Murdergram, Part 2

by Nisa Santiago

  He stepped forward, confident he would have her tonight. “Let’s go to bed,” he said quietly. He reached out to take her hand, though she still gripped the bloody knife.

  Make no mistake about it, Tamar wanted to fuck him, but she always felt used by him. Did he do Cristal the same way? she repeatedly asked herself. Did he love her more than he does me?

  With E.P. standing butt naked in front of her, she fantasized about all sorts of nasty things. Once she felt his hand touch hers, she dropped the knife to the floor and followed his lead into the bedroom, where he undressed her.

  Tamar wanted to be penetrated by him—a beautiful, strong, vicious black man with a deadly past. Like her, he was a killer, and it turned Tamar on so deeply. Thinking about the kills they could amass together was already making her wet and ready to come.

  He pushed her against the bed, and she landed on her back, instantly spreading her legs, waiting for his thrust inside of her.

  E.P. climbed onto the bed fully erect, ready to take Tamar’s body. She didn’t care that another woman had just warmed his bed. All that mattered to her was being with him and having him love her back.

  The sensation of having his big, black dick rub her pussy lips, teasing her, sliding up and down her slit, made Tamar anxious and excited. He then thrust his thick erection inside of her, making it feel like they became one.

  She quickly jerked from his raw entry, grabbing his thick frame tightly, her legs spread for him, feeling his thick, hard dick pound in and out of her, filling her with ecstasy.

  “Fuck me!” she cried out.

  “Damn, baby! Your pussy feels so fuckin’ good.”

  The pussy had him warped, as her nails dug into his ass cheeks, pulling him deeper and deeper inside her. He fucked her harder and faster in the missionary position.

  Tamar could feel herself about to explode soon. There was nothing better than having the full weight of a man on top of her and hearing him speak softly in her ear.

  From behind, he fucked her rough and rapid, grabbing her hips. Tamar felt her tits swinging while he thrust repeatedly inside her with all his might, and then, being the freaky nigga he was, he started fingering her asshole.

  They both moaned and groaned as he continued to pound her from the back.

  Howling, she gripped the headboard, as the bed shook. And then, finally, the explosion she longed for happened. She felt herself coming all over his hard dick from getting thoroughly fucked, tears in her eyes and not knowing what to do with herself.

  When it was done, E.P. lifted himself from her petite, sweaty frame, leaving her mashed against the mattress. He smirked. “I gave you what you wanted. Now you give me what I want.”

  Twelve

  Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the sixteen-acre complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Manhattan, was teeming with stylish people in the open courtyard. A picturesque fountain flowed during the late summer evening, and the buildings were awash in yellow light. The theater was jumping with the annual fashion/charity fundraiser, and security was tight, with NYPD scattered strategically through the area to protect everyone’s well-being.

  Chow Ling Tao stepped out of a black Maybach parked not too far from the activity in the square. Flanked by his security detail and his family, he was all smiles, dressed sharply in a black three-button Calvin Klein tuxedo. He grabbed the hands of his two young daughters, ages five and three, and walked toward the Lincoln Center with his wife following. Chow Ling Tao walked and laughed with his two little girls like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Four men had set up a small perimeter around him for his and his family’s protection. They walked uncontested with their dark suits and earpieces, communicating with each other, their holstered weapons concealed under their jackets. It looked like the president was at the center.

  From a short distance, Cristal fixed her eyes on her target. She blended into the crowd easily, disguised as a well-dressed attendee in a long black Versace gown, her scars hidden by a stylish hat and veil. She looked as if she belonged there.

  She headed his way, cool and collected. Keep it simple, she said to herself.

  Chow stopped to chat with a few other attendees before entering the building. He seemed to be a genial man, and far from the dangerous arms dealer and trader of U.S. secrets her organization portrayed him to be. But Cristal knew that looks could be deceiving.

