Intro
It was a bitterly cold day in December and there I was, Honey Robertson, sitting in on my first raid with my immediate supervisor, James Dougherty, a hard-drinking, tough-talking Irish-American. I’d been working as an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, better known as the ATF, for six short months. My health insurance had kicked in, my checks were being direct-deposited into my checking account, and I’d even signed up for their 401(k) plan, where I was investing heavily into different stocks and United States Treasury bonds. Not bad for a 23-year-old female from Harlem.
“How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait?”
“How the fuck should I know some stupid shit like that?” James quipped. “And why you asking anyways? You’re getting paid for each second you sit here doing nothing. Like, what the fuck are you doing right now that I gotta hear you complaining?”
Not many females would be able to take his direct talk, but I felt he was a breath of fresh air. Sure, he was abrasive, but I wasn’t a sensitive type of chick. In fact, if he was all polite talk and stuffy, it would have taken me longer to open up and trust him.
“I got a stiff black penis that needs the attention of my mouth tonight.”
James laughed. “And that takes precedence over possibly apprehending a terrorist? A small black penis?”
“Who said small, muthafucka?”
“Ain’t all black penises small?” James arched his eyebrow and smirked. He definitely found himself amusing.
I looked at his puffy face, a telltale sign of years of alcohol abuse. It was a look I knew too well. His skin, which should have been pale white, was tinged with a fuchsia pink. Though slightly overweight, he was a handsome man, but he always looked flustered and overworked, and had that “cop air” a seasoned criminal could spot a mile away.
I took another sip of my now warm coffee and thought about Dré, who I’d married two days after my eighteenth birthday and was still head over heels in love with. We’d grown up in the same building in Lexington housing projects in East Harlem, New York. He’d sold drugs hand-to-hand, but within a few years he began pushing weight and even had a few soldiers under his belt.
My brother Chief had fucked up Dré’s work, and Dré came around to collect. He’d shot up Chief in the hallway of our building, and Chief had crawled to our front door with Dré looming over him. Chief took two bullets, one in the abdomen, and one just grazed his temple. I’d heard the shots and came running out the front door and stood face-to-face with Dré holding a .357 to Chief’s head at point-blank range. I pleaded with him not to finish him off, and for some inexplicable reason, he lowered his pistol and slowly backpedaled, never taking his eyes off me.
Before that unfortunate incident, Dré, fourteen years my senior, didn’t look twice at me, who, at the time, was a 16-year-old school nerd, focused on getting out of the PJs.
“So much for counterintelligence,” James said haphazardly. “I think we’re in for a long night. This muthafucka might have us out here breaking day, which is good. I need the overtime.”
I exhaled. As much as I loved my job and was grateful that the Federal Bureau had hired me, I loved spending my nights with Dré. Sitting in an undercover car waiting only God knows how many hours on a possible terrorist wasn’t appealing.
I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Dré. “Hey, babe,” I said. “It looks like we’re gonna pull an overnighter.”
“What about dinner?” he asked.
“Umm, there’s some spaghetti in there from last night, and the salad.” I thought quickly.“Or you could make yourself a hamburger.”
“Yo, you gotta do something about this job of yours!”
“Do something?”
“You know what the fuck I mean. They can’t have you out at all types of night when you got a household to hold down.”
“It ain’t like this happens all—”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about all that you talkin’. You got me up in here cookin’ and cleanin’ up shit. What the fuck I need you for?”
“I’m not your maid, Dré.”
“You’re my wife!”
“Exactly!” I wanted to say more, but who wants to air their marital laundry out in front of their boss?
“A’ight, I don’t got time for this bickering shit. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I could sense he wanted to continue the argument but chose not to.
Dré had a warped vision of women and my duties as his wife. When I told him I was applying to be an ATF agent, he thought he’d hit the jackpot of wives. He thought that meant he’d have a get-out-of-jail-free card, which I later explained wasn’t the case. For some odd reason he felt that I would contact local and state police and also all federal agents and announce to them that my husband Dré Robertson could move as much drugs as he pleased and to not fuck with him, or else. Once I drilled into his head how asinine his rationale was, it was back to him thinking a woman’s place was in the bedroom and kitchen.
So, although I was a young wife, I handled mines. I kept a clean house, fucked Dré whenever he wanted to be fucked and, except on nights like these, kept his meals on the table.
“You don’t look too happy?”
“I’m good.”
“He hates your long hours?”
“Something like that.”
“Fuck ’im.”
“Is that your advice? ’Cuz if so, I’ll pass.” I rolled my eyes playfully. “Besides, you have three ex-wives. You’re hardly in the position to be dishing out advice, with your track record.”
