“Cristal, baby, he’s coming, so there’s no need for you to keep staring out that window, chile,” said her aunt Ruth.
Cristal sighed. “It’s getting late, though, and we about to eat and I don’t want him to miss out on anything.”
“Hugo’s a grown man, and he’ll be here when he gets here.”
Cristal smiled and nodded. She went to join her family in the room.
Fifteen minutes later, there was knocking at the door. Cristal rushed up from the couch and hurried toward the door with a huge smile. This would be the first time most of her family members were going to meet the love of her life.
Cristal unlocked the apartment door, but before she could completely open it, Hugo was roughly pushed into her and the door burst open, allowing three masked assailants to charge inside with their guns drawn. Immediately, they pistol-whipped Hugo and besieged the apartment. Screaming and panic ensued. Cristal’s family was wide-eyed with horror and fear. Their celebratory mood had transformed into a nightmare.
“Ohmygod, please! No! No!” a cousin shouted.
“What is this?” another family member screamed.
“Please, this is my family!” Grandma Hattie begged.
One of the masked assailants rushed toward Grandma Hattie with his gun raised at her and shouted, “Shut the fuck up, bitch, before I blow your fuckin’ brains out!”
Hugo lay on the floor in Cristal’s arms, dazed, bleeding from his head. He glared up at his attackers defiantly, but inwardly he was trembling. Without a gun in his hand, he was helpless.
While one gunman kept his gun trained on everyone in the room, one by one, each family member’s hands was duct-taped and they were placed facedown on the living room floor. Everyone except Hugo and Cristal had duct-tape placed over their mouths. Then the masked gunmen searched through the apartment for anyone hiding in the bedrooms or bathrooms.
Why are they here? Who did they come for? Are they going to kill us? It ran through everyone’s minds. The panic and fear manifested on the captives’ faces didn’t do anything to their assailants. It was obvious that the three were heartless and cold-blooded. And, it was also clear that they were experienced. Cristal noticed the black gloves—they were not leaving behind any fingerprints—and the silencers at the tips of their guns—noise control.
One stepped toward Hugo with a .9mm with the silencer trained on his head and exclaimed, “Where the fuck is the money at?”
Hugo glared up at the gunman and boldly replied, “Fuck you!”
The butt of the .9mm came crashing down on Hugo’s forehead. He cried out as more blood spewed from his open wound. Cristal wept. Her family looked distraught. The masked gunmen were persistent in getting what they came for.
“The money, where is it?” the masked gunman repeated.
With hurt and agony written across his face, Hugo gazed up again and feebly replied, “I don’t have any money.”
He was hit again with the butt of the pistol, and again, and again, and again. His face turned red with blood, starting to look like hamburger meat.
“You’re killing him!” Cristal screamed. With all of her training, all of her kills, she would have never guessed that she would have got caught, slipping. Her guard was down when they burst in, and they’d subdued her before she could react.
Now Hugo lay listless in her arms. Her tears fell against him. Her hurt and pain penetrated the room. Hugo offered his pocket money to the assailants, but that was an insult. They came for a large lump sum, nothing less.
“Why are you here?” Cristal screamed.
“Okay, I see that we’re going to have to do this the hard way,” said the alpha gunman in the group.
He was tall, pushing six-two, and looked completely fit. Each gunman was clad in black jeans and a hoodie, with ski-masks concealing their identity. Frustrated, one of the gunmen walked up to Grandma Hattie. He stood over her like the Grim Reaper with his pistol trained on her head and with finality, asked, “Where is the money at?”
Hugo once again refused to reveal any information. Cristal cried out that he should just tell them, but Hugo didn’t budge. The gunman fired—Poot! Poot!—and two bullets ripped through the side of Grandma Hattie’s head, killing her instantly. As blood pooled beneath her, muffled crying was heard through the duct tape as her family gazed on in absolute anguish.
“That’s one down. And I swear to you, I’ll execute every last muthafucka in this room, one every fuckin’ minute, if we don’t get what we want,” the gunman assured, his cold eyes black like space.
