and screamed at you for asking a question like that. But this is the reason that I wanted to hold this press conference—specifically for questions such as that and to set the record straight and let the public know once again that Gun Clap Records did not sanction a hit on anyone. Chris was loved and respected by everyone at Gun Clap and if he wasn’t I don’t think he would have put his life on the line for me and everyone else at Gun Clap the way he did. I’ve already sent my condolences to his family. And I assured them—and I also give everyone that can hear my voice this assurance and my word—that his immediate family members will be taken care of financially and all of his children will have scholarship funds set up immediately. And you asked me about my organization, well I am not part of any organization, I’m part of a family. Gun Clap Records is a family and only a family would look out for their loved ones when they’re gone and that is exactly what we’ll do in the case of Chris Mims.”