“Two. I have two ex-wives,” Dougherty corrected.
“Whatever.”
I reclined my seat, slightly, and propped my feet up on the dashboard. I needed to think about my marriage and how Dré spoke to me. After tonight I intended on things changing. Dré was the only person who I allowed to fully rule over me, and I did it because I was his wife. He treated me like some side chick.
Dougherty tapped the side of my leg. “Move your feet.” He then reached into his glove compartment and pulled out a flask of whiskey. “Might as well lighten the mood.”
“We’re on the clock.”
“So?”
“So any minute we’re about to do a full-on raid on an armed, dangerous fugitive for selling weapons—AK-47s, Uzis, Glocks, the whole gamut. We can’t be fucked up.”
“Honey, I’m Irish. A pint of whiskey can’t get my four-year-old daughter fucked up.”
“But what about backup, car 44-10? What if they smell it on us?”
“Jesus, Honey! I’m not even drunk and you’re blowing my high. I’m your supervisor, and you’re my subordinate. Let me worry about the other car. If one of them even opened up their mouths to say something foul, I’ll fucking punch their teeth down their throats! All the shit I’ve seen go down out here while we’re on a stakeout is shit you’d have to see to believe. One thing you gotta learn is that we have a brotherhood. Whatever is done out in the field stays there. You got me?”
I shook my head. “Well, you know I’m down for whatever.”
“Then shut the fuck up”—James flashed a broad smile—“and drink.”
An hour into our hardcore drinking, I was giggling and cracking jokes, yet neither one of us was drunk, despite the fact that we’d down the whiskey and had now mixed it with a liter of Scotch Dougherty found in his back seat. Honestly, I wasn’t a whiskey or Scotch type of girl. I was more Moët or margaritas, but the randomness of the night made it fun.
“So how much does a pair of fancy sneakers like you got on cost ya?”
“These?” I replied, looking down at my Prada kicks. “Close to four hundred.”
“Four hundred dollars? On footwear?”
“Just about.”
“You people sure keep the white man rich then complain about being oppressed.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know how many young punks I’ve arrested throughout the years for moving arms, and when we kick open the door to their dilapidated apartments, these kids have thirty-thousand-dollar Rolex watches, and dozens of sneakers piled up against their bedroom walls—enough sneakers to supply a whole African village—yet can’t pay for a proper attorney?”
“So?”
“So?”
“Yeah, what right do you have to judge them? Or me for that matter?”
“Calm the fuck down and take that bass outta your voice. I’m just wondering, that’s all.”
“They buy what makes them feel better about themselves.”
“Really? So those Prada sneakers are about self-esteem?”
“I buy Prada because I can. My self-esteem is already intact.”
“You can afford four-hundred-dollar sneakers on your pay? Your pay grade is GS-level 4, Robertson. Who you foolin’?”
“I guess, not you.”I cut my eyes toward James. I really wasn’t sure where he was coming from. Perhaps the liquor was talking for him.
“Who the fuck cares about fashion? Huh? Not me.” James gave me a playful punch on my shoulder with his massive fist. “However you get yours is your business. Fuck ’em! Fuck the government! Fuck the IRS! Fuck ’em all! Do you think I report all my earnings, my little side jobs, to Uncle Sam? Hell, fucking no!”
“I hear that,” I replied, as the liquor finally began going to my head. “As you said, my pay grade don’t stretch that far, so Uncle Sam don’t know about half the shit I buy nor how I can afford it.” I felt tipsy, but I wasn’t drunk. I knew better than to open up to him about Dré and all the cocaine he was moving through Harlem.
“So what made you join the force?”
“Honestly, I needed a come-up. Something progressive that held respect.”
“Respect?”
I shook my head and took another sip of Scotch, which burned going down.“Yeah, that was important.”
“Do you mind telling me why?”
I hesitated briefly. “I dunno. I guess having a father in and out of ‘club fed’ all my life, a brother who’s the dumbest criminal on earth, and a mother who has struggled with mental illness since I was born. I was always the butt of jokes where I grew up. But my environment and struggles actually helped propel me. It kept me ambitious and toughened me up. When I was twelve years old, I was fighting women twenty and up, all for respect.”
“Didn’t you grow up in Suffolk County?”
“Not at all. I grew up in East Harlem amongst prostitutes, pimps, and drug hustlers.”
“Harlem?”
“Yeah, Harlem. And not the Harlem with the huge beautiful brownstones like the Huxtables lived in on The Cosby Show. I grew up in the gutter and had to claw my way out.”
