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

by Steven Grosso

  As much as he liked the ethnic, neighborhood feel of South Philly, some things had always stuck out to him as an officer there. It amazed him how each neighborhood had been so territorial at one time and still remained that way but to a much lesser degree. You had the Italian-Americans in one neighborhood, the Irish-Americans in another, the Asian-Americans in another, the African-Americans in another, the Hispanic-Americans in another. If you flew an airplane over South Philly and labeled each section from above, you’d have perfectly divided squares of different races and ethnicities. Throw in a few yuppies and hipsters and you’d know exactly where each ethnicity lived by which street you were on.

  In the past, when Steel was a boy, it was much more divisive. Race seemed to be a sensitive topic in South Philly. People clung to their groups. Blacks didn’t walk in white neighborhoods, and whites didn’t walk in black neighborhoods. But it went even deeper than that. Years ago, the Italians hadn’t gotten along with the Irish. Many Irish had fought with the Italians. Some African-Americans and Italians hadn’t seen eye to eye. African-Americans and Irish had bickered with one another. Tension had been everywhere. Steel remembered hearing stories from his buddies in high school, who had lived in South Philly at one time, about race wars, people getting jumped and threatened. And for what? he had always thought. For what reasons other than the color of their skin or culture?

  His thoughts drifted. He knew humans loved to form cliques and esoteric circles, that mankind had never truly abandoned its tribal roots. People usually stayed close to what they felt comfortable with. He believed people did it subconsciously. After analyzing human behavior for no particular reason in his free time, he’d noticed that people separate themselves into groups by race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, country, state, city, neighborhood, sports teams, tastes in music, movies, you name it. Everyone wants to belong to something. That was why he’d hear stories of typically nice people randomly acting crazy or fighting at a sporting event for their home team. Humans love to fight for causes they feel close to, even trivial ones.

  He knew, nowadays, South Philly was less divisive and the tension was all but gone. Yuppies and hipsters were turning old factories and other old vacant buildings into condos and driving up property values. The Italian and Irish-American populations were shrinking as people were moving to Jersey, or other cities, or out to the suburbs for better job opportunities because they were more educated than their immigrant grandparents, or after realizing that the only thing Italian or Irish about them were their last names. He guessed that many families had assimilated into American culture after a few generations and that ethnic roots that dated back to over a century ago didn't fit into the plans for a melting pot like America. From what Steel had been told, he had Irish, Scottish, and Italian blood in him. He guessed that explained his two-beer-a-night-habit and hot temper. “Ah, stereotypes, how can they be avoided?” he’d tell people. However, he only viewed himself as one thing: a proud American.

  Steel’s thoughts broke at the sound of his own car horn. He flinched and realized his hand must’ve slid on it while he’d been lost in his thoughts. “Shit,” he muttered.

  He stepped out of the car and into his Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood. It was quiet at night, and he liked it that way. His block was more rural than urban. The northeast section of Philadelphia was greener than the others. He walked to the sidewalk, let the cool breeze hit him, and listened to crickets chirp. This breeze feels good.

  Something rattled, then rang out. Steel flinched and took a step back. He traced his gun on his waist, ready for a quick snatch. His eyes moved back and forth until a metal trashcan lid appeared, shaking on the ground. An inch over from the can, a gray alley cat flashed raw, piercing green eyes and meowed and hissed, then dashed under his neighbor’s black Honda Accord.

  He shook his head. “Son of a bitch scared the shit out of me.”

  All he wanted to do was get inside, grab a beer, and sit on his deck in his backyard. He figured he couldn’t waste a night with a cool breeze; they’d been rare of late. His yard wasn’t big, about the size of a typical office in a corporate building. He’d recently had a small deck built just out back, with a swinging bench placed on a wooden platform, and he did his best thinking, head-clearing, and reading on that deck. He loved to recline and read in his small amount of spare time, mostly crime and law fiction. Of late, he’d been on a John Grisham kick. But all he felt like doing was relaxing and thinking; his eyes were too tired to read.

  He walked over to his neighbor’s trashcan, bent down on one knee and snatched the lid, and then fastened it on top with steady fingers to keep the noise level down. It was only 8:30 at night, but his neighbors on each side of him were elderly, and it was way past their bedtime.

