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

by Steven Grosso

  “Yeah.”

  “Try to stay calm.”

  He didn’t say anything and hung up.

  “Where is my fuckin’ notebook? Son of a bitch!” Steel muttered. He snapped his head back, eyes on the ceiling, then lowered it. He shot a deranged look at Frankie. “Let’s go get these fuckers. Now!”

  Frankie, usually the maniac on the force, held out both hands, palms facing the ground, and lifted them up and down, followed by a low-pitched, calming voice, “Keep it cool.”

  “Fuck that!” Steel said. He slammed the desktop with a balled up fist, which rattled his computer monitor, and stormed out.

  38

  Knee sat on the same chair in the same interrogation room he had been in before, his eyes still focused on the ground. But the stakes were much greater than the last time. The door creaked open, then flipped back and slammed against the wall, shaking its frame.

  “What happened out there, and you better start talking! What?” Steel shouted. Frankie walked from behind and up to Knee, stood overlooking him.

  Steel tossed his notebook onto the table, slapped both palms on top of the smooth surface, and glared at Knee. Rage ripped through his stare, and he spoke loud, clear, and straightforward. “I wanna know what the fuck is going on here! You better start talking!”

  Knee’s demeanor was different than the last time he’d been interrogated. The sarcastic, sly talker wasn’t present. Instead, his eyes swept across the floor, his shoulders slouched. Beads of sweat moistened his upper lip. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Who did then? Who else is taking shots at us at your arrest? Huh? I want answers, and I want them now!” Steel shouted. He pushed himself off the table and straightened his back. “We’ve got reason to believe you orchestrated it, and you better start talking, or you’re not leaving this place—ever. I’ll personally make sure of it.”

  Knee wiggled in his seat, twisted his hands still cuffed behind his back, and spoke but barely made eye contact with Steel, “You think I’m dumb enough to take out a cop?”

  “Dumb, no, but I think you’re brazen enough to do anything, yeah. You knew we had your boy. You knew he’s got you on everything. And you knew we were coming. You have nothing to lose at that point. What exactly were you trying to do? You think taking out one of us is gonna solve your problems or halt our investigation? You think you’re clever? This isn’t the movies, and you’re not getting away with anything. You’re not as powerful as you think you are. You’re a low-life, drug-dealing piece of shit who doesn’t know anything outside your little world.” Steel cracked his knuckles. “You fucked with us now. You’re gonna talk, or again, you’re not leaving this room, I swear to God.”

  “There’s nothin’ to talk about. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that,” Knee said, his voice shaky and more like a plea than a statement. “I swear to God I didn’t have nothing to do with that or Hitchy. You got the wrong guy, I swear to you.”

  “I got the right guy,” Steel shot back. “The right guy for Hitchy and my partner so don’t try that manipulative shit with me. That might work on the streets, but I see right through you sociopaths. We know you did it. You better start talking.” Steel gave a head nod to Frankie and then pointed back to Knee. “Think about it.”

  Steel and Frankie left and closed the door behind them. Knee shook his head to himself and lightly dropped his face onto the table.

  Steel whispered to Frankie, “Freeze him out. Lower the temperature and let him sit there for an hour. But I don’t know. I think the guy might be telling the truth, though, but we’ll see. Who the fuck could have fired that shot? Hitchy’s crew? Knee’s crew? I don’t know.”

  39

  Frankie yanked the door, and he and Steel entered the next interrogation room. An image of Marisa’s bloody body passed through Steel’s mind, followed by a second of intense heat over his skin. It angered him, frustrated him, almost broke him. And it saddened him, the lump in his throat the size of a golf ball. He had never witnessed a partner shot on the job. He was supposed to have her back. He’d let her down. He’d let her father down. But his anger provided enough adrenaline to pursue the people responsible for this.

  Knee’s boy lounged in his seat, oblivious to what had happened.

  Steel held his hands against his hips. His hair swirled in all directions, and a blood-stained shirt hung from his pants. The man glanced at Frankie, then Steel, then Frankie, as if to see if one of them looked relatively sane, but Frankie glared and gritted his yellow teeth. Knee’s boy swallowed hard.

