Chapter Twenty-six
Jonas left St. John’s Church with quite a bit to think about. In the years since Doug was gone, they had never known who his killer was. Mula had dispatched Brian before they could pry the secret loose. They had to charge it to the game, but it had never sat well with Jonas. That was the one name he had always wanted to add to his list of corpses. Thanks to the detective, he finally could.
It was ironic in a way, the timing of it all. The same day Jonas got back in touch with Alex, the name of her brother’s killer had suddenly fallen into his lap. It had to have been the universe sending Jonas a sign that he was moving in the right direction.
When Jonas got back to the hood, the first thing he did was check in at the trap house. It was an apartment inside of a building on 138th and Eighth. That was the strip Drew gave them to hustle on when they started. Since then, they had claimed six other blocks as their own, but 138th was their hub. Everything they did flowed through that apartment.
Jonas climbed the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door of the trap house in a coded pattern. A few minutes later, the locks on the other side came undone. A smoker, Paula, opened the door. The apartment belonged to her. She was in her early thirties but looked closer to forty. She was wearing a floral housecoat and slippers. Erect nipples poked through the fabric. Though she was an addict, Paula still had a nice body. A few of the homies had smashed, but Jonas never did.
“Sup, Wrath?” Paula greeted him with a yellow-toothed smile.
“Chilling. Who all up in there?” he asked.
“The usual suspects. Everybody in the living room.”
Jonas brushed past her and walked down the hall toward the living room. Under his feet the floor was sticky, so it made a funny noise when he walked. He could smell the heavy stench of weed coming from the living room. When he bent the corner, he frowned. At least half a dozen people were hanging out, smoking, and drinking beer. Jonas didn’t like anybody in the spot who wasn’t serving a purpose. Too much traffic would make the spot hot. If they lost Paula’s crib, they wouldn’t have anywhere else to conduct their business.
Mula and Tavion sat at the table, stuffing baggies with crack rocks. Jonas took a mental assessment of the drugs on the table and reasoned they would have to re-up soon, which was a good thing. Business had started picking up, but it still wasn’t enough to mark them as anything other than small-time hustlers. Hopefully, when he took care of Flair for the detective, things would change.
Ace sat in an armchair near the window. A fat blunt dangled between his lips and a beer was clutched in his mitt. On his lap was a young girl that Jonas had seen around the neighborhood. He knew that Ace had been trying to fuck her for a while, and from the way she was smiling, it probably wouldn’t be too much longer before he got into her pants. It seemed like all Ace did was smoke weed and chase pussy.
When Jonas’s eyes drifted to the couch, his mood darkened. Two girls sat there; one was rolling up weed, while the other was pouring Hennessey into a plastic cup. The girl pouring the liquor was Stacey. She was brown-skinned and a bit on the chubby side, with hair that she always wore in a tight bun atop her head. With her pink glasses resting on the bridge of her thick nose, she had a bookish look about her. She was Paula’s niece. She used to come by after school and help them bag up drugs for extra money, but when Jonas peeped how smart she was, he realized her talents were being wasted. She was now a part of upper management. Stacey kept the books and handled whatever clerical tasks Jonas had needed. It had been her idea to always set aside a small part of their monthly income in a reserve in case the boys needed lawyers or bail money. She was almost as valuable to Jonas as Ace was, sometimes more.
The other girl Jonas hadn’t ever recalled seeing in the spot. She was light-skinned, wearing a too-tight dress, and a face full of makeup. Her eyes had been locked on Jonas since he walked in the house.
Sandwiched between the two girls, and looking like he was having the time of his life, was Cal. Jonas had specifically told Ace to keep him at a distance, but here he was smack in the middle of their operation, taking it all in. It was officially time for Jonas and Ace to have a serious conversation about protocols.
“What’s good, Wrath?” Ace greeted him.
“You tell me,” Jonas said sharply, looking from Ace to Cal.
“Ain’t nothing. We in here getting to this money,” Ace said coolly.
“Look like y’all in here partying to me. What I tell you about having a hundred niggas in the spot?”
“Man, calm your paranoid ass down. Everybody here is solid. I got this shit under control,” Ace replied like it wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t like the fact that Jonas had checked him in front of people.
“Sometime I wonder,” Jonas mumbled.
“What’s up, Wrath? You too big to speak now?” the girl with the face full of makeup got his attention.
