The Innocents

by Nathan Senthil

  * * *

  Both climbed into the car, Joshua taking the wheel.

  “Well, that was a farce,” Peter said.

  “I expected as much. Tried the easy way, but predictably, it didn’t pan out.” Joshua eased the Audi into the traffic.

  As they exited the dingy neighborhood, Joshua felt dreadful. Something was wrong.

  He angled the rearview and found a black SUV driving behind them. While most other vehicles behind them either changed direction or overtook them, the SUV maintained a steady pace and interval.

  But a few minutes later, when Joshua pulled the car over in front of a shoddy hotel in downtown, the SUV drove past without slowing or speeding.

  Joshua sighed, chiding his brain. Why would anyone tail him? His overactive amygdala was crying wolf. Tired, having travelled for a long time, his head vibrated constantly. And the bar full of criminals had given him the jitters. He needed a stiff meal, a hot bath, and bed.

  Joshua got down from the car and opened the back door. A notebook that he had placed on the seat when they started their journey lay down on the floor.

  Cursing that he had to bend, he retrieved the notebook and dusted it off.

  They went in and booked two rooms. As the receptionist filled the forms, Peter pointedly looked at the notebook. “You’re gonna make me ask?”

  “This is the culmination of all my work relating to Lolly. Years of investigation, stripped of drama and bullshit, leaving only the cold, useful facts. I’ve been writing it since ‘93.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t…” Joshua searched for the right way to explain without sounding emotional. “This is my life’s work right here. I want someone to pick up where I left off, you know, if I die before solving the case. Or worse. If anything happened to—”

  “Nothing will happen to us.”

  “If!” Joshua pinched Peter’s ear and shouted in it. “If, Grampa. Remember that word, you senile dildo? If?”

  “Leave me alone, asshole.” Peter jerked away.

  The receptionist tried her best not to look up at them as she pushed the forms forward. “Please sign here, gentlemen.”

  As Peter signed, Joshua said, “If we fail, I want my son to carry on my legacy. One Chase or the other, we’re gonna bring this motherfucker down.”

  The receptionist passed each a key, still avoiding eye contact.

  * * *

  Joshua was vaguely aware of his consciousness returning. His eyelids were heavy and grainy, brushing against his eyes. His lumbar region stung, and he reckoned his body was covered in sticky sweat. The room was cool, but the temperature under the blanket was stifling.

  A creak made him open his eyes. The noise didn’t seem to have come from his bed. Aggravated by the lack of comfort, he threw the blanket away and kicked it down.

  And his heart froze in terror.

  A form, resembling a three-headed hellhound, stood in front of him, snarling, its red teeth sharp and rugged. Unable to grasp the image his retina was feeding him, he rubbed his eyes. The sight returned along with the reasoning, and the Cerberus transformed into clothes hanging from the wall hooks.

  Releasing a huge breath, he looked around the dark room. A shadow under the door moved ever so slightly, and the wood creaked again.

  “Peter?” Joshua called out.

  The movement halted and the shadow disappeared. As if it had never been there.

  Bemused and wondering if he had dreamed the whole thing, he fell back onto the damp pillows and dozed off.

  Chapter 22

  April 07, 2019. 3:21. P.M.

  Joshua had slept until late afternoon. Grumbling why aged bodies took longer to recuperate, he shambled to the bathroom. He took a Spartan shower and dressed up before rapping on the adjacent door.

  Thirty minutes later, Peter and Joshua were cruising on the main road, their destination being the DPD.

  Driving through downtown without hectic traffic made Detroit look weird. At this time, the city center back home would be replete with exhaust fumes and road rage. Maybe he got so acclimated to the hurly-burlies of NYC all day every day that his cognition was biased.

  His head wasn’t in the right place, groggy from the fiasco the previous night.

  “You came to my room?” Joshua said, momentarily looking at Peter.

  “I did, around eleven this morning, but you were snoring like an elephant. So I left.”

  “No, before that.”

  “I didn’t.” Peter regarded Joshua, with worry on his face. “You don’t look so good. Didn’t you sleep well?”

