Williams waved a hand, pointed to a chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
Steel took a few steps and plopped down, pulled on his tie’s knot and adjusted it against the collar with two fingers.
“What do we have on this case I assigned you?” Williams said.
“Desiree Jones, thirty-five. Shot in the head once, the bullet killed her instantly, forensics believes. I went there yesterday after I spoke with you and talked to her mother. She swears it’s the boyfriend, but I don’t have any evidence, I don’t have anything to bring him in on.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Yeah, yesterday. He didn’t even know she was killed, so he says. He told me they had been fighting and he didn’t talk to her before she died. But he’s on my suspects’ list, for sure, just gotta get something on him.”
“All right, any priors?”
“Nah. I was just about to look him up in the database again, though, find out more about Desiree, the firm she worked at, friends of hers, but…” Steel clapped his hands once, hard, “with the holiday, I’m going to have to hold interviews until after Christmas day.”
“Right,” Williams said and looked down at his computer screen and gripped the mouse in his hand, index finger tapping the tip.
Steel waited while Williams poked his fingers against the plastic keyboard and typed a few words.
“Sorry, Steel, had to respond to an e-mail real quick.”
“No problem, Lieutenant Dan.”
They both laughed.
“Wish I had his tenacity,” Williams said.
Steel had been calling him Lieutenant Dan of late, a play on words and reference to one of his favorite movies, Forrest Gump.
Williams said, still smirking, a bit embarrassed, “Marisa’s back with you on this case…how do feel about that?”
Steel sighed, shrugged. “Nervous.” He laughed, but only slightly, anxiously, cautiously. His upper lip twitched and his eyes glinted in thought from a warm beam of sunlight from the office window.
“Understandable.”
The room fell near silence and neither spoke. The wind beating against the windowsill provided the only noise. Steel lowered his head, pondered for a moment.
Williams reached over his desk for a mint and the seat squeaked. “You okay, Steel, you don’t look yourself?”
Steel snapped out of his thoughts, bobbed his head. “Yeah, just a little down today, my grandmother, Christmas-time-blues, that’s all? Get ‘em every year.”
“Right…again, sorry for your loss.”
Steel waved off Williams’ need to say sorry.
“My door’s always open. You find something on this case and need approval to move on it, walk right in.”
“Yeah,” Steel said, squeezed the seat arms and shot his body up.
He left the office and headed back toward his cubicle. The aroma in the air smelled like onions and orange soda. He dreaded the conversation with Johnny that awaited him and accessed why Williams had just asked about Marisa. He knew they’d soon be broken up as work partners because of their relationship but was surprised Williams hadn’t mentioned it. He figured he’d let it go until it was brought to his attention.
He sat back down at his desk, and confusion over the case and racing thoughts soured his stomach worse than before. His temples throbbed. Dizziness set in from the increased blood flow. He never understood how others handled stress so much better than him, but he knew he was a fighter. At moments when the darkness clouded Steel’s mind, he wanted to self-destruct, to jump off a fucking bridge, to stay in bed for days and forget about the world, to fire a bullet through his brain. Desiree Jones wouldn’t have a Christmas dinner, and his blood boiled against his skin at that thought.
