by Mark Anthony
Sir, it’s okay. I’m with the FBI. This is official FBI business. We will be bringing the patient right back.”
“Well I wasn’t informed of any of this!” the doctor emphatically replied. “I’m responsible for this patient!”
“Sir, if you do not move your foot from the door, I’ll have to place you under arrest!” I stated with a very authoritative voice.
“Place me under arrest for what?” the doctor asked.
At that point our loud conversation began to draw the attention of others and I knew that Haz would get antsy and do something desperate and irrational if the situation escalated. So I pushed the doctor back out onto the hospital floor and he fell backward as the door closed.
“A’ight, where the fuck is this ambulance thing gonna be at?” Haz asked, sounding very nervous.
“There should be one right near the emergency-room entrance,” Nicole replied in a nervous tone of defeat.
“A’ight. Yo, if anybody tries anything I want you to run that same FBI shit on them so that we can get the hell up outta here,” Haz commanded me.
As we reached the ground level of the hospital and wheeled our way toward the emergency-room entrance I desperately wanted to disrupt our getaway. We had always been trained that if at all possible, never let ourselves or a hostage be taken to another location. The chances of surviving such an ordeal are very poor.
I scanned the floor, looking for someone to alert.
Suddenly the sounds of cell phones ringing started coming from Haz. From the ring tone I was certain that it was my phone.
“Eh, sir, excuse me. Cell phones must be turned off in the hospital, sir,” a security guard stated as he appeared out of nowhere.
“Keep walking!” Haz instructed. “Nicole, where is this fucking ambulance thing at?” Haz muttered under his breath.
“There should be one just past that door,” Nicole stated as we all picked up the pace.
“Haz, I think you should answer the phone,” I said in an attempt to add some confusion to the tense atmosphere.
“Sir, did you hear me? Cell phones are not allowed inside the hospital,” the persistent guard restated.
Haz looked as if he was attempting to reach for his gun as he stopped and turned to confront the security guard.
“Money, why are you stressing me? Am I using the phone? I didn’t even answer the call!” Haz stressed as he clearly intimidated the security guard.
The guard stopped in his tracks and fortunately for everyone involved, the cell phone stopped ringing.
“Okay sir, please have a nice day,” the guard calmly stated before walking off.
At that point, almost simultaneously, all of the cell phones that Haz was carrying started ringing. I knew that it had to be my superiors at the FBI trying to contact both me and Sherry. Someone had probably found Sherry’s body and alerted the police. I could have been wrong but that was my wish.
We finally spotted the ambulette. To me it looked just like a regular ambulance, an ambulance whose engine was running and was sitting idle with no one inside.
“What’s up with this one?” Haz asked Nicole.
“That’s a city ambulance, it’s not one of the hospital ambulances. The paramedics probably just dropped someone off in the ER and will be right back,” Nicole replied.
Haz checked the back door of the ambulance and it was open.
“We’re taking this one,” Haz said. He commanded Nicole and me to get inside the back while he hoisted Horse to us.
Getting Horse inside the ambulance wasn’t the easiest thing but somehow we managed. Horse was in obvious pain but I think his thoughts were more focused on getting to a new destination.
“Y’all are riding up in the front with me so that I can see y’all,” Haz instructed as he led us out of the back door and into the front.
As Haz gripped the handle to the front door we heard an alarm sounding off from the hospital.
“Code Red! Code Red! Code Red!” a very loud-sounding computer voice kept repeating as a siren blared in the background.
“Hurry up and get in!” Haz shouted as he hustled to the driver’s side and jumped in the ambulance.
Just as Haz was pulling out to get away, security guards from inside the hospital emerged from every door and were frantically looking around. I was certain that they had been informed of Sherry’s death and Horse’s disappearance.
The cell phones that Haz was carrying all began ringing simultaneously.
“Shit!” Haz screamed in frustration. He ignored the cell phones, which wouldn’t stop ringing.