  The mere mention of sleep made Joshua yawn. “Tossing and turning the whole damn night, I feel restless.”

  Peter said, “It’s evolution, you see. Can’t help it.”

  “Evolution?”

  “Tell me, when is someone in danger?”

  Joshua sensed it was a rhetorical question, so he bit. “When?”

  “When sleeping and shitting. Your reflexes slacken, which by definition means your guard’s down. So the reptilian brain overcompensates by constantly being alert. That’s why tourists feel like they miss their own toilets and beds, when in reality, they miss the secure familiarity they experience in the inviolable habitat of their own toilets and beds.”

  “Hm.” He mulled over his friend’s point. Or Joshua was really being stalked.

  The view outside transformed from city to ghetto. The change was painfully obvious—buildings turned from marvelous edifices to skeletal geriatrics.

  Joshua couldn’t stop looking in the rearview. Call it paranoia, not hallucination, but he always found a leery vehicle lurking ten to twenty meters behind. A motorcycle this time, not an SUV.

  Even with all the distraction, they reached the precinct safely in under twenty minutes.

  While pulling over into the parking lot, Joshua noticed a rusty tandem bike chained to a horizontal pole on a brick wall in front of them. Drawn above it was some old graffiti. Joshua squinted and tried to fill the missing sections and make out the shape. Then the design jumped on him.

  It was the American flag, but with only five stars.

  * * *

  The precinct was in no way different than his 122nd. In fact, it was not unlike any other office place. Except three things: guns on the hips of residents, tattooed guests cuffed to benches, and offhand use of bigotry slurs, which would lead to your termination of employment in any other setting.

  The cops themselves were mostly black, about 80% of them. Back in Staten Island, the cops were mostly white. However, Detroit had a ratio of 80:20 black to white, while Staten Island’s ratio was the same inversely.

  Anyhow, the cop they met, the one who had been helping Joshua, was white. Captain Wheeler ushered them into his office.

  After the pleasantries and obligatory lame jokes were out of the way, Joshua began by confessing that he felt like he was being followed. It surprised Peter as much as it did Wheeler.

  “Why would anyone follow you?”

  Smiling apologetically at Peter, Joshua said, “We talked to Roman.”

  Wheeler tsk-tsked. “Now why would you pull Maverick shit like that?”

  Peter said, “So what? He’s just a regular scum. We thought he’d spill some beans.”

  “He is a capo regime. You know that capos are made men and made men take a certain oath?”

  Omertà. An oath of silence, which most carried to their graves. Joshua hadn’t thought of that before. The Mafia thing seemed so old to him even though he grew up in New York.

  “If they’re tailing you, losing them is impossible,” Wheeler said. “With Instagram and Facebook Live, they don’t tail with just one vehicle. They do it as a gang.”

  “That’s pretty advanced of them.”

  “Yes, they’ve been known to use high-tech gadgets, hack phones, and emails, too.”

  “Or maybe he’s just losing it.” Peter grabbed Joshua’s shoulder. “Roman refused to help. Cool. But why follow us?”

 
; “Good question,” Wheeler said, and they both looked at Joshua for the answer.

  Joshua deflated. “Fine. I’m being a worrywart. Let’s get down to business.”

  “What’d you need, Chase?” Wheeler asked. “I thought I gave you all the intel I had. About the truck hijacking, about Detroit Alliance.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking.” Joshua leaned on the table. “Before I linked the MacSharp truck hijacking to Lolly, we thought his first ever recorded crime was in 1982.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now that we know he began sooner, maybe we could find something before that.”

  “Before 1981?”

  “Yeah. Crimes related to theft or robbery, with Lolly’s signature unfettered violence.”

  As Wheeler’s fingers drummed the desk, the lines on his forehead deepened. “That timeline falls under the period of John Nichols.”

  Peter shrunk his eyes. “Are we supposed to know him?”

  “Not if you aren’t an old, black Detroiter or an old-timer cop. Uncle John, as Mr. Nichols was affectionately called, was famous because he’d gestated STRESS when he was the commissioner of the DPD.”

  Peter asked, “Stress? Stress for who?”

