The Highway (A Benny Steel and Marisa Tulli Novel - Book 1)

by Steven Grosso

  Flashing balls and straight lines of colorful chemicals exploded and faded throughout the sky for a good five minutes before they ended.

  After another five minutes, a sea of red jerseys and hats poured out of the stadium in the distance. Marisa inched closer to him, and her warm, soft body leaned up against his. There was now no space between them. He wrapped his arm around her. Hell, why not go with the moment.

  “I haven’t seen those fireworks here since I was a kid,” he said.

  She slid her cool, smooth hand over his, didn’t say a word. His spine tingled and sent cold shockwaves throughout his body.

  His mind drifted over past relationships, and he didn’t know why they would at this moment, but he couldn’t help it. He’d had his share of dates over the years—after she had left him. Most had been quick hook-ups, a few nights out here and there, some casual sex with no strings attached, nothing serious, except for, maybe, one. That relationship had lasted ten months but hadn’t been a big deal. He’d liked her, but they’d been at two different places. She’d wanted to get married and suggested that he quit the force, said she couldn’t let her children worry if their dad would make it home at night. He’d told her he wouldn’t be a 9-to-5er if you paid him a million dollars a year. That had been the end of that. He knew, or at least he’d thought up until this point, that he wasn’t cut out for the married life; he’d become a self-proclaimed bachelor.

  But as Marisa leaned her head on his shoulder, her hair tickling his eye, he pondered if he’d been wrong. What am I nuts? I don’t even know if this is a fucking date. What is the right woman, anyway? Is she right next to me? You just met her, could it be? Why now? This feels so real. He tried to focus on Marisa but failed. Shut the fuck up, brain! Stop thinking! His thoughts yelled so loud in his mind his head hurt.

  He fidgeted and decided to screw all the thoughts and do something he rarely did—go with his instincts before thinking. He tightened his arm around Marisa. A chill ran through the air and let itself be known as it brushed behind them, hitting and cooling their necks. She snuggled closer to him and ran her hand across his chest. His fingertips glided up and down her right arm. Her hair grazed the bottom of his chin, and he breathed in the scent of her hair spray. He puckered his lips to kiss it, but refrained. The moment was moving so fast, no time to think. He couldn’t have sketched it up any better—the fireworks, warm summer wind that Sinatra sang about, his dream-woman wrapped around his arm. But what is this? Nothing’s clear. he thought. He almost forgot that the following morning they’d be interviewing a top suspect.

  Marisa uncurled her legs and lowered her feet toward the ground in one motion. She faced him. “So, what’s your deal, Steel? Why aren’t you married?”

  “Why aren’t you?” he said.

  “I was engaged, ah, about, let’s see, four years ago. It didn’t work out.” She looked away as if she had hidden pain that only she knew about.

  He waited for her to look back up. “Yeah, me too…but a lot longer ago.”

  “Longer ago? What grammar is that?”

  “The South Philly dialect is rubbing off on me.”

  Marisa smiled, her teeth gleaming in the night’s darkness. She gazed into his eyes for longer than he could hold hers. His stomach flipped, and he looked away. His mind called him a coward, but he whistled to offset the mental chatter. He just hoped the self-criticism and self-defeating thoughts wouldn’t come back in the middle of this moment.

  She smiled again, nervously, a bit distracted, and still seemed to be bothered by telling him about the engagement.

  He saw the hurt in her eyes. The eyes always revealed one’s spirit.

  Steel slid his arm back around her, and she gazed again, but he managed to hold the gaze the whole minute or two. Without a word, their lips connected. Her warm lips swirled his stomach and gave him butterflies like he was a schoolboy all over again. Has to be for real. The thought faded. The trepidation he’d felt earlier vanished. The level of closeness he felt to this woman he had just recently met blew him away. Words couldn’t describe the feelings going on inside him. It was as if he’d swallowed the fireworks—at least his stomach twirled as if he had. Maybe good old fate had worked its way into his life. He didn’t know about all that, but he couldn’t definitively say it hadn’t.

