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

by Steven Grosso

  An iPhone, red BIC lighter, and a green and white pack of Newport cigarettes were next to him on the table.

  Steel took off his suit jacket one arm at a time and said out of the small slit in the side of his mouth, “You’re a smoker. Used to be, too, Marlboro Red. Had to quit when I started hacking up brown phlegm every morning.”

  Knee smirked a bit, although Steel could tell he didn’t want to, mostly doing it to please him. Steel wanted to sound like a street tough to get a street tough to open up to him. If he went right into cop-mode, he wouldn’t get anywhere.

  Steel took a seat, and Marisa followed. She crossed her legs and angled her chair to face the two of them. It appeared as if she had her mind set on observing, without intentions of interrupting. Steel took notice of this but carried on.

  Knee took a long glance at Marisa and then Steel, sized up his competition like a heavyweight fighter as the referee reads over the rules at the beginning of a match.

  Steel faced Knee and slightly leaned back. Knee didn’t take his eyes off him.

  “So, I’m sure you’ve heard by now?”

  “About Hitchy?” Knee said calmly.

  Steel crossed his left leg over his right and rested the ankle on the kneecap. He wrapped a hand around the ankle and palmed the back of his head.

  Knee said, “That’s why you brought me here, no?”

  Steel swung his legs to the floor and folded his arms across his chest. “Thomas Hitchy was found dead last week under a highway. One shot to the head.” He scratched his upper lip with a finger.

  “I’m aware,” Knee said. He remained in the same position—feet flat on the floor, shoulders back, hands resting on his thighs. “Before you even go there…I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”

  “How would you describe your relationship with Hitchy?” Steel asked.

  “I knew him.”

  “How well?”

  Knee scratched his nose. “Just enough to say what’s up to.”

  Steel pressed on with a lie. “You know we have prints off the car, right?”

  “Good for you.”

  “Are they yours?”

  “Maybe they’re yours,” Knee shot back. He slid one sneaker out and stretched the leg to full length and leaned back in his seat, a sarcastic smile across his face, his demeanor similar to a defiant schoolboy being questioned by a teacher in detention.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Steel said, trying to hide his annoyance. “Look…we know you didn’t get along with Hitchy. I know about the beef, the fight.” Steel’s voice escalated as he continued, “I know about it so don’t fuck with me, simple as that. And I know about the customers he stole from you.” He locked eyes with Knee and studied his body language for a reaction—very little. Knee didn’t say a word; instead, he rolled his eyes slightly.

  “Look, man, I wasn’t involved in that. I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “Who was then? You know who, I can see it in your face.”

  “I dunno. All I know is that I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”

  Steel leaped up from his chair, and it scratched the floor, the echoes bouncing off the white soundproof walls. He sidestepped left to face Knee. “So, let me get this straight. You and Hitchy get into it a few times. He steals your customers and takes money out of your pocket, and you don’t do nothing?” He glared at Knee, waiting for a reply.

  Knee tossed his hands forward and shook his head, indicating that he wasn’t buying Steel’s routine. He smiled.

  Steel shouted, “You think killing a man is funny?”

  Knee looked up at Steel and studied him for a moment. “Look, I’m just about done talkin’ to you. I might call my attorney.” He waited for a reaction from Steel, but nothing came. Steel stood stone-faced. Knee continued, “First off, I don’t have beef with nobody, and I don’t know what customers you’re talkin’ about. It has to be my tattoo customers because they’re the only ones I got.”

  Steel hesitated for a moment and remembered reading in Knee’s file that he ran a tattoo shop out of the back of the hangout. It was legit and had a small business license and everything. Maybe the only reason he was still on the streets. Without an income on the books, he wouldn’t have had anything to show for his Lexus, house, and multiple vacations a year. Narcotics couldn’t get him, although they’d been building an investigation for years. By all accounts, Knee ran a tight organization, with a lot of clever maneuvering. He always covered his tracks.

