The Innocents

by Nathan Senthil

  “I am because he was serving a three-year sentence in the eighties. Care to guess when?”

  “Any period that includes 85-87?”

  “Right you are. The same timeframe when I believe Lolly was in prison.”

  “It all makes sense in a strange way. My mind is now just one soup of random information.” Raymond whistled. “You did a lot of work. Alone.”

  “It’s worth it. Numerous family members of the victims can finally get closure and see that justice gets done.”

  “Definitely worth it, if everything goes to plan,” Raymond said. “When are you visiting Jake?”

  “Gonna have to do some backgrounds.”

  “Like what? His cellmates?”

  “Already did. Jake had three bunkmates during his stretch in West Virginia, but none of them is Lolly. They are all white.”

  “Shit.”

  “As you know, apart from the witnesses swearing by the conjecture that the robbers spoke with a slight Ebonics dialect, the surviving cashiers reported they saw through the eyeholes in the mask and Lolly was black. With blue eyes.”

  “That’s correct. Then what else are you checking for?”

  “Don’t know but I need to find some dirt on Jake. Then threaten him and make him believe that he has to give up the name of his friend who’s been buying cars from him.”

  “Those Mafia types don’t rat much.”

  “Italians are only interested in killing a snitch and stuffing a canary down his throat if it affects other Italians.”

  “What are you gonna threaten him with?”

  “Jake recently had a baby. I’m gonna tell him that I will have my friend in Child Protective Services take the baby away, what with Jake having a mile-long rap sheet and all.”

  “You won’t do it.” Raymond chuckled.

  “I won’t. It’s a bluff. I’m gonna act all desperate and angry and—”

  “Act?”

  “I’m gonna give him what will seem like an ultimatum. Give up his friend or his child.”

  “What if he calls Lolly and warns him—”

  “Looking forward to that.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Already tapped his phone. He makes a call, we don’t just have Lolly’s identity, but also his address.”

  “The FBI tapped his phone?”

  Joshua murmured, “I didn’t say FBI.”

  “Be louder. I can’t hear you.”

  “I stopped sharing info with the feds when they made me solve their biggest case all by myself, spending my own money for gas, motels, food, and snitches.”

  “No one asked you to,” Raymond remarked. “Don’t change the topic. How did you tap Jake’s phone? I don’t remember a warrant coming by me.”

  “Who said anything about a warrant?”

  Raymond laughed again. “I’m your captain, you know?”

  “Well, Captain Asswipe, my work is to protect innocent people. I don’t care how I go about doing it. As long as I save someone from getting practically decapitated by Lolly’s elephant gun, nothing I do is wrong or unethical.”

  Raymond sighed. “I must ask. To get this one lead, which might turn out to be nothing, you solved nine carjacking cases in three different states? On your own time and expenses?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  There was nothing but silence on the other line.

  Did Raymond just hang up?

  Joshua looked at the phone. The call timer was still running. “Hello? Captain Ass—”

  “You’re a ram,” Raymond said.

  That gave Joshua a pause. “Ram? The Hindu deity?”

  “No. Ram as in goat.”

  “Why am I a goddamn ram?”

  “Rita and I went to Bali last year for our holidays.”

  “Yeah, I know. My missus never lets me forget how romantic you two are.”

  Raymond laughed. “Apart from the coastline, we also toured parts of the Indonesian countryside. In a village, we watched two rams fighting. They just bash their heads, walk back a few yards, then run and bash their heads again. Blood drips down the thick skulls of these vindictive bastards, and they still go at it. Even when they are hurt, even when they know they will probably die from a gaping wound in the head.”

  “Wait… are you telling me that if I don’t let go, I’m gonna die with a gaping wound in my head?”

  “All I’m saying is that you just don’t know when to give up.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s not a compliment.”

  This time, Raymond did hang up.

  Chapter 17

  November 25, 1994. 02:30. A.M.