10
T
he elevator jolted to a hard stop and the doors sprung open. Steel stepped off on the Eighth floor and headed for Dr. Steinberg’s office. The thick air in the hallway hung dry, and Steel’s nostrils detected new carpeting, the scent as if it had been installed moments earlier, the freshness of new gray factory fabric that had been recently stored in an old warehouse before being ripped from the plastic covering and laid across the floor. The walls were whiter than a clean sheet of computer paper, a smooth surface without one chip in the paint, a light beige strip of baseboard hugging the bottoms. A few famous sites of Philadelphia were aligned in square picture frames along the center of the walls on either side of him. He walked and noticed The Liberty Bell and studied the crack in the copper, Rocky Statue with Balboa lifting his arms high, Constitution Center, and Betsy Ross’ House with an American flag swaying in the wind. The office was housed in one of the most expensive properties in all of Philadelphia. Before entering moments earlier, Steel had gotten buzzed into the front doors of the building before he even flashed two forms of ID to security at the front desk in the lobby. The guard welcoming the guests probably pulled fifty, sixty grand a year, above average for Philly, and probably had been working there for years. Crystal-clear sparkling chandeliers dangled above the receptionist. Gold-plated signs engraved with black letters were stuck to the walls behind the front desk, each so shiny he saw his reflection in them, his white skin appearing tan. Renters of the office space were addressed as “Sir” and “Ma’am” or “Mister” and “Miss” as they entered the building. But at a rate of two-hundred-and-fifty dollars a session with his psychiatrist, but just fifty as a co-pay for him after his insurance covered its share, the building better have been nice, he’d always tell himself.
He’d picked Dr. Steinberg out of a list of psychiatrists, which his primary doctor had given him, for two reasons.
One: Dr. Steinberg’s office was located around the corner from his apartment.
Two: The doctor was in his sixties, had over twenty-five years more life-experience than Steel, had served as the director of the psychiatric unit at a local hospital, believed in talk therapy before deciding to go on medication, and had more than thirty years’ experience treating depression.
And that’s the way Steel wanted it. He didn’t want to see a shrink the same age as him or just a few years older—how much more about life would they know? Steel could be picky, peculiar and hardheaded, but he knew what he wanted, what would work best for him.
Steel spun a gold handle and opened the door, hoping to heal the invisible wounds in the deep recesses of his brain. The receptionist, an attractive thirty-something African-American woman, flashed him a wide smile. She hooked her straight black hair behind her ears, so it dangled past her shoulders. Pink makeup appeared to be her theme of the day, as a subtle hint of pink was spread over her eyelids and cheeks, and barely visible pink lipstick lay over her lips. Steel had been to this shrink about five times and at each visit the makeup was a different color, sometimes blues, sometimes red. But she was nice, pleasant, seemed enlightened as if the deity worked through her on a daily basis to spread good vibrations to others, and always made him feel comfortable. He knew she was the type of person who could make anyone feel welcome and calm because she listened to people like she didn’t want to be anywhere else but in conversation with them. She acted that way with everyone, the desirables and undesirables.
She squinted at the computer screen then raised her eyes, ceiling light sparkling off each pupil. “Benjamin Steel, 2:30, for Dr. Steinberg, correct?” She smiled, her perfect white teeth and full lips something you’d see on a Crest commercial.
Steel smiled and snapped his shoulders back and popped his chest out like he somehow had muscles to display, was in the mood to flirt for some reason. “That would be correct,” he said and held a smirk.
She stared and grinned back. He held her gaze for a moment, and they both smiled until their eye-lock unlocked. He’d had enough of the flirting when the stare ended, but he still had it, he told himself, couldn’t hurt to stay sharp.
She waved at three chairs in the waiting room, in front of a coffee table that held several magazines. He glanced over and noticed
TIME and People, each book’s cover creased, the edges of the paper soft and curled, brown coffee rings in the center.
He drifted over to the first chair and lowered his rear end into the seat. He crossed his left leg over his right, the ankle over the kneecap, and flipped his head back and up toward the ceiling. The sudden view of the white paint dizzied him. His vision blurred and he got light-headed, the room spinning, his stomach swirling. He thought he was going to vomit, so he squeezed his eyes shut, lowered his head, and yawned until his gut stopped bubbling and tingling.
He waited a minute. What the fuck was that? Damn. Moved my head too fast, he thought. He checked his watch: 2:25. He’d left the office at two, wasn’t much he could’ve done on Christmas Eve except make an electronic file on everything he had to go on—forensics reports, interviews with Desiree’s mom and boyfriend, photos of the crime scene, a rough draft of a timeline of events. He had reviewed some other cold cases he had going, but that was standard procedure, one he made for himself, to check up on old cases once a week. Nothing that couldn’t wait, nothing new on those either.
