The Innocents

by Nathan Senthil

  “Shhh!”

  Peter nudged Joshua’s leg with his shoe. “Don’t shush me, ass—”

  “It’s on!” Joshua’s frantic fingers pointed at the TV. “Turn it up.”

  “Oh shit!” Peter retrieved the remote that his right ass cheek was smothering and increased the volume.

  Joshua grabbed his Skoal tin from the table. His eyes didn’t leave the TV, while his hands opened the tin, plucked two pouches from within and tossed them into his mouth.

  The commentator, after advising viewer discretion, announced that the video was five minutes long.

  Three robbers entered the bank, which was almost empty at the early hours. They wore black T-shirts, black bomber jackets, and camo pants. Two of them ran in different directions just as soon as the swing doors closed behind their backs. The remaining one, a stocky, blue-masked demon, locked the only entrance to the bank with a device that looked like a thin wheel clamp. Then he grabbed an assault rifle strapped on his back and manned the door.

  Lolly wore his famed pale green zombie mask. In his right hand, he carried a shiny silver-plated pistol with a longish barrel. A white lollipop stick poked out from the zombie’s mouth hole.

  Lolly cannonballed toward the space between the cashier’s table and a confused-looking security guard. Once he was close to him, he shot the guard in the face.

  Joshua shuddered. No matter how many dead bodies he had seen, it hadn’t desensitized him. He bit his teeth and uttered a small prayer. He asked forgiveness from the security guard and his family. If only Joshua had caught Lolly. Seeing that savage son of a bitch on the TV made the blood in Joshua’s veins boil.

  Lolly, however, didn’t give a shit that he had just killed someone. He didn’t even slow his sprint, but angled himself toward the cashier’s table and slid over the marble floor. Without waiting to check if the preemptive strike had made a kill, Lolly leaped over the counter.

  His movements were precise, aggressive, and slick, like a quarterback with a football in his hands. In just four seconds, even before the blue demon locked the entrance, Lolly killed a man, made a sharp turn, and jumped over a tall table.

  Lolly pulled one of the dumbstruck cashiers up as if he were a ragdoll, and held the gun to his temple. The hostage repeated a set of instructions whispered into his ear. Linda, the second cashier, put her hands up. Another dumbstruck but unharmed security guard and every one of the bank’s five morning customers lay on their stomachs and placed their interlaced fingers at the back of their heads.

  A red demon, which dashed in a different direction when the front door closed, went out of the camera’s focus, to the right. A few seconds later, he reemerged with a black pistol in his hand.

  From the victims’ accounts, the red demon had barged into the bank manager’s office and buried two bullets between his ribs. The cops said it was a brutal but effective tactic. The manager was the only one who wasn’t in the lobby, and he could have called for help when the robbers were busy.

  The red demon jogged toward the sleeping security guy and took the machine gun he’d kept over his head. Then he headed toward Lolly. When he reached the counter, he unstrapped the bags from his body and threw them at Linda. The bags hit her chest and fell at her feet.

  Linda put her hands down, doubled over, and brought up the bags. She started filling them, wiping her cheeks at irregular intervals.

  When Linda finished filling the bags and handed them over, Lolly kicked his hostage’s right buttock hard. Linda’s frenzied attempt to catch her colleague from hitting the floor would have been comical if it weren’t for the blood spreading under the head of the dead security guard.

  Then they beelined towards the entrance, all three disappeared, and the video mercifully came to an end.

  Chapter 20

  April 6, 2019. 8:01 A.M.

  The swelling river snaked between a series of hills, before flowing right and disappearing along the woods. The road they were on looked feeble and thin, running through majestic mountains and forests. Like a floating noodle on a green ocean.

  Joshua opened the glovebox and took out the Skoal tin. Just as he finished burying two in his mouth, an impatient douche honked behind, forcing him to drive onwards. The congestion moved at a snail’s pace and the toll booth was a good three minutes away. What’s the rush then? Why not look outside at the scenery nature had been chiseling for millions of years? The fortitude of a river that eroded its way through titanic rock was inspiring.