“How do you turn on this goddamn siren?” Haz vented. He pushed any and every button and flicked every switch that he could find. He eventually hit the correct switch because the ambulance’s siren came on and it gave Haz a license to speed and blow lights.
All of the cell phones continued to ring until finally Haz picked up one of them.
“Yo, where y’all at?” Haz asked as he continued to recklessly maneuver the ambulance through the city streets.
“Hold on, hold on, I gotta put you on speaker so I can drive this thing,” Haz yelled into the phone while barely missing a pedestrian and almost sideswiping a parked car.
He pressed buttons on his cell phone and began speaking into the phone. With the siren blaring in the background and the other cell phones continuing to ring, Haz was growing increasingly agitated and antsy.
“Yo, ’Preme, you ain’t gonna believe the shit that just went down, kid!” Haz yelled into the phone’s speaker.
“Why you got me on speakerphone and what the hell is all of that noise?” the person on the other end asked. I was sure that it was Supreme, but with all of the noise I wasn’t 100 percent sure that Haz had said Supreme’s name.
“Kid, I’m in a fucking ambulance trying to get the fuck outta Dodge!” Haz replied.
“What?” Supreme questioned.
“’Preme, I’ll explain everything to you in a minute but—”
Supreme cut Haz off. “Haz, what’s up with Horse? Are you hurt? What the fuck are you doing in an ambulance?”
“’Preme, Horse is in the back of the ambulance and I’m driving this bitch!”
“What!” Supreme yelled.
“’Preme, just listen to me, nigga! Round everybody up and do whatever you gotta do but bounce right now! The feds is on to y’all niggas real heavy,” Haz yelled into the speakerphone as he appeared to be maneuvering his way toward Queens.
“Haz, you had a job to do and it sounds like you fucked it up!”’Preme yelled.
Haz appeared agitated as Supreme seemed to be totally ignoring Haz’s words.
“Haz, you was supposed to pose as security for the nigga and merck his ass and get the fuck up outta there! How did you mess that up?” Supreme asked as I listened in disbelief.
I had a very extensive slang vocabulary and I knew that “merck” was a synonym for murder. I could not believe that Supreme had actually planned to have Horse murdered! Immediately I started questioning myself and wondering if the shooting at Chelsea Piers had in fact been orchestrated by Supreme. That was ironic, because I had lied about it to Horse in an attempt to get him to cooperate with us and from the sounds of things it seemed like that really may have been the case.
“’Preme! I gotta disrespect you for a minute just to get your attention! Please shut the fuck up and listen to me, nigga! Goddamn!” Haz yelled.
“Do you know a light-skinned chick named Jessica?” Haz asked.
“Yeah, why? She—”
Haz cut Supreme off and continued on, “She’s sitting right here next to me, Supreme! Do you know that this bitch is a fucking federal agent?”
There was dead silence and my heart began to race.
Even Nicole, who didn’t know all of the details, could put two and two together and sense that something just wasn’t right. She squeezed her hand around my right thigh. I was sitting in the middle between Haz and Nicole and I made sure not to respond t
o Nicole’s nervous gesture. But like Nicole probably knew, all Supreme had to do was give the word to Haz and the two of us would have been taken out in a heartbeat.
“A fed? Get outta here! She ain’t no fed. Nigga, I fucked that bitch and even nutted all up in that!” Supreme stated through the phone.
Nicole released her grip from my thigh after that comment and I could only imagine what she was now thinking.
“’Preme, I’m telling you the bitch is an agent. I saw her badge and all of that! She was trying to cut a deal with Horse to rat y’all niggas out!” Haz yelled.
There was silence. Supreme must have been contemplating what he should do.
“Haz, tell me I’m not getting set up!” Supreme stated.
“Supreme, if you don’t get ready to bounce, your ass is getting locked up! This ain’t got nothing to do with no setup. I just murdered an FBI agent up in the hospital about fifteen minutes ago and Horse is with me, missing from the hospital. Them niggas’ next move gotta be to come calling for you.”
