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

by Steven Grosso

  19

  Steel followed behind Marisa’s gray Civic to a small driveway in front of her parents’ home. He cut off the air conditioner and pressed his brake pedal each time Marisa’s taillights turned bright red. Steel knew this neighborhood well—Packer Park—from his days working in South Philly.

  It was a middle-class area—a step up from the one he’d grown up in. The homes had some space surrounding them, although not much, unlike other parts of South Philadelphia that had row homes attached to one another. He noticed that each home had a small concrete driveway and could hold up to two or three cars if squeezed tightly, each parked on another’s bumper. Two large American flags, each swaying with the breeze, were dug into her parents’ front lawn for the holiday.

  She turned off her engine, and he waited behind her. Her eyes caught his through her rearview mirror, and she gave him a silly wave and got out of the car. He laughed and gave himself a quick mirror check, patting his hair.

  His hands moistened, and his blinking increased. A slick sweat made his forehead glisten. He knew his limitations, his strengths, and weaknesses. Small talk wasn’t one of his strengths. Outside his job, the only time he spoke was when he had to—at the supermarket, brisk hellos to neighbors—but whatever it was, it was quick. He never knew what to say in casual chit-chat and often stuttered and avoided eye contact. While conversing, his thoughts raced so fast and mixed with anxiety that his mouth couldn’t keep up with his words. He’d often think of what to say before the other person finished a sentence. Then, he’d go over the whole conversation multiple times after it had ended. He guessed for confirmation that he had said everything perfectly. Ah, perfectionism, his Achilles’ heel. This night would without a doubt be a challenge for him.

  He scratched his hair follicles hard under his wavy, brown hair and wished he would’ve done his usual—avoided an uncomfortable situation—and also wished he would have just told Marisa no. She tapped her finger on his window and flashed a thin, sexy smile. He opened the door, stood, and pumped his chest so much that it was obvious, but it couldn’t hurt to fake his confidence. As they approached the home, the smoke from sizzling meat and fire and charcoal filled Steel’s nose.

  “Nice house,” he said.

  “Yeah, come on. Everybody’s in the backyard.”

  20

  The sunset looked like it belonged on a postcard. The sun’s size had changed from a yellow beach ball to a golden baseball and hid behind an orange-reddish hue across the teal sky. Steel and Marisa had been at the barbecue for nearly four hours. Most of Marisa’s family still lingered, mingling on an outdoor patio, and some had moved the activities back inside the house, to the living room, and were watching the Phillies play the Braves, sitting around laughing and joking over a few beers, enjoying family.

  Steel stayed outside and sucked in the remaining aroma of smoke from a grill that had just cooked hamburgers and hotdogs. The smoke and trees and grass resembled the scent of a forest fire. He’d surprised himself over the course of the night and reflected on how well he had socialized. Standing ten feet away from the crowd and staring over a pointy wooden fence, he glanced down at the fresh green grass below his shoes and up at the sky that darkened by the second—a half-moon peeking through a swirl of fog. He tucked a hand into his pocket, the other holding a can of Budweiser, his eyelids thin lines as an image of the body of Thomas Hitchy appeared in his mind and then the interview with Venice and her mother. Those two punks from the hangout surfaced, and his chest tensed a bit, but he shook off the thoughts. This case needed to be solved. What can I do to solve it? he thought.

  His mind stopped as a hand patted his shoulder. Marisa’s father, Nicholas “Nicky” Tulli, stepped in front of him, wearing a pair of blue jeans and a black polo shirt. He stood 5’5, give or take an inch, by Steel’s estimation. Steel instantly thought Marisa’s father would’ve made a good interrogator with his dark, beady eyes and rough, been-around-the-block demeanor. His hair was salt-and-pepper, slicked straight back; it receded a little and formed the letter V just at the tip of his scalp. His jet-black mustache had been trimmed into a perfect line over his upper lip, and a five o’clock shadow covered his cheeks.

  He checked his watch on his hairy forearm, looked up, and was about to speak but got sidetracked by a family member who was getting ready to leave for the evening.

