Trap House (24 page)

As he laughed, Pony turned his head to leave.

“Hold up, yo! It’s not what it looks like!” Ali-Rock laughed again, adding insult to injury. His
laughter reverberated in Pony’s ears as he left.

Tiffany, knowing full well what a burnt bridge looked like, kept on bobbing her weave.

A single tear escaped Pony’s eye as he climbed back into his truck. In truth, he knew he could
only blame himself. He had broken the cardinal rule: You can’t turn a ho into a housewife. It was
his bad, and he knew it.

CHAPTER 22

M
arcus and Wanda finished polishing off an ounce, not even a full twenty-four hours after
receiving it. He was expected to pay $500 for every ounce Pony fronted him. Marcus
always came up short, but this time he didn’t even sell one crumb. They tricked off with some
and smoked the rest. “Ain’t the first package I fucked up.” Marcus laughed. The way he figured it,
Pony owed him; they were partners. It was his lick that got them started, and he was the one who
had put him on with P.I.G. Last but not least, he knew Tiffany had moved in with Pony months
earlier and hadn’t tripped about it. With all that in mind, he dialed Pony’s number.

Pony was in a foul mood after just seeing the love of his life with some dude’s cock in her mouth.
He was busy putting her belongings (minus what he’d bought her) by the curb. He was tearing up
pictures, trying not to cry, when his phone rang. His first thought was to ignore the call, thinking it
was Tiffany with some lame excuse like
“Baby, I don’t know how his dick got in my mouth.”
Still,
Pony picked up the phone, eager to hear whatever she had to say. He hoped and prayed he had
somehow misunderstood what he saw.
Damn, he coulda been raping my girl!
his pussy-whipped
mind screamed. “This nigga here,” Pony fumed when he saw Marcus’s name on the ID screen. He
was eager to vent his frustration on someone, so he took the call. “Yeah?” Pony barked.

“What’s good, play?” Marcus sang playfully. “I need to get witcha.”

“You got my money for the last one? Ain’t shit if you ain’t got my money,” Pony shot back.

“Money?” Marcus chuckled. “I know you ain’t trippin’ ‘bout no money.” He actually pulled the
phone back to look at it and make sure he had the right number. He couldn’t believe his ace from
the first place was fronting on him.

“Nigga, I sell blow. I can’t come up giving you all my work!” Pony yelled.

“What you tripping on?” Marcus whined.

The pleading in his voice caused Wanda to take notice.

“Trippin’!? You junkie-ass nigga! I got ya tripping!” Pony shouted. He was feeling better with
every insult he hurled at his former friend. “Get my money up, fuck nigga!” he said, taking it too
far.

Marcus looked at his phone again, hearing the game-changing insult. He knew he was a junkie,
but a fuck nigga?
Dem’s fighting words,
he thought. “’Fuck nigga’?” Marcus asked, daring Pony
to say it again.

“Yeah, fuck nigga! Bitch nigga, ho nigga, dick-in-the-booty-ass nigga!” Pony yelled.

There was a deadly silence on the line as Marcus digested what he heard. The insults had
awakened the murderous demons in his head. They had been subdued by the mind-numbing amount
of drugs Marcus had been consuming, as well as his offing of Mike and the ho he was fucking, but
now that the pipeline had been cut off, they were stirring.

“Hello? You there?” Pony asked when no reply came.

“Yeah, I’m here. I’ll be to see you,” Marcus said in a dangerous tone before hanging up.

It was at that moment that Pony realized he’d gone too far. He knew firsthand that Marcus
was a killer. He wasn’t someone who just marked a nigga; he was an actual killer. There was a
difference.

Pony knew his life would be over if he didn’t act fast. His first call went to the Homicide Unit,
where he anonymously dropped a dime about Mike’s murder.

The next call was one he’d been contemplating for months, and now the time was ripe for it.
“Say, shawty. Dis Pony. I know who kilt y’all daddy,” Pony told one of Red’s still-grieving sons.
With that one phone call, Pony killed Marcus without busing a shot, and he made up a scenario to
excluded his own role in the crime. He finished the call with the address where Marcus could be
found.

Pony’s next call went to Jasmine, seeking refuge in the back of her throat—not to mention he
needed someone there to give him strength if Tiffany came home.

* * *

Wanda was able to glean from Marcus’s side of the conversation that he’d blown his connect.
She still had most of the money she had stolen from Tiffany, but she had no intention of supporting
both of their habits. It had been a great ride, but the Marcus train was at the end of the line. It was
time to move on.

She convinced Marcus to sit tight while she made a run to P.I.G.’s to cop. She even wrote down
his order for a supreme fish sandwich before she left.

Wanda pulled on Tiffany’s Coogi dress that now fit like a glove due to her weight loss and
pushed off to the next chapter in the drama that was her life.

