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

by Steven Grosso

  He watched her flip her hair and look away. He thought about how he couldn’t read her and, quite frankly, he didn’t have time for games. He had a case to solve. What were these mood swings?

  Apparently, Marisa didn’t care if Steel didn’t have time for games. She tilted her head, and her hair fell sideways, swayed back and forth in the wind like carwash scrubbers. “And don’t leave me out again.”

  Steel wanted to tell her not to tell him what to do but opted to remain silent. He wrapped his arm around her as they walked down the street, fighting wet, cool wind mixing with drizzle, looking up at the sky as flashes of lightning dashed through the clouds in between rumbles of thunder, the rumbling sound of God moving furniture.

  She flashed him eyes of mystery. “Look, don’t take it personally. I just—”

  Steel held up his hands. “We’ll talk about it later. Not now. We gotta do this.” His demeanor was similar to an MLB pitcher on his day to take the mound; he didn’t want to be interrupted before performing.

  The building looked like two floors to him and was right in South Philly on the brink of a neighborhood of Mexican and Asian immigrants.

  His thoughts kept breaking and racing and were darker than usual. Lethargy set in, along with a who-gives-a-fuck-attitude. His stress was building and causing it, he knew it.

  That attitude wasn’t uncommon to Steel, and it often hit him at the worst times, when he needed all his strength and mental prowess on his side. The world beat the hell out of him from time to time. His depression resurfaced whenever it felt like it, no matter what his plans were. It wasn’t in his control; it was the condition. The depression happened to him against his will, just like cancer happened to people against their will. He knew if the neurotransmitters weren’t firing across the synapses in his brain, the mental and physical effects of anxiety, panic and fatigue would follow.

  His mind defaulted to a depressive state at times, often triggered by similar scenarios of the original trigger that had caused his first bout with it or stressful life events. He figured his spat with Marisa might have dredged up painful memories of when Tracy had broken his heart. The rumination that followed the depression had an existential twist. What’s the point of life? He argued with himself that humans were put on earth to suffer—and for whom or what? It was a sick game. People live and die and that’s it; they worry and suffer, and what does it all mean? Most wake up every day and do things they don’t want to do just to have a place to lay their heads to get up the following morning and do it all over again.

  He hated how unfair life could be, how no matter what politicians on Capitol Hill said, not everybody got a shot to pursue happiness. It bothered him how divisive the world was—how some people hate one another over skin color, religion, country, social status, and other issues—how people have treated and continued to treat each other so savagely. All of those things brought him to depression at times, almost making him want to give up.

  That rumination mixed with his loneliness created a fire that tested his soul and his will to live. He’d been called an idealist, but he knew being an idealist never ended well. Either you’re considered crazy by traditional follow-the-rules-and-do-as-they-say types, or you’re all alone constantly going against the grain. Steel had realized at thirty that he didn’t have the power to change the world; it was set in stone, doomed to repeat the same mistakes or follow the same patterns over and over, just with more sophistication and technology. That’s why he’d read the Proverbs in the Bible, or Socrates, or any philosophical writer throughout human history and still relate to the words on the pages. But he was a fighter, and fighting on was what he had been doing his entire life. Also at thirty, he’d made the decision that he’d make right what was in his power and try not to think about irrelevant things as much as he used to. Luckily for him, he knew how to get out of a depressive cycle once it started. He’d focus his mind on a project, and that project happened to be the Hitchy case.

  “Helloooo…” Marisa said, snapping her fingers in front of his blank stare. “We going in or what? Where were you?”

  “Yeah, yeah…let’s go,” he said and waved his hands and sidestepped her question.

  He stepped in front of a half-open screen door. A concrete staircase lay below it. He swung his left leg onto the bottom step, reached over, tugged at the rusty handle as the door screeched like fingernails running across a blackboard, and pounded three times. They waited. The knob turned, and a short, round man with a curious stare wobbled out. Steel lowered his eyes even though the man had two steps up on him and stared at separate patches of thinning hair that was combed over his shiny scalp. “Can I help you?” the man asked.

  Steel and Marisa flashed their badges.

  “Police…here to speak with Hector—”

  “Maybe you better come in.” The man scratched the salt-and-pepper stubble on his cheeks.