  Steel nodded. “Look, an officer was shot. It happened at Knee’s arrest. You need to tell me everything you know. Did you hear anything about Knee trying to take out an officer?”

  The man sat up straight, swirling his eyes, both hands patting his bald head, lost in his thoughts.

  Steel snapped his fingers. “Yo, hey, right here.”

  “Fuck, man. I’m dead. They gonna kill me.”

  “They’re not gonna do anything,” Steel said. He pointed to his chest, just over his heart. “We’ll protect you.”

  The man shook his head and mumbled, “Damn…how’d I get myself in this shit?”

  Frankie butted in and said, “Answer the man’s question, just like we talked about.”

  “I don’t know if they had plans for one of you. I wouldn’t put it past them, though, but I know about Hitchy.”

  “What about him?” Steel asked and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Knee hated that dude. He was jealous of him. Hitchy took business from him, sold where he shouldn’t of. Knee talked shit about him but wouldn’t challenge him. He was scared of him. Hitchy slapped him one time, and you know Hitchy was a big dude. I think Knee was a little shook up about it because he just took it and always said how he’d get him back. Patience…that’s all he talked about.”

  “Why didn’t Knee kill him right then?”

  The man snorted a nervous laugh. “I’m not sayin’ I know for sure, but Hitchy had his own crew, too. You know how that shit goes…you can’t just go all out and kill somebody.” The man stopped and fixed his eyes on them.

  “You said you had Knee pinned,” Frankie said, his voice hard and rough.

  “I got him on the drugs for sure. I got a motive for him for Hitchy. Think about it, Hitchy fucked with his business. That’s motive enough. Put me on the stand, and I’ll talk about how Knee hated Hitchy, what he said about him, all that. All that shit.”

  Steel and Frankie both sighed and shot an impatient look at one another.

  “You better not be fucking with us,” Frankie said. He pointed a finger, arched an eyebrow. “If you know more and we find out…”

  The man nodded several times.

  Steel and Frankie walked out.

  “You believe this guy?” Frankie said.

  “I don’t know what to believe. Somebody’s lying. I’m starting to think it may have been retaliation for Hitchy—that the bullets were meant for Knee, not Marisa. Now we might have to deal with a fucking drug war.” Steel checked his watch. “But I’m not sure of anything. I’m going to the hospital. Keep them both in the room until I get back. Make them think about it. We’ll pick this up later.”

  Steel headed for the lobby and dialed Venice. She didn’t answer.

  40

  Steel checked back in with Mary before he left the station, and she told him that they’d rushed Marisa to the Trauma Unit of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

  He pulled into the main parking lot of the hospital, and the sun faded behind him as he drove through a tunnel of darkness. The air smelled of car fumes and leaked gasoline. He waited at the check-in station, which was shaped like a box, a yellow guardrail streaked with black lines in front of it. The machine next to his car lit up, and he yanked a ticket. The rail slowly rose. He floored the gas pedal and circled the lot for two or three levels, speeding uphill and making sharp turns, before he jerked his steerin
g wheel into a cramped space in between twenty or so cars to his left and right.

  He jumped from the car and ran for the stairs. The gasoline and car exhaust scent intensified. He didn’t even remember to lock his doors. The day’s events had contaminated his mind with so much shock and misery that his emotions and fears collided and threw his every thought, movement, and action into overdrive. He hurried through the dark parking lot on level three, past other vehicles slowly driving by, their headlights shining circles onto the shadows bathing the walls. He barely noticed them, almost got hit by them. He’d started that morning with his hair perfectly combed back, but now it lumped together and stuck to his scalp, soaked from sweat; his tie hung around the third button, and the top two were undone; blood stained his shirt, which hung over his belt. Appearance didn’t even cross his mind, though. The only thing on his mind was Marisa.

  The staircase had a down arrow attached to it, and he ran down, hopping over two or three steps at a time. He entered the hospital through clear sliding doors. An information desk caught his eye. A thin, middle-aged woman with round eyeglasses and short brown hair wearing blue scrubs talked and laughed with someone on the phone at the desk. A security guard, who appeared to be a foreigner from somewhere in Europe, stood tall behind her, waiting for the call to end. He frowned, palmed his buzz cut with a receding hairline, and looked Steel up and down as he rushed over to the desk with his disheveled appearance. The guard barely smiled, and Steel knew that that man’s face wasn’t designed to smile, and when he did, it seemed forced and unauthentic.