* * *

It was well after midnight when Marcus finally accepted the fat that Wanda was not coming
back. She had turned off her phone, and according to the regulars at P.I.G.’s, she had come and
gone hours earlier. “Bitch ain’t even bring me my fish sandwich!” Marcus fumed as he tucked his
pistol into his waistband. He intended to go make some collections on some of the credit he’d been
doling out over the last few months.

His luck was still holding up as two of Red’s sons kicked in the front door only minutes after
he left. He drove around town, pulling his gun on people he knew and taking whatever money or
drugs they had. Finally, once his hate was boiling, he headed to settle a score.

It was just past three in the morning when Marcus pulled in front of Pony’s condo. He sat there
for a while smoking the cocaine he’d robbed from some kid at a gas station. “Fuckin’ garbage!”
he exclaimed as he exhaled the low-quality dope. “I’m smoking dis bullshit while dat fuck nigga
got dat glass!” he growled, further amping himself up. He mentally whipped himself into a frenzy,
then headed up the stairs.

The noise of the front door being kicked in woke Pony and Jasmine from their slumber, but
Marcus was in the room before they could react. “What it do?” Marcus asked with a devilish
smile.

“Shawty, what the hell you doing?” Pony asked, noticing the gun in Marcus’s hand.

“Don’t ack like you don’t know,” Marcus shot back. “Fuck nigga.”

“Man, I know you ain’t tripping ‘bout that shit!” Pony laughed nervously.

“Um, excuse me, fellas…” Jasmine said, getting out of the bed. “I’m finna go so y’all can
handle y’all bizness,” she said, bending over to pick her panties off the floor.

The sight of Jasmine’s naked ass caused Marcus to pause.

Pony took advantage of the distraction and reached for the nine-millimeter pistol on his
nightstand. He didn’t make it. A well-placed shot put his brains on the headboard as he went to
meet his maker.

Jasmine, being the hoodrat she was, was no stranger to violence. She fully understood that the
next words out of her mouth meant the difference between life and death. “Come on, pimp. Lemme
show you where the stash at,” she said, dropping the panties back on the floor. She was grateful
that Pony liked to show off his goods. Actually, she had planned to send some of the goons from
her projects to rob him anyway. “You gon’ hafta break me off tho’,” Jasmine said as she led Marcus
to another room.

“Oh, Ima break you off a’ight,” he replied, getting an erection from her swagger.

When Jasmine heard the lust in his voice, she knew she was out of the woods. “I ain’t stingy
with the pussy.” She chuckled. “So don’t be stingy with the dope.”

“Fuck!” Marcus gasped as he entered a room where several kilos sat in various stages of
preparation. He knew Pony was getting to the money, but he didn’t know he was doing it like that.
“And dis nigga spoon-feeding me onions!” he said as he loaded up the dope.

“Don’t forget about me,” Jasmine reminded as he put it in the bag.

He started to say something fly, but the sarcastic remark disappeared into thin air when he
turned back to Jasmine. She was spread eagle on the ground, fingering herself. Two minutes later,
he was on his way out of the house with the dope, minus the couple of ounces he threw Jasmine.
She put it on him so well that he left without any of the money.

As soon as Marcus left, Jasmine went about the task of removing all traces of herself ever
being there. She wiped down every surface from everything she ever touched. Next, she pulled the
pillowcase containing her DNA off the bed. It was a lot of work, but the $130 she left with was
compensation.

By the time Tiffany pulled up, the trash collector had come and gone with her belongings that
Pony had set on the curb. An anonymous call had the complex swarming with police. Tiffany
joined the crowd of curious onlookers just in time to watch Pony being removed in a body bag.

CHAPTER 23

A
s Wanda sat in the lobby of the free clinic, her emotions ran the gamut. She vacillated
between wanting to cry and wanting to laugh. “I know I am not pregnant.” She chuckled.
“Probably got the flu or something.” It had been months since she had her last period, but it was
the nagging flu symptoms that had sent her to the clinic.

Wanda had been selling her body one way or another since she was thirteen and had never
gotten pregnant. Now she was twenty-nine, and she certainly didn’t think it possible. She and
Marcus had been having unprotected sex for months, not to mention all the guys she’d tricked with
or without him.

If I am pregnant, Ima slide right back in there
, she thought enthusiastically at the prospect of
hooking back up with Marcus. Word on the street had him doing it real big lately.

When Marcus killed Pony, he absorbed a little of his personality and began selling some of the
blow instead of smoking it all. He was able to recoup from P.I.G. and keep it going…for now.

Wanda laid her head back in the chair in hopes of getting a little rest. Being banned from all the
clubs and cut off from her gravy train, she had to go hard with the sex game to support herself. She
had lost quite a bit of weight but was still fine, and the head was the stuff of legend.

Just as she drifted off to sleep, she heard her name being called. She looked up to see a pretty
young nursing assistant scanning the room, repeating her name.