The Innocents

by Nathan Senthil

  “I’m sorry,” the pig said.

  “Sorry?” the woman’s voice rose a notch. “This is how it has been for months. I can’t…” She sighed. “I don’t think I even love you anymore.”

  “Come on.” The pig looked up and grabbed the woman’s elbow. “Don’t say that.”

  She yanked out of his clasp. “Now that I think about it, I don’t even know how I ever loved your pathetic ass.”

  Ryatt winced.

  “What should I do? Just tell me. I’m ready to give you anything you want.”

  “A goddamn divorce.” She spat.

  The pig stared at his wife, his lips quivering. Finally he put his head down and muttered, “Fine.”

  “Look at me when I’m speaking to you, not at your fucking shoes.” The woman swung her hand, and the slap landed with a heavy thwack.

  Ryatt winced again. True, he was here to end the man, but he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. However, the pig sat without any movement whatsoever. As if he had not been hit on his ear by his wife.

  “React, goddamn it!” the woman shouted. But her voice wasn’t domineering anymore. It sounded grainy, as if she was on the verge of crying.

  It looked like the pig picked up on that, too. He heaved himself to his feet and walked towards the woman.

  “Don’t you dare come near… don’t you touch me, you piece of…”

  The pig wrapped his arms around the woman. She tried to push him away, but she really wasn’t putting any muscle into it. Then she broke into a cry.

  “I love you,” the pig said. “I’m so sorry for hurting you.”

  The woman, now bawling like a kid, clasped his collar. “Please leave this job.”

  The pig eased up, took her by the shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “I really think it’s best if you leave me.”

  The cry became hysterical as she once again buried her face into his chest. The pig caressed her head as she let it all out. Two full minutes had gone by, before the woman calmed.

  She cupped his hands in hers and kissed it. “Do you think you can make this world a better place all by yourself?”

  “I… I don’t,” the pig said, his voice trembling. “But I can’t stand idly by when bad people make this world worse for everyone else.”

  Ryatt frowned and something clicked in his mind. His mouth dried and heart raced.

  “Pl-please…” she implored.

  “I am sorry.”

  Face twisting in rage and vehemence, the woman swatted his hands and lifted her arm once again. But she didn’t hit. A few moments passed, and she dropped her hand, as if it weighed a ton. “There are some leftovers on the table,” she said and walked away. Ryatt had to rise a little and lean left to see her.

  The pig… no, the detective followed her as she trudged to a room. She stopped at the threshold, one of her arms holding the door frame, barricading entry. Should be their bedroom.

  The detective opened his mouth, but closed it before saying anything. He repeated the action two more times, like an amnesiac goldfish.

  The woman sighed. “I packed already. I’m leaving in the morning.” With the back of her wrist, she smeared the tears cascading down her cheeks without consent. “I-I’m sorry. I just… I just can’t.”

  Still shaking, she closed the door ever so slightly. Joshua lingered, watching the door. Then he wiped his face on his shoulder and sniffled.

  Silently witnessing all this, Ryatt couldn’t breathe or swallow easily.

  Ryatt never had a problem killing because he didn’t believe good people existed. Any person who didn’t try to stop evil deeds happening before their eyes was bad, weren’t they?

  Except his mom, every single one of them was as selfish as they came, including himself.

  Even pigs did their duties, got paid, and didn’t give a shit about good and evil. But this Joshua, his demeanor, his voice, it all suggested that he was dying inside. He was going way out of his way to sacrifice his marriage, hence his life and happiness, to catch Ryatt.

  To stop evil.

  With difficulty, Ryatt digested a truth that had dawned on him a while ago: Joshua was like Iris. They both belonged to the unlucky clique of angels God had forgotten to collect when he abandoned the world usurped by demons.

  “Hello?” a voice called from above, jolting him.

  Heart pounding, Ryatt looked up.

  A small head was protruding out of the window on the second floor, the eyes on it peering at him. The boy waved and Ryatt returned the gesture.

