The man stretched the door as far as it could go and waved them in, palm up, his hand about ten inches long. “Come in,” Kevin said, his voice deep, cutting in and out from nerves.
Steel noticed the living room, the small size you’d expect for a row home in the inner city. It had an entertainment stand that held an old model television, and the screen was square, but the back bulged into an uneven bubble, the model just before the advent of the modern flat-screens, and probably weighed over forty pounds. The sofa was beige cloth. The only light in the whole living room beamed off a table lamp next to the sofa. An episode of Pawn Stars played in the background, just loud enough for Steel and Marisa to hear Rick and the old man duke it out over a purchase gone bad. The carpet was blue and fairly new, and the air smelled as though a crock-pot had been plugged in for a few hours roasting beef, the air rich with simmering garlic, onions and tangy meat. Steel and Marisa sat on the couch and studied Kevin until he settled into a recliner next to them.
“Please tell me what’s gone on here. My heart’s about to pop out my chest,” Kevin said, fidgeting around, running both hands across his forehead, wiping beads of sweat.
Steel frowned and angled his kneecaps toward Kevin. This was, by far, one of the hardest parts of Steel’s job, informing loved ones of a victim’s death. In Steel’s eyes, Kevin was innocent until proven guilty.
He cleared his throat. “Kevin, your girlfriend, Desiree Jones, ah, she’s been murdered.” Steel clenched his teeth. “Happened last night, and we ID’d her for sure today and just passed it to the news stations. Wanted to tell you before you heard it from them.”
Steel rose from his seat and shuffled over to the man, flashed out his hand for a shake. This was more of a way to gauge a reaction, study Kevin’s body language than to console him, although he also wanted to express his sympathies. “My deepest condolences, sir.”
Kevin blinked rapidly and shook his head violently. “No, what, wait?” He snorted a short laugh, almost in disbelief. “Desiree, wait, what? Who?” His eyes rotated from confusion, shock, panic and disbelief. His breathes sped up, the inhaling and exhaling like a vacuum against his larynx. His chest heaved. He hugged himself and dug his nails into each bicep. His eyes narrowed into a cry position but tears didn’t come.
Seconds later, he stood and tears streamed down each cheek. What Steel had just told him was registering. Kevin shook his head with so much force that Steel could hear his neck clicking and cracking.
Steel watched Kevin’s hands tremble, wiping tears. “Are you serious? What? What the fuck? My boo? My baby? What happened? What? Wait?” He sobbed until he almost lost his breath. He stooped down and clawed at the air.
Steel and Marisa sensed the tension building, the air still and thick as a brick wall, Kevin’s sobs banging against it, and each of the detectives shifted. Steel never liked being in the same room as a grown man crying because he knew it was never a good sign, knew something bad had happened.
The lingering whines faded out after a moment and the room fell silent.
Steel dug his fingers through his wavy brown hair and scratched, and Marisa tapped her nails against her lips. Uncomfortable moments had become Steel’s life, and this one was nothing compared to what he’d been through in the past six months. It was as if he’d become accustomed to them, numb to them, expected them. He was beginning to learn that life could desensitize you to pain—whether you let it or not.
“Mr. Johnson, are you in a position to answer a few questions for us?”
Kevin nodded, sat back down in the recliner. He wiped away the remaining tears but his arms and legs still trembled, his fingers twitched against the arm of the seat.
“How the hell did this happen?” Kevin said. His eyes popped open, his eyelids buried deep in the socket.
“Could’ve been a robbery, could’ve been murder, we don’t know yet,” Steel said. He stared dead in Kevin’s watery eyes. “But you better be damn sure that we’ll get whoever is responsible for this.” Steel held the stare, a signal that he wasn’t eliminating Kevin as a suspect just because of the tears. Hell, he’d seen tears before, some of the most authentic-looking tears, just to find out that they’d been phony.
“Where were you last night?”
Kevin rocked back and forth, winced, and collected himself. His stern eyes contorted down and stared straight, appeared brave, but his words didn’t sound it. His voice hit several different pitches with each syllable like fingernails running along a blackboard. “I was at my job.”