“Yeah, I had a hard life too. My old man used to beat the shit out of me on a regular basis, and my mother just sat there and let it happen.” James had a faraway look in his eyes. “But the past is the past, right?”
“I hope so. I try not to let that shit get to me. It’s all in how you cope with things. They can either break you or make you.”
James held up the liter of Scotch. “This is how I cope with things.”
“I think we should take it a little easy on that bottle, James.”
James let out a hearty laugh, his deep blue eyes staring intently into mine. “You know, Honey, you really are beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I said and ran my hands through my short haircut.
“Do other black women think you’re beautiful?”
“What type of question is that?”
“Do other people see what I see? Are your features considered beautiful to the blacks?”
I cocked my head to the side. Did I hear him correctly? “The blacks?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, no, the fuck I don’t. You said it, not me.”
“Calm down,” James said assertively, almost bordering on a command.
“Ain’t nobody hyped,” I said, getting hyped.
James chuckled. “This ghetto hoochie-momma thing you got going is turning me the fuck on.”
Taken aback by James’ last comment, I instinctively looked down and noticed that he had unzipped his fly and was massaging his pink-colored penis.
“Come on and suck it,” he said. “Give me what you give your husband.”
Before I could react, James had his hand on the back of my neck, trying to lower my head.
“Get the fuck off me!” I knocked his hand away.
“Come on, just do it. Ain’t nobody watchin’.” James quickly peered over his shoulders. “Just suck me off, and I’ll eat your pussy next. I promise.”
Shell-shocked, all I could say was “Huh?”
Before I could think, I felt his strong hands groping and pulling at my clothes. His hands were fast and experienced, like he’d done this before. He leaned over and forced my seat back and already had half his body weight on top of me while his finger was close to being inserted into my pussy.
“Are you retarded?” I screamed. “Fuckin’ psycho!”
James suddenly eased up, his blue eyes becoming small and menacing.“What did you call me, bitch?”
I stared at my supervisor and knew I had two choices. I didn’t like either one, but I went with my gut. “I said, ‘Get the fuck off me, psycho!’” and put my Glock 9 in his face. My clenched jaw felt like it would lock up. “Don’t you ever put your filthy hands on me again!”
There was a stare down.
“You’re fuckin’ dead, you hear me? Dead!”
I managed to briefly see a little humor despite the tension. My supervisor was literally sitting with his dick in his hand and a gun in his face.
I backed out of the vehicle with my Glock steadied at his head. When I was clear, I hauled ass out of there and made my way home. I was too amped to be scared, yet I knew that things had boiled over. In a nanosecond things had changed. I went from being on a stakeout to catch a suspect moving weapons to almost getting raped by my supervisor.
I ran into my house like a tornado, only to be met by the sight of my husband, head first into some bitch’s pussy. All I saw was dyed-red pussy hair and caramel-colored legs spread-eagled across my sofa. My heart sunk into my stomach. I knew at that moment what a broken heart felt like.
“What the fuck! Oh, hell no!” I could feel my body tense up, and I was rapidly losing control. The one person I trusted had betrayed me. “On our muthafuckin’ couch, Dré? Seriously?!”
The red-haired-pussy bitch jumped up and quickly started scrambling and looking for her clothes.
“Baby, this ain’t what you think,” Dré said to me, standing to his feet. His dick was standing at attention and pointed right at me as he started to approach me with his hands in the air, showing surrender.
I pulled out my Glock and I aimed it right at his forehead.“Take one more step, and I’ll blow your brains out!” My eyes cut to his mistress. “And tell that bitch to sit the fuck down right now!”
“Honey, why you—”
BLAOW!
I fired off one warning shot that whizzed right past Dré’s head and lodged into the newly painted sheetrock wall in our living room. The shot had definitely caught everybody’s attention.
“A’ight, baby, you win. I lose. I’m wrong, dead wrong,” he said to me, his dick suddenly limp.
“So this is what you like?” I asked, my voice accusatory and laced with malice. My eyes scanned his chick from head to toe. I knew Dré was a street dude with a wandering eye when I married him, but you always think that your man wouldn’t go there. It’s always some other chick’s man that’s the tramp.
“Hell no, baby. I was just fuckin’ her, that’s all. It don’t mean nothing.”
“Dré, I know you’re not going to stand there and tell her that I don’t mean nothing to you,” the chick said, rolling her eyes and looking at Dré.
Dré bent down and reached for his jeans.
“Did I tell you to get dressed?” I barked.
Dré looked at me like I was crazy and immediately dropped his jeans and let them hit the living room floor.