  “A-a-are you hungry, M-mister?” the boy asked and brandished half a cookie with the other hand. “Want s-s-some?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Ryatt grinned and looked around. The streets were still quiet. He grabbed hold of the tendrils and climbed up.

  The boy’s room was small. Painted in periwinkle blue, it had no posters or drawings. Books were strewn across the floor but no toys or video games or TV.

  The boy was sitting down, his legs tucked under him. He stretched his arm towards Ryatt, holding the cookie he had been eating. But the cookie slipped from his fingers. Seemed like the little one had difficulty with movements.

  The boy picked up the cookie and gave it to Ryatt again, who accepted the generous offer and tossed the whole thing in his mouth. It was coconut flavored, laced with butter and cashew.

  What was the boy doing up at this time? The ruckus downstairs would have woken him up. The half-asleep child treated himself to a cookie, evidently quenching the sugar crave you get when randomly woken up in the middle of the night.

  Snaking a hand into his jacket, Ryatt knelt down in front of the boy and watched his big brown eyes. He pulled out a lollipop and gave it to the boy who accepted it hesitantly.

  “I could be called a villain.” Ryatt shrugged as if that was not his problem, but a universal fact that everyone just had to deal with. “But even I love superheroes. You know who my favorite is?”

  The boy shook his head, absent-mindedly toying with the lollipop.

  “My mom.” Ryatt smiled. “You know who yours should be, handsome?”

  The boy smiled shyly and shook his head again, picking his nose.

  “Your dad.” Ryatt gave the boy’s bony shoulders a gentle squeeze. “He’s a goddamn hero.”

  Ryatt put his head down, ashamed for having planned to kill Joshua and deprive this world of yet another good person.

  Then he lifted his head. “You never forget that, you hear?”

  The boy nodded and began unwrapping the candy cover.

  Ryatt got up and slogged to the window. As he swung a leg over the ledge, he halted and turned to look at the boy one last time. He gave Ryatt a beautiful smile that filled his heart with pure joy. The child must also be an angel. An angel that would inevitably rise above and make this world a better place. Like his mom. Like Detective Chase.

  Ryatt just had to ask. “What’s your name, tiger?”

  “G-G-Ga…” The boy closed his eyes and tilted his chin up, as he struggled to construct the word. Then he said, in the feeblest of voices, “Gabriel.”

  Part II: Joshua

  Chapter 16

  November 24, 1994. 11:13 A.M.

  The piano played in the background a crude, repetitive tune, as he shuffled along in a queue, waiting to deposit cash. The music was temporarily overlapped by commotion.

  The ground in front of him caved in. From the smoldering hole, three entities clambered up. Red, blue, and pale green faced demons.

  While the red and blue disappeared somewhere, the green masked demon snarled at him. Then it pulled out a huge gun with its claw, blood dripping from the muzzle.

  Two loud explosions!

  Stunned, he looked back. A woman sprawled on the floor, her pinkish red entrails drooped from a grisly laceration in her stomach, onto the shiny marble.

  Wait… two explosions?

  He looked down. A red dot appeared on his chest and slowly stretched into a wide blot. Sudden darkness sucke
d his mind. He unfurled his fingers. Let the coldness consume him.

  But…

  Why is that goddamn piano still playing its goddamn jingle?

  * * *

  Joshua awoke with a start, springing up so fast that his forehead banged on something hard. Cupping the hurt, he lay back again, grunting.

  Promising retribution to his injured noggin, he opened his eyes. To his chagrin, he found the upper half of his body stuck underneath the bed.

  The tune from the nightmare blared again, giving him another start. Was he not in reality yet? Where did that sound—

  His new cell phone!

  He rolled out and shot up to his feet. Now there was a stunt his alcoholic ass shouldn’t have pulled. Always sorrier than safe, he gritted his teeth through the comeuppance. The mother of all headaches exploded within his cranium. The edges of his vision darkened while the center flickered with a bright blur. Nausea followed almost immediately, his hand covering his dry mouth.