  Steel trailed him inside. Marisa did the same and yanked the screen door shut as the wind fought her. The guy seemed to be collecting things from the apartment; if one could call it an apartment. Most would call it a bedroom. It couldn’t have been bigger than a small middle room of a row home in an inner city. A maroon couch was placed in the corner, along with an old television, crusty toaster, pair of worn-down Nike sneakers, grease-colored construction boots that were once light brown, a few forks and knives, and a few pill bottles.

  The man stood over the stuff and ran the back of his forearm across his sweaty forehead. He shook his head, and his chin waggled. He waved his pudgy arms in disgust. He gripped his waist in a Superman pose, the only differences being that he stood a foot shorter in stature and the gray t-shirt around his body was only snug because it looked like he’d owned it since the nineties. He’d done more than grow into it; his gut and man boobs were perfectly outlined in it.

  He ran his tongue along his cheek, and his skin expanded. “So, you guys don’t know about Hector, huh?”

  Steel blinked, flipped up his palms without saying a word.

  The man took it as a nonverbal sign to proceed. “Yeah…dead. Found him last night. I thought you guys said you were detectives.”

  Steel stepped forward but stopped. He’d checked up on Hector right after he’d dropped off Venice the previous night. So it must have been after midnight, he thought.

  “Who are you?” Steel said.

  “I own the place. Hector was my tenant.” The man performed the sign of the cross and kissed his fingers.

  “We had to ask him a few questions.”

  “About what? If you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Police business.”

  “Fair enough, but the cops were already here this morning.”

  Steel’s mind spun. What the hell is going on? How did this happen? Does Venice know? Is this connected to Hitchy or Knee?

  Marisa walked next to Steel, her right elbow tapping his left. “How did he die?” she asked.

  “Overdose. He called 911 twenty minutes before he died. He musta known something was wrong, you know? By the time the ambulance got here…” he lowered his head, “…they found him in vomit…face down.” A single tear trickled down the man’s cheek, and his red eyes hid behind a slow twitch. He stopped himself and took a deep breath. “Sorry, I just knew that kid a long time—nice kid, bad habits. You know?”

  Marisa glanced at Steel, and he held it, but he turned back and faced the man. He inhaled and exhaled through his nostrils. “Boy, do we know. Story of our lives.” He turned his eyes across the room. “You mind if we look around for a minute? I know officers were here already, but if you don’t mind.”

  The man shrugged, too tired for questions. “Do whatever you have to. I have to gather up this kid’s stuff. He doesn’t have anybody—both his parents are dead. I gave him this place for 200 bucks a month. Felt bad for him. I run a grocery store up in North Philly. He used to work for me as a kid. You know, running groceries to old people’s houses and stuff, cutting deli
meats, stocking shelves. He was about, ah, twelve, thirteen at the time. Lived with his mother until she died. That was it. Tailspin.” The man swatted at the air, gathered up more belongings. He mumbled, “Twenty-four-fuckin’-years-old.”

  Marisa made her way over to the sofa. She leaned over and observed, pouting her lips and moving her eyes. Steel dug right in, moving the television aside, tossing the shoes, and grabbing at the pill bottles. Both bottles were prescribed to Hector.

  “What’da we got here?” Marisa said and angled her head over Steel’s shoulder as he held the bottle close to his eyes to read the small print on the label. Typed words across the white sticker, which circled an orange-brown bottle, read “Klonopin.” The second identical bottle read “Prozac.”

  “Hmm, the guy had anxiety and depression issues, but there had to be more,” he whispered so only Marisa could hear.

  “Maybe suicide,” she said.

  Steel’s mind drifted again to his past issues with depression. He remembered when a tall, thin doctor fresh out of medical school had recommended Prozac to him after his breakup. He’d strongly considered it, and although he probably could have benefited from the pills, he’d somehow crawled and then walked and then run his way through depression. Toughest battle he’d ever fought—tougher than any criminal.

