The Innocents

by Nathan Senthil

  Thomas would be waiting on the road perpendicular to the bridge, to T-bone their target. Probably revving the shit out of the backhoe, nervously gripping the steering wheel and unclasping it. His eyes fixed on the signal like a hungry hawk watching a rat hole.

  Leo would be at the corner of the street the backhoe was idling. The brink van would come from their left and drive onwards to their right, if they let it pass the bridge, that was, which they had planned not to.

  A long blaring honk reverberated in the hot atmosphere, and seconds later, heavy-duty tires screeched to a sudden stop.

  As the van neared the intersection, Leo had jaywalked. The driver skipped a heartbeat, his eyes widening in horror as he was about to run over a small kid. Thanks to Leo’s stature, which Ryatt hadn’t forgotten and optimally factored in on his plan, he was never thought of as the fifteen-year-old that he was. Then the distressed driver stood on the brake, skidding the van to a halt.

  That was Thomas’s cue.

  The backhoe lingered a good one hundred meters from the intersection, its front aimed at the van’s right side. To the left was the guardrail of the bridge crossing the canal, under which Ryatt lay in wait.

  Ryatt heard people yell at the driver and Leo, which eventually became panicked shouting and unrest, as they all scurried away, because Thomas had just put the backhoe in gear and accelerated it to its top speed, the metal jaw slicing through the shimmering heat distortion of the blacktop. The security guard sitting beside the driver saw the clamoring crowd quickly disperse, pointing at something. He then turned and noticed the unsettling scene outside his window that made him shit a little in his pants. A backhoe racing towards their van, its gaping metallic maw pointed at their flimsy door, at him, its lower teeth gleaming menacingly in the sunlight.

  The guard’s brain fumbled and tried to take the next course of action, wanting to apprise the driver of the situation. The driver who was busy scolding Leo. However, his mind and body had been paralyzed in fear; his legs wouldn’t move, neither would his arms. He stunned the moment he spotted the raging backhoe descending upon them, blowing black smoke angrily through the exhaust on its head. A monstrous hellhound sprinting towards them, its claws pummeling the ground.

  The last thing the guard saw was the equally terrified face of a teenager.

  And then the beast bit its prey.

  The entire weight of the ten-thousand-pound construction vehicle, concentrated on its impermeable cast-iron front-loader, smashed on the van’s side, scooping it off the road and tossing it through the guardrail.

  As soon as Ryatt heard the crash, he shot up to his feet. Rebar and debris rained down before him.

  Then profound silence.

  A flash of deceiving quietness as the van took the plunge was broken by an explosive sound of the durable steel box hitting the concrete, its top slamming on the ground. The gravity crushed the van and shattered its glasses. Upturned, its bent wheels rotated like an inept bug uselessly peddling its legs in a vain attempt to escape its predicament.

  Not wasting a jiffy, Ryatt quickly ran to the van, drawing the .22 from his hip.

  “Whoo!” Leo screamed from the broken section of the bridge. A group of onlookers gathered beside Leo, who pulled his gun out and shot at the sky, clearing the crowd. Then, without giving it a second thought, he jumped down and landed on the van’s underside. He got off and pulled a spare kerchief hanging from Ryatt’s back pocket that he tied across his face.

  Ryatt and Leo turned their attention to the van as the front door was pushed open. They could hear men moaning inside the driver cabin.

  “Move it!” Thomas tossed a thirty-six-inch bolt cutter and Ryatt caught it. Then he and Leo jogged towards the back of the van. However the tool became redundant because there was no lock in the door but a small box with numbers.

  Leo studied it, with growing confusion. “The fuck is this? A telephone?”

  Thomas craned his head from the guardrail above and shouted, “No, you dipshit. It’s a Yale lock.”

  “What’s a whale lock?” Leo scratched the back of his head.

  “It’s not a whale. It’s a—forget it.”

  “Whatever. Just tell us how to open the fucking door.”

  “You can’t. You need to know the numbers.”

  “What numbers? Can you come…”

  Ryatt left them to it and rushed to the front. One of the security guards had crawled out successfully, and the other man was on his partner’s tail. They both stopped moving when they saw Ryatt. The older security guy was black, and the young one was white.