  But nothing came. False alarm. Or it could be true, but just a bit sooner.

  He lumbered to the other side of the room, where his table stood. On its top vibrated a Nokia Cityman 300, playing that monotonous tune, its LCD display glowing in the semi dark room.

  He picked it up and pressed the green receiver button.

  “That’s fast enough,” the voice on the other end said, generous with sarcasm. “Let me guess. Another all-nighter?”

  “I’m close, Ray.” Joshua rummaged through the stuff on the table and lifted a wild newspaper. Hiding under it was a Skoal tin. Joshua loved dipping tobacco, but his wife’s aversion to him squirting brown liquid every tenth second made him switch. Now he used snus. No spit. No bulge. Certainly no smoke. Just all the cancerous goodness of tobacco.

  “You gotta let go, man,” Raymond said, his voice tired. “It’s not our responsibility now.”

  “I’ll take you to the victims’ families. Can you tell them that?”

  Silence.

  “Thought so. What’s your problem anyway? I’m working my shift and do this in my spare time. Why do you care?”

  Joshua twisted the cap open, plucked out two pouches, and fixed them between his gums and cheeks. A rush of energy coursed through his veins and hammered the hangover back into the nothingness from where it came.

  “I care because you drink a lot, you only eat once a day, if that, and your marriage is practically in the coffin. All that’s left to do is bury it.”

  It was Joshua’s turn to be quiet. He didn’t remember getting back home last night. But seeing that he had been sleeping on the floor and his wife hadn’t woken him up when she left for work, Raymond was correct. His marriage was as good as dead.

  It hadn’t always been like this, not until that fateful day.

  A year ago, Joshua was called to a crime scene which would change his life forever. A cold-blooded animal, whom the media would eventually christen as Lolly, shot two people at a bank in Staten Island before robbing it. One security guard was DOA and one woman died in the hospital later.

  Witnessing the havoc, Joshua knew right then it was his duty to stop this madman.

  But Lolly turned out to be one of the most elusive bank robbers in the US, having robbed fourteen banks in as many counties. His crimes were linked by three distinguishable things: the mask, the use of .44 caliber, and his blatant hobby of sucking a lollipop while gunning people down.

  “You’re not gonna answer?”

  Joshua offered more silence.

  “Ugh. Fine. How’s it going?” Raymond asked. “Are you any closer?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me,” Joshua muttered, then yelled into the phone. “We are gonna get the fucker tonight!”

  “Wait,” Raymond said, his sentence paused doubtfully. “We’re going to get Lolly, the Lolly, tonight?”

  “His identity, I mean. Once we know who the asshole beneath that mask is, then it’s only a matter of time.”

  “But how?”

  “Unrelenting detective work, that’s how,” Joshua said and proceeded to explain.

  After Lolly’s gang robbed the bank in Staten Island and hightailed it, they dumped the getaway vehicle in New Jersey, probably switching to another set of wheels. The abandoned car was a 90s Firebird. The FBI tracked it and found that it had been stolen in Memphis.

  And they dropped that line of inquiry.

  In the months that followed, the FBI tried to trace the bullets and the money, but nothing worked. Joshua insisted they looked into the car angle deeper. But the FBI refused, stating that it was a dead end. In fact, they had a list of cars that Lolly’s gang had used and abandoned, since they first achieved prominence in 1982. All the cars on that list were stolen but the cases were unsolved. All dead ends, they had concluded.

  Joshua disagreed.

  He had spent a lot of time with the list and was rewarded for his fortitude.

  He had noticed that the cars Lolly’s gang used before 1987 were beat cars. Cars that even a novice, or particularly a novice, would steal. No resale value. But from the second half of 1987, the cars employed in the robberies became sedans with good torque and control, which had a lot of resale value. Types of cars professional thieves would steal.

  In March 1987, Lolly’s gang used a Ford Escort. But in November they used a BMW, the latest model released that year. How did they graduate from using soccer mom SUVs to high performance vehicles in a matter of months? Joshua hadn’t found an answer for that.