Hugo still didn’t budge. He refused to give up his cash knowing they were going to execute him anyway. The look in the assailants’ eyes showed they had already made up their minds to kill everyone in the apartment once they’d rushed inside and duct-taped women, men, and kids. Hugo knew the game and how it was played. He had killed many men before in the same fashion; having once been a ruthless and violent stick-up kid coming up on the streets. He unwillingly found himself on the losing end of the pistol this time around. He would rather die as a man who didn’t flinch or beg for his life like some coward under the pressure. Hugo would rather die knowing these muthafuckas didn’t get their grubby hands on his hard-earned cash. And nobody was going to make a come-up off the blood that ran through his veins.
The men focused their attention on Cristal.
“Where the money at?” they asked.
She didn’t know. She stared at Hugo with her eyes pleading to him to fix the problem, to make it right. They’d already murdered her beloved grandmother.
Hugo shook his head slowly, remaining stoic. He wasn’t budging. If it was his day to die, then so be it. Cristal and her family were scared to death, but Cristal was also furious knowing time was running out. She knew her grandmother’s place didn’t have any money, but she helplessly hoped that Hugo could negotiate with their assailants—perhaps take the stick-up kids to his stash, and in return, they might let everyone live.
“Hugo, just tell them where everything is! Please, baby, for my family!” Cristal exclaimed hysterically.
The gunmen once again threatened to execute one victim per minute if their demands weren’t met. One of them stormed toward her Aunt Ruth and shoved the gun to the back of her head. He was ready to pull the trigger, but Cristal shouted out, “I have money! Lots of it!”
Everyone turned to look at her. “I have money, and it’s not stashed under some mattress or put away somewhere secretly. It’s in a bank account. It’s yours, every penny. It’s more money than you can spend. But it’s going to take some time to get it all out—at least twenty-four hours.”
They gazed at her but said nothing.
Her family thought she was talking gibberish, only trying to save them before the inevitable. They felt it was only rants coming from a woman who was about to die.
“Shut up!” one perpetrator demanded.
“Why? It’s the fuckin’ truth!” she screamed.
“We don’t want your money,” the shorter stocky goon stated coldly.
“Then what the fuck you want?! What is it?! This is my fuckin’ family! Please, have some mercy! You know who the fuck I am! Who I’m connected to!” she screamed out, ranting crazily.
The shorter stocky goon stood over Cristal and dryly returned, “I know who you are, and I’m still about to rock you to sleep.”
The television and radio was turned up to drown out their victims whimpering and muffled cries through the duct tape. And then one by one, Cristal helplessly watched the shortest and slimmest one of the crew start executing her family members, just innocent victims, by shooting them in the backs of their heads. Each one squirmed powerlessly on the floor trying to avoid being shot to death by the hot bullets slamming into the back of their brains. Mothers poorly tried to lie on top of their children to protect them from the hit, but to no avail. The killers were heart
less.
They didn’t speak much, especially the shortest one, who hadn’t spoken at all. They all stood over a potential victim and aimed, enjoying the moments their captives writhed and squirmed, only to fire two rounds into the back of each skull. The deadly process was repeated until many in the room dramatically dropped down to a handful still alive.
A six-year-old girl, dead. A nine-year-old cousin, dead. Her forty-year-old aunt, dead. Her uncle and first cousins, dead. Cristal began to give up. No longer did she have thoughts of overpowering the room and killing the three assailants, slowly. Her tear-stained face was in absolute misery. Her mind was clouded with grief and anger. Her emotions overwhelmed her and death surrounded her. Hugo remained emotionless. Numb. The pain of her family being violently murdered was too heavy to bear on her heart. She gasped and uncontrollably cried out with every life—young and old—being taken away.
Cristal fixed her teary eyes on the shortest goon, and all of a sudden, something about him stood out. The way he moved, along with his physique. She knew him, or should she say, her. The realization of the obvious—that she was the target, broke her heart into a million pieces. How could she have been so naïve to think she could outsmart the Commission?
Cristal glared at the shortest assailant and cried out with venom in her tone, “Tamar, I know that’s you! How could you? How could you do me and my family like this?”
Movement paused in the room and gunshots from the silencers came to an end, temporarily. Tamar pulled the ski-mask from off her face so her former best friend could see her clearly. Her long hair was pulled back into a tight braid and her hourglass figure was camouflaged with baggy jeans and an oversized black hoodie. Tamar tried her best to look like one of the murderous goons and blend in with the two male hoodlums. However, there wasn’t a disguise out there that Cristal couldn’t pick her out in.
