Murdergram, Part 2 Page 13

  ...

  Sharon cruised through Harlem in her Fiat and came to a stop on the block where Pike was killed. She stepped out of her car under a graying sky and took a deep breath.

  Going back to the scene where he was killed was always hard for her. She remembered that day so vividly. She remembered being somewhat incapacitated because she had been jumped by Meesha’s crew, and Pike was there to have her back. It had started out to be a wonderful morning. He made her some tea, toast, and scrambled eggs, and was taking care of her. He had placed everything on a breakfast tray and served her breakfast in bed. He was going to pick up her prescription from the pharmacy.

  Standing on the sidewalk, she peered up at the apartment they’d once shared. That day began to flood into her head again. She could see Pike getting dressed, ready to head to the store. He gave her a hug and kiss, donned his jacket, and the last words he ever said to her were, “Baby, I’ll be right back.”

  She would never forget it. She could clearly hear him saying it, like he was standing right next to her. Then she remembered what happened right after he left—those dreadful gunshots ringing out.

  Just thinking about it all over again brought tears to her eyes. She needed to take a deep breath and relax. It had been a few years now, but the pain was still fresh in her heart, especially with his case still open and the way she’d submerged herself in it.

  She walked around the area, searching for one or two witnesses to talk to, if they were still around. She was willing to offer cash, ten or twenty dollars, to anyone who could point her in the right direction. She’d brought with her pictures of two young females, Tamar and Cristal. She had a gut feeling about something, but it was also hard to think her childhood friends could’ve had something to do with Pike’s murder, but she couldn’t escape the nagging feeling.

  After an hour of walking, questioning people, and being relentless, she got what she needed. Sharon found one of the witnesses from that day, the crackhead Wilson, in a vacant apartment off Eighth Avenue.

  Rochelle was lingering in a stairway, sitting there with a male friend. It was obvious they were about to get high. She looked like a bag of bones, her face sunken in like a skeleton, her stringy, unkempt hair a tangled mess.

  Sharon interrupted their moment of bliss. “Rochelle Wilson, right?” she asked.

  Rochelle became startled by Sharon’s sudden presence in the dimmed stairway. She was ready to leave, thinking there was going to be trouble, and her male friend was about to do the same.

  Sharon quickly identified herself. “I’m not here to hurt or arrest you. Yes, I’m a cop, but I just want to ask you a few questions.”

  Rochelle and her friend looked unsure about what to do.

  “It’s about a crime you witnessed a few years back, here in Harlem. A young man was murdered,” Sharon said softly.

  “I don’t remember no damn murder.” Rochelle was fidgety and didn’t look Sharon directly in her eyes.

  “I’m sure you do. You gave your testimony to the detective.”

  The male sat quietly and timidly on the stairwell. He was frail-looking himself and far from a threat to Sharon. The only thing he seemed to care about was getting high.

  Sharon stepped closer to Rochelle and said, “In your statement, you said you was sure that you got a good look at the occupants in the car, and you told the detective you swore it was two females in that car, not two men. You said they had on dark hoods. Can you elaborate more about that day?”

  “Look, I don’t remember anything about any murder.”

  “Just think.”

  Sharon pulled out the two small pictures of Tamar and Cristal and placed them directly in Rochelle’s face. “Look at these two ladies clearly. Was one of them, or both, in that car that day?”

  Rochelle went from looking edgy to agitated.

  “The picture on the left, her name is Tamar. Does she look familiar to you? Could it have been her you saw that day? Just take your time and look at the damn picture!”

  “Look, I can’t remember anything about that day.”

  Sharon exclaimed again, “Look at the fuckin’ picture, and just let me know—Do the one on the left look familiar to you?” She shoved the picture in the woman’s face, almost coercing her to give the right answer.

  “It could be the driver, but she don’t look like her. It was too long ago, okay? I don’t fuckin’ remember her,” Rochelle spat. “It wasn’t her!”