  Until he put together the other pieces.

  The leader of their gang, Lolly, was not present in three robberies they had committed from 1985 to 1987. Only the other two, the red and blue-masked demons, operated during this time. A criminal doesn’t take hiatus this long voluntarily. They got killed, either by cops or their partners, or they got arrested. Lolly was back in 1987 and resumed his work, meaning it was the latter.

  “Okay, so you think he was in prison from 1985 to 1987?” Raymond asked.

  “Yes. And if we have his latent print recovered from either the casings or the slugs, we could search for it in NCIC.”

  “But we don’t,” Raymond said. “They always wipe their cartridges clean and wear gloves when they fill their clips.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Forgetting wishful thinking, returning to topic,” Raymond sternly said. “Lolly comes out after serving his sentence. His gang, who was using shitty vehicles in their jobs until then, starts to use top end cars? Could be Lolly made a new friend. Prison contact?”

  “Bingo!” Joshua chirped.

  “A professional carjacker.”

  “Yes.” Joshua walked out of the room, to the kitchen. “From 1987 till last week, a robbery in Chicago, they used a total of nine getaway vehicles. I visited the places where these cars were stolen and conducted my own investigations.”

  “By yourself?”

  “The FBI didn’t think I had a lead and refused to help me.”

  “So all the annual leave you made me approve for your ‘marriage counseling’ was just me getting my anus bigger, uh?”

  Joshua laughed. “I wouldn’t put it in so many words, but yeah.”

  “Let me remind you to whoop your ass when you come to the precinct,” Raymond grumbled. “Anyway, tell me, did you solve those cases?”

  “Not officially. I got no evidence.”

  “But you found out who stole those cars?”

  “I did. With the help of our brothers in blue.” As Joshua approached the fridge to get some water, he spotted a note stuck on its door. “Excuse me,” he said into the phone and read the note.

  His wife’s attractive cursive reminded him that her parents would be joining them for Thanksgiving dinner, and he should not forget it.

  After filling his stomach with half a pitcher of cool water, he ambled to the couch in the living room and plunked himself on it.

  “Hello?”

  “Still here,” Raymond said.

  “Alright. Sorry about that.”
Joshua burped. “So those nine cars were stolen from different cities, by various unrelated professional carjackers, controlled by various unrelated auto theft rings. Nine cars, nine rings. But the respective PDs had info on them.”

  “They gave you the names of the gang leaders?”

  “And I spoke to them.”

  “And they told you to fuck off.”

  “They told me to fuck off, yes.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “But I didn’t, no. Instead I spoke to the snitches and low-level assholes who needed a quick buck. I mean, I’m not asking them to testify or anything. I just needed a name, a common denominator, who bought nine cars from these nine rings.”

  “But why? Why can’t the gangs sell the cars themselves? Why do they need him? What’s linking them all?”

  “Greed. That’s the link.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “These nine cars were stolen from three states: Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky.”

  Raymond didn’t speak for a few seconds, possibly his brain recovering from the sudden apparent change of conversation. “That supposed to mean something?”

  “They’re landlocked.”

  “I am still lost.”

  “You remember the time when the Mafia used to export cars to Arab countries.”

  “Oh…” Raymond said. “From Jersey and New York?”

  “Yes. The Auto Theft gangs in these three landlocked states stand to make a lot of money if they sell it to a middleman who later exports the stolen cars to foreign lands.”

  “They are reasonable discoveries. Where did it all lead you to?”

  “Every scum I spoke to—snitches, gang members, thieves—repeated only one name. And according to the criminal records of the leaders of these nine rings, under the Known Acquaintances sub-divisions, the same name was repeated again.”

  “The middleman. The common denominator.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Jake Caridi. A chop shop runner.”

  “Let me guess. He also exports scraps?”

  Joshua chuckled. “He exports scraps to the Eastern hemisphere.”

  “I don’t think any of this is coincidence, but are you sure it’s him who supplies the wheels to Lolly?”