  “Anything I can help you with, sir?” the man asked, his English clearer than Steel had expected.

  Between huffs and puffs, Steel said, “I need to see a patient here…” he swallowed, “…Marisa Tulli.”

  The security guard held up a finger. The woman at the desk nodded a few times, speeding up the conversation, as if the person on the other end of the line could see her nodding, then ended the call. She flashed a broad smile at Steel. “Hi…can I help you?”

  Steel felt around the inner pocket of his suit jacket and found his badge. “I’m a detective, and I have to see one of my colleagues, Marisa Tulli.”

  The woman’s smile closed. She whistled, scratching her cheek and sifting through paperwork on her desk. Steel closed his eyes and rubbed his neck, waiting. She began typing on her keyboard like a pro, at least sixty words per minute. “All right, sir. Can I have your identification? A driver’s license will do it, along with the badge.”

  Steel reached in his back pocket and pulled out his black leather wallet. He handed her his ID, and she gave him a visitor’s pass with the words 5th FLOOR written along its center.

  Steel followed her finger as she pointed toward the elevators. “The doors are on your right, sir, and it’s room 9.”

  A nurse and a doctor waited nearby. Both appeared to be of Indian descent. The doctor wore a white coat and had a stethoscope around his neck, and the nurse wore blue scrubs and gray Nike running sneakers. Each held a bag from Saladworks and chit-chatted about a film festival that weekend in Northern Liberties.

  Steel’s mind spun in circles, and he actually thought of asking them if they’d seen Marisa but came quickly to his senses. He was in one of the biggest hospitals in Philadelphia with hundreds of doctors and patients. At that moment, he realized what desperation will do to a mind, how the irrational can, somehow, seem rational. He concluded that humans will do anything for survival; he’d seen it daily with ex-lovers who’d murdered spouses to cover-up affairs and other cases of that nature. A thought crossed his mind of who could have shot Marisa, and another image formed of him ripping out their throat with his bare hands. But he also knew he had to stay calm, at least for Marisa’s sake.

  The elevator doors lit up and separated in one swift motion. The nurse, then the doctor, then Steel inched on. The doctor dug his thumb into his floor’s button and asked Steel where he was going. Steel didn’t verbally answer but just flashed five fingers. He waited, often fidgeting, huffing and puffing. That made the doctor and nurse a bit uncomfortable. Each shot quizzical eyes and shoulder shrugs at one another when Steel wasn’t looking.

  The cable wires tugged at his floor, and Steel stepped off and moved his head from left to right. His nostrils and throat burned from strong cleaning chemicals and medical gloves. The floor was eerie and silent; visitors sat with frightened expressions, in a place where life and death both began and ended on a daily basis. Steel power-walked the white floors and looked for room 9. His shoes screeched as they hit the ground as if he was playing a game of basketball. He ran past vending machines, then past water stands with blue plastic jugs turned upside down, and through an area with chairs arranged in a square with a coffee table in the center and magazines placed on top. A group of people rested in the seats, and he knew it was Marisa’s family. He didn’t know what to expect. His heart pounded so hard he thought it would pop through his chest. He could actually hear the throbbing in his warm eardrums.

  Marisa’s father noticed him. “Benny,” her father called out, but it seemed forced, his voice weak and hoarse. Nicky Tulli jumped from his seat and walked to Steel. His face was scrunched up, as if he was about to cry or had been crying earlier, but it also resembled a man who was trying to be the brave patriarch of his family. Marisa’s mother was hunched over one of the chairs, her head in her lap, sobbing and moaning well above a whisper. Marisa’s broad-shouldered brothers slid their hands across their mother’s back, trying to console her. Tears trickled down each of their sculpted and strong cheekbones. It appeared to Steel that no matter how much Marisa’s brothers tried to hold back the tears, it wasn’t going to happen. Not for the baby girl of the family, even if she was in her thirties.

  Marisa’s father shook Steel’s hand and patted his back with the other. Steel stared straight ahead. His heart stopped pounding but ached at the scene. Guilt wrapped itself around his intestines and squeezed hard. His mind repeated, over and over, that it was all his fault, that their tears could have been prevented.