  Joshua stared at their bedroom door, which his wife had closed after her. The slap still tingled his cheek, but the subsequent hug had more than compensated for it. His wife emanated a unique scent. A mix of rosewater and sandalwood. The smell of purity. Must be how heaven smelt.

  Amidst this pleasant sensation, his heart imploded in agony. It could very probably be the last time he would be allowed within close enough proximity to his wife to inhale her angelic waft.

  The separation, although painful and humiliating, was not shocking in the least. It had been a long time in the pipeline, and wholly attributable to Joshua’s negligence. He was designed like that, he presumed. Manufacturing defect, so to speak, having been programmed to give more importance to the overwhelming responsibility he felt towards the homicide victims than to the love towards his wife. The murdered themselves didn’t bother Joshua much but the ones left behind, their families, did.

  Not their fault though. Even imagining losing someone dear to a violent crime disquieted Joshua.

  One night your mom or dad, husband or wife, son or daughter didn’t come home. You called them, but they didn’t answer. You began to fidget. You made apologetic late-night calls to their friends and colleagues, but no one knew anything. The jitters morphed into dreadful foreboding. You felt in your stomach—not in the heart because these sick premonitions originated only in stomachs—that something was wrong. The next morning your phone rang, and you picked it up on the second ring. The caller began with ‘I am sorry’ followed by empty words that had ‘incident’ in them. Then they told you that someone had yanked your loved one away from your life at the snap of their fingers.

  No last words, no amendments, no goodbyes.

  But this was the easy part. The hard part came after the burial.

  Everywhere you looked, you saw the murdered; their place on the couch or at the dining table; when you got a whiff of their favorite food, listened to their favorite band, changed through their favorite TV channels.

  It wasn’t fair. Not fair at all. You were just a regular Joe going about your regular Joe business. You were a good regular Joe. You didn’t even deserve the paper cut you got in the office the other day, let alone seeing your loved one on a gurney, missing a quarter of their head.

  And during one of your late-night crying fits, you gnashed your teeth and promised them you would make the son of a bitch pay. But what could you do? You were, after all, just a languished regular Joe. Life rarely mimicked TV. You didn’t don a latex T-shirt with a skull printed on it, pack a bag full of guns, and chase the killer. No. You chased the people responsible for catching the killer.

  People like Joshua.

  You developed a despondent relationship with detectives. Helpless, it had become your duty that whenever you found free time, you called them. You were now a steadfast believer of the adage involving squeaky wheels and grease. In your eyes, they weren’t detectives anymore. Not cops, but some divine entities. Powerful authorities, the only friends capable of bringing some sort of peace to you. And Joshua was usually the type of friend who delivered.

  But not tonight.

  Jake was dead, and the lead Joshua had been working on for ten months was now lost forever. The fact that he almost unmasked Lolly made him wanna puke.

  An unbridled anger urged him to kick the door down and explain all this to his wife. He wanted
to yell that she was being unfair and shake some sense into her. But he couldn’t. She had no obligation to put up with the aftermath of his gloomy crusades.

  So he did what his body had been wanting to do ever since he saw Jake’s exploded brain an hour ago: hang his head.

  A minute later, he sniffled and rubbed his face on his shoulder. Picking up a bottle of Jim Beam, he dropped into the recliner in front of the TV. He took a huge swig; the alcohol burned its way down to his empty intestines. Though the light from the paltry infomercial flickered through his watery eyes, the images his brain saw were something utterly different—they were of Jake’s crime scene.

  Who killed him? One of his criminal friends, criminal enemies, criminal customers, or hell, even his criminal wife? Too many criminals surrounded Jake’s life, but Joshua had already arrived at a supposition, considering the hole the size of an apple in Jake’s head.

  Lolly.

  Ballistics would later confirm or deny his hypothesis, but Joshua trusted his intuition for now.

  That murdering bastard had cursed New York again with his riotous presence. The mere thought that he and Lolly were possibly sharing the same few square miles, but that he was unable to do anything about it, demoralized him. It seemed as if some greater evil protected Lolly, which begged the imminent question: where the fuck was Joshua’s greater good? Most likely cowering in some church or temple, leaving Joshua to pick after its battle.

