Trap House (15 page)

“Hey! There go my girls,” Mike announced cheerfully when they came into view. He lifted
Wanda up and planted a kiss on her lips.

“Mmm. Hey, yourself,” Wanda purred, giddy from the affection.

“Hey, Mike,” Tiffany gushed girlishly.

Mike had a sisterly hug for her as well once he sat Wanda down. He put one girl under each arm
and led them inside. Tiffany, who was becoming intoxicated by the smell of his cologne and feel
of his touch, melted into him.

The first thing that struck Tiffany as she toured the establishment was the smell. Over the
cigarette and weed smoke, through the battle of warring perfumes and clashing colognes, and
even the chicken being fried in the club kitchen could not compete. The place smelled just like
pussy—not stank funky pussy, just a faint whiff of vagina.
No wonder
, Tiffany told herself as her
eyes adjusted to the light. The place was full of women in various states of undress, all glistening
with baby oil. Her self-esteem plummeted as she saw beauty after beauty. Just an hour before, she
was admiring herself in her mirror, but now she wanted to run and hide.

Tiffany was lost in her thoughts as she entered this fascinating new world. She missed most
of the narrative Mike gave, and before she knew it, she was back at the front door. Mike was still
talking, but she had no idea what he was saying. “Excuse me?” Tiffany said, stopping him mid
sentence.

Wanda sucked her teeth sarcastically, but Mike was more sympathetic. He recognized the deer-
in-the-headlights stare in Tiffany’s eyes, and he knew she was out of her element. “I said, this is
where you’ll be working,” he repeated, pointing to the small booth where she would check ID and
collect admission fees. “And sometimes my servers don’t show up, so you’ll have to help out there
as well,” Mike added.

Before leaving her at her post, he introduced her to Big D, the club’s first line of defense. He
protected against all adversaries, especially the dreaded broke niggers. They were the riffraff who
sat in their cars getting as high as drunk as they could so they wouldn’t have to pay for drinks in the
club. It wasn’t unheard of to catch one or more masturbating under the table. Big D would make
sure to break an arm if he caught them.

“A’ight, lil mama. See ya later,” Mike said with a wink before leading Wanda back into the
bowels of the establishment.

Not long after Tiffany got settled in the booth, the customers came in droves. She saw plenty of
familiar faces from school, work, and even church. For some reason, anyone who even remotely
knew her asked what she was doing there. Wearied by the question, she began getting snippy as
her patience wore thin. “What am
I
doing here?” she repeated curtly. “What are
you
doing here,
Deacon Jones?”

The junior pastor from her church mumbled incoherently and slinked inside.

Big D looked at her with a raised eyebrow as if to say,
“What’s up?”

She caught herself, smiled at him brightly to indicate that she understood, and went back to
being cordial. After all, she knew what was wrong. She needed a blast. It had been almost an hour
since she’d smoked, and that monkey on her back was growing restless. As it began to fidget, so
did she. “Um, Big D, I left my inhaler in my car. Can you hold me down for a sec?” she asked
sweetly.

Big D fell for the helpless routine and quickly agreed. “I got you,” he said, assuming her
duties.

Tiffany fought the urge to run to her car, where half a blunt waited in the ashtray. Walking as
briskly as she was, she caught Mike’s attention on the security monitor on his desk. She wasted
no time once she entered her car. In a flash, she was taking furious drags on the cigar, holding the
smoke for as long as she could. The monkey settled back down, and Tiffany outed the blunt again,
making sure to save some for later.

Mike shook his head as he watched the whole episode on the monitor. He almost had second
thoughts about turning her out until then. If she was smoking, selling some pussy was inevitable.
May as well get that money instead of someone else
, he reasoned.

He and Wanda had turned out hundreds of young women and girls. They had a stable of them
working in clubs, private parties, escort services, and lately, even porno movies. The formula was
simple: Wanda would get them using and then hand them over to Mike. Mike would put the dick
on them and tell them he loved them. They would love him back and do whatever he asked of them
to prove it.

Once the club was filled to capacity, Tiffany was asked to help serve drinks.

Ursula, the lone waitress for the night, showed her what to do. “Ima take the orders, and you
just gotta brang dem they drinks,” Ursula said in her heavy Southern drawl.

“Okay,” Tiffany replied, staring wide-eyed in apprehension, nervous about actually going into
the trenches.

“Ain’t nothin’ to it,” Ursula said reassuringly, seeing the fear. “And we gon’ split the tips.”

It went smoothly, and Tiffany began to enjoy the attention she received. All the customers
flirted with her, even while in the midst of a rump-shaking table dance. “Here you go,” Tiffany
said, handing over a tip for her and Ursula to split.

“A hunned dollars!?” Ursula exclaimed. “Dem cheap bastards neva gimme shit!”