“A’ight, yo, I’m gonna get on the horn with my people right now. What I want you to do is meet me at my mom’s old crib in Rosedale, it’s over near Snake Road and One-forty-seventh Avenue,” Supreme instructed.
“A’ight, I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. Yo, what you want me to do with Horse?” Haz asked.
“That nigga is dying tonight! Just bring him and Jessica to the crib and I’m gonna have Jessica pull the trigger so our hands will be clean!” Supreme stated like the devil that he was.
I knew that Horse couldn’t hear any of what was being said and I was certain that when we got to our destination he was gonna be in for the surprise of his life. But I also knew that there was no way that I could pull the trigger and kill him.
But then again I had been known for bending the rules …
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
When we arrived at the location in Rosedale, Haz parked the ambulance and waited for Supreme to show up.
“You should be a’ight, ma,” Haz said to Nicole.
Nicole didn’t respond. She looked as though she were living through the worst nightmare ever.
“Ain’t nobody gonna get hurt that ain’t gotta get hurt. Just as long as you don’t do nothing stupid you’ll be a’ight,” Haz reiterated, for the first time showing signs that he was actually human.
“Yo, that’s them!” Haz stated as he quickly opened the driver’s side door.
He was instantly greeted by Supreme and his entourage of four beefy and intimidating-looking men, none of whom I recalled ever seeing before.
“Where’s Horse?” Supreme asked, speaking in a rushed tone.
“He’s in the back of the ambulance,” Haz answered.
“Listen. You was right about me possibly getting locked up tonight. My cell phone started ringing nonstop with my people telling me about the feds running up on everybody and raiding everybody’s crib and all that shit! So we gotta be in and out. I already called Jet Networks and chartered us a plane so that we could just get outta town and figure out what we gon’ do. You feel me?” Supreme asked.
“I feel you,” Haz answered.
“Okay, y’all help him get Horse outta the ambulance and bring him into the crib right there across the street,” Supreme ordered and then he quickly turned his attention to me.
Snatching open the passenger-side door of the ambulance, Supreme stood as stiff as a statue and peered at me.
“Jessica, I gotta give it up to yo ass. You had a nigga fooled,” Supreme said with a disgusted frown on his face. “You did E pills, you drank, you even fucked a nigga, and all this time you was a damn agent?”
I didn’t know how to respond so I kept my mouth shut and just shook my head no.
“Get out of the ambulance!” Supreme yelled as he dragged me out of the seat and threw me onto the floor.
“Who the hell is this?” Supreme asked, referring to Nicole as she also made her way out of the ambulance. Haz left Supreme’s underlings to attend to Horse and he ran over and quickly explained who Nicole was.
“A’ight! Yo, just get everybody in the crib. Bring Horse to the basement. I don’t even wanna see that nigga,” Supreme explained.
Everyone followed Supreme’s orders. We entered the tidy single-family home. It appeared to be lived in but no one seemed to be home at the time.
Haz had been instructed to take me and Nicole into two separate rooms and to handcuff us to the radiator in each respective room. And as we were being handcuffed I could hear Horse yelling from the basement, asking for Supreme to come downstairs. Horse was in tons of pain and considering that he didn’t have painkiller medication dripping into his veins like he had in his hospital room, he was probably feeling double the pain he had felt just hours ago.
You could even hear the sounds of pain in his voice as he helplessly yelled out for Supreme to come downstairs to his aid.
“Fuck that nigga!” Supreme stated as he yelled to the basement for the beefy bodyguard-looking guys to come back upstairs. When they arrived he instructed them to keep an eye on me and Nicole while he and Haz went to the adjacent room to talk.
Horse was still screaming out in pain. Through the thin walls, Haz could be heard talking extremely theatrically and loud. I could hear him describing to Supreme everything that had gone down in the hospital. But I guess it was all an attempt to make himself look good, because he did a horrible job of accurately describing what had gone down between Horse and myself at the hospital.
