The Innocents

by Nathan Senthil

  For the first few minutes, Roman and Bugsy discussed where to transact business. They still wandered around in Bugsy’s turf.

  Ryatt said, “Rome?” He was more than aware that this was the first time he addressed Roman by his first name, something that would surely rub him up the wrong way.

  “Rome?” Roman stopped his chatter with Bugsy and stared at Ryatt. “What happened to Mr. Roman—”

  Ryatt’s arm sprang out; a tight slap from the back of his right hand impeded Roman’s words, his paws shooting up to tend to his face.

  “What the—” Bugsy lurched from the backseat but froze midway. His face slowly drained all anger and became pale as all the movements in his body stopped.

  Roman lifted his fist to punch Ryatt, who calmly said, “Ask your boss if it’s really a good idea to do that.”

  Temples twisting in fury, Roman looked back. “Mr. Hat?”

  Bugsy replied with a subtle shake of the head.

  “If you so much as breathe fast, see how close my hand is to the horn.” Ryatt’s palm hovered over the center of the steering wheel for a moment before receding back to its circumference. “I’ll honk thrice.”

  Roman’s features displayed a kaleidoscope of confusion. “You’ll honk?”

  “That’s the signal for him to pull the trigger.”

  Roman looked even more flustered than before. “Him? Whose him?”

  Bugsy finally broke out of his trance and answered, “I have a gun pressing against my spinal cord. And it’s mighty fucking big.” His voice failed him at the last word.

  Roman’s face slowly showed recognition. “That little psycho bastard is with us, isn’t he?”

  Ryatt couldn’t help giggling. And Leo, from inside the trunk, cackled in return. “Yup. We cut out the backboard and put it together in a way that it’s easy to remove from the trunk.”

  Roman shook his head. “You unbelievable punks.”

  “Whatever.” Ryatt smirked. “Throw your gun out and hand me my baby back. I miss her.” Ryatt pressed a button on his side and Roman’s window rolled down. “Did you see that?!” His voice betrayed excitement. “I can lower your glass from here. Also look at the speedometer. It’s digital! Everything’s digital! What a time to live in!”

  Roman didn’t move.

  Ryatt let go of the wheel and traced the horn with a finger.

  “Do it, goddamn it,” Bugsy barked.

  Roman pulled out his gun and chucked it out the window. Then he returned Ryatt’s revolver to him.

  Ryatt roamed around the city, making sure no one followed them.

  For some time, Roman didn’t open his mouth. Until he got bored that was. “So that weasel punctured our car?”

  “Look who decided to stop pouting.” Ryatt rubbed Roman’s blond hair, which was oily. “And, yes. We built a small set-up inside the trunk, so Weasel let himself out and slashed your tire.”

  “But why?” Bugsy asked. “Why go through all this trouble?”

  “Survival,” Ryatt said.

  “What?”

  Ryatt did not answer.

  “What do you mean survival?” Bugsy asked.

  Ryatt rolled his eyes. Looked like the asshole would not shut up without an explanation, so he gave him one. “Once we deliver the MacSharp truck to you, you’d kill us three and dump us in Lake Michigan. Following tradition, probably slice open our torsos, so as not to let the gas build up inside and balloon us up to the water’s surface. Maybe tie cinder blocks to our feet, just in case. The world would never find our bodies as they’re slowly absorbed into the lakebed, eaten by bottom feeders and time.”

  “Is he for real?” Roman scoffed and turned to his boss.

  “We didn’t plan to kill you,” Bugsy said between his clenched teeth, as if that really was the truth.

  A little more frustration in his voice, Ryatt would have believed him. “Then why did you need us to do the job? You have every kind of low life working for you, including robbers.”

  “Cause like I said, all our guys are known to the cops. We needed fresh meat.”

  “Then why make us wear full masks? You’d have a better chance at the pigs not suspecting you if the witnesses said it was black kids who robbed the van.”

  “That’s too obvious a diversion, kid. Remember, me and my guys met you at your little recreational club the other day? At least one snitch must have seen it. So when the cops link the robbery to black kids, who do you think the snitches will point their fingers at?”

  Ryatt had to admit, he didn’t think this deeply.

  Bugsy shook his head. “You don’t understand all this yet. You’re not even shaving, and you’re playing at a man’s game.” From his facial expression, Ryatt could see that Bugsy was trying his best to stop himself from jumping up and throttling him. “We. Did. Not. Plan. To. Kill. You.”