  He downed another long gulp, uninhibitedly. Not that he needed any excuses lately. These days, his waking hours were those murky gaps between morning hangovers and midnight blackouts. Not a moment of clarity there.

  The presenter on the infomercial, a semi-naked girl, was now advertising a magic pill that cured baldness. Why she had to expose her cleavage and tan stomach a good three inches below her navel to sell something that men bought to restore some of their youthful confidence was beyond Joshua.

  Deflated, he wrapped his fingers around the bottleneck and pushed himself up with the other arm.

  But his palm slid over the armrest. The cheap rye spurted out of the bottle and spilled on the back of his hand, the chilly liquid evaporating in an instant. Shaking his head at the disappointment he had become, he placed the bottle on the floor and heaved his body up again.

  Carefully navigating his way across the room, he reached the stairs and climbed the steps. His son had probably woken up due to the ruckus he and his wife had caused and might need tucking in.

  As Joshua reached the landing, he thought he heard someone talking behind his son’s door. Weird. The boy had no imaginary friends.

  He knocked and waited a few seconds, before entering.

  The little guy had problems with his motor skills, due to his condition. So instead of standing, he was hanging onto the ledge of the window, waving. Joshua rushed to his side and peeked out.

  A white Hummer parked across the street, on seeing Joshua, sped off. Its screeching tires must have woken half the neighborhood.

  Hadn’t Joshua seen it somewhere before?

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Joshua sifted through the drenched cabinets of his inebriated memory.

  Where did I—

  Outside Jake’s auto shop!

  “Gabe!” Joshua turned the boy towards him. On seeing Gabriel’s face, everything spun out of control, and the alcohol in his bloodstream was not the reason.

  The boy was sucking a lollipop.

  Joshua darted out of the room and stomped down the stairs, taking three steps at a time. As he bolted through the front door to his car, adrenaline thumped in his ears.

  But before he got inside, he observed that the vehicle sank lower on one side. Two tires on the left were slashed.

  Undeterred, Joshua took off after the Hummer which was just a pair of receding taillights in the fog. He didn’t care that he was barefoot. He sprinted towards it at full speed. But for all the acceleration, he felt like he was suspended in space, like trying to punch or run in a dream.

  They gained a lead on him, gradually dissolving into the distance. Inside he screamed, “No.” Joshua stretched his arm out, grabbing at the spot where the Hummer had disappeared.

  The lack of stamina caught up with him all at once. His eyesight blurred, making it physically impossible for him to continue running. A lamppost provided him a shoulder. He held its sides, not allowing the tears of anger escape. Tried to close his eyes and collect his breath and his thoughts.

  Having had Lolly within spitting distance, for the second time the same night, broke Joshua’s heart into pieces. Under his nose. So close. Just meters away. In front of his home. In his son’s room.

  Frustrated, he shook the lamppost, punching and kicking it. Not feeling the pain of hitting the metal. Not hearing the sound.

  “Stop it, asshole!” a voice carrying an unmistakable bravado warned.

  Joshua opened his wet eyes and turned around. A young fat cop was holding a pistol on him with quaking arms, a cruiser parked beside him. The flashing blue and red gave Joshua a new surge of nausea. The officer must have assumed that Joshua was one of those crack junkies that terrorized the city these days with their capricious vandalism and violence. Drug epidemic, the popular news had dubbed it. So the uniform must have called it in and pulled over. Joshua couldn’t blame the poor kid though. To any passing person, a hyperventilating guy grappling with a lamppost wouldn’t look friendly. Or sane.

  “Which precinct?” Joshua asked.

  The bald-headed cop’s ruddy face twisted in bewilderment. “D-detective Chase?”

  “Yeah, the one and only,” Joshua said. “Is that you, Ivansky?”

  “Yes, sir.” Officer Ivansky lowered the gun. “What happened here?”