  Cristal slowly approached with his bodyguards watching all movement. She pretended to be on her cell phone and abruptly stumbled his way, deliberately falling into him. She hit him with a great force, which immediately sent his security detail into high alert.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said quickly, looking like an innocent patron of the arts. “I’m just so clumsy.”

  “Everything’s fine. Accidents happen,” Chow said, quickly waving off the dogs ready to lunge. “Just a mishap. It appears this young lady is eager to see the show like everyone else,” he said, keeping his humor and easygoing attitude intact.

  Cristal once again apologized and hurriedly walked away. It was done. It wasn’t graceful, but it was effective.

  She didn’t have to follow behind Chow; she already knew where he was going and his schedule with his family. Her main focus was on the Maybach parked on the street with the driver behind the wheel. She walked closer, looking nonchalant, her attention shrewdly transfixed on the high-end vehicle. She saw something in her favor—The glass wasn’t bulletproof, and the exterior of the car wasn’t armored. One glimpse of the car and she knew everything about it. Only a trained eye could spot what she spotted.

  As the crowd outside slowly but surely walked into the Avery Fisher Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic, Cristal turned and went the opposite way. She calmly crossed Columbus Avenue, where the yellow cabs dominated the city street, and headed toward the towering skyscraper.

  Rule number one: Always fit in and never look suspicious—always act like you belong. She effortlessly strolled into the building, gliding through the lobby, and even gave the doorman a slight nod and smile. He smiled back, not seeing anything dubious about the woman in the long gown and makeup. She stepped into the elevator, going to the planned floor, and entered a well-furnished apartment like it was her own.

  It belonged to Mr. Schmidt, a German software developer who was out of town for the week on business. She had seen the man in a nearby café, picking him out of a dozen customers after she had overheard his conversation about his impending business trip. She pickpocketed his wallet, gained access to his personal information, and hacked into his email account to find out about his routine and his goings and comings.

  His apartment was perfect. It was high enough and positioned precisely to her favor. From the corner window of the living room, she had a direct and flawless 360-degree view of Lincoln Square.

  The privileged crowd in the square had withered away into the building, leaving Cristal ample opportunity to get the job done right. She set up near the window, the Blaser R93 LRS2 sniper rifle on the floor and the detachable night scope in her lap. She also had a small Kahr .9mm with six rounds in the magazine. If everything went according to plan, she wouldn’t need the .9mm. At this moment, all she had was patience, since the event had only just started.

  Cristal didn’t move from the small area in the living room. The lavish apartment was dark and completely still. She removed a small device from the clutch she carried and activated the tracker. Unbeknownst to Chow Ling Tao, when Cristal had bumped into him, she’d quickly attached a small tracking device under the lapel of his jacket. Now, she had his exact location inside the theatre and would know his every move.

  Two hours went by, and her patience was still strong. Like a statue, she didn’t move from the area in the living room. She sat gazing out the window, which was open just wide enough to aim the long, thin barrel of her sniper rifle through.

  A small crowd started to trickle from the hall. The show had ended.

  Cristal took h
er position, crouched with one knee on the floor by the window, the sniper rifle gripped expertly in her arms. She glanced at the tracking device indicating Chow’s exact location.

  The crowd started pouring out heavily from the hall, men and women laughing and chatting. It was hard to see anything from so high and in the dark. Looking for one man in the sea of faces in the night was almost like trying to find Waldo in the crowd, but the device gave her the GPS location of her target.

  The Maybach was still parked close by, and the driver was waiting outside for his employer to arrive, ready to open the passenger door for Chow and his family. The Yukon his bodyguards traveled in was parked behind the Maybach.

  Cristal had a small open window as Chow approached the vehicle with his family in tow. She could feel the adrenaline sharpening her focus as she raised the rifle to her shoulder and pressed her cheek against the hollowed-out stock. Through the green-and-black night-vision lens, her target’s face came clear as he walked calmly with his security detail, looking like he had enjoyed the show.

  She took a deep breath. She centered her main targeting chevron over Chow’s forehead. When he got within an arm’s reach of the door handle, she squeezed off one fast round. The rifle’s suppressor allowed a small pop of sound, nothing more.