  “Then you got nothing to worry about. We’ll finish the transaction and off you go.”

  Bugsy bit his lower lip. “Paranoid little shit.”

  Chapter 11

  December 25, 1981. 01:57 A.M

  Ryatt parked the Caddy between the MacSharp truck and the semi, all of them around ten meters apart from each other. Thomas jogged to the car, his eyes widening at the sight of their guests. “You gotta be…”

  “No, it’s happening,” Ryatt said.

  “You kidnapped the one person you don’t wanna fuck with in Detroit? What the hell?!” Thomas grabbed the hair on his sides. Leo cackled but Ryatt’s face was stern.

  “Not now, Buddha. I ain’t ready for your bitching. I literally had a trashy day.” Ryatt put his arm out. “Give me the Eagle.”

  Thomas looked at Bugsy apologetically. Then he ambled to the truck and returned with the gun, which he passed to Ryatt.

  Ryatt grabbed it and got down. “Clear.”

  The trunk lid flew up, and Leo stepped out with a shotgun. He was sweating profusely, his T-shirt smudged with dust and oil.

  Finally, Bugsy relaxed and without waiting for instructions, stepped out of the car. So did Roman.

  Ryatt had nothing to fear though. The pistol in his hand, ‘Desert Eagle’ the inscription on it read, was a strong backup. As he tapped its hefty barrel against his palm, he got reminded that this gun was not easy to maneuver like the SW. So he brought down his confidence level a notch. “Desert Eagle is heavy. Almost thrice my gun,” Ryatt spoke to Thomas. “Need some training.”

  “What’s a Desert Eagle?” Roman asked.

  Funny. Ryatt would have thought that Bugsy and Roman didn’t have secrets between them.

  “An impressive pistol that’s not going to hit the markets for a few years,” Bugsy answered.

  “A prototype,” Thomas said.

  “Yes. MacSharp has been stealing designs from Magnum.”

  “So they can’t report the hijacking,” Ryatt thought out loud.

  “No, they can’t. That’s the whole point. Listen here, kid,” Bugsy said. “Don’t make this any worse for yourself than you already have. Give us the weapon crates, get your damn money, and we’ll pretend this whole thing never happened.”

  “What if I wanna?” Ryatt asked.

  “What?” Bugsy screwed his face.

  “I said what if I wanna make this worse?”

  “I don’t get—”

  In one casual but flickering movement, Ryatt shot Roman.

  On his left knee.

  The bones splintered open and a bloody mist sprayed back. Ryatt could visualize the kneecap exploding by the velocity of .44. For all intents and purposes, Roman’s chunky leg was severed. Such was the raw power of this pistol, Ryatt had learned when he first opened the crates and tested it out. The recoil was the worst, but Ryatt was born for taming guns like this. In fact, he kind of liked the kick. What he didn’t like though was the sound. It deafened him for a minute every time he fired the damn pistol. He ought to do something about it.

  “Santa Maria…” Roman muttered as his knee buckled under him. He tilted sideways and cr
ashed on the ground like a soaked log.

  Bugsy gawked at Roman in horror, then turned to Ryatt, his eyes spewing venom before his mouth did. “What the fuck?!”

  As he stepped forward, Leo rammed the butt of the shotgun at the back of his head. Bugsy fell. To make sure he stayed down, Leo repeated the strike. Still Bugsy slowly tried to get up, disoriented.

  “I can’t smack any harder,” Leo whined.

  “Not like that you can’t,” Ryatt said. “Grab the barrel and hold it like a mallet at a game of high striker.” Ryatt showed him how by doing it empty-handed. “Then whack him in the head. But be sure there’s no round in the chamber.”

  Leo emptied the gun and lifted it over his head.

  “Stop it.” Thomas got fidgety. “Please, Lolly.”

  Leo watched them both like mice peeking out of a hole, unsure.

  As Ryatt held his chin and put up a show of pondering, Leo cackled and brought down the stock on Bugsy, who finally went to sleep.

  * * *

  “What the fuck?” Bugsy asked when he came to and found that he couldn’t move. He was fastened to the metal bedding of the semi, wrists and ankles tied to the corners of the container with nylon ropes. The underboss of a Mafia family sprawled on the floor like an X, butt naked, taught Ryatt an important lesson: never be brash.