  “You need to fuckin’ remember!” Sharon grabbed at the crackhead, clutching her clothing tight, almost slamming her into the wall.

  “Get off me! Get off me!” Rochelle screamed. “Help! Help!”

  The frail male took off running upstairs.

  “Get off me! Please! I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t remember. I don’t remember.”

  Sharon came to her senses and released her taut grip from the woman’s tattered clothing. What was she doing? It had happened again. She had lost control of herself.

  ...

  It wasn’t the first time Sharon had badgered a witness. A few days earlier, she had gone to talk to a direct witness to the murder at her home. She’d found Cassandra McCollum’s address and made an unannounced visit. She’d lived across the hall from Pike. She was a high-school senior at the time and so happened to be leaving the building lobby when Pike was killed. His death unfolded right before her eyes.

  Sharon’s girl-to-girl talk with the young woman escalated into a heated shouting match between them in the apartment. Cassandra said she saw two men in black, but Sharon tried to convince her that maybe it was two females dressed in black, to make it look like it was two males. But Cassandra was adamant about what she saw. She wasn’t changing her mind, and it made Sharon upset.

  Cassandra filed a complaint at Sharon’s precinct, and she was given a warning.

  ...

  Sharon stepped away from Rochelle, looking at the woman apologetically. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Fuck you! This is police harassment!” she exclaimed, looking teary-eyed at Sharon.

  “I’m sorry. I just have a lot of things on my mind.”

  “I’m gonna have your badge for this!”

  Sharon didn’t take her threat seriously, figuring that by the next time she got high, being drug-addicted, she would forget the whole thing. She pivoted away from the woman and exited the building.

  The sky had gotten darker, like her mood. Things seemed to be going nowhere for her. She climbed into her car and sat behind the steering wheel for a moment. She thought about Pike. She always thought about him, every day. She missed him. She didn’t want him to be forgotten.

  She took a deep breath and said into the air, “I’m trying.” She wiped away a few tears that fell from her eyes and started the car.

  Eighteen

  It wasn’t an issue of when she was going to kill Hector Guzman, but how. Tamar debated with herself if it should be done up close and personal—with a knife, a razor, or her bare hands—or from afar, with a sniper rifle possibly, or maybe poison. The thrill for her in taking out a target up close, where her victims could see her face, was the feeling that she’d snatched away their life. It brought pleasure to her to watch them die; to see their lives slowly vanish from their eyes.

  She arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico in the middle of the afternoon. Santa Fe, the oldest capital city in the United States, was getting ready for a lively festival called the Fiestas de Santa Fe, an event held during the second week of September, commemorating the re-conquest of Santa Fe in 1692 by the Spanish after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. It brought many tourists into the city, giving Tamar the perfect cover.

  She arrived in Santa Fe after landing at Albuquerque International Sunport on a midnight flight and renting a car. From there, she drove Highway 550, an isolated and barren thoroughfare. The stars in New Mexico looked so close, you could reach out and take one home with you.

  It was her first time in New Mexico. Immediately, Tamar hated the place. San
ta Fe was hot and desolate-looking. She was only there to do a job and didn’t plan on staying long.

  Hector Guzman was a drug lord who wanted to retire against his affiliate’s wishes. The report on Hector was that he was a ruthless and coldblooded kingpin. He had smuggled billions of dollars’ worth of cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamines into the United States, and fought vicious turf wars with other Mexicans gangs.

  Tens of thousands of people had been killed in the fighting, and many of his victims had been tortured, beheaded, and their bodies dumped in a public place or in mass graves. The violence had ravaged border cities and even beach resorts like Acapulco.

  He was dangerous, unpredictable, and loved wild animals. His favorite animal was the tiger. He was known for raising a few Bengal tigers, which he would starve for days, and then for fun and cruelty, he would feed them by throwing his enemies and victims into the tiger pit. He enjoyed watching his animals viciously tear and shred men and women to pieces right before his eyes. It was his entertainment; he would sit and watch the carnage like it was a football game.