  “Bullshit…you didn’t like Hitchy stepping on your toes,” Steel said as he broke out of his thoughts.

  “Man, I’m not even gonna entertain that bullshit anymore.”

  Steel sucked in air until his lungs were full and released it through his nose. “You don’t want to talk to me…talk to her. Tell her what you did.”

  “I’m about to not talk to nobody and call my fuckin’ law—”

  Marisa interrupted him. “But you did know Hitchy, right?”

  He sighed. “I thought I told you that, but yeah, I knew him.”

  “How would you know a drug-dealer from a different section of the city?”

  “A few years ago…I gave him a tattoo, a lion on his arm. I knew him since.”

  “So how does that explain the hostility between the two of you?”

  He slapped both palms together and jiggled his hands. “Look, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, but I didn’t have a problem with the guy.”

  Steel re-entered the conversation. “If you didn’t have a problem with the guy, why’d you kill him?” Steel stepped closer to Knee. “Better yet, have him killed?” He glanced at Marisa and nodded, then nodded again, longer and faster. “Yeah, that’s right. You didn’t like Hitchy—he didn’t like you. He takes money out of your hands, fucks with you, you get mad. You talk to your boys, and that’s it, problem solved. You set it up and take out Hitchy.” Steel smiled now, hoping to come off as if these were facts he’d already known. “Who are you trying to kid here, Knee?”

  Knee stopped staring at Steel and turned his head away. He chuckled, then stopped and stared, then chuckled again.

  “Hit a nerve?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe the prints we have say otherwise.”

  “Your prints don’t have shit to do with me,” Knee said. “And you know it.”

  “Why did you conveniently take a week-long trip to Miami right around the time Hitchy died? A little suspicious to me, what da’ya think, Detective Tulli?”

  “I think this guy’s full of shit,” she said.

  Knee just smiled, as if enjoying all the attention. “You two are two of the dumbest fuckin’ detectives I ever met. My cousin’s got a house in South Beach, on Ocean Drive. I was down there for a tattoo convention. I come home and hear you assholes are looking for me. I was in Miami the night Hitchy died.”

  Steel bent down right in Knee’s face as soon as the last syllable had left his mouth. “Don’t fuck with me!” he yelled, and spittle shot sideways. The color of his face changed from beige to Valentine’s Day red in two seconds. “We know you’re involved.”

  Knee answered back with his own fury. “And I’m telling you I’m not!”

  Steel cooled a bit, backed up before his temper exploded again, and nodded at Marisa. He motioned for the door, and they walked out. Knee huffed and puffed.

  Steel and Marisa snuck into an unoccupied office just outside the interrogation room. He stared, his hands around his waist, sweating. “We’re gonna have to let this fucker walk for now. We have nothing on him. And with that alibi,” he shook his head, “if it’s legit…it’s…”

  Marisa blinked—nervous and enthralled at the same time. He took it as if she knew she was in the big leagues now.

  “I still think it’s him, but today I’m not that sure. I give it fifty-fifty. I put that scenario together for him, and he couldn’t look me in the eye. But he knew we didn’t have evidence on him. Either that o
r he’s gambling with us.” He scratched his forehead with just his index finger and reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Trident. “You want one?”

  She frowned and waved her hands. “No thanks.”

  He tore the wrapper off a single stick, flung it into his mouth, and chomped like a lion tearing apart a fresh catch. Mint filled the room. He opened the door and slid a hand on the small of Marisa’s back to lead her out, then followed.

  They reentered the room, where Knee sat, staring straight, looking as though he’d had enough.

  “Think about it for a while,” Steel said.

  He walked back out and planned on letting Knee freeze for a few hours, hoping he’d break before he had to tell him he was free to go and to enjoy the small amount of free time he had left.