  Having no choice but to watch the arid I-80, his mind disassociated.

  “Boring,” Peter voiced Joshua’s thought.

  He grunted in return.

  “Now would be an optimal time to say why Detroit.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Joshua replied and started filling his partner in.

  After Nigel told him about the Desert Eagle, Joshua talked with Magnum and eventually with the Detroit PD. He gathered a trove of knowledge, the chief among it was that Lolly could be using one of the first models of Desert Eagle Magnum had experimented with. That explained the abnormal 1:21” twist rate. It was a functioning piece, but not the perfect handgun they released in 1983.

  “Where did Lolly get a gun like that?” Peter asked, his wrinkled eyelids barely containing the same puppy-like curiosity they did eighteen years ago.

  Joshua whistled. “You might wanna strap yourself. It’s one hell of a story.”

  He proceeded to explain: in 1981, the then new company, Magnum Research Inc., filed a lawsuit against MacSharp, its competition. A prototype Magnum had been developing in their Michigan facility, apparently the most powerful pistol in the world at that time, had gone missing.

  “The Desert Eagle?”

  “Yes,” Joshua confirmed. “Their corporate security conducted an investigation. Turned out one of the employees in their research team was a double agent working for MacSharp. But Magnum couldn’t prove anything.”

  “How did Lolly get the Eagle from MacSharp?” Peter said.

  “A few months after the theft at Magnum, two of MacSharp’s employees were found dead on a seedy road on Livernois Avenue. A driver and a security guard who delivered trucks. But the company said that no truck left their Detroit facility that night.”

  “Maybe they didn’t.”

  “But the witnesses on Livernois Avenue reported they saw a truck, resembling the same models MacSharp employed for transportation. It was driving dangerously, and get this: someone was clinging to its passenger side door.”

  “A hijack,” Peter said.

  Joshua affirmed with a nod. “The arms on a level crossing nearby had some paint scraped. Same type of paint used on MacSharp’s trucks. But they denied everything, and the case went nowhere.”

  “What will a burglar do if a scorpion stings him at a house he’s broken into?”

  “Keep his goddamn mouth shut.” Joshua chuckled. “Another important detail is, like how MacSharp had a snitch in Magnum, someone had a snitch in MacSharp.”

  “Who?” Peter frowned.

  “A crime family named Detroit Alliance. The homicide detectives investigating the double murder on Livernois Avenue looked into the history of all the employees in the MacSharp facility where the driver and the security guard had worked.”

  “Go on.” Peter’s frown relaxed a bit.

  “A guy in the logistics department was a relative of a known repeat offender, who’d been a soldier for the Detroit Alliance.”

  “Seems like the DPD gave a lot of time to you. He’s a retiree, too?”

  “No, he’s a captain. Who hates Lolly as much as I do.”

  “Hm.”

  They paid the toll and continued driving. Peter was looking outside but his thoughts weren’t with nature. He was thinking about something else.

  “What’s up?” Joshua asked.

  “It doesn’t fit.” Peter turned towards Joshua. “You can’t just assume that the hijacked truck transported the prototype Desert Eagle. It could be anything.”
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  Joshua laughed. “I knew you’d try your damn best to find holes in my theories.”

  Peter lifted an eyebrow. “Would you prefer it any other way?”

  “No.”

  “Then plug the hole.”

  “So a Caddy drops a bloody guy in front of the ER on Christmas in 1981. The poor bastard drags his way inside and admits himself. He said a rowdy gang mistook him for someone else and shot him in the knee. A victim of a drive-by, he’d claimed. The doctors treated the poor bastard and bagged the bullet for the detectives.” Joshua gave Peter a knowing smile.

  “Forty-four?” Peter asked. “From the broken Desert Eagle?”

  “The one and only.”

  “But that’s even earlier than 1982, before Lolly’s first recorded robbery.”

  “Exactly. Could be Lolly’s very first shot.”

  “First shot?”

  “MacSharp truck was hijacked at midnight on December 24, 1981. And the Desert Eagle was used to shoot someone a few hours later.”