  “Call the dispatch and request them to issue an APB on a white Hummer. I want every road exiting the city cordoned off. Also, ask them to contact the FBI and tell them that Lolly is in New York City and if they coordinate with staties and us, we might catch him.”

  Officer Ivansky looked stupefied.

  “What?!” Joshua barked. “Did you get everything I’ve just said?”

  “Y-yes sir,” he said, his hands slipped as he fumbled to holster the gun.

  “Goddamn it, Ivansky. Don’t shoot yourself in the dick.”

  Ivansky nodded, his blubbery jowls vibrated as he did, and piled into his cruiser. Notwithstanding the flash of guilt for browbeating the young cop, Joshua’s plastered mind warned him that it was futile. Lolly was an animal, but a really paranoid and farsighted one. He had backups for backups that were Plan Bs.

  Enervated, Joshua faced the truth squarely: he had missed his chance. And the three masked demons had retreated to whichever hellhole they’d crawled out of.

  Chapter 18

  June 10, 2001. 02:12. P.M.

  Although Joshua had sworn to abstinence six years ago, to care for Gabe as a single parent and help with his speech impediment, he missed alcohol every day. Sleep had become his coping mechanism against the nibbling desire.

  And now Joshua was irritable because he had been woken up from his nap by his newbie partner.

  “I’m one hundred percent sure…” Peter placed his palms on Joshua’s desk and leaned forward, his tie askew and hair ruffled.

  Peter Lamb had been working in Gang Unit before their new captain had tagged him with Bernadette, a veteran in the homicide squad. The duo’s first case was a bank robbery committed in Staten Island on April 30th of that year. The perpetrator murdered one person and robbed $98,000; coincidentally the same amount Lolly had robbed from a different bank in the same neighborhood in 1993. The FBI screamed Lolly, the media screamed Lolly, and even the cops did, like Bernadette and Peter. Though Joshua knew better, the investigating team considered his input trifling, so he shrugged and watched them chase their own tails.

  Bernadette availed maternity leave the previous month, and the captain had partnered the tyro with Joshua.

  “It is Lolly,” Peter implored.

  “No, it’s not.” Josh
ua stretched his arms over his head and groaned.

  “There are too many similarities between them. Can’t you see it, Chase?”

  “That’s the thing, rookie, I can’t see any pattern. I don’t suffer from pareidolia.”

  “It’s the same technique, for fuck’s sake,” Peter said.

  “What same technique?”

  Peter eyed Joshua with abhorrence.

  “Robbers generally don’t think about shooting people, at least not before making a demand. But Lolly always kills someone as soon as his gang enters the bank, to exert dominance and gain absolute control. Only then does he rob the money. This modus operandi is similar to what I have now.”

  “Could be a copycat or a really twisted fan. You know these infamous criminal types have a weird following, confused wannabes attracted by their tinsel world. John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James…” Joshua stifled a yawn. “You get the idea. What you have, it isn’t Lolly.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Peter asked, irritation creeping into his voice.

  “The perp in your case is a loner. And Lolly hunts in a pack.”

  “But I read your reports. You mentioned that Lolly’s gang committed at least three robberies from 1985 till mid-1987 without Lolly himself. So they don’t shy away from breaking the pattern.”

  “In your case, the witnesses say the perp was lanky and highly-strung, both of which Lolly isn’t. Sounds more like a teenager than a man. Not to mention that your robber used a totally different type of mask and gun.”

  “No. My robber also used a .44 round,” Peter nettled, unwilling to let go. “Just like Lolly does.”

  “Sit.” Joshua sighed and motioned Peter to a seat opposite. “It’ll take a while but I’m gonna share with you certain info that most people don’t know about the Lolly investigation. It’s only because you are as restless as a fucking half-puppy that got its first boner.”

  Peter sat, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. “Okay. I’m all ears.”

  “You know what rifling is?” Joshua inserted his hand into his pocket and pulled the Skoal tin out. He didn’t need much energy to explain something he knew inside out; one pouch would do.