  Steel waited. Over the course of the night, he and Marisa’s father had discussed the Phillies. He had told Steel about the retired life and how he struggled with boredom from it. How he’d been a union carpenter his whole life but now could barely hold a hammer with his “darn arthritis.” Steel had taken notice of Nicky’s swollen, crooked fingers—the fingers of a man who had taken full advantage of them in his youth. “I can’t lift a goddamn hammer, you believe ‘at?” was the exact way Marisa’s father had put it in his native South Philly dialect. Their conversation had touched on Steel and Marisa’s job. Nicky Tulli had told Steel how Marisa’s being a police officer worried him to death. He’d wake up in cold sweats, thinking that his little girl was out on the streets among the “wolves,” as he’d put it. He’d said how he had always thought that one of Marisa’s two brothers would have joined the force. As he had said that, he’d pointed to her siblings, and Steel had laughed after noticing the size of them. Their biceps were bigger than his head. But Steel also remembered thinking that it took a lot more than muscles to be a savvy cop. If he had been talking to anyone else, he would have said that, but he refrained.

  Nicholas Tulli turned back toward Steel after he finished saying goodbye to a family member and said, “So, you have enough to eat there, Benny Boy?”

  Steel whistled while patting his stomach. “I’m full. I haven’t eaten this good in a while.”

  “Take some pasta salad home,” he said. He smacked his lips closed and waved his right arm like a third base coach sending the winning run to the plate. “Yeah, come on, take some. We got all this left here.”

  Steel inwardly laughed as his belly bounced under his shirt, even though his mouth only smiled. Marisa’s father was at least the fifteenth person who had tried to feed him throughout the night. He had known Italians liked to eat but had never actually experienced it firsthand—at least not to that extent. Marisa’s Italian-American family also sent his stomach into internal laughter, but simply because of how out of place he’d felt when he first arrived at the house.

  He glanced to his right and noticed her three uncles sitting in the same white lawn chairs they had been in the entire night. Each had to be 250 to 300 pounds. Throughout the evening, he’d heard a lot of “Aaaa” and “Ahhh” and “Eeee” and “Ohhh” and other sounds resembling vowels.

  He turned his eyes left of the uncles, at Marisa’s women cousins and her aunts, and thought her good looks must’ve been genetic. The ladies all had a natural beauty about them. They all looked the same—dark hair, sparkling brown eyes, tan skin, and curvy bodies. And he noticed each had that firecracker attitude he’d seen in Marisa. Those girls were gusty and anyone who spoke to them longer than thirty seconds knew it.

  He observed some more. The younger generation of Tullis seemed as though they were auditioning for the Jersey Shore with tans, sunglasses, muscle shirts, and short skirts. The guys had gelled hair; the girls had dark hair styled to perfection.

  At the beginning of the night, Steel had thought of introducing himself as “Benny Steelo” just to fit in. But with little effort from his end, he felt welcome. Marisa’s family was nothing but gracious as if he’d known them for years.

  He focused back on Nicky Tulli. “I appreciate it, but I’m full, thank you.”

  “You sure? Come on.”

  Steel laughed. “I’m fine, thank you, though, Mr. Tulli. But everything was great.” He looked over Marisa’s father’s head and scanned the backyard, wondering where Marisa had drifted off to for the past forty-five minutes.

  “Lookin’ for my daughter?” Nicky Tulli asked as if
reading Steel’s mind.

  “Yeah, I think I’m gonna head out.”

  Nicky slowly spun in a circle and shrugged. His dark eyelids blinked over his beady eyes. “I saw her a coupla minutes ago,” he said. He waved his arms forward. “Ah…she’s here somewhere.”

  Marisa’s mother, Joanne Tulli, crept up from behind her husband and gently slid her hand across his back. She smiled so similarly to Marisa that Steel thought she was her for a moment. “My husband talkin’ your ear off yet?”

  Steel laughed.

  “How was everything, Benjamin?” Joanne said.

  He nodded. “The best.”