  After opening his front door and walking through the living room, he frowned and sniffed at a sour odor. The bowl of cereal he’d poured that morning before being called into work had lain in the hot house the whole day; the milk had curdled into lumpy, oily bubbles, leaving not one inch of fresh air. He gripped his shirt and tugged it up to his nose. No air conditioning circulated. He didn’t have central, hated it. He preferred window units and the feeling of walking from a hot room to a wave of cold air in another. At this moment, though, standing in hot, sour air, he wished he had central.

  Steel grabbed the bowl with a hand, still holding his shirt over his nose with the other, tossed it into the sink, and flipped up the silver faucet handle. He snatched his keys from his pocket, tossed them onto the kitchen table, and let his grip off the shirt. After walking over to the refrigerator, he opened the door and grabbed a bottle of Budweiser.

  “Ah,” he said to himself.

  He kicked off his shoes and took off his black dress pants with one hand, holding the cold, sweaty beer in the other. This routine was natural—he’d done it numerous times throughout the years. A pair of khaki shorts, which had been on his kitchen floor from the previous night, caught his attention, so he tugged them on one leg at a time with the hand not holding the beer. A fresh shirt was all the way up the stairs in the bedroom, so he just unbuttoned the one he was wearing. Not his Saturday best, but all he wanted to do was relax.

  The backyard adjoined his kitchen. He unlocked the sliding glass doors and walked through. The cool night air mixed with swaying trees, grass, and pollen smelled clean and natural—not man-made. It was as if he was alone with the universe, alone with its Creator. It calmed him instantly. He slid the door shut and reached up to flick on an outdoor nightlight. The light was drilled into a brick wall and gave off as much brightness as an average end-table lamp, just enough to see most of his yard—the grass, a few small trees, and a blue recycling bin filled with empty beer, soda, and water bottles. The wind picked up a little, wrapping itself around each side of his home, howling and whistling. A maniac wouldn’t stop beeping his car horn in the distance, and it went on for a good two or three minutes before the peacefulness of the night returned, just as crickets began chirping in the darkness.

  Steel looked down at the blades of grass and up at trees that appeared black, almost as shadows in the darkness. He swatted at his legs and ankles, each tingling and itching with annoying bursts of heat, and brushed some mosquitoes off.

  “These bastards are gonna start now. First the cat, now these little fuckers.”

  He kept a can of bug repellent on his deck at all times, for nights like this. After finding it by his windowsill, he sprayed shots of mist on each leg with his right hand, holding his beer in his left.

  Finally, he fell backwards onto the bench, and it rocked from the shock of new weight. He inhaled, deeply and slowly, and swung back and forth under his own volition, arms beside him, feet flat on the ground, head off to the side. He didn’t know why, but he always felt like Clint Eastwood while sitting on that deck. And he sometimes envisioned burglars hopping his fence, where he would welcome them with an Eastwoodesque snarl. He’d say a Dirty Harry line: “Come on
, punk, make my day.” He was Detective Steel and didn’t get that way by watching Disney movies growing up.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness, he continued rocking. His worn-out body and tired, cranky mind couldn’t help but think about the case, even during his supposed relaxation time. He strongly suspected a rival drug-dealer, maybe customer, but wrestled with the fact that cocaine was left at the scene. Maybe it was set up that way to throw him off. Whatever the case, he wanted to get his hands on it right then and there. Why does the human body need sleep? he thought. All the things he’d accomplish if he didn’t have to recharge. But most were late-night hopes, wild dreams until they faded the following morning when it came time to work on them. Marisa popped into his mind, but he minimized those thoughts, not about to get infatuated with another woman so quickly. He’d learned his lesson after his one true love had torn his heart to pieces. But Marisa’s natural beauty blew him away, and her attitude turned him on. She had quiet ambition and confidence and toughness about her; it was as if he’d known her forever, the comfort level years advanced. Those lingering thoughts he couldn’t shake, so he let them pass through his mind.