  “Why?” Bugsy asked. “I told you we ain’t planning to kill you.”

  “You really weren’t?” Ryatt scratched his chin.

  “No!” Spittle shot out of Bugsy’s mouth.

  Hm. Maybe they weren’t. Ryatt was indeed becoming paranoid. Good. That meant he would take better care of himself and stay vigilant.

  Ryatt said, “Don’t make no difference.” He walked out of Bugsy’s field of vision. From a corner, he grabbed a device and dragged it towards Bugsy. As it was heavily grating against the metal floor, their hostage anxiously tried to get a glimpse of it.

  Bugsy’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets when he saw what Ryatt was tugging. His fingers scrabbled blindly before catching hold of Ryatt’s pant leg. “No, no, no, no, no—”

  Ryatt yanked it away. “Take your damn mitts off my leg.”

  He lifted the jackhammer and put the chisel near Bugsy’s head, which landed with a loud clank. “Say Hi to Jack.”

  Bugsy shook like a fish caught in a net, thumping on the floor.

  “Badger. Grab the fucker.”

  Leo cackled and wrestled Bugsy’s left arm down. He was comically small compared to Bugsy, but as he put his entire weight on one forearm—pinning it down with his hands and knees—it was highly secure.

  “Please, please, please, just listen to me for one second…” Bugsy’s desperate words tumbled out like an unrestrained flash flood.

  Ryatt hauled the tool and placed it on Bugsy’s left shoulder. On its touch, he tried to jerk aside, but to no avail. The rusty tip wedged itself between the sockets, scratching off his white skin and smearing it with dark tar particles from its previous job.

  “Oops. Almost forgot.” Ryatt took out a lollipop from his jeans and put it in his mouth. “Can’t forget this.”

  Bugsy shouted. “No! Why?!”

  Bugsy would never know why this was happening. Just like how Ryatt would never dare to find what exactly Bugsy did to his mom, and if the rumors on the streets had any truth to them.

  “Why?” Ryatt smiled while also shedding tears. “The axe forgets; but the tree remembers.”

  Three pairs of arms and shoulders stiffened in anticipation of Jack’s force, when Ryatt took a deep breath and pressed the switch.

  Nothing happened.

  Ryatt frowned and lifted its cable to check it was connected to the generator. It was.

  He asked Thomas, “What’s wrong with this piece of sh—”

  A whimper interrupted him. Ryatt looked down and found Bugsy crying in a low-pitched voice.

  “Pipe down.”

  But Bugsy didn’t. He shook uncontrollably.

  “I said shut your fucking yap.” Ryatt put his sneaker on Bugsy’s mouth and shushed the sniveling pig, then he looked up at Thomas. “Hey. It ain’t working?”

  “The generator,” Thomas said without turning. He was sitting at the entrance, keeping watch. How did he know what the problem was without even looking at anything?

  “What about it? Jack’s connected to the generator.”

  “Start the damn thing first, fool.”

  “Oh,” Ryatt felt his cheeks getting hot. “Come in and turn it on, Buddha. We all got our hands full.”

  Thomas did as he was told, trying his hardest to not look at the threesome.

  “What you mad at me for?” Ryatt scratched the back of his head.

  Jack slipped from Ryatt’s one-handed grip and plummeted towards Bugsy’s petrified face. But Ryatt grabbed it at the last moment and apologized. A little damage was however done. The chisel had gouged a patch of Bugsy’s skin and it was bleeding. “Sorry. My bad. Totally new to this whole torture thing.”

  When the generator started, Bugsy said, “Pi—pi fauri—”

  “Here we go!” Ryatt pressed the button, and Jack’s metal tip drilled into Bugsy’s shoulder. He writhed as if he had been electrocuted. The blood spritzing out of the pounded meat, along with the smell of exhaust fumes, merged together and formed a hypnotizing odor. It didn’t take Jack more than a minute to pierce through the body and batter the steel floor beneath.

  When Ryatt let up, he was exhausted. Though they weren’t trying to amputate the limb but just pulverize the bones underneath, operating Jack even for a short while was an exacting task.

  “… disembowel you, you cocksucking son of a whore.” Bugsy screamed.

  Ryatt grinned, having gained a sudden burst of motivation. He told Leo, “The leg.”