  23

  Steel relaxed at his cubicle, the only light in the entire office from a table lamp next to his desk. All the detectives in his department were home for the holiday or out working, including Marisa. She headed home around 7 p.m., and that had been three hours ago. He was in his chair, reclining as far back as he could go, his shoes propped up on the desktop. The aroma of duck sauce and deep-fryer oil rose from Steel’s cubicle and floated throughout the office. White containers of Chinese food sat on his desk, flaps dangling, with red letters and symbols written across the center of each in a language he didn’t understand. A few crumpled fortune cookies in plastic wrappers sat atop a greasy brown bag, along with used napkins and a twenty-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola with a red label.

  He was re-reading Knee and Hitchy’s files—reviewing phone records, looking over the medical examiner’s reports, and comparing notes to prior cases to see if there may have been a connection. Maybe he’d missed small details, he figured, and knew that that happened frequently and that the smallest clues often mattered most. The back of his head ached and tingled from eyestrain. Warm pressure radiated between his eyebrows and nose. His stomach ached from greasy, sodium-packed meat, and the belches it produced mixed of bubbly soda remnants and acidic soy sauce.

  He snatched the Daily News off his lap and flipped it open, and the silky gray pages ruffled as he turned them between his thumb and finger. He skimmed through and quickly scanned the pictures of each news story, searching for one of interest. A short article about the Phillies caught his eye, detailing how they had a lot of “what ifs” going into the trade deadline. He read his horoscope, sped through the food section, and learned about a new Italian restaurant opening up in Center City. Then he saw a topic that captured his interest for longer than the others. The article detailed how a young mother had tied up her children and left them on the side of a road in Ohio. He usually didn’t follow crime outside Philadelphia—figured he had enough misery to see in his own city on a daily basis—but he couldn’t help reading. His eyes swept across each sentence, but he cringed as he got to the end, at the author of the article, Dick Naki. Ah, how Steel disliked that guy. Naki freelanced for The Philadelphia Daily News along with The Philadelphia Inquirer.

  A few years back, Naki had written a factually incorrect piece about a case Steel had been part of. Naki had named Steel. A couple of days after the article had hit newsstands, grocery stores, and convenience shops, Steel had run into him at a sandwich shop in Center City. It had taken every ounce of willpower in Steel’s mind and body not to crack him with a right hook. Instead, he’d gripped Naki by the shirt and let his eyes do the talking. Since then, Steel hadn’t been in the papers. He had seen fear in Naki’s eyes that day. He knew Naki was a spoiled, rich kid from the Main Line, one of the richest sections of Philadelphia, and one of the richest across the country, for that matter. Naki’s daddy was a partner at a prominent law firm and had gotten him the gig at the Daily News through his connections; Steel figured that was the case because Naki was a half-assed writer, anyway. Over the years, Steel had felt a little bad about the way he’d acted with Naki but hadn’t lost sleep over it. Fuck him!

  Steel closed the paper, flipped it over at the center, and tossed it next to the leftover Chinese food, nearly knocking over one of the containers. He rubbed his face with both hands until it reddened and then yawned wide like a tiger.

  “Son of a bitch, I’m getting obsessed with this case,” he mumbled. “I gotta solve this damn thing.”

  The office was silent and near-darkness, and he liked it that way; it helped him focus. He’d wondered over the years why he worked best in the dark and came to the conclusion that it was because of 9/11. When Steel had heard the news of 9/11, he had been in the Marines for two years. At the time, he had just gotten home from an overnight shift, on patrol where he was stationed, his role at the time. He remembered that he had been in his bedroom, the curtains drawn with the lights dim when he’d heard what had happened. Emotions had exploded throughout his body—anger, rage, shock, sadness for families who’d lost loved ones. That moment had stayed with him beyond that day, and whenever he wanted to get back to those emotions, he’d set up a similar scene. His blood boiled within minutes of creating it. Those memories were sharp, and he’d been engulfed in them the whole evening as he reviewed the case.

  His phone vibrated and spun in front of him on the desktop. He flinched and narrowed one eye and closed the other, glancing at the number. “Hello.”

  “Ah, Detective…” There was a short pause. “…Steel.”