  He had known she was Marisa’s mother the second he’d met her. The only differences between the two were age, a slightly wider frame from the years, and their hair color. Joanne had dark red hair opposed to Marisa’s black. He noticed genuine warmth and a caring nature in Marisa’s mother; her sincere eyes revealed it. And he was a firm believer in the saying “the eyes are the window to the soul.” Marisa’s parents were honest, decent people—he knew just by looking at them. If he was good at anything, it was judging one’s character.

  Joanne sidestepped over to Steel and grabbed his left forearm with her hands. “Come on, I’ll make you a plate to take with you.”

  He followed his routine by rubbing his stomach and reminding her how full he was.

  Then both Nicky and Joanne Tulli stood on either side of him and tugged each forearm. His can of beer nearly slipped from his hand, and he blushed and almost took a step forward before he heard Marisa’s voice.

  “What’re you two doing?” she said, followed by a playful but confused smile, focusing on Steel, as if to say, how are you warming up to my parents so fast? “They trying to get you to eat more?”

  He laughed into the warm air, and so did her parents.

  Marisa rolled her eyes. “Figures.”

  Steel held out his hand to Nicky Tulli. “Very nice to meet you, sir, and thank you for everything. It was delicious.”

  Nicky’s pudgy, leathery hand firmly gripped Steel’s. “Same here.” He wrapped his arm around Marisa and pulled her close to him.

  She laughed like a child. “Dadddd! Come on, I’m a grown woman.”

  Steel knew that no matter what, Marisa was still a little girl in the eyes of her parents, not a detective for the Philadelphia Police Department; he could read it across their faces.

  Nicky squeezed Marisa, and his eyes bulged, locked with Steel’s. “You see her,” he shifted focus from Steel to Marisa, “make sure my baby’s all right.”

  “Sure will, sir,” Steel said.

  Marisa rolled her eyes again, and Steel couldn’t have been more turned-on by the way she did that.

  She said, “Dad, I’m in my thirties…you’re so embarrassing.”

  Nicky let go of her and laughed deviously. “Still my little girl…always will be.”

  She sighed. “I guess.”

  Steel turned to Marisa’s mother, hand extended. Joanne bypassed his hand and gave him a warm hug and kiss on the cheek.

  “Thanks again for everything,” he said.

  “Thanks for comin’,” Nicky Tulli said. He wrapped his arm around his wife, and the two walked away happier than two kids on Christmas morning.

  21

  When Steel had told Marisa he was heading out, she had said she’d go with him. They walked away together, nowhere in particular, just through her parents’ neighborhood. Citizens Bank Park, the home of the Phillies, was nearby. Every July 4th weekend, when the Phillies were home, the stadium celebrated the holiday with fireworks. It had become a tradition for locals in the neighborhoods of South Philadelphia, which surrounded the stadium, to sit out with family and friends in front of their houses, laughing and talking, viewing the display, enjoying the small things in life.

  Steel and Marisa continued walking, and trees hovered over them, the atmosphere dark and nature-scented. Families laughed and conversed. The adults reclined on beach chairs, and little kids chased one another around. Young children’s eyes beamed with excitement as they anticipated a lit-up sky. And Steel and Marisa strolled like a married couple, but he felt uneasy and excited simultaneously. As he glanced at the kids with eager eyes, as they jumped around, asking their parents when the fireworks would start, he figured he might’ve been more excited than them by simply strolling down the street on a warm summer night with Marisa. What a sucker for romance I am, he thought. If only I knew how to fully show it. An inward chuckle bounced his stomach, and a tight smile stretched across his face at that. Marisa glanced at him, saw that he was lost in his thoughts, and smiled to herself, a curious look in her eyes.

  He’d learned not to waste any leisure time when away from his job, because, in reality, the work had made some of the most optimistic people in the world cynical. If he didn’t escape it, even for a few hours, the depravity of man he saw daily would leave him hopeless for the future. Reminding himself that good still existed in this world was crucial. Many officers over the years had cracked from the pressure—the long nights, time away from family, shitty pay for putting their lives on the line, messed up schedules that rotated between night and day work almost weekly at times. It all had screwed up some of his co-workers from time to time. And in a city with high crime rates, it was a thankless job. Policemen had targets on their backs and were often viewed as the enemy. Lawsuits against the department were routine. This night provided a well-needed break for the two of them.