“Stand up,” I said to the girl.
She sucked her teeth and stood up.
I saw the name Olivia tattooed on her left thigh. “You and your stripper bitch Olivia, march your asses downstairs right now.”
“Stripper? Please.” Olivia sucked her teeth again.
“You think I’m fuckin’ playing games, bitch?” I was one second from whipping her ass. “Keep talking slick if you want to. Dré, you better school this ho if you want her to make it out of here alive.”
Dré was heated on so many levels. No man wants to get caught fucking his side chick. Dré was busted and now to have me busting shots with my legal firearm was just too intense for him. He liked being in control, and standing butt-ass naked with nothing to defend himself with had aged him ten years. I could see the stress and worry written all over his face.
“Olivia, stop disrespecting my wife. Damn! How the fuck you think she feel right now?”
Olivia obliviously wasn’t the silent type. Nor the sharpest knife in the drawer. Despite having used my pistol only moments earlier and still having it pointed at her head, she just couldn’t police her mouth.
“Your wife? Nigga, you disrespect her each time we fuck! Each time you eat my pussy then kiss her lips you disrespect her!” Her voice elevated to a high pitch. “You never respected her, which allowed me to disrespect—”
Dré charged Olivia like a pro quarterback filled with rage and hostility and commenced to whipping her ass. His punches, heavy and overflowing with guilt and malice, landed on every exposed part of her body—head, stomach, back, thighs. Nothing was spared from his wrath. It all happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to process what was happening. Yet, I didn’t intervene. She needed her ass whipped for fucking another woman’s husband in the apartment he shared with his wife. As a woman, she should have known better. Take that shit to a hotel; Dré could obviously afford a room.
I listened to Olivia scream for mercy until finally I got bored. No way was I going to allow Dré to erase his guilt by beating up his mistress in front of me.
“Knock it off, Dré!” I waited a few seconds and he didn’t let up. The room was now warm from all the commotion and filled with unsavory body odors. Her exposed pussy coupled with being worked over had begun giving off a pungent odor that I didn’t want any parts of. “I said knock it the fuck off!”
This time Dré fell back, breathing heavily and looking at Olivia in disgust, as if she was the culprit. “Don’t cry now,” he mocked. “Silly-ass bitch!”
“You two can take this lovers’ quarrel elsewhere,” I stated. “As I said, go the fuck downstairs. Now! Move your asses! And, if I have to say it again, I’ma start putting bulletholes in ankles, and you’ll have to crawl the fuck downstairs!”
Dré shook his head and wanted to say something, but the glare in my eyes silenced his rebuttal. He grabbed the now battered and ego-bruised Olivia by the hand and almost dragged her out of our living room and down the one flight of stairs in our newly renovated brownstone apartment in Sugar Hill.
As I followed right behind them with my gun pointed at them, I peeped yet a second tattoo on Olivia. She had two cherries on her lower back. A tramp stamp is what I call tattoos placed in that spot.
“You on some bullshit, Dré!” Olivia said.
She definitely is defiant, I thought. I was two seconds from whacking that bitch upside her head with my gun.
When we made it to the bottom floor, I could tell that Dré was confused as to what was next.
“Now I want y’all both to get the fuck out,” I said, raising my Glock and pointing it right at Olivia and Dré.
“Get the fuck out?” Dré asked.
“Open up that muthafuckin’ door and get the fuck out, you and your little stripper freak.”
“Honey, it’s like zero below out this muthafucka!”
I cocked my gun to show Dré that I wasn’t playing games. “I’m not negotiating shit. You was in my house disrespecting me with this whore, tramp bitch! So now we play by my rules. Open up that fuckin’ door and walk the fuck out.”
“I ain’t got no fuckin’ clothes on, Honey!”
“Do you seriously think I care about you? Either one of you? I have no sympathy for husbands who fuck on their wives!”
Dré wasn’t moving, and neither was Olivia, so without hesitation I let off three consecutive shots right at them. Both of them began hopping up and down like something was hot under their feet. I was always on the gun range, so my aim was precise. I knew I wasn’t going to hit them. I just wanted to get their respect. In the process, I was fucking up my crib, but with the way Olivia and Dré started scurrying and scrambling, it was worth it.
“Open that door and take your ass to Olivia’s house and don’t come the fuck back! Test me if you want to.”
Olivia finally understood the seriousness of the situation. “Honey, honestly I—”
I screamed, “Bitch, why are you talking to me? Walk the fuck out that front door before I pop your ass! Are you stupid or what?”