“Guess cuz I’m new,” Tiffany said naively.

Ursula shot her a cold glance until she realized she was serious.
Poor thing
, she reflected to
herself, knowing Tiffany was too green to life to know that the only reason a man does anything for
a woman is because he wants to fuck her—that “Good morning” and “How are you?” all translates
to “Can I have some pussy?” Ursula shook her head knowing what was in store for her.

It was only a few years earlier that she was caught in Mike and Wanda’s clutches herself. She’d
met Wanda one day after moving to Atlanta from her family’s southern Georgia farm. A week later,
she had coke in her nose and a stranger’s dick in her mouth. It took a year to shake off the yoke
of drugs and get into school like she’d come for in the first place. Now, she only served drinks to
make a living until she graduated.

She felt like telling Tiffany to run for her life, but she opted to mind her business.
She gonna have
to learn the hard way...just like I did.

CHAPTER 13

M
arcus and Pony set up shop, armed with half a kilo of the best crack in town, bar none.
While Pony weighed, cut, and bagged up the work, Marcus smoked it.

Pony wisely decided to sell it all in ten- and twenty-dollar increments to maximize profits. That
entailed hella traffic and hella risk. Depending on how generous he felt, he could cut between
$2,000 and $2,500 an ounce. He had eighteen ounces, which came to at least $36,000.
If dis nigga
don’t smoke it all first
, Pony thought as Marcus smoked rock after rock without a care in the world.
Nigga was ready to suck a dick
. Pony frowned at the memory.
You a junkie too, an inner voice whispered.
You gon’ be just like him if you don’t stop.
It was at that exact moment that Pony decided to drop both
bad habits real soon. Both Marcus and the dope had to go. “Here. Take these and give them out,”
Pony told Marcus, handing him the one-hit testers he’d bagged.

“
Give
?” Marcus asked, confused. “You mean for free?

“Yeah, give. Once the word get out that we got that glass, we straight,” Pony said, giving him
a brief lesson in marketing.

“That’s what’s up,” Marcus agreed and set out on his task. He went room to room, smoking the
testers with the other junkies.

The junkies were so used to the bullshit whipped cocaine that the renegades sold that they flipped
once they got a hit of the butter. In fact, it set off a chain reaction that reverberated throughout the
entire city. Those with cash came to cop, while those without cash went to get it. Shit got stolen,
people got robbed, and dicks got sucked. The first customers came in a trickle, but that grew into
an all-out flood. If there was a junkie dam somewhere, it had clearly broken.

Pony wisely rented two more rooms and switched at random, a plan devised to keep the jackers
and police off balance.

A few customers complained about only being able to buy dimes or dubs, but Pony was in it to
win it. As a concession, he let them get three for twenty-five or five for forty. Either way, he was
winning. Before he knew it, the four ounces he’d bagged were gone. Pony initially thought he
messed up somehow or Marcus cuffed some. Then he counted and re-counted the $7,500 stuffed
in his pockets.

Marcus returned with a fine little smoker in tow. She was young and had to be a new convert
since she still possessed all of her teeth, and she was thick where it counted. Marcus grabbed a
handful of the dimes Pony was bagging and handed a couple to the young girl. They both wasted
no time in loading their pipes and lighting them. After a few hits a piece, they climbed on the bed
and stripped naked. Marcus and the girl went at it as if they had the room to themselves, even as
Pony served the customers that came and went.

Pony tried to ignore the copulating couple, but her moans were getting the better of him. “Say,
what that hit like?” he finally asked.

“Come see for yaself,” the young pro said. She changed positions so Marcus could hit her from
the back while she accommodated Pony in her mouth. It only took the young pro a few minutes to
get both men where they were trying to go.

* * *

By the next morning, the men had just over $13,000. It could have been more if not for
Marcus’s smoking and tricking. They still had eight more ounces stashed in the basement of Pony’s
grandmother’s house. The plan was to flip that, then move up to a whole bird.

That was, of course, until Marcus saw all the money and had a change of plans. “Break me off,”
he demanded once the cash was counted.

“Be easy, shawty. We gon’ flip it one more time before we pull anything out,” Pony reasoned.

“Flip hell! Break me off!” Marcus insisted. “We got, what, thirteen stacks? That’s at least four
g’s a piece,” he said, flaunting his mathematical prowess. “I’m tryina ball, nigga!” He laughed.

Reluctantly, Pony forked over $6,200. He couldn’t beat his old friend, but he did deduct a fee
for what Marcus smoke, stole, and tricked with. In the end, he figured he was better off that Marcus
wasn’t interested in the goldmine they came across. He intended to flip his money to infinity.
Niggers would die to get their hands on the quality of cocaine they had. He knew firsthand that at
least one had died for them to get it.