The Innocents, Nathan Senthil [best life changing books .TXT] 📗

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 percent 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.

A barrier separated the prisoners and the visitors. The bottom half of it was concrete, the top half made of reinforced glass. The barrier was divided into a dozen neat partitions vertically, and a single chair was placed in front of each.

They chose the middle, the only spot to receive two drafts of air from two different fans. Peter took the seat, and Joshua pulled himself a chair from beside.

As they waited, a lean guy in orange prison garb was ushered in through a metal door on the other side.

“Ten minutes,” the guard shouted and stood with his back against the wall, while the prisoner made his way towards them.

His hair was closely cropped; his face could do with fewer scars. For a guy over seventy, his ramrod physique and black hair were begrudgingly absurd.

“I know why you’re here. Wheeler told me,” Joey said as he sat, his hoarse voice a few decibels lower when it filtered through the holes on the glass. “Lolly.”

Both nodded in unification.

“Now the country fears him, but back then, he was just a little runt,” Joey put his hand out, slightly over his shoulder, “about yay big.”

“Go on.”

“Not so fast.” Joey grinned and scratched his cheek. Joshua noticed that he missed his right thumb. Joey caught him staring and quickly drew his hand down. “Show me your wallets.”

Clueless, they looked at each other but obeyed the scum, brandishing the leather front to back over the glass.

“No, you idiots. How much you got? Put it over there.”

They emptied the wallets above the ledge and all three counted. Two hundred dollars and a bit of loose change.

“Nice,” Joey stretched the E. “Transfer it to my JPay.”

Joshua’s fatigued mind took a moment to understand what was happening. Joey was mugging their $200—while in prison, in front of