  He knew his lifestyle contributed to his bouts of melancholy, or at least he had thought that throughout the years. He did everything ass-backwards from the way man was designed to live. In fact, he thought most people did. Sleeping eight hours per night was out of the question; heck, he considered himself lucky to get four, at the most five. Fitness routines weren’t part of his daily life. Primitive man had exercised as they hunted and gathered for food every day. The only food Steel hunted was Entenmann’s white-powdered doughnuts stashed in his desk drawer. He knew most people benefited from sunlight, but he was lucky to get ten minutes a day. Instead, he sat under fluorescent light bulbs in a cubicle or slept through the sunshine when he’d work the overnight shift. He ate like shit—no fruits, no vegetables, no nuts, no salad. Meals that didn’t come in a sodium-filled can or couldn’t be heated in a microwave or couldn’t be ordered from a car window were few and far between. He didn’t have a strong social network of family and friends that every human being needs. Shit, primitive man had access to his or her tribe and family members all day long. Besides occasionally talking to his parents and brothers and sisters, his interactions with people on a daily basis were a mix of egotistical cops and ruthless killers. After that, he’d go home to an empty house and a beer—a friend that never talked back to him.

  And he knew he had self-confidence issues, that he’d never felt worthy. As if his life didn’t matter. Someone else always seemed as though he or she had it together—but not him. That was why he worked so damn hard. But then he’d think to himself, For what? For whom? The questions were endless. Steel’s mind fucked with him like a bully in the real world, not the world that adults told kids about. If he took a swing back at the bully, it’d hit him with ten more punches. The more he threw at it, the more it threw at him. His fight-or-flight response activated numerous times during any given day, which sent a cascade of stress hormones throughout his body. Sometimes he’d burp from acid reflux for hours, sickened from anxiety, sickened from the shit he saw daily. At night, he tossed and turned as his mind tried to solve cases or life’s dilemmas. And his loneliness was constant, but he had become used to it over time, as if his life was meant for it. God, he wished life was like the movies, in which a person started out lonely and, by some giant act of fate, the universe aligned him with his destiny. He knew, odds were, real life would give you a season—a bright, sunny season—only to smack you down with a massive snowstorm. His loneliness often led to avoidance, and he knew that stress would one day kill him but didn’t know how: heart attack, stroke, whatever.

  “Look…right there,” Marisa said and twirled her finger.

  Steel reached for the greasy construction boot, dug his hand in, and pulled out a plastic bag, cocaine residue smudging the sides.

  The man was hunched over, picking something up off the floor, and the top of his ass-crack peeked from his pants like he was a plumber. Steel turned away and was glad he hadn’t recently eaten, or he might have regurgitated it. Marisa nudged him and smiled.

  “Um, Mr….”

  The man popped up, picked up his pants, and spun around. “Henderson. Sorry.”

  Steel said, “We’re going to get going, but we may need to contact you for further questioning.”

  “Sure,” the man said, his eyes droopy and sad. He gave Steel his contact info, and Steel scribbled it into his notebook, then walked to the door.

  Thick raindrops pounded cars. Puddles of streaming water foamed and backed up from rusty metal sewer grates and piled onto street corners as they exited. The wind swirled and blew gusts of cool moisture into their eyes and faces. A classic summer thunderstorm poured over them—one that had built over days—and lowered temperatures after oppressive humidity levels that had lasted an entire week. It rained so ferociously, hammering the ground as if Mother Nature was sending a warning that she was still in control.

  Marisa looked at Steel. “All right, on three.” She flipped out a stretched palm and flicked up one finger at a time. “One, two…three.”

  On three, the two bolted, ducking as though it would somehow shield them from the rain, and jogged to Steel’s car. They jumped inside, listened as large raindrops pounded the hood and roof of the car as if buckets of stale gumballs poured down from above. The rain cascaded down and streaked the windows, making it impossible to see anything out of the glass.

  Steel rubbed his wet palms together. The cold rain soaked his back, and a chill ran through his body.

  Marisa held out her hands and shook them off, the water hitting the dashboard. She combed her wet hair with her fingers, and the hair curled away from her cheeks.

  He watched in awe for a moment, glanced at the shimmering reflection of her face in the window, the reflection of her curled hair and wet cheeks swaying and meshing in the mix of rain and glass, and reached for his cell phone and dialed a number.

  The phone rang twice before he heard Mary’s voice. “Hello, Ben,” she said.

  “Mare, can you do me a favor?”

  “Anything, my dear.”

  “Could you look up a name for me, Hector Illiteo?” See what the cause of death was? It’s not our district’s case, but something should be in the system by now. Don’t know who’s handling it; he just died this morning. Can you call the district and have them push for an autopsy?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  As soon as he ended the call, he dialed Venice. Marisa turned her head toward him, both hands still wrapped around her wet, curled hair, her forehead glistening. After each ring, Steel frowned. Nothing: no answer, no voicemail.