  The kiss stopped with a tug on his bottom lip from hers. She opened her eyes and held his face for a moment, and it felt as though her eyes made him come alive—broke the cycle from his past lost-love—as if he could feel again. He stared—confused, elated, nervous, and cautious. Either he had just made the best decision of his life by getting involved with Marisa or the worst.

  22

  Knee had found out that Steel wanted to talk to him the previous day and had returned his voicemails just past midnight, after Steel had left Marisa’s parents’ house, and agreed to come into the station at noon.

  Steel had arrived at the office even before sunrise. Marisa joined him at 9 a.m. They’d tossed mock questions back and forth at one another for about an hour. Steel had been waiting a week for this moment. He’d paced all morning, mumbling to himself as he rehearsed what to say, preparing so rigorously for questioning that he could’ve been mistaken for a Broadway actor reviewing his lines before going on stage.

  While sitting at his desk, reading notes he’d scribbled on a legal pad, he huffed and puffed. I know this son of a bitch is behind this, I just have to prove it, he thought. He sipped his coffee and frowned after noticing it had turned cold, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting to the bottom of this damn thing. His mood was foul, for no reason, but he tried his best to lift it. He wanted this thing solved for the city of Philadelphia and also for himself. If he had any shot of making lieutenant detective someday, he’d need a success rate. And the numbers weren’t for his résumé or ego, but to lead by example. If he managed to get that rank one day, he wanted to use it to inspire the men who’d be working under him.

  His biggest fear over the Hitchy case was further retaliatory violence from Hitchy’s crew or Knee’s crew. The code of the streets never changed: don’t snitch or talk to law enforcement. Anything could happen with those guys, and he wouldn’t get wind of it until after the matter, especially after more dead bodies had popped up. God forbid, he thought, we have an innocent kid get killed in a drive-by or shootout. I can’t have that on my conscience if I know I can get these guys before that.

  He frowned, disgusted at the thought of drug-dealers. Although he wasn’t one to moralize or judge others, something ticked him off about those who sold drugs, especially hard drugs. And especially the ones who knew better—the people who had a chance to change or realize the effect they had on society but chose not to, showed no remorse—sociopaths in his mind. He disliked when people took advantage of others’ vices or weaknesses, legally or illegally. Liquor companies, too—the way they marketed it as cool, the in-thing to do. But he’d seen the dark side of alcohol abuse—the bloody and violent scenes that came with it—anything from drunk drivers killing innocent people, to domestic violence, to unnecessary brawls at night clubs that left people severely injured or even dead just because they’d had too much to drink. He disliked tobacco companies, even though he had been a smoker and still was an occasional social smoker. And he didn’t like the way the government turned its back and let the companies sell cigarettes, a product without any health benefits for people, just to make money or fund political campaigns.

  But he guessed people had a choice, free will, but the marketers for vices preyed on weaknesses and had an agenda, a campaign, all geared to hook, to suck the public in. But that’s life, he thought. Can’t change a damn thing. Sometimes I just wanna put a bullet in my head and end it all. This world is fucked up and backwards…right is seen as wrong, and the wrong is glorified. But who are you? What are you perfect? Far from it. I’m just as screwed up as everybody else. I’m a fallible, imperfect human. He whistled, rubbed his chin.

>   He dug his back into his chair, and his body tensed. He adjusted the legal pad on the desktop. All the lives he’d seen destroyed by drugs over the years. He’d seen mothers’ eyes filled with so much pain, as they’d been unable to do anything to protect their children, and fathers as they’d fought back their tears at the sight of their children gone astray. So many bodies found murdered, dead from overdoses, and innocent victims caught in the crossfire, and all over drugs.

  Warm rage tangled itself deep in Steel’s gut. His body shuddered.

  His cousin on his father’s side and his poor aunt and uncle came to mind. “What a good kid,” he said aloud and shook his head. It shouldn’t have gone that way for his cousin, Scott. Scott had been two years older than Steel. They had seen one another often during childhood, having grown up just a few blocks apart. They’d played middle-school basketball together and seen each other on birthdays, holidays and occasional family get-togethers. They’d gone to the same high school, chased girls together, hung out in the same circle of friends, and been close up until Scott’s senior year. Steel had only been a sophomore at the time but had known something wasn’t right. Scott had been a good student all his life up until that point—a nice kid, actively involved in extracurricular activities like school newspaper and sports.