  Nicky Tulli’s eyes welled up. After a minute or so, he stepped back from Steel, snorted a few times, and wiped the moisture from his face so his family wouldn’t see him.

  “Where is she? Is she all right?” Steel asked.

  “What the hell happened out there?” Nicky asked. His eyes darted, and he pushed his bottom teeth out farther than his upper teeth, causing his chin to stick out. Steel knew he was hysterical, furious.

  “I’ll kill those...” Nicky said.

  Steel grabbed his shoulders and stopped him. Marisa’s father reached under his shirt collar, pulled out a gold chain with a crucifix on it, and kissed it several times. “My poor baby, my baby, my little girl. Those bastards! My baby…”

  “Where is she?” Steel asked again.

  Nicky flipped his watery red eyes up at Steel. “She’s gettin’ operated on, emergency surgery. She’s in critical condition.” He gasped for air and sobbed. “They don’t know if she’ll make it.” Nicky shook his head hard. “My baby…my baby.”

  Steel’s tears pressed hard just behind his eyeballs, but he fought them back. His stomach threw acid around, causing indigestion and nausea, which burned, reminding him of just how serious the situation had become. He raised his eyes above Marisa’s father’s head, at a flat-screen television in the waiting area. The news played. Pictures of Marisa and the crime scene popped on the screen. Although he couldn’t hear the sound coming from the TV, he sensed the outrage on reporters’ and interviewees’ faces. They’d had enough. Steel had had enough. He told Marisa’s father that he’d be back, then left on a handshake and ran for the exits.

  41

  Steel left the hospital but didn’t go to his car. Instead, he stood in front of the building to get some air, to collect his thoughts, to calm down.

  As noon approached in downtown Philadelphia, workers filled the streets for lunch, pouring into any business serving food—Subways, M
cDonald’s, trendy luncheonettes with outdoor seating and umbrellas attached to tables, Saladworks, or silver food carts on corners. Medical employees, construction workers, and business-types conversed, laughed, joked, and reveled in the brilliant sunshine, thrilled to have half an hour of freedom from the grind of a day job.

  Steel couldn’t stand there any longer, so he roamed the streets in a fog. Things didn’t seem real. He glanced at people who felt so secure and protected in society while he suffered at times to keep them safe, orchestrating the strings behind the scenes, working and experiencing the other side with all its reality, brutality, harshness, and inhumanness. If only they knew, he thought. Although Steel had seen the worst of mankind, he refused to lose faith in it and always tried to find a silver lining, even though he often failed.

  He eyed a church, just off Market Street. Its massive steeple stretched up into the sky and towered over the neighborhood below it. He raised his head up and down and from side to side and squinted because the sun had wrapped itself around a cross atop and stung his eyes. The stone façade flooded his mind with childhood memories of attending Catholic middle school, especially as church bells clanged together loud enough to be heard over voices in the streets, traffic and honking horns, and hammers pounding against buildings from construction workers.

  He climbed the steps, which sparkled from the sunlight, a hint of glitter on the surface, and entered the church. In the lobby, he passed holy water in stone cups and snuck into a seat in the back of the church. He accidentally kicked the kneeler in front of him, sending echoes off the high, hand-painted ceilings. Just a few elderly women were in front, but they ignored the noise and continued gripping their rosary beads in prayer. The rest of the wooden pews were empty. The silence numbed him. He thought of leaving.

  Steel hadn’t stepped foot in a church in years. Although he had been born and raised Catholic, he’d abandoned his faith in his early twenties and taken on agnostic views. Although he respected everyone’s beliefs, he had ended his in Christianity about ten years prior. He believed in a higher power but had stopped asking who or what it was. Most of the man-made rules of the Catholic Church bothered him, and he couldn’t get past how reciting seven Hail Marys after confession could absolve one of their sins. He saw some wisdom in the Bible, especially the Proverbs, but that was where it ended. In his mind, religion had a place in society, and he felt most of the world religions taught to love one another, although not everyone who believed in them followed that advice. Whomever or whatever the Creator of the universe was must have been a benevolent being, in his opinion, and the teachings to love one another were beneficial to people and helped them understand what it meant to be human.