Dirty Work, Part 2

by Erica Hilton

  A few hours later, she was finally granted her phone call. Her arresting officer, Spielberg, called her name and Jessica hurried to leave the large jail cell to make her phone call. It had taken damn near all day, and she wanted to spit in the man’s face. It was six in the evening. She had been awake for over twenty-four hours.

  She picked up the receiver and her first call, of course, was to Maserati Meek. He was the only one that mattered. His phone rang and rang, but his voicemail picked up. She wanted to leave him a message, but what could she say with a cop in her face?

  That asshole cop, Spielberg.

  She hung up and she tried to redial his number. But Officer Spielberg suddenly stopped her, exclaiming, “You only get one phone call in here.”

  “But no one answered.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  Jessica wanted to scratch his eyes out. She swallowed her smart remark, and with sad eyes and a change of attitude, replied, “I don’t know how things work here. Please, can I try another phone call?” That bitch she was earlier had faded away. Now she was much more desperate.

  Spielberg exhaled, and said, “Just one more.” Maybe he wasn’t a dick.

  Jessica managed to smile. Now she debated on whether to call Maserati Meek again or her family. She figured it was best to call her family since Meek wasn’t answering his damn phone, probably because she was calling from an unknown number. It also wasn’t smart to be calling him from a police precinct after a bombing.

  She dialed home, the phone rang several times, and she prayed that someone answered. Finally, her cousin Jalissa picked up, and Jessica was thankful. To throw the cop off guard, she started speaking in Spanish, saying to her cousin that she was in jail.

  “La cárcel, lo que pasó?”

  “I don’t have long to talk,” she continued in Spanish. “But I need you to call this number for me. It’s my boyfriend’s number.”

  Her cousin was listening. Jessica was speaking with a sense of urgency. She gave Jalissa Maserati Meek’s number and added, “Call now; don’t wait!” Then she said, “Tell him this: ‘Everyone in red left early.’”

  It was a cryptic message, but Jessica felt a sense of relief once she hung up. She could trust her cousin. Jalissa had always been responsible and on point.

  Jalissa had no idea what Jessica was talking about. She had every intention of making the call immediately, but she got distracted by some infuriating texts from her ex.

  Right after Jessica’s phone call, it was business as usual. Back to her nasty attitude, Jessica began cursing Spielberg out once again for arresting her. He just smirked. She was escorted back into the bullpen. Now her only option was to wait. Hopefully the judge would release her on her own recognizance or set a low bail.

  ***

  Unbeknownst to Jessica, Officer Spielberg was fluent in Spanish. Though he appeared Caucasian, his mother was Puerto Rican and his father was Jewish. He understood everything that was said on the phone. Her saying that everyone in red left early bewildered him. What did it mean? He knew it had to mean something dealing with the explosion. The girl who’d come looking for Jessica earlier, a Stephanie Brown, had on red. Second, why was Jessica running like a track star at the police checkpoint not long after the bombing? When she was arrested, it wasn’t a run that said “I need to get home,” but “I’m guilty.” Something had happened. She was involved in something—if not the bombing, then something criminal.

  Spielberg remembered the phone number she gave over the phone and he jotted it down into his notepad. His gut instinct told him to look into it. There was something there. It was too early to put his finger on it, but it was a major case, and he wanted a piece of it.

  He found a computer and started his investigation. Quickly, he ran the ladies’ names, Stephanie and Jessica. Within minutes, he realized that he couldn’t find anything on Stephanie Brown’s information. Jessica had a previous arrest record with a Harlem precinct. Officer Spielberg knew that these two ladies were linked to the bombing somehow—if not directly, then indirectly.

  With his newfound information, he went to speak to his sergeant with his gut suspicion. It was eating at him. He was definitely on to something.

  However, Sergeant Harrison let Spielberg know that the cryptic line a young woman gave over the phone about people in red hardly made them terrorists, or linked to terrorists. He was dismissive of Spielberg because it had been a long night, and a longer day. Calls were coming in from everywhere, people were edgy, and the commissioner and the mayor were up everyone’s asses to solve the confirmed terrorist attack on New York City soil. The death toll so far was 189 dead, with 75 still missing. It was a huge and popular club.

  But why a nightclub? The attack had many high-end officials baffled.

  Spielberg didn’t want to give up. He knew he was on top of something big. Before he departed the sergeant’s sight, he requested one last thing.

  “Could we get Jessica’s dress and have forensics swab her hands for any residue?”

  The sergeant sighed, but he relented.

  ***

  Exhaustion finally caught up to Jessica, and before she knew it, she was fast asleep on the hard bench in the bullpen. The officers knocking their batons against the iron bars suddenly woke her up from the bench, and the annoying and cruel sound echoed, waking other sleeping inmates.

  “Ladies, let’s get up and go!” a cop shouted.

  It was time to move. It was time for her to be transferred to Central Booking—then it was to The Tombs, as some called the place if they were unlucky in front of the judge. The Tombs was a colloquial name for the Manhattan Detention Complex—a municipal jail in lower Manhattan at 125 White Street.