  Scott’s parents had also known something was fishy and had often called Steel’s house asking him for information. He’d hear his cousin yelling in the background, but Steel had never given anything to them, although he’d wanted to. It still bothered him. He still regretted it.

  His eyelids slammed shut, and he ran his hand across his mouth, creating red lines on the skin above and below his lips. The emotions were fresh, although the memories many years old. His queasy stomach never forgot. How could he have not told his aunt and uncle that he’d known about his cousin’s drug issue? Could he have prevented the overdose?

  That funeral was one of the hardest things Steel had ever dealt with in his entire life. He’d dug deep down during that time and mustered up enough strength, as he’d fought back hot, sharp tears behind his eyes, to carry a heavy casket that held the body of his eighteen-year-old cousin through a packed church filled with hundreds of Scott’s friends, family members, neighbors, and teachers. A young life with so much promise cut short over drugs. Drug abuse was always a promise of pleasure that got broken. Steel remembered keeping his head down, avoiding eye contact to the best of his abilities. For the few seconds that he had glanced at the pews filled with familiar faces, he’d noticed one of Scott’s teachers as she’d sobbed and another student, whom Steel hadn’t known, had slid a hand across her back and consoled her. He could still feel his lips quivering and a hard lump forming in his throat as he recalled the scene. That teacher, Ms. Murphy, if Steel’s memory served him correctly, hadn’t had any children of her own. The 100-plus seniors in her class had been her children—they had been her life. And one of them had been ripped from it.

  His uncle had attempted to be brave at the viewing and funeral, but his bloodshot eyes had revealed a failed attempt. At the funeral, he’d just stood there, at times in a daze, as he’d stared at his son lying in a casket. He’d seemed to believe that if he looked at his boy long enough, he would wake up and run over to him. Steel’s head throbbed at that thought. His uncle’s eyes had saddened that day and never recovered. The once jovial man Steel had known as a kid had disappeared forever—gone with his son. His uncle may have smiled a handful of times since then.

  His aunt, too, had had a hard time. She’d thrown herself on the casket at the burial, wrapping her arms around the box, screaming at the top of her lungs, arms and legs kicking as she was being dragged away, tears soaking her cheeks—but, over time, she eventually overcame the pain and couldn’t let it beat her. She’d started a scholarship fund in her son’s name and spoke daily at a drug rehabilitation center for adolescents. Giving back filled a small gap in a wound that would never fully heal; after all, your only child could never be replaced.

  Steel’s family had taken it hard as well. It had been a tough year for Steel. Suicide had even crossed his mind at the time. The guilt had eaten at him. If only he could have done more.

  But I was just a kid, he thought. He balled a fist and held it over his mouth. The memories pushed tears to his eyes, tightened his throat, felt like a piece of food was stuck down it.

  They’d never found out who had sold his cousin the drugs that had taken his life, but Steel hoped whoever did could’ve felt the pain just once, the pain that he and his family had felt. Drug cases were personal to Steel. He couldn’t help but reflect on how he thought Hitchy had gotten what he had coming to him, but he wanted to get that bastard Knee off the streets, too. Knee had flooded enough drugs into his neighborhood over the years, and enough was enough in Steel’s book. As far as getting justice for Hitchy, Steel didn’t see it that way. He viewed it as stopping the panic and bleeding in Philly and taking as many drug dealers off the streets before another dead Scott tore another family apart. He worked in homicide and didn’t always dabble in narcotics territory, but when he did, he took advantage.

  A small hand slid across Steel’s back. He flinched and spun around. Marisa stood in front of him but didn’t speak. Steel took it as a let’s-get-this-show-on-the-road moment. He rose and followed her over to her cubicle. At this moment, he fell deeper for her than he had the previous night at the fireworks. Her heels clapped against the floor, and her black slacks highlighted her thighs and wrapped around her thin waist. She didn’t have on her suit jacket yet, just a tucked-in white blouse. Two buttons were left undone, revealing soft skin under her neck. She smelled like heaven.