Tamar walked over to Renee, Cristal’s mother, who was face down, duct tape around her mouth and hands bound. Her eyes showed fear. She looked at her daughter for comfort. She didn’t want to die.
“Ms. Renee, blame your daughter for this. Everything that happened today is her fault. She fucked up,” Tamar uttered coldly before putting two rounds into the back of her skull. The muffling and squirming came to an abrupt stop.
“Mommy!!! Nooo . . . not her! Noo!!!” Cristal sobbed profoundly. “Why, Tamar! Why?” her chest heaved convulsively and her eyes brimmed with anger. Mechanically, everyone in the room was shot down, including Hugo. They decided to save Mia, Cristal’s cousin, for last. They wanted her to witness. Tamar stood over Mia’s pregnant frame and smiled wickedly. She turned Mia face-up and stared into the woman’s eyes. Mia was distraught and plagued with tears as she gazed up at the smoking gun aimed at her. There was a moment of silence until Tamar fired six hot slugs into her pregnant belly.
“Why are you doing this, Tamar?” Cristal cried out heatedly. “At least give me that. I deserve an answer!”
Tamar gazed at her with a cold stare. The realization came front and center for Cristal. She knew the answer to her own question. It was never about money. Tamar crouched low toward Cristal and looked at her intently. “You know what this is about,” Tamar countered.
“I could have never done you so dirty,” Cristal felt betrayed, defeated. “Who’s behind this?!”
Tamar laughed wickedly. “It’s only business, Cristal. You know that. It was always about business—what we did, what we got ourselves into—business. But unfortunately for you, your name came up on the murdergram.”
“You’re a liar!” Cristal screamed. “Since when does the Commission execute a whole family, Tamar? We only take out our targets! You know you could have come at only me but you didn’t? Why would you do this?!”
“I want this to make the front page news...”
Tamar pointed her pistol at Cristal. Her murderous cohorts stood around to witness. Cristal braced herself for impact. Tamar fired; the first bullet pierced Cristal’s left ear. The second bullet grazed her head, splattering her blood all over. Two more body shots were fired, and then, silence.
They all were dead. But there was still more to do. The three murderers tore open a ki of white horse and started to sprinkle premium, high-quality, uncut cocaine around the apartment to make it look drug-related. And then before their exit, the Queen of Spades card, a symbol from their clique, was tossed on top of Cristal.
Murdergram delivered.
The two men were eager to leave the bloody apartment and receive their large pay that Tamar had promised them. But there would be no payday for her homies. Tamar turned her weapon on the masked men, getting the jump on them first, and fired a bullet into both of their heads. She left them among the dead with Cristal’s family. It would be the bloodiest scene the neighborhood would ever see.
Tamar exited the scene feeling like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. There was no remorse for the crimes she’d committed. In her twisted mind, what she had done had propelled her onto a new level, and it was like taking out the trash. She was officially alone. Everyone from her past was dead, even Mona. Tamar killed Mona because she refused to do the hit on Cristal, so Mona became a liability and Tamar strangled her in her Bronx apartment.
What Tamar didn’t know was that the murdergram on Cristal didn’t come from the Commission. The unsanctioned murdergram given to Tamar came directly from E.P.
Tamar left through the back door of the building, head low, and then she disappeared into the night. New York was about to become a memory for her. She had her sights set on going international.
Epilogue
Washington, D.C.
Two years later…
Tamar sat sunbathing on her twenty-third birthday, outside on the wrap-around terrace of her magnificent penthouse apartment in Georgetown.
Things were good as long as she made other people die, and by her hands alone, she’d executed dozens of murdergrams on the East Coast. She’d become a marksman with guns and canny with knives and explosives. E.P. didn’t come around often, but when he did he would always mention the half-bred Killer Doll. Just like Cristal, Tamar was infatuated and jealous of the assassin that executed her victims with a dagger. In Tamar’s delusional mind, they were in a competition.
Since dismantling the Cristal Clique, Tamar’s new name was Tee-Tzu, and with her deadly skills and a thirst to be at the top of her game, Tamar was ready to teach bitches the Art of War. She was now the one receiving the murdergrams from the Commission, and her most recent murdergram was to kill a woman named Melissa Chin.
Melissa Chin? Now why on the earth does the Commission want to get at her?
Murdergram, Part 1 Page 26