  Wheeler laughed. “No. It’s an acronym.” He pronounced each letter separately, as if Peter couldn’t spell the word. “Abbreviation for Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets.”

  Joshua said, “Yeah, I think I’ve heard about it. A controversial decoy unit within the Detroit PD, right?”

  “Correct. Back during those desperate times, there was no subtlety in crime. The voracious street urchins robbed people in broad daylights, in front of witnesses.”

  “That’s ballsy of them,” Peter said.

  “Uh-huh.” Wheeler nodded. “Those hellions put the kids who call themselves gangstas these days to shame. None of these hoodlum-wannabes with low-hip jeans and YOLO caps. No. What the kids in old Detroit had was desperation. And zero fear. That’s what kindled so much will and courage in their little rotten hearts, it was unworldly.”

  Peter said, “So that’s why this STRESS was created?”

  “Correct. Officers would disguise themselves as oldsters, drunks, Johns, or hippies. When the evil sons of bitches decide to rob the officer… well, that’s where the controversial part comes in.”

  Peter said, “Because the cops were trigger-happy?”

  Wheeler burst chuckled. “That’s putting it mildly. When STRESS was active, they were responsible for more than 90% of death by the police. Most of the criminals they shot down didn’t even have a gun. And in a few publicly embarrassing incidents, officers were found guilty of planting weapons on the victims they’d killed.”

  Peter said, “Wow. That sounds a lot like TV.”

  “I hear you. But remember that reality—history specifically—is far more violent and animated than any movie or show ever created.”

  “I’ve heard about a few dirty cops taking bribes, or even doing some favors for the Five Families, but not something as blatant as this.”

  “The STRESS officers weren’t dirty per se, not at least in the normal sense.”

  Peter scoffed. “Except they were murderers with a license to kill minorities.”

  “I agree.” Wheeler lifted his hands. “Old time Detroit, particularly the seventies and eighties, was the golden age of crime.”

  Peter lifted his eyebrows. “That bad?”

  “Cowboys and Indians, real-like.”

  “Were you in STRESS?”

  “Good god, no. But I was still in the force. Wanna know about my first day as a cop?” Wheeler’s face turned as if he’d tasted something sour. “I chased a scrawny kid for two miles on foot. The idiots who’d brought him in didn’t frisk properly. So he unlocks the cuffs while back in the police cruiser. When they open the door, he smashes their faces in and runs out like a bat out of hell. And since these two were obese, I had to take off after the kid.”

  “You catch him?”

  “Nah.”

  “Too fast?”

  “Also too smart.” Wheeler looked up and sighed, as if he still regretted failing to catch that boy. “But that day was still a lot better than others. I’m telling you all this so you’ll get the gist of how prevalent crime was back then.”

  Joshua asked, “There’s no use researching all the violent property crimes from that time period?”

  “Too voluminous you wouldn’t even know where to begin.” Wheeler shook his head. “And people didn’t trust us back then. Chances are, we might have had as many unreported crimes as the reported ones.”

  “Fuck,” Peter said.

  “I second that, brother,” Wheeler said.

  As Joshua thought, he took out his Skoal tin and utilized two packs to accelerate his brain. “How about your snitch from the Detroit Alliance? Is it possible for us to meet him?”

  “Can be arranged, but why?”

  “The mole in MacSharp’s logistics department was working for the Detroit Alliance. Without his information, no one would have known that the Desert Eagle was being transported that night. If we find out who hijacked MacSharp’s truck on behalf of the Alliance, we unmask Lolly.”

  “You’re correct.” Wheeler clasped his hands on the table. “If anyone can shed light on this, it would be the snitch. He used to be an enforcer.”

  “Used to? What happened? Has he gone straight?”

  “Ha-ha.” Wheeler didn’t try to hide the duplicity of the laughter. “Far from it. He’s in the big house for attempted murder.” Wheeler brought his voice down and murmured. “Could have been murder if the bastard were able to shoot straight.” Then he laughed at his own inside joke, while Peter and Joshua exchanged awkward glances.

  “Let’s go then?”