“Where do you work?”
“I just gotta bartending job up Old City. Last night was my first night. I was doing it for her, trying to get my act together.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“Bonner’s of Market.”
“Yeah, Yeah, I know that place.”
Marisa jotted down the name.
“But she was your girlfriend, correct?”
“Sort of, but we didn’t talk at all last week and were mad over some bullshit.”
“What bullshit?”
“She wanted me to get a job, get serious, talking about marriage…and now this, maybe if I woulda been there this wouldn’t have happ—”
Marisa held up a hand. “Sir, can’t blame yourself.”
Steel twisted his neck toward Marisa. She’s learning, warming up to a suspect for their trust, he thought.
“How long have you two been together?” she said.
Kevin raised his shaky fingers to his lips, pet them, the fingers still trembling. “About ten years. I can’t even process this right now. My mind is numb, like I’m in a nightmare, hallucinating or somethin’.”
“Just try to stay calm, Kevin,” Steel said and quickly wished he’d take his own advice at times because waiting five minutes longer in a line at the supermarket could throw him into a nervous breakdown.
“Look,” he glanced back and forth at both of them, “I know what this is. I didn’t have anything to do with this. She was my girl, my life, my future wife. I loved her with every bone in my body. When my mom gets home, she’s gonna be devastated…she loved her.” He grabbed at his stomach, bubbled his cheeks like he was going to vomit.
“You all right?”
He nodded.
“You live here with just your mom?”
“Yeah…I was living with Desiree, but after the break we took, I came here.” He dropped his nose into a palm and choked up, the dark brown skin of his forehead rolling across his fingertips.
Steel and Marisa waited, heard the muffled episode of Pawn Stars in the background, Rick’s raspy laugh echoing as he negotiated with a customer.
Kevin lounged back in the seat. He stared up at the dimpled, foamy white drop-ceiling tiles. “God up in heaven, Desiree. Oh my God. Oh my fuckin’ God.” His head fell involuntarily and bobbed. He cried. “I wasn’t the best boyfriend in the world,” he sobbed, “had my issues with employment and maturity, but I was trying. I would never in a million years harm my baby.”
“When you say you weren’t the best boyfriend, were you violent?”
He shook his head. “Never once. She was the most successful woman I ever met, so driven, comin’ from nothing and turnin’ herself into what she became. Nothing but love between us.”
Steel reached in his pocket, pulled out a pack of Trident, pointed it at Kevin, swung the arm to Marisa. “Anybody?”
Each shook their head no. Steel unraveled a piece, flipped it in his mouth, and chewed on one side, filling the room of cinnamon. He figured he had enough from Kevin at this early in the investigation, but he’d keep his eye on him, for sure. He knew he was still in the first forty-eight but didn’t have enough evidence to bring Kevin in—he had nothing. These no-evidence cases were becoming his trademark. Maybe he’d picked the wrong career, should have joined a labor union where he could work six month out of the year and collect unemployment the rest, leave and forget about his job at the end of the workday. But this was his life, his calli
ng, his passion, and nothing else in the world mattered, except his family, and Marisa, but even she didn’t seem enough for him at the moment, nothing did. His optimistic outlook on life he worked so hard for in therapy, right out the window. Just like that, his indecisiveness and doubting mind crept back in. He rolled his shoulder blades and massaged his forehead, but the pain throbbed as if Floyd Mayweather Jr. were using his brain as a training bag.
He pressed his hands into the cold sofa cushions and nodded upward at Marisa. She stood in one motion and hit full stature, tugged at her clothing, smoothing out each article with her fingers.
“Kevin, again, my deepest sympathies for your loss,” Steel said as he got up. “We’ll definitely be checking back in with you, and soon.”
Kevin didn’t stand but rather lightly shook from his seat, not making eye contact, lost in his thoughts.
Steel strolled toward the door and back out into the cold weather. What a cold world, he thought.