  The radio could be heard from the driver’s cabin, the DJ talking at length.

  Leo came up front. “Hey, motherfucker,” he said to the old black guy, the one who was already out in the open. “What’s the number combination for the door?”

  “Did you just say ‘number combination?’” the guard laughed. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  It pissed Ryatt off. The way this man spoke down to them. The way they all spoke down to them. The whole world looked down at them, didn’t it? Little black street urchins wearing torn jeans and not by choice? Even if they had guns, they were treated poorly. Ryatt should teach this old fuck a lesson. No more—

  His stomach finally exploded, the flood of puke drenching the skull kerchief.

  Ryatt turned away from the van. Then he yanked the soggy cloth off of his face, threw it in the weeds, and panted.

  “You okay in there?” Leo asked, holding the gun on the security guards.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.” Ryatt rubbed his mouth on his shoulder. “Don’t let them move, not even a pinky.” Ryatt looked up at Thomas. “Lollipop.”

  “Oh shit.” Thomas fumbled in his pocket, brought out the candy and threw it to Ryatt. He unwrapped it as if he had just been bitten by a snake and it was his antidote.

  When the burn in his chest eased up, he let himself be embarrassed. The rush of committing a crime in broad daylight was just too much for him. But his will was stronger than his fear. No successful man had let fear stop him. Emboldening his thumping heart, Ryatt removed the jersey and tied it across his face. He didn’t wear anything underneath, so his body glistened with the sheen of sweat. The humid afternoon air blew through Ryatt’s dreadlocks, the heatwave cooling his sticky skin.

  As he turned, the DJ had finally stopped talking and put on a song.

  Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise…

  Ryatt inched closer to the old guy on the ground. “Pin code.” His voice was surprisingly calm and authoritative as he stressed those words. Poverty, lack of means and opportunities, God, and even his own body, they had all been throwing so many hurdles in his path and staving off his victory for too long a time. No more. Right then, he knew he was crossing an important threshold into a point of no return. He was not gonna be bullied by this world anymore, no.

  He was gonna be the bully.

  The old man regarded Ryatt. “A little vermin sucking on a piece of candy ain’t gonna rob us,” he spat. “Fuck you!”

  We will, we will rock you…

  “Pin,” Ryatt repeated through his clenched teeth. “Code.”

  “Oh… that supposed to scare me?” He put his hands up in mock fear. “Why don’t you run home to your momma, you little—”

  The old security guard was unable to finish as a bullet hit him square on his forehead. Mouth hanging open, his head arched back violently and hit the ground with a thud. The shock froze his face, his pupils locked on the blazing afternoon sun, the eyelids not rushing to protect the eyes.

  “What the fuck?!” Thomas’s voice roared behind him, but Ryatt didn’t break eye contact with the security guy’s head. He was curious as to why there was no spatter.

  Ryatt put his foot on the dead man’s chest. With the tip of the shoe—the toe still poking out of the hole—he pushed the guard’s chin to a side. The bullet didn’t travel through his skull but slid across the top, tearing the scalp and knocking
him out. The bastard was still alive. Fucking small calibers.

  Ryatt hated half-assing anything. To finish the job proper, he lifted his gun and took aim.

  “Lolly! No!” Thomas warned.

  Ryatt looked up at him and smiled underneath his makeshift mask, but Thomas wouldn’t know because it didn’t reach his eyes.

  Ryatt sang along, “Buddy, you’re a young man, hard man shouting in the street gonna take on the world someday…”

  Then Ryatt pulled the trigger. The firm recoil travelled through his palm, forearm, and upwards. Like a powerful guardian of some kind patting his shoulder, comforting him when everything was utterly painful. It gave him hope, and oh God did it feel good for somebody who had been deprived of it their whole life!

  Just to experience that ephemeral feeling of hope and strength, a fleeting sense of control and serenity—not out of sadism or anger—Ryatt squeezed the trigger twelve more times, synching it with the drum chorus of ‘We Will Rock You’ but the gun had become empty on the fifth squeeze.