  Chow stiffened for a fraction of a second, the bullet going through his skull. Instantaneously his head lolled to the side, and he collapsed in front of his family and security.

  It took a split second before his security detail and family knew something was wrong. Chow collapsed right in front of them, a small hole in his forehead, blood pooling around his head. Instantly, panic and fear gripped the crowd. His wife screamed, and his children were flushed with fright. His security team immediately went into action, crowding around the body with their guns drawn.

  Cristal removed herself from the window, dropping the rifle to the ground. It was time to go. She already had an exit plan. She removed a small retro cell phone from her clutch. It was the trigger to a small pipe bomb she had cleverly placed in the stairway of the building she was in. She needed confusion to make her escape easier.

  Quickly wiping prints and packing up her toys, she made her way toward the door. The confusion could be heard outside with police sirens blaring, and people yelling and shouting.

  She walked out the apartment into the carpeted hallway and hurried toward the service elevator. Descending down into the lobby, before the doors opened, she pressed the call button on her cell phone sending radio waves to set off the device, the cell phone having the same frequency as the trigger sensing it.

  Ka-boom!

  The explosion could be heard from the lobby and immediately sent a wave of panic to the people lingering there. A woman shrieked from impulse, quickly grabbing the arm of her husband like he was her Superman.

  With the commotion going on outside and the sudden explosion inside, pandemonium was inevitable. The fire alarm sounded. Smoke started to billow from the stairway.

  The doorman tried to take charge of the situation, directing everyone outside. “Everybody, please exit the building in an orderly fashion,” he announced.

  A few dozen folks hastily started to exit the building. Cristal was covertly mixed in with the exiting crowd, keeping her low profile intact.

  Dozens of NYPD officers were everywhere, their marked cars engulfing the entire area, lights blaring from every direction, radios crackling. Shock and horror were registered on so many faces, the scene reminiscent of 9/11.

  With the fire happening in the building across the street from where Chow Ling Tao’s body lay, the peaceful event quickly transitioned into anarchy of epic proportions, turning Lincoln Center into Ground Zero.

  Cristal easily slipped away from it all—job well done.

  Thirteen

  It was a long ride for Cristal, but it was also a relaxing one. The sun was rising gradually, spreading daylight across the sky. Cristal had gotten some needed sleep while riding on the Greyhound bus as the landscape changed from urban metropolis to rural area and back to the metropolis of Massachusetts. There weren’t many passengers on the bus, so she had her own seat and time to think.

  The Chow Ling Tao hit had gone smoothly, so it was time to get out of Dodge. Chow was an important figure, both politically and in the underworld, so there was no doubt that those devoted to him would come looking to avenge his murder, which happened right in front of his family.

  She checked her bank account via cell phone. Her payment had already been transferred. Another body, another dollar.

  She closed her eyes, feeling the bus driver navigate through narrow, winding roads. The engine snarled up steep hills, approaching their destination in great time, New Bedford Ferry Terminal. The place looked almost historic with cobblestone buildings lining MacArthur Drive.

  Located approximately seven miles off the southern coast of Cape Cod was Martha’s Vineyard, where Cristal boarded the eighty-foot ferry carrying one hundred and thirty passengers to Vineyard Haven, a seaside village also known as Tisbury. With indoor and outdoor seating on the ferry, Cristal chose to sit outdoors beneath the blue sky and was treated to some of the best sightseeing on Buzzards Bay.

  Stepping off the ferry with the other one hundred thirty passengers onto the island, Cristal headed toward one of the idling cabs waiting near the port. She was only one of a few young black faces sprinkled amongst a sea of Caucasian faces.

  She climbed into a white cab with a white driver on Water Street and told him her destination. Fifteen minutes later, she arrived at a peaceful-looking beachfront cottage on Lagoon Pound Road.

  She handed the driver a fifty-dollar bill for a twenty-dollar fare as she climbed out the backseat. “Keep the change,” she told him.