8
S
teel pressed the back of his skull into his bed’s hard wooden headboard. He rolled his hair against the cold surface and rested his shoulders on a cool, comfortable spot. A black plastic table lamp from IKEA let off a blast of light, brightening half the room, the rest faded out to darkness. He held a Dennis Lehane paperback between his bent thumb and crooked first finger. The green bedcovers scrunched up just over his belly button, his elbows at the tip. He’d just read a full two paragraphs across the off-white pages but didn’t remember anything. His concentration completely gone. The day’s events had him stressed and worried—his grandmother’s passing and the case he’d been assigned to. He rolled his legs around under the sheets, kicked out his feet with force, his mind all over the place and the last thing he could do was follow imaginary characters in a book, too much going on in his own world. He thought of Desiree Jones, of a life cut short, and knew he’d seen that too many times for being just thirty-three years old.
The door creaked open, and Marisa’s shadow darkened the floor before she walked inside, the black imagine on the ground swaying like an enlarged version of her. She wore a pair of tight red boxer shorts and a black bra. “What are you reading now?”
He flipped the book closed and tossed it on the end-table. “Gone Baby, Gone…”
She grimaced and wrapped both arms around her back and tugged her bra but struggled, pouting, her black hair thick and shiny and swinging below her shoulder blades as she twisted her body. “There we go. I hate this bra. I’ll never buy this kind again, digs right into my back. But isn’t that book a movie, too?” She tossed the bra aside and pulled a white T-shirt over her head.
“Yeah, the Affleck brothers made it, I think. Ben directed it, I think, and his brother, Casey, starred in it. Heard the book was better.”
“You and these books,” she said and smiled.
“Need some distraction from reality.”
“Crime fiction’s a distraction from your reality?”
He twisted his mouth upward and proverbially wiped his hands clean. “I read the book and then put it down…no consequences, not my life, not my case.”
“Whatever,” she said, half smiling, rolling her eyes. She grabbed at her hair and flipped it back like she was filming for a TRESemme commercial.
He didn’t answer, just yawned until he moaned for a good minute.
“Let me ask you something I was thinking about today and can’t believe I’ve never asked you,” she said. “Why Benjamin?”
“My name?”
“Yeah…who you named after?”
He scratched his cheek. “My father was a big history guy, especially American history. I’m named after Ben Franklin.”
She smirked.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Franklin was the man. He left home in his teens and accomplished so much in his life. The guy is the most popular Philadelphian ever, was an author, printer, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, diplomat, statesman. He invented the lightening rod, bifocals. He started hospitals, libraries. They called him ‘The First American,’ a self-made man. My father wanted me to look up to self-made men…guys who follow their own paths, not society’s version.” He tapped a finger on his book on the table. “Let me ask you something?
“Go ahead?”
“You ever regret not going to law school?”
“Ah, nah, not really. I mean, that was the plan after I got my Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice, but I have no regrets. Detective work is better for me, get to help people hands-on. Besides, if I woulda gone that route, I wouldn’t have met you. And I think my life has gone this way for a reason, past career ambitions and my broken engagement with Mario was all to prepare for you, to learn.” She winked.
She strayed over to a mirror hanging over her dresser and studied her face, ran her fingers over her sharp, delicate cheekbones protruding from under soft, smooth naturally tan skin. She could’ve been a model instead of a detective, had natural beauty only designated for the gods. And he couldn’t help but catch a glimpse in the glass of her soft breasts without a bra under her shirt—the image took over his mind.
Beautiful even without make-up, he thought.
Steel’s eyes started from the heels of her feet which creased as she propped herself up on her tippy-toes, up her toned calf muscles, to her sleek thighs, and up to her ass, a small slither of cheek hanging out from under the shorts, an ass that women worked out two hours a night for but came naturally to Marisa, past her tiny waist that dipped inward between her hips and ribcage and was visible behind her thin shirt, and up to her soft black hair dangling just below her shoulder blades—but he just wasn’t in the fucking mood. This damn depression and anxiety, he thought. I hope she’s tired because I don’t have the fuckin’ energy. I don’t think I can get it up right now. Fuck. Fuck!