  “So why was the bullet not in any records? If it were, we could have made this connection a long time ago.”

  “National databases were used to log evidence only from most notorious cases, not drive-bys with no fatalities. How many cases did our own NYPD fail to record in the ViCAP? And computers weren’t that popular among cops in ‘81.” Joshua squeezed Peter’s shoulder. “Come on, man. You’re asking all the wrong questions.”

  Peter thought for a whole minute. “Alright, who was the poor bastard that got shot?”

  Joshua glanced at Peter and smirked. “A right-hand man to the Don of the Detroit Alliance. The snitch who was siphoning information from MacSharp was suspected of working for him. So I’m fairly sure that the hijacked truck contained the prototype.”

  “Wow.” Peter shook his head. “That’s the final part in a very convoluted puzzle.”

  “Wrong.” Joshua’s gaze intensified. “It’s just the beginning.”

  They stopped at a fast-food van in Williamsport, and each downed a cup of chicken rice. When done with the late lunch, Peter got behind the wheel and drove. Joshua rolled the window up, then leaned on it and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  He felt a strange sense of sickness in his stomach. A black bile. He discerned he was stuck in a lucid dream, but he couldn’t get up. As he writhed and struggled in the timeless ether of his mind, he felt the car’s movement slow. As if the road suddenly turned into tar and the air into oil. So much resistance. And something soft touched his chest, pushing him back.

  No, Joshua thought, it was not pushing him back. It was him who was moving forward and the hand was trying to stop him from going further.

  As he tore the last shackle of sleep paralysis and pulled himself out, he gasped and sucked in air greedily.

  Peter passed a bottle, and Joshua thankfully gulped the water. He hadn’t realized how parched he was until then.

  Peter did not show any sign that he’d seen Joshua awaken in trepidation. He knew about Joshua’s perpetual bouts with night terrors.

  Wait.

  Was it already night? The dark sky said as much.

  Then Joshua’s eyes lowered.

  They were still on the highway, but he could see their destination. The city glowed on the horizon, the skyscrapers and factories protruding from the Earth. They looked to be floating on the sea of blackness.

  No, not floating. More like the arthritic fingers of a desperate captain as he went down with his sinking ship.

  “Where to now?” Peter asked.

  “Calabria.” Joshua programmed the location in the dashboard GPS. “It’s a bar in Gratiot Avenue.”

  “Who’s there?” Peter asked.

  Joshua lay back and closed his eyes. “The poor bastard.”

  Chapter 21

  April 6, 2019. 08:17. P.M.

  “I don’t know no Roman,” the barkeeper behind the table said as he wiped a beer glass with a cloth.

  “Tell him it’s about Lolly,” Peter said.

  The barkeeper paused cleaning but quickly resumed. “I don’t know no Lolly.”

  Peter snapped, “It’s the asshole who shot your boss when you were just a slow-witted sperm in your dad’s nutsack.”

  The barkeeper eyed Peter with a hint of mischief. Though he was too young to have been around in 1981, he might have heard stories from the criminal grapevines before but now he was a part of it.

  Smirking, he placed the glass on the table and went over to the corner. He picked up a wireless from under the table and mumbled something in it.

  Joshua looked around the bar. The lighting was dim, the music was tacky, and cigarette smoke coiled upward from almost all the tables. But the customers looked neither like the complaining type nor like they would go to the authorities for help. And there was not a single woman in the bar. Its clientele was purely men, purely suspicious, and lastly, purely quiet. However, the silence came only after Joshua and Peter had stepped into the establishment a minute ago.

  The barkeeper returned the wireless to its place and tilted his head towards a door at the back.

  “It’s not me,” Joshua said. “The smell’s coming from you.”

  “What smell?”

  “Smell of pork. Why else would the barkeeper be so wary of us?”

  “Oh, screw you.”

  As they skirted the table, Joshua inserted his hand into his jacket. The bartender’s eyes widened, and he reached behind his back.

  “Whoa!” Joshua lifted his hands and showed him the Skoal tin. “It’s just tobacco, hoss. Slow down before you shoot your toe off.”