  “You wanna stop there before we go to the meeting?” Marisa asked.

  He shook his head no. “We have to be at the meeting on time, can’t be late.”

  A bolt of lightning zigzagged in front of the foggy car windows, and she grabbed Steel’s arm. “Damn. You see that? But, yeah, you’re right. We have to be at the meeting.” She leaned an ear to the window and listened to the rain pound the pavement and car. “It’s coming down.”

  After Steel had turned the key, the radio crackled through the speakers. His windshield wipers swished over the glass, clearing his view for a brief second before water refilled it. He listened to his defrosters whistle and gazed blankly, emotionless, pondering if the killer of Tom Hitchy had just been murdered.

  28

  Williams’ meetings usually went on extremely too long, and some officers dozed off. But a mandatory during a major crisis in Philadelphia had Steel and Marisa wondering what the hell was going to take place. This wasn’t the usually roll call meeting for attendance and uniform inspections.

  They’d
arrived at the station a few minutes late. Luckily, Williams had not begun. A handful of uniformed police officers conversed with each other, all dressed in blue shirts, as their thumbs gripped their bulky belts, which were complete with a gun, a baton, handcuffs, and pepper spray. The sergeants and lieutenants did the same, only they wore white shirts to show the status of their positions. The detectives wore black suits despite the high temperatures.

  The room, about the size of an average office, had white paint on the walls and a wooden folding table in the center. Steel thought how cliché it was because a square box from Dunkin’ Donuts was on the table, along with a few boxes of Munchkins and a cardboard Box O’ Joe, next to a few paper plates and a stack of brown napkins.

  He wandered over, snatched a Boston crème, and bit the dough like a vampire going for a neck. Marisa collected a few glazed Munchkins and perfectly placed them on a dish. Steel shot her quizzical eyes and devoured his doughnut in two bites but soon felt like a moron as yellow crème oozed out and leaked onto his shirt. He grabbed one of the napkins and wiped it off, but a damp circle was still visible. Chit-chat and body movement rattled off the walls and filled the room with echoes.

  In walked Lieutenant Detective Daniel Williams. He was scheduled to speak first at the meeting. The volume dropped with each passing second. Each officer straightened his or her shoulders and focused intently on the lieutenant, appearing like military synchronizing to the drill sergeant.

  Williams cleared his throat and slid his hand across the ebony skin of his forehead. He waited another moment for the final words to subside—both hands raised high in the air. The room silenced, and all eyes were on Williams.

  “First off, I want to thank everyone for coming on such short notice.”

  The officers responded with nods.

  “Look…we have a bit of a crisis on our hands here. The city is chaotic, no doubt about it. I know this…” he looked around the room and then raised his eyes over his black eyeglass frames, “…you know this, too. Crime isn’t going to stop completely. We’re here to enforce the law and prevent crime if we can, but things are always going to happen…we know that, and that’s not why we’re here. But we can’t let the citizens of our city expect crime. Philadelphia’s reputation is on the line. Tourists won’t come here. Funds will be slashed more. We’ve already taken a hit with the city’s cutbacks. Some of our jobs will be in jeopardy.” He jerked a thumb back in the direction of his office. “I just got off the phone with the commissioner, and he just got off the phone with the mayor. You all have been working hard, but we need more. We’re all adults here, and we know what has to be done. We’re going to flood the crime-ridden areas with more patrol.” He pointed. “But I’ll let the sergeant tell you about that in a moment. Detectives…” he looked at his team, and Steel and Marisa felt his eyes on them, “…we need to do everything in our power to clean up what’s on our plates. Send a message through the streets that we’re not playing around. Put in the overtime if you have to—we got the go ahead from the commissioner. Get it done.” The floor shook as he shifted his weight to his right side and leaned more on that leg. “This can’t go on in this city. We can’t be in the top percentile for crime in the country. I have a family here. You all have families here. I believe in you guys. The city needs us to lead by example. If not, half of us will be working security guard jobs at twelve bucks an hour next year. Patrol officers…remember to check in for your new routes.” The officers focused as he cleared his throat and held up his right hand once more, calling for full attention. “Thank you all for your time. Let’s get to work.”