  Legally, Jessica had to be processed within a certain amount of time. But before she went anywhere, two female officers approached her and asked her to follow them. Jessica was taken aback. Why was she the only one singled out of the group? What was going on? In a small room, she was asked to remove her dress.

  “Fuck no!” Jessica cursed at them. She wasn’t about to remove anything.

  The officers anticipated this. They wore latex gloves and carried batons. The order had come in from high above and as a precaution, the sergeant had to alert federal authorities. Jessica was under suspicion, and the feds wanted to follow every lead, no matter how small or ridiculous it seemed.

  “Y’all stupid bitches touch me, homes, and it’s on!” Jessica threatened them. “Fuck y’all!”

  The officers, both black and both from troubled neighborhoods, were no strangers to friction. Jessica continued to curse at them and scowled and scrunched her hands into fists. They stepped closer to her and Jessica swung at them. She went pound-for-pound with one cop, before the second officer intervened and attacked Jessica from the back with her baton. The blow to her lower back made her stagger.

  “Ouch!” she screamed.

  “Get down, bitch! Get the fuck down!” one of the officers barked at her.

  Jessica relented. She had bitten off more than she could chew. She fell to her knees as the two cops wrestled with her and beat the shit out of her. Someone grabbed her long hair tightly and slammed her head against the floor. It was a hard and dizzying blow, and blood gushed from her forehead. Everything the lady cops had done was against protocol, but they wanted to hurt that disrespectful little bitch.

  Jessica was forced to undress. The dress was taken from her, and she was given scrubs. Looking terrible and humiliated, Jessica threatened a lawsuit against the NYPD and the two female cops. She screamed out, “Police brutality!”

  The captain and sergeant wanted Jessica out of their precinct now. They shipped her to Central Booking in her scrubs and sent both female officers home on a paid suspension. It was an unfortunate incident, but with a bombing on their hands, the last thing they needed was a police brutality lawsuit, even though the prisoner ha
d provoked the fight.

  9

  Police lights still lit up downtown Manhattan, as the FBI searched through tons of rubble from the explosion, removed dozens of bodies, and asked many, many questions. Surveillance footage from dozens of cameras in the area had been confiscated, and the feds were meticulously analyzing every second of it, trying to pinpoint any suspicious behavior before the bombing. They questioned everyone, from young to old. Time wasn’t on their side, and they were springing into action, already flagging passports at airports, train stations, and bus depots.

  It was a balmy night with a bright, full moon above. Papa John walked out of the hotel lobby alone with a cigarette in his hand, a lighter in the other. He needed some fresh air, and he needed to think. Papa John lit his smoke and took a few needed pulls, then exhaled. Weed would have been better—preferably some Purple Kush. Unfortunately, he had to settle for the Newport to calm his nerves.

  He missed his kids. He thought about his son, John Jr., who’d recently been diagnosed with autism. John Jr. was still staying with one of Papa John’s other baby mothers, Tina. His son was in good hands with Tina. Papa John was getting his son the best treatment possible.

  His thoughts involuntarily drifted back to the club incident. Every time he thought about it, it made him edgy. If they had stayed any longer at Sane nightclub, then they would have been crushed underneath all that rubble.

  Papa John took another drag and a sweeping view of the Hudson Lake. The waters were dark, but calm, and on the other side was a place where he didn’t want to be at the moment. There was too much going on in Manhattan, and although Jersey City wasn’t exactly a haven, it was safe enough until they figured out what to do next. And that “what next” was dealing with Jessica.

  The edginess refused to subside, so Papa John went for a walk. He traveled closer to the long pier that protruded out over the Hudson. With it being such a lovely night, there were scatterings of people seated on the benches and others leaning against the iron railing, looking out at the sea. Otherwise, activity was sparse since it was creeping toward midnight.

  Papa John flicked his dwindling cigarette into the waters and released the last of the nicotine smoke from his jaws. His .9mm pistol was fully loaded and tucked snugly in his waistband, concealed by a long T-shirt and green jacket. He gripped the railing and looked at nothing in particular.

  His autistic son and the club bombing weren’t the only two things occupying his mind. He also thought about her—Dina, his father’s fiancée. It had been weeks since they had last seen each other, but he wanted to see her again. He liked her. Though it was wrong, Papa John had a strong appetite for the forbidden that he couldn’t shake off. Everything about Dina was almost perfect. She was smart and cool. She was sexy and well put together from head to toe. She was also a freak, and thinking about that pussy was creating an arousal in his pants at a not so appropriate place.

  Papa John needed an escape from being locked away at a Jersey hotel, bored and paranoid. He wanted to see her, no matter the risk. They had started something that day in his father’s home that the two couldn’t deny. Though she was still engaged to his father, she had her fun with Papa John by sneaking around. It was a blissful fun that felt like it could continue forever.

  Papa John removed his cell phone. He wanted to call her, but thought otherwise—most likely a text message would be safer.

  You good, beautiful? I wanna see u, he texted.

  Papa John started to walk away from the pier when he received a text back from her.

  When, tonight? she texted him back.

  Yes, tonight. Where my pops?