  Ryatt winked at Thomas whose jaw dropped; he peeled his eyes off his appalled friend and regarded his work. Though the security guard’s head was dotted with half a dozen holes, it did not explode, nor did his brains leak out. However, Ryatt knew the man was dead, because one of the bullets had popped his right eye.

  Not looking away, Ryatt stretched his arm in the direction where a small figure loomed at the peripheral vision. He beckoned Leo over and dropped the empty revolver to hang from his forefinger, smoke coiling upwards. Leo retrieved it from him and replaced it with his .21. Fully loaded. But Ryatt aimed at nothing, the muzzle pointed loosely at the ground.

  Ryatt, whose attention didn’t yet leave the dead body under his foot, spoke in a smooth tone, addressing the remaining security guard. “You want to live?”

  There was a movement at the corner of his eye. The man must have nodded.

  “Then answer the question this brave idiot failed to, but remember,” Ryatt finally looked at the shivering man, and lifted a finger, as if preaching the very meaning of existence to a devout, “don’t be a hero. Heroes end up with a lot of lead in their tiny brains.”

  “B—but…” Tears streamed down the guard’s face, choking him and drowning the words. “I—I just got married. Baby’s due…”

  Ryatt understood the security guard’s fear: it’s the fear of life. Newlywed, a little bun in the oven. Maybe they already bought a comfy pink cradle, tunes playing as some cute toy spun over it. Husband and wife huddled close to the baby’s crib, kissing each other, caressing the bulge and expecting to be overrun with euphoria when the little precious finally came into their lives.

  What a picture-perfect image!

  Ryatt didn’t give two shits though. If he couldn’t provide happiness to his mom, then no one should be happy. He wasn’t born to see others live fulfilling lives while his own deluged in hobo piss and goddamn ramen.

  Ryatt said, “Give us the code, and I’ll let you go.”

  “You… You are lying.” The man wept.

  Ryatt looked at the pathetic thing kneeling in front of him. Did people really love their lives so much? They would cry rivers to just live, meaning they had a lot to lose. A lot that gave them a reason to look forward to the next day. Ryatt couldn’t relate.

  “No, I ain’t lying. So best believe when I say.” Ryatt lifted the gun and thumbed the hammer back. “You got two seconds to answer me.”

  The guard put down his head and lifted his hands to protect his face. As if bones and muscle tissue would deflect the cold bullets. Ryatt’s finger wrapped around the trigger.

  Then the Whitey iterated. “Four, nine, seven, zero, five, three.”

  * * *

  During the whole getaway, Thomas didn’t stop giving Ryatt shit. “You killed an innocent old feller. We don’t kill innocents.”

  Half naked, Ryatt sucked on his lollipop and looked out the window, not paying attention to the bitching.

  Because fuck innocents.

  Iris’s husband had been beaten to death in front of her eyes while she was pregnant, and her shop raided, in that bloody riot. Which could have been easily prevented had the innocents showed some balls. There were literally hundreds of people for each rioter. Forget hundreds, if just three people had stood up against one criminal, that massacre could have been prevented. But they didn’t. Instead they ran out of their neighborhoods, tails tucked between their legs. They ignored the evil happening right in front of their eyes.

  Due to the inaction of these so-called innocent people, Ryatt’s dad was murdered and his shop, their livelihood, was looted. Iris was forced to borrow money from a loan shark, and everything went to shit. Ryatt became a criminal to escape that life. The innocents, Ryatt just hated their guts and couldn’t care less about spilling them on the streets.

  The car stopped inside their hangout. Leo said he would later drive it far away and light it up. A few kids were getting high inside, but the place was otherwise empty. It generally was during daytime. The trio climbed down and Thomas shooed the junkies away.

  Leo handed the cash bag to Ryatt. As he drew open the zipper, he thought that the key out of this miserable life was rather heavy.

  Ryatt opened it and glanced at his friends. Wetting his lips, Thomas nodded and Leo twitched his neck. Ryatt upended the bag.

  Wads of Benjamins and other lesser denominations fell in lumps.

  Leo clucked and started doing a funky chicken dance around the mound. Thomas grabbed his temples and dropped onto his ass; a disbelieving chuckle escaped his mouth. Apparently, large volumes of cash cured guilt.

  Ryatt wouldn’t know because he did not feel a sliver of such feelings.