Luckily for him, Dr. Steinberg was Jewish, wasn’t really religious, and didn’t feel the need to take off on Christmas Eve. Steel was glad because he could use the therapy session.
Steel snatched TIME off the table. He flipped to the middle and read a short article about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East until he heard a door click shut. A lanky man with a wiry smile, pale skin, dark red pimples on his cheeks and crooked teeth took wide strides from an office and quickly flashed an awkward wave to the receptionist. She stopped typing and smiled and wiggled her fingertips in the air until he closed the door and existed.
The phone on her desk began ringing in the enclosed office space.
“Okay, yep,” Steel heard her say. She nodded, the phone dug in between her ear and shoulder, fingers still hammering the keyboard. “Mr. Steel, the doctor will see you now.” She smiled from ear to ear, her pink makeup smooth and shiny over her cheeks.
“Thank you.” He slowly lifted his buttocks off the seat and pointed a finger at her. “And you are? I’ve been here a few times but never caught your name.”
The woman kept smiling and grazed her hair, straightening it. “Jasmine.”
“Pleasure to officially meet you, Jasmine.”
“Same here. You’re a detective, right?”
“Yep.”
“Should I address you as ‘Detective?’”
He laughed. “Noooo. Call me Ben.”
“You got it.”
Beautiful girl, he thought, My God. What a sweetheart.
He walked toward Dr. Steinberg’s office and thought that if he wasn’t with Marisa he would have asked her out. But he soon chuckled to himself and pondered his past history as a first-rate pussy when it came to approaching women, even when he first met Marisa. I’da never done it, he thought, and I doubt she would’ve gone out with a mental patient. He chuckled again. I fuckin’ hate my brain sometimes, the fucking torture. He laughed.
A thought crossed his mind, and his memory drifted to a time when he’d received wise words from a cab driver while he was in New York about ten years ago. He was visiting the Big Apple with his brother for the weekend to see Jerry Seinfeld perform a comedy show on a warm summer night in Manhattan. His brother wasn’t feeling well one of the days of their vacation and decided to head home early. Steel stayed out and wandered around Times Square, dodging and elbowing swarms of people, walking through the packed streets, the cool night breeze on his skin, taking in the advertisement signs flashing wide blasts of yellow and red and blue and orange and spraying fog into the atmosphere, illuminating the streets, staring out at the traffic made up of mostly yellow taxis, the potholes and manholes dug into black streets and silver payments, listening to car horns honking and street performers drumming cans and strumming guitars, inhaling the scent of warm salty peanuts roasting and floating through the air, and simply just people-watching, studying each person as they entered massive stores and restaurants or chewed stringy, oily pizza while leaning up against a building.
By the end of the night, Steel flagged a cab and hopped in. The sun had completely faded, but the leather seats still warmed his elbows, and thick, stale, spicy cigar smoke inside the vehicle clogged his nostrils. As the taxi occasionally jerked and stopped in traffic and rode for a few minutes before halting again, Steel stared out at the people and lights and thought how New York was the place for those with ambition, for people who could not be contained, who could not thrive in their hometown, who welcomed the chaos, a place for the dreamers. At that moment, a jolt of energy had hit his young twenty-something bones and he dreamed of all the things he could accomplish in New York, all the career ladders he could climb, all the women he could lay, then the cab driver lowered the radio.
Steel glanced at him and at his ID badge stuck onto dirty plastic that separated the two and noticed he was a thin black man in his sixties, wearing a blue Jeff cap, tinted sunglasses, and a thin gray goatee. He made eye contact with Steel through his rearview mirror and spoke as calmly and deeply as James Earl Jones.
“What brings you to New York, young brother?”
Steel adjusted his shoulders after the cab hit a pothole and swerved a bit. “What gave it away?” he said and pointed toward his head, “Phillies hat?”
The driver chuckled for a sharp beat. “You right, the hat. Ha-ha. First time in New York?”
