The Innocents Nathan Senthil (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) 📖

the authorities—by making them deposit it in his commissary account.

Peter said, “But we have just ten minutes.”

Picking his teeth with his nail, Joey said, “Then chop-chop!”

Joshua glanced at Peter sideways.

“Oh, come on,” Peter whined, but got up, holding his hip. “Hope you rot in hell.”

Then he made a show of looking around. “Oh! You’re already there.”

“Whatever.”

Peter’s footfalls disappeared along the corridor.

“Okay, now that you’ve bilked us out of our cash, play your part.”

“It’s payment. I ain’t no shyster. My lawyer is.”

“Using the prison library, uh?” Joshua smirked. “Let’s not waste time.”

Joey said, “My cousin was hired by MacSharp, a weapons factory that had opened near Livernois. Back then we had several people working in various plants who kicked up information to us—”

“I’m sorry. I neither have the time nor the inclination to learn the mechanics of the Mafia. You may have noticed, it’s not the dominant force it used to be back then. Bigger and meaner evil overtook it. Heard of cartels? How about Isis? Just tell me anything you know about Lolly.”

Joey sneered, but spoke nonetheless. “So… we got information from our guy in MacSharp about a shipment. But our soldiers were all known to the system. Though my cousin was sure it wouldn’t get reported if we ambushed it, we didn’t want to take that risk. Robbing a weapon carrier could generate a lot of heat.”

“So you outsourced the job.”

Joey nodded. “Roman had just become a capo, and he wanted to prove his worth to the family.”

“He became innovative.”

Joey chuckled. “He put a word out that he needed some lowlifes skilled in robbery but not known to the cops.” Joey’s face stiffened. “That’s when we heard about a scrawny black kid who had a rep as some kinda batshit daredevil.”

“Wait! Lolly was renowned in the underworld even before he hijacked the MacSharp truck?” Joshua hadn’t doubted that Lolly must have committed some sort of crime prior to MacSharp, but didn’t think he would be infamous in Loserville.

“We chose him to rob MacSharp because he was already famous.”

Famous. Joshua rolled his eyes. “For what?”

“Another truck job.” Joey leaned forward, his eyes beaming. “They T-boned a freaking backhoe into an armored cash van and threw it down a bridge…” Joey went on about what Lolly did that day.

“When was this again?” Joshua didn’t need a pen. His desperate mind was sucking in new facts like the vacuum of the space.

“We met Lolly’s gang in December of ‘81. This robbery would’ve taken place some three to six months before that.”

“Alright. Tell me about your meeting with Lolly.”

Joey massaged the stump of his missing digit. “We made a really simple deal with the little Satan. Bring the MacSharp truck and get paid.”

“But you guys planned to kill them,” Joshua spoke out his suspicion. “Lolly shot Roman and possibly you and escaped?”

“We didn’t plan to kill them!” Joey implored and told him what happened.

By the end, Joshua was appalled. He hadn’t imagined the story to be this sadistic. The deeper he went, the darker it got, giving him the chills.

“I don’t understand the need for torture. It doesn’t fit Lolly’s pattern. Did your Don do something to Lolly before you guys met him?”

“If we remembered every bad deed we did our brains would go like this.” With his left hand, Joey made an action of explosion beside his temple.

Good point.

“You haven’t figured it out? No suspects?” Joshua asked.

“We had a lot of enemies. But the guys—no the kids—who did us in were blacks. Our Don always kept them at distance, both in friendliness and enmity. Still he rounded up the bosses of all the black neighborhoods in Detroit. He got their permission and put out an offer, which is still valid.”

“What offer?”

“Time!” the officer behind Joey said.

“Bring Lolly’s blue-eyed head, you get two million.”

“How many for alive?”

Joey stood up, with a lopsided grin. “I’m a finger shorter to show you.”

* * *

Joshua resigned to sit at the passenger side of the car. His brain worked double time, computing the latest data, while his eyes studied the mirrors.

They drove on the 8 Mile Road, made famous by Eminem. It did seem like it separated the poor inner city from the wealthy suburbs.

They turned onto Livernois Avenue, and a mile ahead was an overpass the GPS called the Michigan highway. Joshua asked Peter to take this route because Lolly had killed two people there almost four decades ago. The sparse road allowed them to cruise at a leisurely pace of twenty miles per hour.

In the side mirror, Joshua noticed something. A beat SUV, driving two cars behind, took a sudden turn and accelerated.

As the SUV gained on them, the driver’s face behind the windscreen became visible.

The guy was wearing a balaclava.

The SUV was almost flanking them. Another man in a balaclava, sitting in the second row, was aiming a shiny pistol with both hands. A Desert Eagle, not an Uzi or similar types the drive-by shooters preferred. Both men were black. It hadn’t crossed Joshua’s mind until now. Could… could it be Lolly who was after Joshua?

The guy took a shot at the car, the bullet bouncing off the metal. For a split second, the deafening boom whelmed the sounds of the busy road. Joshua watched the recoil fold the shooter’s elbows and his forearms hit the rim of the window, making him scream in pain.

Grabbing the hair at the back of Peter’s head, Joshua ducked and yanked the gear stick. The car teetered to a stop, and the SUV flew past; but it skidded around in front of them.

Blood pounding in the ears, Joshua sat up straight.

“Holy panties!” Peter finally understood what was happening. As he shifted the car into gear, Joshua noted the