  Chapter 8

  December 17, 1981. 10:41 P.M.

  More than four months had passed since the bridge, but every time Ryatt’s eyelids rested, he saw the security guard’s head mottled with red blots, the sunlight swallowed by his dilated pupils, his mouth contorted in disbelief. The vile memory murdered Ryatt’s sleep.

  Not that he worried about it. And he reckoned the image burned into his retina would soon dissipate. It should eventually go, right, when Ryatt replaced it with new images and fresher vile memories? His mind would then get used to the macabre and say ‘meh’ after a few times.

  Now the security guard’s dead face was supplanted by disco lights that flashed around him, accentuating the graffiti on the wall. Two Aux cables ran from the Delco cassette player in their ride’s dashboard, to a pair of towering speakers that played Michael Jackson’s Beat It.

  The threesome chilled on their new Cadillac Eldorado, with its top down. Ryatt lay on the backseat. Thomas and Leo had chipped in and bought the car from their share. Ryatt, being the responsible son that he was, did not squander the money on anything fancy.

  He did spend a little on an extravagant birthday cake. With candles, festoons, balloons, the whole set-up. It was the best birthday party, maybe because it was the first one he’d ever had. Not only did he buy himself some new clothes and sneakers, he also bought his mom dresses and jewelry. Robbing was the best decision Ryatt had taken in his life. If something made you feel this good, then it couldn’t be wrong, could it?

  Out of the $51,900 netted from the van, Lolly took $20,000 and tossed the remainder to Thomas and Leo. They didn’t raise any dispute over the uneven split because it was all Lolly, the idea, the plot, and the murder, everything. If it weren’t for his radical measures, they would have gotten nothing; so the duo acted grateful for what they received.

  One of the toughest things Ryatt had to do following the robbery was lie to his mom. He told himself not to hesitate or stutter when tackling her questions, and he had built up a story that he could reiterate even if someone woke him up in the middle of the night and asked him to. The premise of the story went like this: a school in Toronto had offered Ryatt a football scholarship, and they would pay him $2,000 every month if he played for them. On top of giving Ryatt a decent excuse for th
e money, it also provided him a reason for his absence. Given his new profession, he decided to stay with Leo and Thomas, and visit Iris once a month. Though she was reluctant and heartbroken, they had agreed it was for the best, but for totally different reasons.

  Then Iris got the money and, just like Ryatt predicted, made the first call to Bugsy. In total, he’d lent $5,000 and collected an upwards of $20,000 in return. A robbery, she had said, making Ryatt wince. Anyway, she was happy that they didn’t have to deal with Bugsy anymore. Ryatt had planned to move her to a new place next month, then buy the household items he had been longing to own.

  Ryatt wanted to pay Bugsy in installments, so as not to bring attention to themselves. If Iris had settled the whole amount at once, a street-savvy fucker like Bugsy would know something didn’t add up. A little imagination, a few tips from the underworld grapevines, and Bugsy would have made the connection between the robbery and Iris’s sudden riches. In fact, many kids in their hangout idolized Badger and Buddha because the idiots had bragged about the robbery to other YBI members when drunk. But no one knew anything about them except their street names. Till now, Bugsy had no clue that Ryatt was Iris’s kid, so everything was as it should be.

  Best if Ryatt stayed mysterious, though he was becoming increasingly infamous in their little part of town. The robbery had been a sensation for some time, and Lolly would be remiss if he didn’t enjoy the notoriety. But unlike Leo and Thomas, he didn’t allow beginner’s success to get to his head. Ambushing a cash van was nothing compared to his ambitions for the future, so he did what he had to do in order to exploit his full potential.

  He trained his body and mind.

  Ryatt’s thumb, forefinger, palm, and wrist ached almost always because he practiced his draw and precision five hours a day, for more than three months. He did okay, but he was far from becoming the most proficient shooter that he aimed to be.

  If Ryatt kept training, he would achieve speed and accuracy, better than that of any gun-toting individual on the planet. As the fastest and the sharpest gunslinger he would literally be the one guy in the entire world no one fucked with. Each and every person would kneel and yield, but only after seeing Ryatt’s determination to kill.