  And both the thoughts of the Hitchy case and Marisa meshed together in a half-dreamlike, half-conscious state, as he occasionally went back inside the house, three or four times, for a cold beer. Eventually, his eyelids sagged and flipped open and sagged and flipped open until he dosed off for good, for close to an hour on the deck. When he woke after the hour with an aching head and dry mouth, he forced himself to get up and drag his feet to bed. Work awaited him in the morning.

  9

  Steel snored in his ice-cold room with the covers over his head until he heard one of the most annoying sounds ever devised—his cell phone alarm clock. His eyes sprung open, then closed. He expanded his cheeks while he yawned. After moaning and groaning for a full minute, he rolled and twisted his body off the sheets. The alarm screamed, and he slapped a hand at it on a flimsy end table next to him. He pressed his face into the soft pillow and stayed in that position for another moment. Then he rolled over, yawned again, reached for his phone, and texted Marisa, telling her to meet him at the medical examiner’s office for the autopsy.

  His regular routine was doable this morning, although he didn’t perform it as regularly as he would have liked because, at least twice a week, he’d get woken up in the middle of the night to go to the scene of a crime. He jumped out of bed at 6 a.m., took a warm shower as he listened to the morning news on a wet and fuzzy sounding shower radio, brushed his teeth with Crest 3D White, combed his hair straight back with American Crew gel, ironed his clothes, got dressed, threw a cup of instant Folgers coffee into the microwave, cracked three eggs into a frying pan with real butter, snapped down two slices of Stroehmann’s bread into his old toaster, sat at his kitchen table and ate in silence, jogged back upstairs to get his gun and badge, and then left for the police station. Boring, but it was his life. Routines made things easier and gave him more time to think about other things.

  But the routine this morning took a detour from the police station. Steel was heading straight for the medical examiner’s office for the autopsy of Thomas Hitchy. He knew this day would require mental concentration, so he poured an additional cup of coffee and carried it along with him in a travel mug. But he gulped it down before he even pulled out of his driveway, not too smart, because soon after, his chest tingled from the extra caffeine, his heart palpitated, and his face flushed. Faster breathing, racing thoughts, sweating, and crippling anxiety would follow the caffeine overload; he knew it, had done it plenty of times, scolded himself after each, realized why his family used to call him hard-headed. Great way to start the morning: high off coffee. He backed out of his street and hoped he would be able to sit still until he reached the office.

  Marisa stood outside the medical examiner’s office as he pulled up. At 7:30 a.m., the sun shined bright, and a light breeze flowed, fooling those who didn’t usually follow the weather. Informed Philadelphians, though, knew the cool morning was just a tease for the sauna that would follow in the afternoon. He welcomed the morning air, especially with the hot summer Philadelphia was experiencing, and enjoyed the peace and quiet and the birds chirping before the race began at rush hour, as if the universe revealed its secrets in the early hours. The quiet mornings would trigger reflection, and he’d find himself questioning mysterious things. Why humans were on Earth, for what purpose? What deity was up there? He thought about how unbelievably complex a sunrise was, and how humans couldn’t fathom the intricacies of it, yet it was expected to rise every day in what seemed so simple of a process to us. Something was up there—whatever or whoever—but something, he believed. The sunny mornings were better than the dark and hellish scenes he witnessed on a daily basis.

  He kicked the car door shut while viewing an e-mail on his cell and walked over to Marisa. She stood with her back facing him, her black hair midway down her spine, stretching across each side, swaying with the breeze. She held a black leather notebook in her hand—a fancy one that zipped shut. Her clothes were business casual—slim black slacks and a blazer that stopped at her hips, amplifying her curvy thighs and legs.

  A familiar feeling found its way into the pit of his gut. He felt it every time he had to observe an autopsy—an anxious fluttering deep in his abdomen. He dreaded the smells, the sights, the sounds. It all sickened him, and each time he viewed one, it bothered him even more. But observing autopsies was part of the job, and he wanted to talk face-to-face with the medical examiner and see his or her reactions to his questions. Steel had pushed the limit and even annoyed some of them at times with his obsessive questioning. But he needed answers, for the sooner evidence came in, the better the odds of solving the case were.