Jonas was trying to figure out why she was speaking to him, but when he studied her face, he realized that they had met before. It was the girl who had come to the house the day Yvette and his mom had gotten into it, Shauna. “Oh, what’s good? Been a minute.”
“Yeah, last time I saw you, you were a little kid. You ain’t so little anymore,” Shauna said, openly eyeing him. He returned her gaze.
“What’s up, Wrath? No love for your boy,” Cal announced himself as if Jonas hadn’t seen him sitting there.
“What’s good?” Jonas replied dryly. “I see you’ve made yourself at home.”
“Yeah, Ace invited me up to enjoy some friendly hospitality.” Cal draped his arm around Shauna, marking his territory. “Y’all got a nice little setup going. Real nice. I was telling Ace that I got a homeboy who’s getting a lot of money down in Richmond. The shit y’all are selling for twenty goes for fifty out there. I thought maybe y’all can do something together. It’s nothing for me to set up a meeting.”
“Fo’sho,” Jonas said. He had no intentions on doing business with anybody Cal brought to the table.
“You want me to pour you a drink, Wrath?” Stacey offered.
“No, thanks. I ain’t staying long. I got somewhere to be,” he told her.
“My man, Wrath. Always on the move,” Ace said sarcastically.
“Let me holla at you for a second, Ace.” Jonas started toward the bedroom without waiting to see if he was following.
Ace purposely waited for a few beats before sliding the girl off his lap and getting up. “I’ll be back,” he told his company.
In the bedroom, Paula was sitting on the edge of the bed. She had a small glass tube, stuffed with crack, to her lips. She was about to fire it up when Jonas walked in.
“Give us the room for a sec, Paula,” he told her.
“Sure thing, Wrath.” She tucked the tube into the pocket of her housecoat and left the room.
“So, what’s so important that you dragged me away from the little party we got going on?” Ace asked.
“That’s just it. You’re in here partying when you’re supposed to be handling business. You know better than that, Ace,” Jonas scolded him.
“I told you, everybody is solid.” Ace sucked his teeth.
“Nigga, besides Mula and Tavion, you can’t vouch for nobody else in that room! Ace, we gotta move smarter than this, man. All it takes is somebody chatting about what they’ve seen in this apartment, and either the police or the stickup boys are gonna kick this door in. I ain’t trying to fuck my shit up over a good time.”
“Don’t you mean our shit?” Ace questioned. “I know you’re the one who got the ball rolling, Wrath, but sometimes you act like we didn’t build this shit together. It’s like we’re your workers instead of your crew.”
“It ain’t like that, Ace. You know I’d never put myself above the team, but somebody has to be the voice of reason around here. I got something lined up that could potentially take us to the next level, but I gotta know that the people around me are ready to take that step.”
“You know I’m ten toes down for whatever, whenever. All you gotta do is tell me what the play is,” Ace said.
Jonas considered telling him about the conversation he’d had with the detective, about him finding out the name of Doug’s killer. Ace had just as much a right to the man’s blood as Jonas, if not more. Doug had been the one to put Ace on his feet. Had he not blessed Ace with the weed connect, maybe none of them would have gotten into the game. Or worse, they could all be working for Drew on the block. Jonas decided it would be a bad idea. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Ace. Ace was a pain in the ass, but he was still the closest thing Jonas had to a brother. He just didn’t want to run the risk of it getting back to Ceaver that he had talked. The detective seemed to know everything. “I’ll fill you in later. Right now, I need you to get all of these people out of the spot. Especially Cal.”
“Why you going so hard with this Cal business? He just came home from a bid, and he’s already trying to put food on our table. I think we should look into his people in Richmond.”
“And I think you’re speeding,” Jonas shot back. “Where the fuck we know these niggas from? Shit, we don’t even know how well we know Cal just yet. Let’s not jump the gun and fuck ourselves up.”
“But this is Cal, not some stranger. He’s one of ours, and we look out for our own,” Ace reminded him.
“I hear you, Ace, and I’m not disagreeing with you. All I’m saying is slow down,” Jonas cautioned. “Look, if you wanna put Cal on, I ain’t gonna stop you. Give him a package . . . Hell, give him a whole block if you want to; just be mindful you don’t feed him too much too soon.”
“I’m telling you, Cal is solid,” Ace insisted.
“You willing to stake your life on it?”
There was a brief pause before he answered. “Yeah.”
“Good, because you just did.”