  He didn’t recognize the sweet, soft voice on the other end of the line.

  “Ah, yeah, speaking. Who’s calling?”

  “It’s Venice.”

  Steel swung his legs down to the floor in one motion. “Venice, how you holding up? I was just reviewing your case here.” He leafed through a few pages and tucked the phone in between his ear and right shoulder.

  “Sorry…I called the number on your card…hope it’s not too late.”

  “It’s fine. What’s on your mind?”

  “Um, I think we should talk soon.”

  “Okay…why, what’s up?”

  “I feel like I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

  “What are you doing now?” Steel asked.

  “Ah, now,” she said, as if collecting her thoughts, “nothing…you wanna talk now?”

  “You at the apartment?”

  “Yeah, but, ah…”

  “We can go somewhere else if you want,” Steel quickly said.

  “It’s because my mom’s sleeping.”

  “All right…I’ll swing by in a half-hour. We’ll go to Dunkin’ Donuts.”

  “Okay.”

  24

  Steel pulled up in front of Venice’s apartment, and she locked the door and jiggled the knob. A light mist fell, just annoying enough to fog up his car windows, so he flicked on his windshield wipers. Venice held up a finger, turned her body back toward the door, and checked it once more.

  Maybe a fellow OCD sufferer, he thought.

  She flipped the hood of her light jacket onto her head and jogged through the light rain that had now started. He tapped a button on his door, and the locks popped up. She hopped in and shivered, then made a small, sad smile, as if she was wary about something. Her hair product, a mixture of ripe strawberries and another fruit flavor he couldn’t make out, inflamed his nasal passages. He quietly sniffled due to the fact that most chemicals wreaked havoc on his allergies.

  “Hi,” she said and turned toward him, wiping raindrops from her forehead.

  Steel smiled. “Hey, how’ya holdin’ up?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I’m gonna shoot down to Dunkin’ Donuts. Unless you want to go to a diner up at The Piazza. It’s, ah, it’s on me. I can go for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.”

  She whispered, “Sure.”

  The Piazza wasn’t far from Venice’s apartment, about seven or eight blocks. The official name, The Piazza at Schmidt’s, opened in the summer of 2009 and was a getaway for him. He’d have a drink, eat, or enjoy a warm summer night. He used it as a place to t
ake his mind off the evil in the world. If he didn’t have an escape, he didn’t know what he’d become. He refused to get old, run-down, and numb from the job like some of his colleagues—the ones who had developed leathery, wrinkled skin, which seemed to crease more and more the longer they stayed on the job. Or weary, untrusting eyes. Or a heart void of optimism, blackened like a smoker’s lungs from the accumulative stress of witnessing the harshness of humanity daily.

  The new, lively, hip Piazza was located in the center of a North Philadelphia neighborhood that had been built more than a century before it. The enclosed area was circled by twenty-plus buildings, and the first floor of each was used for commercial properties, bars, restaurants, trendy clothing shops, grocery stores, office space; luxurious apartments were on the top levels. At well over a thousand bucks a month, pricey for Philly, most of the rental properties were occupied by young professionals. The yuppies lived there, but the hipsters partied there. The huge, open-air space was utilized every summer night by couples hand-in-hand, families, and twenty-somethings catching a drag of a cigarette or sipping drinks or simply hanging out. In the center, on an old, red brick factory building, which symbolized the industrial roots of Philadelphia, a movie-theater-sized screen was attached to its surface and ran live Phillies games in the summer. Whenever the Phillies scored, applause echoed throughout. A stage was below the screen, and live bands and concerts rocked the crowd for special events. Festivals were held almost weekly. It was a city inside a city—a small neighborhood where one could get food, transportation, and supplies and all within a five to ten-block radius. It was a meeting center for hipsters from all over the city. Steel had always called it Hipsters’ City Hall. People gathered to relax, laugh, and escape the grind of daily life, and Steel used it for similar purposes.