  Marisa spun around at Steel’s black Aldo shoes smacking against the pavement. He nodded; she smiled. She wore subtle makeup. She stood, arms crossed with a handbag dangling from them, one leg straight and the other with her toes angled in the opposite direction, digging the point of her high heel into the pavement. She tipped her chin upward. “Partner.”

  “Marisa. Good morning.”

  “What time is the autopsy?”

  “Tony got me an appointment for 7:45. Tony is the man to go to if you need something to happen quickly.”

  She checked her watch and gum cracked between her teeth.

  Steel said, “We’re a few minutes early, just wanted to make sure we were here. Gotta head right over to Hitchy’s apartment after this to talk to his girlfriend.”

  “Whatda’ya know about her?”

  “She’s twenty-nine, never been in trouble with the law. Hispanic, I believe. Originally from Northeast Philly, but she moved with him in his Old City apartment.”

  “Where’d you get all this information from so fast?”

  “After you left yesterday, I talked to the officer who went there to tell the girlfriend about Hitchy…I pulled the report, looked her up in the system.”

  “Who else we looking at?”

  “I talked to Narcotics, got one suspect, rival drug-dealer. Narcotics knows him well, mean son of a bitch. Apparently, he and Hitchy had a beef, recently had words, got into a fistfight, which an undercover in Narcotics took note of. They hated each other.”

  She nodded. “Hmm.”

  Steel stared off for the next five minutes, lost in his thoughts. Marisa leaned against a railing and searched through her phone.

  At 7:45 a.m., they went inside.

  The medical examiner greeted them sipping a cup of Wawa coffee. Her name was Dr. Beth Steele, no relation, but Steel knew her from previous cases, and the two always joked around about having the same last name and same initials: BS. Steel had told her how he had the rare spelling of their surname: Steel, not Steele. She’d joked and said that was bullshit, a play on their initials. She was down to earth, like him, and that made this part of his job somewhat easier. Beth Steele kept her mid-forties body in excellent shape. Sh
e was tall and slender with straight, blonde hair, and her skin was so smooth, without one wrinkle, that she appeared ten years younger than her actual age. Her smile was warm, and her eyes resembled the clear blue sky Steel and Marisa had just left.

  Steel thought she had some of the best legs he had ever seen. Toned calf muscles lay just underneath her white lab coat, but the rest of her smooth legs were up to his imagination. He felt bad for the mental image, but he was a man, what could one expect? Old Catholic guilt, even though he wasn’t a Catholic anymore. He always figured her to be a runner or jogger but had never gotten into that conversation with her. They had gone out for a drink a few years prior, but nothing ever came of it. They remained friends. She was pleasant, and that always seemed odd to Steel, as he dreaded the thought of an autopsy. This woman performed them on a daily basis but managed to stay positive. He shrugged it off and knew that people probably thought the same way about his line of work—like anything else—you get used to it.

  Beth Steele led them to a small room and handed clothing to each to put on before entering. Ah, the autopsy room, he thought. Fuck my life. Electronic doors parted, revealing two autopsy technicians standing in the room, fully dressed in white lab coats, there to assist the medical examiner. A medical student was also present simply to observe the process. Steel knew this guy was a student right off the bat. His face was almost as white as the autopsy technicians’ lab coats. Steel’s stomach was already churning as he took a quick look around the room. Marisa seemed to be okay, and she noticed him staring at her, so she winked.

  There were no windows, and the walls and floor were old and stained with dried blood, although the blood resembled dirt to the naked eye. In the corner, behind rows and rows of steel cabinets, were various tools to perform the procedure, including a saw and face gear, if an autopsy required their use. Lab coats hung in the distance, also stained with dried blood and various colors that had splashed on them from the insides of human bodies. Large steel sinks lined the room, waiting to rinse and clean. The area wasn’t bright because the fluorescent bulbs overhead didn’t give off much light but just enough to lay over a stainless steel autopsy table, which had several drains and handles for running water attached to it. Looks like a damn horror movie set, he thought. He shook his head to himself and couldn’t understand how he was able to tolerate some of the most gruesome crime scenes but couldn’t stand to watch an autopsy.