He focused his eyes again on her cheeks popping out from under the shorts, as she leaned into the mirror and kneaded her hair in her hands. He tried to channel energy and blood flow to his penis, watching her arched back, the small muscles from under her shoulder blades jumping against her skin as she moved her arms and played with her hair, her ribcage lightly outlined against her skin, her buttocks jiggling as she picked up a brush and combed a few strands. Still wasn’t working. What the fuck? he screamed in his head and peeked under the sheets and stared at his penis as if it would move by psychic force. But underneath the apathy the depression was causing, he longed for her warm lips, her taste, the smell of her hair and skin, her fingers through his hair, the passion. They’d made enough love for a lifetime in the past six months—not lustful-lovemaking either, although some—but authentic, slow lovemaking—the connection and pleasure they created together as though they’d left Earth in the human form and transcended into the blissful spiritual world as their bodies had intertwined. Sometimes just the sound of Marisa’s voice popped chills over his skin, made him smile to himself.
He’d recently moved into her apartment in Center City Philadelphia about a month prior and enjoyed being in the middle of the action. The complex was near City Hall and had everything—
the packed streets, the stores, food options—and had so much energy, lights, bars, multitudes of people compared to the quiet neighborhood he’d left when he sold his row home in a small cul-de-sac of Northeast Philly just before packing his bags for her place. He missed the quiet at times, longed for it, but he loved her, she wanted him there. But being with Marisa 24/7, in work and at home, would be a challenge for him, he knew it. Up until this point, he’d went to work while she was still recuperating at home, on medical leave, but now they’d work and live together. Commitment had never been easy for him and this would be his test. Was he in over his head? He didn’t know. But he did know that the past month, living with Marisa, had been the best and happiest time of his life. That scared the shit out of him. He wanted to run away at times, leave her, because in his mind, he’d find a way to fuck it up with his neurotic tendencies. But f
or now, he’d stay, or so he hoped, because the way he felt at this moment, apathetic toward everything in life, shaky from anxiety, barely able to lift an arm, immobilized by depression, he wasn’t hopeful about much. He had one wish, and it was that this bout of depression and anxiety would soon pass, a quick sadness from a day of saying goodbye to a loved one, but it was a crapshoot, he never knew how long they’d stay around.
Steel shivered and stared again at Marisa through the glass in the mirror. “Whatda’ya have the heat on in here? It’s freezing. Raise it?”
Marisa’s brown eyes snapped open, held his stare, each eyeball growing by the second, her hands tying a ponytail. “I’m hot. Are you really cold? It’s hot in here.”
He didn’t answer, lowered his eyes, tugged at the covers.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He yawned. “Tired, that’s all.”
Steel wasn’t completely open with her about his depression. She knew it bothered him from time to time but didn’t know to what extent.
“You done all your Christmas shoppin’?” she said, swirling the final tie on the ponytail.
“Almost…one more thing, I think.”
She shook her head. “One more thing, tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.”
“Last minute present.”
“Ugh…men make me sick,” she said and rolled her eyes.
He forced a smile, and humor felt good, and there was something about her eye-roll that had initially made him fall for her.
“You done out there in the living room? I’m gonna go lock-up,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Her tiny feet slapped the hardwood floor and the skin against wood followed her out into the next room and turned into thumps in the distance.
Steel leaned over and snatched the remote from the end-table. He adjusted his back against the headboard, and his arms brushed the cool sheets. He raised his right arm and dug a finger into the rubber POWER-ON button and glanced at the alarm clock next to him: 11:01. After flipping through a few channels, he left on Fox News, a repeat of The O’Reilly Factor, and watched Bill swirl a finger and tell him to take caution, that he was about to enter “The No Spin Zone.” But again, he couldn’t focus as Bill read his talking points. He grabbed the remote and squeezed the POWER-OFF button with so much force the controller stung his fingers and the plastic almost crumbled in his hand.
Divine (A Benny Steel Novel) Page 5