  The stadium was visible in the distance, one of the only sources of light in the night sky. Lights atop the stadium spiraled into the darkness above it and would’ve stood out to passengers flying on an airplane over that section of the city. A few fans lingered—the ones who didn’t stay for the fireworks display—and walked the streets, dressed in red Phillies caps and white jerseys with red pinstripes.

  Marisa gripped Steel’s arm and headed for a park bench nearby. The area was quiet. No stadium exits were near them, just a parking lot to their left, almost full. So, it was just the two of them, sitting across from FDR Park—a park and piece of Mother Nature so badly needed in a busy city like Philadelphia. When folks from South Philly wanted to get away from the fast-paced city, they’d go there; they fished, rode bicycles, hung out around the lakes inside, jogged, played tennis, and other outdoor activities. Trees and lakes and narrow concrete pathways took them away from honking horns, traffic, nosy neighbors on top of one another, and to a place where they could be alone with nature. Steel had always enjoyed spending time in that park.

  A pitch-black sky awaited the fireworks, except a circle of light from atop the stadium that resembled a halo in the darkness. Steel and Marisa sat arm’s length from one another and thought in silence for a moment before Marisa said, “So…how was the food?”

  He rubbed his stomach and snapped his head back. He noticed a car behind them, about a block away, just sitting there. It looked odd and out of place to him, maybe blue or black. He thought he’d seen it earlier in the day when they’d arrived at Marisa’s parents’ home, but he ignored it and gazed at Marisa. “You Italians can cook.”

  She smiled, and her eyes sparkled in the darkness. A wind gust crept by them, bringing along a backwoods scent from FDR Park behind the bench. Her eyes stunned him, beautiful; their warmth erased any doubts he had and told him that he had made the right decision by going to her family’s house that night.

  “You should come over on Sundays,” she said, “you’ll really leave full.” She curled her legs underneath herself, hooked her hair behind her ears, and leaned an elbow on the bench, facing him. She stared for a moment. He swallowed hard.

  He sensed her eyes and stared at her.

  She didn’t turn away.

  “What’re we having a staring contest? See who can hold off the longest without laughing,” he said.

  “Ha. Shut up.” She smiled, closed her lips, then smiled again.

  He smiled but warily. Wha
t are you an idiot? he thought. Leave it to you and your corny jokes to fuck things up. You’re fucking clueless sometimes.

  She stared again. His blood ran cold. So damn sexy.

  “You know, you’re an interesting fellow, Steel. Quirky, I like it.”

  “Quirky?”

  “I said I like it.”

  He studied her.

  “You just seem so serious most of the time. You’re an enigma.”

  Steel broke a sweat. “Just a little private, that’s all.” He waved a hand. “Better that way. Give others nothing, and they have nothing on you.”

  “Yeah, but sometimes…” she blinked, “…I don’t know, never mind.”

  His sweating intensified and warmed his skin. Fuck! Did I blow it again? Trying to be the cool guy…just be yourself.

  He spoke quickly, “Sometimes what?”

  She started to talk but stopped, squeezed his arm, and raised her head toward the sky. “The fireworks are starting.” She crinkled her nose and laughed, embarrassed by her excitement. “I used to get so excited over this as a kid.” She craned her neck for a view and laughed harder, silly as usual.

  He shook his head. Yep…you blew it—overthinking and introversion have won again.

  Red, white, and blue circles popped through the black sky. It started off slow with a few booms. As the show went on, the booms sped up, and it sounded more like boooooom, boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, boom, boom, boom! Might as well have been his stomach with the anger that boiled inside it as he reflected on what message or signal Marisa had just tried to send him. You’re so fuckin’ stupid sometimes, he thought. Just relax.