  “Thank you,” he said, smiling.

  After closing the cab door, she finally turned around and took in the beauty of it all—sun, water, sand, and sea. The cozy cottage was sizable and simplistic—a little old-fashioned white clapboard with shutters, a wraparound porch, a canopied swing off to one side, and a few steps up to the door. There was hardly any grass because it was mostly a meditation garden with little statuettes hidden near bushes. Purple, pink, yellow, and blue perennials added to the lush flora that draped, shaded, concealed, and beautified.

  Cristal walked up the steps and entered the cottage like she owned the place. Inside, there was the smell of wild roses growing through the hawthorn hedge and the smell of timber. She could hear opera music playing from the rear of the cottage. The rooms were minimally furnished with just the bare necessities, but comfy.

  She walked into a small back room overlooking a colorful garden. In the room a man sat quietly on a saddled seat counter stool, his right arm raised with a paintbrush between his thumb and his fingertip with him softly brushing against the white canvas attached to the easel in front of him. A wonderful picture of his garden was gradually coming to life with a kaleidoscope of color as Nicolai Gedda, the celebrated Swedish operatic tenor, delighted his ears from an antique record player.

  “You don’t knock first?” the man said without turning, his focus still on his artwork.

  “Do I ever?”

  “It’s the polite thing to do.”

  “When have I ever been polite?”

  “I could have had company,” he said composedly.

  “Then she would have to leave.”

  He grunted while touching up the amethyst flower in his painting, bringing out its star-shaped blooms of brilliant blue and sky blue, as well as violet and white. His talent with the paintbrush on the canvas was unquestionable.

  “What brings you here?” he asked.

  “I needed to get away.” Cristal stood directly behind him, gazing at his artwork. She was impressed.

  “To get away, huh? From the Chow hit?”

  “You heard?”

  “It’s all over the news.”

  “I made sure to cover all my tracks.”

  “By coming here afterwards.” He fi
nally turned in his seat to face her.

  “It’s never been a problem with you before.”

  “It never is. Coming here once a month to escape is fine with me, but do not start making a habit of it,” he said to her in a stern tone.

  “I won’t,” she said.

  He turned around to continue working with the brush.

  “It’s nice,” she said, referring to his painting.

  He didn’t respond.

  The Bishop, an aging, distinguished man with smooth, dark chocolate skin, a head full of stark white, wiry hair and a thick, grayish goatee, was Cristal’s contact at GHOST Protocol. He had been born in Cuba to a Nigerian father and Cuban mother. He had come to the States in the late seventies when he was nine years old. He’d started out as muscle for a guerrilla pimp named Winter and was known and feared for his brutality against conflicting pimps and gang members.

  During the mid-eighties, The Bishop was recruited by a drug cartel to become a triggerman because of his marksmanship and his knack for locating and terminating anyone where he found them, whether in public or private. He soon became a vicious hit man with a legendary reputation. Subsequently, his thirst for violence and his hardcore reputation landed him in a state prison, where he did a fifteen-year stint.

  In the late nineties, he was scouted by GHOST Protocol to become an assassin for them. He’d worked his way up the ranks throughout the years and was highly respected. His name alone sanctioned fear in his victims and cohorts. His list of kills included warlords, politicians, drug dealers, kingpins, presidents of foreign countries, dictators, other assassins, and CEOs of billion-dollar companies.

  The Bishop was able to keep a mental account of every kill he had made in two decades, and he was able to recount the details of each kill. How did he do it? He used a mnemonic device first used by Hippo, the ancient Greek philosopher. Using some article of personal import, he would mark it and mentally tell himself the story associated with that mark. Some assassins got a tattoo to commemorate each kill, but there was only so much skin available on the body. Anything tangible could be actionable evidence against them in court and be admitted to a grand jury: notes, journals, blog entries. One of his golden rules was to never write anything down. Ever! A notch in his memory was able to help him track his progress and remember his kill stories. Now, in his fifties, he no longer had to fulfill the contracts, only assign them.