  At work. The bombing in the city is keeping him busy, she replied.

  If only she knew that the bombing was meant to kill him. Everyone thought the suicide bombing was a political statement against the city and the country. Little did they know, it was simply over some street shit.

  I’m comin over, he texted.

  What time?

  Papa John thought how long it would take him to travel to Whitestone from New Jersey and replied, About an hour.

  She sent him a smiley face.

  It was the ultimate offense, having an affair with his father’s fiancée. But Papa John couldn’t help himself. Dina was different, and his father was lucky to have her—and so was he. Her skin, her smile, the way she wrapped her legs around him when they fucked, and the way she made her pussy contract, it made him come like a geyser. Papa John had to see her tonight.

  He went back to the hotel. While he was on his way up, he was met with Devon at the elevators on his way down. Devon looked mentally insane with a cigarette behind his ear, his eyes bloodshot red and cloudy, his lips black, and hair nappy. He looked at Papa John and asked, “Where you been?”

  “Outside takin’ a smoke. What’s up?”

  “Kid wants us to make our move tomorrow,” Devon said.

  “On who?”

  “Jessica.”

  “She’s locked down.”

  “I know, but we need to be there just in case she don’t remain locked down, which is possible. That bitch need to get got.”

  They had said too much in a public area, and Papa John needed to be somewhere. Devon had that look in his eyes—that satanic gape itching for payback and yearning for violence. Though they were both killers, Devon always looked like he ate, shit, and breathed for murder, while Papa John needed some time off from it and needed to indulge himself with the ladies, his kids, and a normal life. Kip’s death was a wakeup call that tomorrow wasn’t promised to anyone, and last night’s chaos might have been an epiphany to him that this game wasn’t for him anymore. He was in too deep to dig himself out right now, and he needed to finish what he started before he could begin whatever transition he was thinking about.

  “Yo, tell Kid I’ll be back,” Papa John said.

  “Back?” Devon replied with a frown and puzzled face, “where you off to, nigga?”

  “I got someplace to be.”

  “At a time like this?”

  “Nigga, I’ll be back before morning.”

  “That ain’t the point. We at war and you chasin’ some pussy.”

  “My business is my business, nigga . . . you know that.”

  “Your business should be being on point, not goin’ to see some bitch.”

  Papa John didn’t like how Devon was coming at him. He stepped closer to his friend with something to say. “What, I’m supposed to hide out here all night with my tail between my legs? Nah, I’m still gonna do me. I still got my kids and my priorities out there. This ain’t gonna shake me up.”

  “We need to stick together.”

  “And we are stickin’ together. But right now, I need to stick to something else.” No matter what was happening, there was still a slice of humor inside of him.

  He had nothing else to say. Papa John didn’t want to be controlled or told what to do. His life was his life. He wasn’t about to live it being scared—though he did feel edgy. He turned and left.

  Devon frowned. He lit his cigarette in the hotel lobby where there was no smoking allowed. If Kip were still alive, Papa John wouldn’t be pulling this shit. But things done changed.

  ***

  Papa John parked the truck around the corner from his father’s place and killed the engine. Whitestone was a tranquil and serene place, especially at night. It looked like a ghost town in the suburbs. Everything in the surrounding area shut down, unlike Harlem, where it was busy twenty-four/seven. This was the way Papa John liked it. He didn’t want to be seen while he crept into his father’s house. He picked up his cell phone and dialed Dina this time.

  “Hello.”

  “I’m here, baby.”

  “Okay, I’ll open the back door for you.”

  He hung up. With his gun still concealed in his waistband, he climbed out of the vehicle and cooll
y walked toward the house. He entered the yard, slid down the driveway, and proceeded toward the backyard under the cover of night. He didn’t see his father’s Benz in sight. It was a good thing. Dina was waiting for him in the doorway. Dressed in a sexy silk and lace robe with a matching thong, she smiled at him. He smiled back. He was excited. She was too.

  “Hey you,” she greeted sweetly.

  “Hey,” he said, entering the house and wrapping his arms around her petite figure. They kissed passionately and welcomed each other’s embrace.

  He pulled away from her. “You sure he’s gone for the night?”

  She nodded. “Yes. That city bombing has every cop on duty.”

  It was all he needed to hear. He lifted Dina up into his arms, her legs straddling him, and carried her upstairs to the master bedroom. He wanted the fun to begin. But first things first, she had what he needed—what he’d been craving—a dime bag of Kush and two cigars.

  “Damn, you my favorite girl. I think I’m falling in love wit’ you,” he teased.

  She giggled. “Which dessert you want first?”

  They smoked one of the blunts and got down to business. Now this was where Papa John wanted to be, deep inside of her as she rode him in the cowgirl position. She knelt astride him as she leaned forward on her arms with Papa John laid back—her dripping pussy swallowing his hard erection. She had much more control over him in this position—depth and angle of penetration. He caressed her hips and her tits. He lifted his torso on his elbows to suck her nipples. They both moaned, drowning in gratification. Her back and forth movement started to speed up. Her moaning grew louder as he thrust up into her, while she licked and sucked his nipples and kissed his neck.