  “Wh— no, no!”

  Leo grabbed the leg and Ryatt went to work. As Jack speared its way between Bugsy’s hip and femur, his threats slowly turned into driveling beggary.

  Jack seamlessly shattered the bones, like they were potato chips. The only complaint Ryatt had with Jack was that its motor was extremely noisy. The ear-splitting sound overlapped the wailing of Bugsy, and Ryatt had to strain hard to even pick out bits and pieces of it.

  When Ryatt was done, he stopped the machine and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  Leo released Bugsy’s thigh, and the leg moved like jelly, independent from the torso.

  In spite of his eardrums being numb, Ryatt heard Thomas coughing and heaving. He looked up in time to see his burly friend hurry to a bush, which he eventually decorated with puke. Ryatt didn’t feel disgusted because his hatred for Bugsy superseded his revulsion. But what about Leo? He acted cool, just another day in the job. Ryatt didn’t know, didn’t want to know, what made Leo this strong. Or broken.

  “Done?” Leo asked.

  Ryatt examined the partially destroyed man on the floor. Bugsy’s face didn’t yet show the same level of agony Ryatt had seen in Iris’s face whenever he visited her. “Nope. Only halfway done.”

  Bugsy muttered something. Could be English or Italian. It came out as air and thin sprinkles of saliva. But when Jack started the penetration once again, some mysterious entity infused Bugsy with the energy to communicate in the language understood by every human on the planet: the guttural cry.

  However, to Ryatt’s chagrin, Bugsy made no noise when the duo went to work on the last limb. Bugsy took the pummeling without any resistance whatsoever. Flogging a dead horse. In this case, hammering.

  When they finished, Leo looked up and regarded Ryatt’s face.

  “What you staring at?” Ryatt panted. “You think it’s a beautiful moment to declare your love for me?”

  “Fuck you, I ain’t no homo.” Leo cackled.

  Ryatt closed his eyes and sniffed. The unmistakable rank of defecation floated in the air. “This asshole shat himself?”

  Leo shrugged. “Guess so. Didn’t hear it in all this racket.”

  “Ew, bail.” Ryatt let go of Jac
k’s handle, and the 60-pound machine fell atop Bugsy who didn’t even react.

  As they jumped down and made their way to the exit, Ryatt spotted Roman crawling towards the container.

  “Hey Cheesecake!” Ryatt called him. “Now I know what you meant when you said shitty trap.”

  Leo and Ryatt burst out laughing while Roman cried and muttered something. Then he resumed his crawling, his leg brushing along a red streak on his trail.

  “Cocksure douchebags,” Ryatt said.

  “Yeah,” Leo agreed.

  Outside, Thomas was making divots on the damp earth with his boot, looking pale and nauseous.

  “You okay in there?” Ryatt asked.

  Thomas gave Ryatt an are-you-kidding-me look. “Detroit’s too hot now. Cops and gangsters are both after us.”

  Ryatt nodded. “We go nomadic.”

  “How? All we know is our city.”

  “We don’t have to know. Just watch, learn, plan, kill, rob, and jump to the next place.” Ryatt pointed his chin at the weapons truck. “We have the means.”

  “Means?” Thomas frowned.

  “Yes.” Ryatt pulled the Desert Eagle and caressed its robust barrel. “Let’s go find ourselves some profitable ends.”

  Chapter 12

  November 24, 1994. 12:21 P.M.

  The aroma of turkey permeated Ryatt’s dreams. Nothing beat spending the cold Detroit morning in a Jacuzzi and napping afterwards, then waking up to the delectable smell of lunch. Especially on Thanksgiving.

  Ryatt began making his bed. An imaginary price tag at its corner read $7,050. The exclusive mattress, the pillows, the duvet, all came from Duxiana, a company of luxury bed engineers based in Sweden.

  He’d bought them with his share of the profits from a bank robbery they’d performed in Minneapolis.

  Thanks to Ryatt’s regime of reckless violence, precise execution and meticulous planning, they had never failed once. Shoot first, talk later.

  At the Minneapolis job, Ryatt, as soon as he burst through the front door, shot a customer waiting in the queue to withdraw money. A bullet to the back of the head splattered his brain across the cashier’s window. The terror-stricken cashier was then transformed to putty in Ryatt’s hand. Just the way he liked them.