  Now, Hector was a marked man, wanted dead by the same cartel he had helped build and had made rich. He’d fled from Mexico into New Mexico with twenty million of their cash and hoped to disappear. But Tamar was about to prove him wrong, and she wanted to make a spectacle out of it if she could.

  She got to know his routine, his likes and dislikes. She’d done surveillance on where he laid his head, an impressive split-level Mediterranean home in Hacienda Santa Fe with five bedrooms and five bathrooms, remodeled with chiseled travertine floors, vaulted ceilings, a granite kitchen with breakfast bar and center island, a fireplace, a large pool, spa, and horses, along with an escape tunnel a mile long. The doors to the house were reinforced with steel, and surveillance cameras covered every square inch of the place.

  She’d studied the blueprint to the home and remembered the layout from room to room. One mistake could cause her demise.

  ...

  The Fiestas de Santa Fe opened with a procession bearing a statue of the Blessed Virgin, known as La Conquistadora, to the St. Francis Cathedral. Tamar blended in with the crowd as she stalked her target. Hector Guzman was a short five foot six with a black moustache, wearing a cream shirt, dark jeans, and a cowboy hat.

  The revelry started with the burning of Zozobra, also known as “Old Man Gloom,” a huge effigy whose demise at the hands of a torch-bearing dancer symbolized the banishing of cares for the year. The event wasn’t for the faint of heart and could be downright scary for small children.

  Hector, flanked by his armed men, was enjoying the evening like he was an average citizen of the city. He smiled and laughed, ate red ristras like they were crackers, and even flirted with a few beautiful young ladies.

  Tamar cleverly followed him around the festival. She watched him and his men escort a few beautiful young ladies back into his armored SUV. There was no need to follow them, since she had already placed a tracker on the undercarriage of the SUV.

  ...

  Clad in a leopard Speedo, Hector Guzman put on a show for the three naked ladies that decorated his king-size bed. He was a hairy, shapeless man with a small gut, but the ladies didn’t mind, because his money and power made him attractive. They drank expensive champagne and had three lines of cocaine on a glass mirror by the side of the bed.

  One girl took a rolled up a hundred-dollar bill, put it to her nose, and did one long line without pausing.

  The second girl went up to Hector with a teasing smile and kissed him on his stomach, while grabbing his crotch. She was ready to please him.

  Hector cupped her B-size breasts and toyed with her nipples as she slid down his Speedo and didn’t hesitate to take his small dick inside of her mouth.

  “Yes, yes. Now this is my kind of party,” he said.

  She sucked him off, while the next girl went to help with the dick, sucking on his balls. The third, high off cocaine too, grabbed Hector from behind, ready to have sex with him and the other girls.

  As the ménage à quatre was about to ensue, everyone in the room failed to realize that they had unexpected company in the bedroom. From in the shadows, Tamar, in a tight, all-black spandex suit, looked at the three sluts sucking off the drug lord’s little dick with a blank gaze. In her hands were two black SIG Sauer P220Rs with silencers at the end of both barrels.

  The girls pulled Hector onto the bed so that he was lying on his back while one straddled his chest and the other two whores continued sucking his little dick.

  Tamar was ready to take him out. She wasn’t worried about the guards. They’d all been killed—eight of his men, gone within the blink of an eye. The first two she took care of at the front entrance. One was shot in his eye, the second in the back of his neck.

  Inside, she’d caught the next three swiftly in the living room. Three accurate shots into their foreheads, and before they could even blink, they dropped dead. She’d quickly moved behind the next guard and slit his throat while he was exiting a room. For the last two, she snuck behind one and put a long, sharp blade through his heart and gunned down the last man before he could react. Now Hector Guzman had no one to protect him, but his bitches.

  Before the party got too heated, Tamar removed herself from the shadows of the bedroom and loomed into their sight. One of the girls screamed, seeing the female assassin in all-black with two guns in her hands.

  Hector spun around, taken aback by her abrupt appearance. “What is this?”

