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They all stared so intensely at Charlie, she felt like she was being put on the auction block. There were sergeants, lieutenants, and even a captain in her presence. Some of NYPD’s finest weren’t looking so fine right now. It was corruption. Only the most trusted criminals were recruited to the inner sanctum, and once drafted, you were guaranteed a “get out of jail free” card. The cops had an elite list of hustlers on their payroll that moved their seized drugs, but there was so much to move that they needed more quality recruits.
The seized drugs were supposed to be destroyed after samples were taken for trial. However, certain members of law enforcement who were assigned to carry out the destruction of the narcotics decided otherwise. Seeing all that val
uable product destroyed when it could have been making them rich made them all go against the badge. They had been making a killing for over six years and showed no signs of slowing down. The seized drugs were a cash cow and covert retirement plan.
Mona’s cohorts had heard stories about Charlie. She was grimy, and that was just the kind of recruit they were looking for.
“What we do here, Charlie, is get money . . . lots of it,” Mona said.
Judging from those kilos on the table, she saw it. Charlie had her reservations about dealing with more cops, but this was an opportunity to make more money than she could ever dream of staring right at her. There was no way she was going to turn it down. She wanted to get paid too.
“What y’all need me to do?” she asked.
“The arrangement is, you work for us. You move drugs for us, nothing else and nothing extra, and we’ll give you points on the package. If you abide by our rules and do what we say, you will become a very rich woman,” Captain Curtis Halstead, a twenty-year vet with the NYPD, said to her.
She was listening.
Lieutenant Patrick Davis, who had over a decade on the force, handed her a burner phone. “Only we will contact you through that phone, no one else. And it’s not to be used for anything but to converse with the faces you see in this room today. It’s clean.”
Charlie nodded.
“If you happen to get arrested, you should know the drill—keep your mouth shut and one of us will get in contact with you . . . to help you out,” Sergeant Whyte promised. “We have lawyers on standby, so don’t panic. We’ve been doing this for a long time. You look like a smart woman who knows what to do in a crisis.”
“I can hold my own,” Charlie replied.
They all looked at her with intensity. The decorated NYPD uniforms, the badges, the holstered weapons—it all felt surreal to Charlie. Cops were telling her how to be a criminal. How ironic.
“And where would I be moving the drugs to?” she asked.
“We’ll call you with locations and times,” said Lieutenant Graham, who had been a cop for fifteen years.
They were meticulous with the details and instructions. The officers knew the tricks and trades of the streets, the law, and their fellow officers. They had access to information that no one else had, from pending indictments and prosecutions to forthcoming raids on organizations and dealers. They felt that they would always have the upper hand against prosecution because they had plants in every department and they were extremely wary about who they brought into their corrupt organization.
Charlie agreed to take them up on their offer. With God and Fingers dead, she needed a new hustle. She couldn’t plan and execute licks alone, but selling cocaine was just really about transportation, she believed. Who couldn’t do that? The deal was that Charlie would get ten percent of the profit.
She didn’t like those fractions, but she agreed to it.
“You’ll be fine, Charlie. Just move carefully and always do what we say,” Mona advised her.
Charlie nodded, and the deal was sealed.
What Mona and the other officers didn’t tell Charlie was that her name had come up in the investigation of the murder of Godfrey Williams. Kymberly Stephens had parents in high places, and they had hired a topnotch criminal defense attorney for their daughter. They also hired an outside DNA specialist to test everything inside the apartment to prove their daughter’s innocence. There were key pieces that they wanted tested, but the corrupt cops were already trying to find someone dirty in a New Jersey precinct and lab to swap out the evidence. If they couldn’t find an ally and Charlie’s DNA was present, their plan B was simple—murder Charlie before she was arrested. They couldn’t allow her to turn state’s evidence against them.
Chapter Nineteen
Chanel looked lost in thought when the cabbie said to her, “Ma’am, we’re here. That will be twenty-five dollars,” snapping her out of her backseat daydream.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Chanel said, reaching into her purse to pay him.
“It’s okay.”
Taking a cab to the rehab center was easier for her than driving her Range Rover. Parking was a headache in the city, and it was expensive.
Chanel was outside the rehab facility, about to go inside to see Mateo. It was an uncertain feeling, when it shouldn’t have been. In the past, she was always excited to go visit her man, ready to nurse him back to health and comfort him. Considering the traumatic incident he endured, he was doing better than expected. However, his rehabilitation was taking a long time, and it was taking a toll on her. She yearned for him to get back to normal, so they could be together like a couple should be. She wanted to marry him and move on with their lives.
But lately, she had been feeling torn about love and matters of the heart. In her spare time she would watch chick flicks or romantic comedies, and then she would find herself crying her eyes out. She was lonely.
Chanel stood at the threshold of the hospital room gazing at a sleeping Mateo. He looked so peaceful. She sighed heavily and stepped farther into the room. A slight smile crept across her face. She took a seat next to him and took his hand into hers. Her touch was what woke him. Seeing Chanel by his side, Mateo smiled.