She twisted her lips and walked over to the front door and opened it. Immediately a gust of frigid air burst through with a howling wind that could freeze your bones. Instantly Olivia and Dré wrapped their hands around their private parts and inched out the front door. Just as Dré got to the first exit step, I lifted my foot and, with all my strength, kicked him square in his ass. His body went face-first down a flight of steps and landed on the cold, hard concrete below.
Olivia, fearing the same fate, bolted down the steps on her own and ran full speed down the residential block, screaming at the top of her lungs, “She’s crazy! She’s crazy! She tried to kill us!”
I locked up the house and drove to my mother’s. I needed time to think things through.
***
“You’re being suspended without pay until further notice. Please relinquish your gun and badge,” our commanding chief, Inspector Balthazar Snashall stated. “Now.”
“Why am I being punished?”
“You walked off the job during a stakeout, Robertson. Why do you think?”
I wanted so badly to tell what really happened, but I knew I wouldn’t be believed. Not with five white smug faces sitting around the conference room. I looked at Dougherty and wondered what happened to him preaching about what occurred in the field staying in the field.
“But I didn’t just walk off. Right, Dougherty?” My eyes cut to my left where his fat ass was propped up in an oversized leather chair. “I mean, I did give you notice. There was a great reason, right?”
“Fuck you,” he said, words dragged out.
“That’s exactly what you tried to do—Fuck me! You tried to rape me the other night, and that’s why I left!”
The moment the words fell out my mouth, I knew I had fucked up. When the white faces got whiter, I knew there wasn’t any way I could take them back.
“Gentlemen, will everyone excuse us,” Inspector Balthazar said.
Everyone left the room glaring at me as I sat, hands trembling. I had so much at stake.
“Is that true? The rape allegation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you go to the hospital and get a rape kit done?”
“Well, no.”
“Why not? You’re a skilled agent.”
“Well, it didn’t get that far.”
“You said rape. Isn’t that far enough?”
“I said he tried to rape me. He obviously didn’t succeed because, if he did, he wouldn’t be breathing.”
“Did you go to the local police and make out a report?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because—”
“These are serious accusations, Robertson.”
“With all due respect, sir, if you allow me to finish a sentence, I could tell you what happened.”
“Honey, is Luther Brown your father?”
“Excuse me?”
“Luther Brown, he is your father, correct?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“What about Corey Atkinson, AKA Chief? Is he your half-brother? You two share the same mother?”
I began to experience a series of emotions that I couldn’t control. I wrung my hands together, and they were damp.
“Look, sir, James Dougherty tried to rape me, and I think that I should be debriefed. All these other questions are secondary. My statement should be first.”
“Are you telling me how to do my job?”
“I’m asking that you stay focused.”
“I am focused. On your application . . . you do know lying on these applications is a federal offense punishable by law.”
Now my heart was palpitating. How did I get here?“Yes, but—”
“Look, my time is valuable, and I’m not going to dick you around. Either resign today with two weeks’ pay or face criminal sanctions.”
“But I didn’t do anything! What about Dougherty?” My plea almost sounded juvenile.
“How hypocritical are you? You lied on a federal application. Our agents put their lives in your hands when they go out on these raids, and the very people you’re supposed to lock up are the very people you lied about having contact with. Your father is one of the most notorious illegal arms traffickers in the North, and your brother is a known drug-dealing pimp. You could have compromised several of our operations.”
“I would never do that. I’m a good agent.”
“You’re just a baby. Hardly wet behind the ears. You don’t know what it takes to be a good agent. It’s all about the brotherhood and what you did, leaving your superior alone out in the field was incomprehensible.”
“But—”
“There is no but! You need to grow up! In life we hardly get a do-over. You had your shot, and you blew it. You can’t make a three-point shot from under the net, Honey. I’ve been doing this for years, so I think you should take my advice. Either resign and not have any blemishes on your record, or hold out for an investigation, and I promise what we’ll dig up will prevent you from working an honest day’s work in the government for the rest of your life.”
The angst and anguish I felt began to boil over. A steady stream of tears began to flow freely. “But what about my mother? You know she needs my medical insurance. She’s just started seeing a great psychiatrist. If I resign, I’ll lose my health benefits.”
Balthazar looked unaffected. “I’m going to step out of the room and give you time to think about your options.”
I walked out of Pearl Street in lower Manhattan, the unknown address of the ATF, and barely got to my car. My world was crumbling under my feet. Just then two men in worn, inexpensive suits approached me.
Immediately I felt danger. Could this be a hit?
“Honey Robertson?”
“Yes?”
“Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”
“What? Why?”
“You’re under arrest for the attempted murder of André Robertson. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you . . .”