  Tamar looked at him with a cold, stoic expression.

  “Such a beautiful little girl with big guns. You sure you know what you’re doing with them toys? You know who I am? Let’s not get hurt here,” he said. “My men are all around this place.”

  “No, they’re not,” she said. “They have already been taken care of.”

  Hector suddenly looked spooked. “Who are you? Who sent you?”

  Tamar said, “You already know about the mistake you made.”

  The bitches whimpered with fright as they looked on in horror at death waiting.

  “I’m a rich man. I’ll pay you triple what they’re paying you. We can talk about this. You seem like a very rational person. I’m a man of my word.”

  She raised both of her guns in their direction, and the girls cried out.

  Hector scowled, knowing what was about to come next. “Please, don’t do this to me, not like this!” he shouted.

  She opened fire.

  Poot! Poot! Poot! Poot! Poot! Poot! Poot!

  Blood splattered everywhere on the bed and in the room, but Hector Guzman was still alive. He didn’t have a single hole in him.

  Tamar had slaughtered all three ladies, leaving their bloody, naked bodies contorted on the king-size bed around him.

  “I have a different arrangement for you,” she told him.

  “What’s going on?”

  She raised the gun to his head and said sternly, “Let’s go!”

  “Like this?”

  “Yes.”

  Hector slowly stood up from the bed. He no longer looked like a dangerous kingpin, but an aging man in bad underwear.

  Tamar quickly restrained his wrists behind him with a zip tie and led him out of the bedroom. They walked past all eight of Hector’s slaughtered men as she ushered him toward the front exit.

  Outside, Tamar pushed Hector into the trunk of her rental car and locked him inside. The ignition started, and they went for a drive. She drove on the 502 for a short stretch and then took a dirt road right off the 502, where there was nothing but trees, hills, rocks, and dirt.

  Twenty-five minutes later they finally came to a stop in a dark and isolated spot. Tamar killed the ignition and got out.

  She opened the trunk and ordered Hector, still in his Speedo and his hands restrained from the zip tie, out of the car at gunpoint.

  With her gun still trained on Hector, she led him deeper into the rough country, where there wasn’t anyone around for miles. Hector couldn’t
help himself; he was panicking.

  “My offer still stands,” he said. “I can make you a very rich woman.”

  “I’m already a rich woman,” she countered.

  “There must be something you want.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  He turned to face her while being shoved forward, wanting to hear what she had to say. “Tell me and it’s yours.”

  “I want for you to die and for me to leave Santa Fe and head back home to New York,” she said matter-of-factly.

  They approached an area in the woods where the ground was disturbed and a large pit had been dug up. She marched him closer.

  “Please, don’t do this to me!” he shouted.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m begging you! Not like this! I don’t want to die!” he exclaimed.

  Tamar raised her gun and aimed it at him. No matter where he turned, his fate was sealed. He stood inches away from the pit, shivering.

  “Either you jump in, or I’ll shoot you and toss your body in.” she said.

  “No, no. Please, not like this!”

  Tamar, sick of his whimpering and pathetic attempts to change her mind, aimed her pistol at his kneecap and fired. His kneecap exploded from the bullet ripping through it, and he stumbled backwards, falling into the pit.

  Immediately, Tamar emptied her clip into him, silencing his pleas.

  Now it was time to get back home. Melissa Chin still haunted Tamar, and she was at a complete loss as to how to find her.

  Nineteen

  Tamar wasn’t home for twenty-four hours when E.P. came storming into her apartment, scowling and looking like he was on the brink of a breakdown. He glared at Tamar. He didn’t care that she’d completed the Hector Guzman contract smoothly. He was tired of hearing about her failures when it came to eliminating Melissa Chin.

  “You dumb bitch!” he shouted, his eyes brimming with anger.

  Tamar screamed back, “What do you want from me, E.P.? I fuckin’ told you she disappeared, left a note behind, mocking us. Mocking me!”

  “You’re useless.”

  “I’m doing my fuckin’ best!”