  Wheeler checked his watch. “The visiting hours are over for today. I’ll schedule a meeting for tomorrow.”

  “What do we do in the meantime?”

  “Take a load off, guys. Enjoy our fine city’s nightlife. Just don’t forget to bring your sidearm.”

  Joshua said, “R-really?”

  “Detroit isn’t as bad as they make it out to be.” Wheeler waved him off and laughed. “I’m kidding.” Then he stopped abruptly, staring icily. “Or am I?”

  * * *

  Joshua couldn’t sleep that night. It had been almost two hours since he’d switched off the lights and started minding the door, with his revolver on his lap. No phone or TV. He needed his vision to be perfect.

  And then he noticed it. Not under the door, but much closer. The window beside the bed. It became darker in the middle. Although the glass was frosted, he could tell from the light outside.

  Joshua crept to it, regulating his breathing. The person outside couldn’t see his silhouette—not even a night lamp was lit in his room. When Joshua was near the window, he gripped the handle of his gun. Taking one last breath, he pushed it out.

  The frame rattled, but didn’t budge a millimeter in the way of opening.

  And the shadow outside had disappeared.

  Joshua switched on the lights and searched the window. A pair of hooks secured the frame to the windowsill. Cursing himself for not having checked that before, he pulled the hooks from their eyes and climbed onto the fire escape.

  He aimed the gun at the stairs running down, then at the alley. He rotated and pointed at the bare walls of the opposite building and the street below. Everywhere was dark and empty.

  Only the stink of garbage assaulted him.

  Placing a hand on his thumping heart, Joshua felt angry with himself. Was he really losing it?

  He locked the window and checked the latches in the front door. Then he lay on the bed and closed his eyes, gun laid on the pillow beside him.

  Once the fervor of adrenaline from anger and fear had subsided, his mind gave way to reasoning.

  What if he hadn’t imagined it and someone was indeed trying to break into his room? As a guy who’d solved homicides for a living, Joshua knew that one hundred perce
nt of the time, a stranger never broke into your room in the middle of the night bearing merry thoughts. He might have something else on his mind that began with the letter M, but merry was not it.

  Chapter 23

  April 08, 2019. 11:21. A.M.

  Joshua’s phone woke him up. It was Wheeler confirming that the meeting was on. After he hung up, Joshua lay back and groaned. He had been watching the door and the window the whole night, unaware of when he had dozed off.

  Just a few more winks.

  But he needed to talk to the snitch.

  An hour later, Peter and sleep-deprived Joshua left the hotel, and fifteen minutes later, they turned onto Mound Road where Detroit Detention Center was located. They pulled over into the visitors parking lot and walked inside the concrete behemoth.

  A stern hulk of an officer, cocooned within bulletproof glass, instructed them to drop their cell phones and belts on a tray jutting out from the booth. Joshua also had to surrender his Skoal tin. When he drew his gun out, the officer’s eyes almost popped out.

  “We used to be cops.” Joshua placed his .38 Ruger Service Six on the tray. The revolver, which Joshua never fired on duty, had been replaced by semi automatics since 1993 in the NYPD. But as any old cop, he had grown quite fond of the one thing that had been literally by his side as he patrolled the shady streets of the Bronx, silently assuring his safety. The wooden handle that had absorbed his sweat was warmer and more comforting than any cold steel.

  Peter dropped his flashy SIG-Sauer P226 on the tray, the one that succeeded the Ruger, which in turn was replaced by flashier Glocks and upgraded Sigs.

  They informed the officer that they were visiting a man named Joey Marco.

  “Ten minutes,” the officer said.

  “No, you don’t understand,” Peter said. “This is regarding a high-profile—”

  “Ten minutes for civilians,” the officer said, louder this time.

  Just as Peter went to argue, Joshua put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s their dominion.”

  Emasculated, they followed a blue line on the wall that read Visitors. The labyrinthine corridors led to a musty hall that smelled of stale cigarettes, sweat, and the sewers. The floor was laden with rat droppings and cockroach eggs that looked like brown Tic-Tacs. Oscillating fans mounted on the walls provided a transitory respite every five seconds.