“’Preme, word is bond! Maybe dude thought I was some freelancing off-duty cop that you paid to serve as his bodyguard or something. I don’t know. But like I said, I go to the bathroom, I’m taking a shit, right, then I hear this chick in the room. So I crack the door open and I didn’t just walk out on them ’cause I didn’t know what was what but I knew she wasn’t no nurse or nothing like that. And then boom! The bitch pulls out a badge and the whole nine and starts saying that she’s a muthafucking federalee! And Horse got silent. And at that point I reached for my gat and was ready to just come out the bathroom blazing, right! Then I hear Horse bitchin’ up, talking about the witness protection program and all of that. And I couldn’t believe the shit! So I thought about the situation and I was like a’ight, cool. I’ll just play it like everything is everything. You kna’imean? But I knew that I had to just get everybody up outta that hospital and get things relayed to you,” Haz stated. Supreme listened as Haz went on to describe how and why he murdered Sherry.
After having heard enough, Supreme came into the room where I was and asked me point blank whether I was an agent or not.
My heart was in my shoes and I was feeling numb all over. When you think you’re about to get beat or killed there probably is no other way to feel. With my left wrist attached to the base of the radiator like I was some dog chained to a fence, I knew that I wasn’t in a position of power and if I wanted to stay alive I would have to do some serious fast talking. But for some reason the words just were not finding their way to my mouth.
“Answer me bitch!” Supreme yelled as he slapped the taste out of my mouth.
“Yes, Supreme but you don’t understand!” I replied through tears.
“I don’t understand what?” Supreme hollered as he pulled out his gun and cocked it back.
“You just don’t understand!” I replied again.
“I understand that you about to get your brains splattered all along that wall right there. That’s what I understand!” Supreme yelled.
Through my tears, I pleaded. “Supreme, yes I’m an agent, but I’m dirty! You think I love working for the fucking FBI? It’s just a job that pays the bills. But what went down with me and you, that’s real! That’s me! I crossed that line with you and I don’t have to go back to the FBI side. And I can prove it.”
“Bitch, yo ass is a fucking liar! You just saying that to save yo ass right now!” Supreme yelled as he appeared to be raising the gun toward my head.
“Supreme no
!” I pleaded. “Listen to me. I was at the hospital placing Horse under arrest. If I had wanted to we could have easily been taking you down. But I never pulled the plug on you.”
“Bitch, you lying to me!” Supreme yelled. He now had the gun at my forehead.
At that point I just knew that I was gonna die, and I was so scared that I almost pissed on myself right there on the floor.
“Supreme, please just listen to me. I came at Horse and told him to cooperate but that was just to bring down the Calvinos. That’s what I wanted him for. If it was to bring you down, that would be stupid. Supreme, I fucked you. I did drugs with you. There would be no case against you because all of the evidence would get thrown out and then my ass would have ended up in jail. All I wanted to do is show the FBI that I got something out of the investigation, which would have been the Calvinos, and they would have been happy about that. And I figured that if Horse ever turned around and talked bad about you and tried to bring you down that you and I could just bounce together, because like I said, with the shit that I did, I would get fired and locked underneath the jail for that,” I pleaded.
Supreme finally relaxed the gun.
Haz stepped in the room and totally threw a monkey wrench into the program.
“’Preme, kill that bitch! She’s lying! I was at the hospital and she was talking real slick and greasy about you. She ain’t never said shit to Horse about taking down the Calvinos!” Haz stated.
I knew that I had to take drastic action or I would be killed immediately. Just as I was about to jump right back in and verbally defend myself, Horse started with his pleas from the basement. But thank God that he did because it triggered my way out of my predicament.
“Supreme I’m not lying, and I’ll show you I’m not. I overheard what you said to Haz when we were in the ambulance, and if you loosen these handcuffs and bring me downstairs I swear to you that I’ll kill Horse myself!” I stated, shocking even myself.
Supreme looked at Haz.