“Yep. Thinkin’ about not leaving.”
“Them girls got your head spinnin’, hmm?” the driver said.
Steel laughed, playing the role of young guy in a conversation dominated by an elder, one of respect he’d learned in his lower middle class neighborhood growing up, and whistled while circling his eyes throughout the streets. “You know it. I’m twenty-five, not engaged anymore. Maybe I’ll transfer and become a police officer out here.”
The cab driver drove for a few more minutes, cutting the wheel and hooking a few right and left turns.
Steel watched the New York streets and thought how he got both exhilarated and depressed when he was around a lot of beautiful women and job opportunities in one place. He loved the sight of it all, wanted to do everything, but realized it wasn’t realistic, and then his mind and low self-esteem would tell him he didn’t have a shot with any of his wild career dreams or with any women, that he was worthless, defective. The depression’s early roots were growing.
Steel reclined against the leather as the cab cut up a ramp to his hotel. Two doormen rushed over.
The driver broke the silence. “Remember this, young brother. One woman is good for any man…remember that and never forget it.” He leaned his arm on the passenger’s headrest and swiveled his head around, nodded, waited for Steel’s full attention. “Ready? Now listen. There are two things that will fuck a man up in life.”
Steel dug a hand in his pocket for the fare, eyes on the driver. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”
The cabbie tugged at his glasses and lowered them, stared his bulgy eyes into Steel’s. “A lot of money and pussy.”
Steel laughed. “Money and women.”
The man shook his head hard and jabbed a finger at his glasses and fastened the frames back toward his face. “Not women. Pussy. There’s a difference. Got it? Be careful because sometimes the world’s most luring treasures are traps.”
Steel blinked, snapped out of the memory.
But he never forgot that conversation. For some reason, it stuck out to him, and he realized over the years that a person could get some of their best words of wisdom in the most unexpected places.
He always interpreted the man’s use of the word “pussy” and his intent as not something derogatory toward women or personal, but as lust and casual sex and not love. And he loved Marisa and wouldn’t let anything get in the way of it. And he was finally beginning to understand what that man meant, that what we think we want or need or long for will get old and remain empty in the tired search, that genuine
, important things in life can’t be found in quantity, that we must water one thing and watch it bloom and grow to truly experience life. And he felt bad for thinking of that after his encounter with the sweet receptionist, but he knew he didn’t mean it toward her, just toward chasing random women for quick pleasure in general, that his mind had defaulted to a philosophical thought, something it did often whenever he could tie an observation to something he’d read, heard or seen in everyday life.
He curled his hand and tapped twice on the doctor’s office.
“It’s open,” Dr. Steinberg called out and the voice fought through the wooden door, low and muffled, as if someone were trapped in a room and calling for assistance.
Steel stepped in.
Dr. Steinberg rose.
They clasped hands. “Doctor, how are ya?”
“Well…and yourself?”
“I’m here, right?”
Dr. Steinberg smiled, revealing his bright white porcelain veneers that probably cost more than Steel’s car. His lean six foot build looked like he hadn’t missed a single day at the gym in over twenty years. He moved quickly and naturally in his suit, like his energy came effortlessly. His pitch-black hair was obviously dyed, and his black-framed Ray-Ban eyeglasses had to be well over five-hundred bucks. The vanity for a shrink, Steel thought, laughed to himself afterwards.
Dr. Steinberg was a good guy, though, easy-going and a great listener. Steel liked him, enjoyed his approach as a counselor.
“Cold out there?” the doctor said.
“Freezing.”
“Have a seat, we’ll get started.”
Steel took a few steps backwards and lowered himself onto a black leather sofa. When he’d first seen the office he couldn’t believe there was really a sofa, like in the movies. The office was spacious with a matching leather dimpled recliner for the doctor across from the sofa, a shiny wooden desk the size of an NFL end zone, maroon rugs, and a lighter shade of maroon for the paint on the walls with white baseboards.
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