  He opened the tin and tossed two pouches in his mouth. When he offered it to the barkeeper, he murmured something and led them through the door, closing it behind. The music abated suddenly, worrying Joshua. If the sound didn’t seep in through the reinforced door, then it didn’t seep out either.

  The inside was entirely different. No smoke, no dark setting, and no blue-collar atmosphere. The left wall shelved costly wines and liquor. On the front was a medium sized desk carrying a PC. The idea of the Mafia using computers for data storage amused Joshua. The civilian part of him fathomed the practicality while the detective side appreciated the fact that nothing entered into the system could ever truly be deleted, not unless you obliterated the hard drives.

  There was a kitchenette in the right wall, and the pleasant smell of cheese wafted from it. Not mozzarella. Something else. Something with a strong flavor. He had eaten it with meatballs or crispy chicken at authentic Italian restaurants back home. Parmesan, he guessed.

  A fat person, with a crutch extending from his left elbow, was whistling as he waddled along the counter, cluttering cookware and china. He took a pair of tongs from the utensil holder and picked a huge brick of lasagna from the rectangular glass dish. He laid it on a white plate on the counter, where already a few scoops of garlic-prosciutto Brussels sprouts were strewn. He added two dollops of butter atop, letting it melt by the heat of the food.

  Joshua found himself salivating. Roman must be one hell of a gastronome. He waved the bartender over and motioned at his mound of fat-adder. “Put it on the desk.”

  Then he turned, licking the tips of the tong and tossing it into the dishwasher.

  Roman must be in his seventies. He blobbed like he ate bacon for food and drank beer for water. Joshua’s attention crossed Roman’s colossal midsection and slipped to his left leg. The pant, though loose, couldn’t entirely hide the wreckage beneath. The knee arched back and formed a hideously zigzagged joint. Seeing it without cringing was a feat.

  “What the fuck you staring at?” Roman turned and walked towards his desk.

  Joshua hadn’t realized Roman was talking to him until Peter nudged him. He was transfixed by the deformity. Could really one bullet destroy a leg like that? Joshua had seen firsthand the detrimental prowess of Lolly’s anti-aircraft gun, but usually the wounds were in the head. Now to see it in a different body part induced morbid curio
sity in him.

  Peter walked behind Roman and Joshua followed him.

  He tried his best not to look at the back of Roman’s knee, which accentuated the damage as he walked. He tried and failed. Even though the crutch supported most of Roman’s weight, his left leg folded back unnaturally in the middle and something blunt protruded as it did. A shiver ran up Joshua’s spine, forcing him to look away.

  With the barkeeper’s help, Roman maneuvered his ass onto the chair.

  Joshua began. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “What you know about Lolly?” Roman asked as he shoved a spoonful of food into his face hole.

  “Everything there is to know about him,” Peter said.

  “Everything about him, uh?” His words distorted as he spoke. “Where’s he now? What’s his name?”

  Peter bit his lower lip and snapped his fingers. “Except those.”

  Roman glowered at them, giving each at least a two-second stare. “Are you here to ruin my dinner, which by extension means, your faces. Who’re you, clowns?”

  “I’m Joshua Chase. I used to be an NYPD detective.”

  “Detective Chase?” Roman frowned. “Why does that name ring a bell?”

  “It’s my son. He caught a serial killer back home and became a national sensation.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s correct. Mr. Bunny, right? Crazy shit, that. He must be really smart, your son—” Roman paused mid-chew and stared at a blank space on the desk. Apparently, he couldn’t think when his mouth was at work. Explained why he ate so much without fearing diabetes or ticker failure.

  “Can you help us?”

  Roman broke out of his trance. “How?”

  “Talk to us about a truck hijacking in nineteen—”

  “Not this again.” Roman dropped the spoon and leaned back on his chair.

  “We just need some basic details,” Joshua said.

  “What makes you think I’ll tell you even if I know? I ain’t no fucking turncoat.”

  “Just tell us who hijacked the truck?” Peter said. “We’re not asking you to testify.”

  “Testify?” Roman smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Get the fuck out of here, you two!”