  But he couldn’t read her at all that morning. Her actions puzzled him. She didn’t even hint to their kiss the previous night, barely joked around, and somewhat ignored him. At times, the tension between them was so noticeable that Steel escaped to the kitchen for an extra cup of coffee he didn’t need.

  She wrapped her suit jacket around one arm and held the other in the air, forcing it into the sleeve, anger in her eyes. As she did this, a woman’s voice yelled, “He’s here…got him in the room, whenever you guys are ready.”

  “Thanks, Mare,” Steel said.

  Mary McNeil had been on the force for years. She was of average height with short blonde hair and always wore a pair of stylish eyeglasses. And she was tough, a leader. She and Steel had worked closely together as patrol officers. About six years ago, she had been shot while responding to a domestic abuse call. It had happened too fast for Mary to react. The shooting had occurred on a cool April day. A husband and wife had been screaming and shouting when she and her partner had first arrived. They’d been the first officers on the scene. Her partner had stepped outside to console the couple’s small children. Mary had stayed inside as the husband had stumbled around, visibly drunk, screaming at his wife, who had stood with a thin line of fresh blood trickling down her forehead, tears pouring from her eyes, and yelled at Mary to go outside and get her children. Mary had taken her eyes off the husband for one second before he’d pulled a handgun from his waist and fired three shots at her. When the paramedics had arrived on the scene, they’d thought she was dead. She’d been hit once in the stomach, the other two bullets just missing her. The baby blue shirt she’d been wearing had turned navy and dark red from the blood that had soaked it. The bullet had ripped through her insides but, fortunately, missed her liver by less than an inch. Doctors had said she would’ve died—should’ve died—and couldn’t believe she’d survived. Although she’d been lucky the bullet didn’t hit a vital organ, she couldn’t escape months in the hospital recuperating. Several nerves had been damaged, causing shooting pains throughout her body. Those pains could resurface for short stints for the remainder of her life. At the time, the department had assigned her to desk duty, where she still worked, sitting by the entrance of the station, taking walk-ins and phone calls. She filed paperwork, did data entry. Steel had an enormous amount
of respect for her and often thought how some officers on the force would have quit after something like that had happened to them.

  “Mare…room one or two?” Steel asked.

  “I got ‘em in two.”

  “Thanks,” he said, rubbing his clammy palms together.

  Mary’s footsteps faded.

  Steel and Marisa made their way for the room, through the hallway, which smelled of stale popcorn that someone must have heated up in the microwave. The lighting was dim as they walked, and Steel told Marisa about Mary and how she’d ended up on desk duty, flipping his eyes upward, gesturing with his hands while remembering the details. Marisa nodded as they entered, still digesting the story.

  Arthur Anderson sat on a chair on one side of a table, and two chairs were positioned opposite of him, reserved for Steel and Marisa. The confined room was soundproof. White walls surrounded them, and it was cold. The temperature was intentional, an attempt to make a suspect uncomfortable. And the department always made the suspect’s chair uncomfortable as well, all to get them talking. One-way mirrors on the walls were in place to rattle the person being questioned—sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

  Steel wanted to work this guy, to make Knee feel comfortable with him in the beginning as if he was there to help him instead of trying to solve a murder.

  Steel closed the door behind him and approached Knee. “I’m Detective Steel.” He waved his left arm, palm up. “And this is Detective Tulli.”

  Knee forced a thin smile. Steel’s first impression of the man was that he didn’t seem like a smart-ass like the two guys he’d interviewed last week at the hangout. Knee gave off the impression of being a leader, of being in control, as if he wouldn’t feel comfortable in a room packed with Harvard professors, but if he was in there with notorious drug lords and other criminals discussing the streets, he’d be given tenure for life. His short black hair was neat and cropped down to the scalp, and a straight line across his forehead, all the way down to his sideburns, looked like it had been drawn on with a ruler. He wore a striped, white-and-black, short-sleeve polo shirt, dark jeans, and a pair of gray sneakers, which appeared to be running shoes. His thin goatee was meticulously trimmed as if with the same ruler used on his hairline and highlighted his pronounced chin that was evenly aligned with his focused eyes. He had a stocky build—no muscle, but solid.