The Killing Room

by Richard Montanari

  Byrne saw nothing. He couldn’t decide if this meant the kid didn’t need someone like him in his life, or just the opposite: that this was a pivotal time, a time when Gabriel might need him the most.

  When they finished they sat in a fresh silence, one that preceded the end of their visit. Byrne looked down at the table, and there saw a small, beautifully folded paper boat. Gabriel had idly crafted it out of the paper in which the sandwiches were wrapped.

  ‘Can I take a look at that?’ Byrne asked.

  The kid nudged it closer with a forefinger.

  Byrne picked it up. The folds were precise and elegant. It was clearly not the first time Gabriel had made something like this. ‘This is pretty cool.’

  ‘Called origami,’ Gabriel said. ‘Chinese or something.’

  ‘You have a real talent,’ Byrne said. ‘I mean, this is really good.’

  One more shrug. Byrne wondered what the world record was.

  When they stepped out onto the street the lunchtime crowd had thinned. Byrne had the rest of the day off, and was going to suggest doing something else – a trip to the mall maybe, or a tour of the Roundhouse – but he figured the kid had probably had enough of him for a first date.

  ‘Come on,’ Byrne said. ‘I’ll give you a ride home.’

  The kid took a half-step away. ‘I got bus money.’

  ‘I’m going that way anyway,’ Byrne lied. ‘It’s really no big deal.’

  The kid started rooting around in his pocket for coins.

  ‘I don’t drive a police car, you know,’ Byrne said. ‘It’s just a shitty old Taurus with bad shocks and a worse radio.’

  The kid smiled at the word shitty. Byrne took out his keys.

  ‘Come on. Save the bus money.’

  Byrne grabbed the lead, walked across the street, willing himself not to turn around to see if Gabriel was following.

  About a block up Filbert he caught sight of a small shadow coming up next to him.

  The group home where Gabriel Hightower lived was on Indiana Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets, deep into a blighted area of North Philly called the Badlands. Byrne took Third Street north and, during the entire ride, neither of them said a word. When Byrne turned onto Indiana Gabriel said, ‘This is cool right here.’

  The group home was nearly a block away.

  ‘I’ll take you all the way. It’s not a problem.’

  The kid didn’t say anything. Byrne acquiesced and pulled over. They were now a half block from one of the most infamous drug corners in the city. It didn’t take Byrne long to spot two young men scouting the area for 5-0. He caught the eye of one hard-looking kid of about eighteen, trying his best to look inconspicuous. Byrne threw the look back until the kid looked away. The spotter took out a cell and sauntered in the other direction. Byrne had clearly been made. He put the Taurus in park, kept the engine running.

  ‘Okay, G-Flash,’ he said. As he said this he looked over, saw Gabriel roll his eyes, shake his head. Byrne understood. The only thing worse than hanging out with an old white guy – and an old white cop to boot – was having that old white guy say your street name out loud.

  ‘Just call me Gabriel, okay?’

  ‘You got it,’ Byrne said. They went quiet. Byrne got the feeling that, if he didn’t say something soon, they would sit there for the rest of the day. ‘Well, we’re supposed to give this three times, see what’s what. You think you might want to hang out again?’

  Instead of answering, Gabriel stared at his hands.

  Byrne decided to give the kid an exit line, make it easy on him. ‘Tell you what. I’ll give you a call in the next few weeks, and we can see where we are then. No pressure one way or the other. Deal?’

  Byrne stuck out his hand. He put it right in front of Gabriel, so the kid was either going to shake hands, or disrespect Byrne big time. The kid hesitated for a few moments, then put his hand in Byrne’s. It wasn’t really a handshake, but more the idea of a handshake. After a second or two Gabriel tossed up his hood, opened the door, and got out. Before he closed the door he turned back, looked at Byrne with his young old eyes, and said: ‘John’s is good, too.’

  Byrne had no idea what the boy was talking about. Who is John? Then it registered. He was talking about John’s Roast Pork.

  ‘John’s? You mean over on Snyder?’

  The kid nodded.

  ‘That’s true,’ Byrne said. ‘John’s is good. We can go there some time if you want.’

  Gabriel started to close the car door, stopped, thought for a moment. He leaned in, as if to share some kind of secret. Byrne found that he was holding his breath. He leaned forward, too.

  ‘I know you know about me,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘Know what about you?’

  ‘Man.’ Gabriel shook his head. ‘White people always got a piece of paper when they talk to me. Social workers, counselors, teachers, people who work for the county. Foster-home people. They all look at that piece of paper, then they talk to me. Gotta be something on there, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Byrne said, keeping his smile in check. ‘I guess I know a little bit.’

  ‘Well, there’s one thing you gotta know, something that ain’t on that piece of paper.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He didn’t bang.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Byrne asked. ‘Who didn’t bang?’

  Gabriel looked up and down the street, behind, watching his back. ‘My brother Terrell,’ he said. ‘Terrell didn’t bang like they say.’

  A few seconds later Gabriel closed the car door and quickly cut across a snow-covered vacant lot, gracefully skirting a discarded refrigerator and a small pile of demolished concrete blocks. Soon, all Byrne could see was the top of the boy’s faded hoodie, and then Gabriel Hightower was gone.

  Byrne made himself a microwave meal for dinner – some sort of too-sweet chicken and limp snow pea pods – then, finding himself restless, went out. He stopped by the American Pub in the Centre Square Building, across from City Hall. He always felt completely dislocated on his days off. Whenever he pulled seven or eight tours in a row, including the inevitable overtime the job of being a homicide detective in Philadelphia demanded, he often found himself daydreaming of what he would do on his day off. Sleep in, catch up on the DVDs he found himself renting but never watching, actually doing laundry. When it came time to do these things he always found himself twitchy, wondering about lab results, ballistic reports, whether some witness had come forward in a current case, anxious to get back into the harness, compelled to be in motion, to pursue.

  He was loath to admit it, but his job was his life. If you opened a vein, Kevin Byrne would run blue.

  He left the pub around 11.30. At the corner of Pine and Fifth Streets, instead of heading home, he headed north.

  Byrne had called the office earlier in the evening and gotten a few more details on exactly what had happened to Terrell Hightower.

  After Tanya Wilkins’s death, Gabriel and his brother – both of whom had been adopted by Tanya’s third husband, Randall Hightower, himself killed in a high-speed chase with the PPD – were put into two different foster homes. By all accounts, Terrell Hightower was a good student at Central High, a tense, fidgety kid who came up at a time when there was no such thing as ADD, at least not in the inner city, a time when kids who tapped their feet or banged their pencils on their desks or acted out in any way, were sent to the office for being a disruptive influence.

  When he was fifteen, Terrell found an outlet for all that nervous energy. His outlet was track and field. With hardly a single season of training under his belt he became a holy terror in the 100- and 200-meter events, taking all-city in his sophomore year and leading his team to the state finals as a junior. Scouts came from as far away as UCLA.

  One night, while Terrell was sweeping up at his part-time job at an auto body shop on Frankford, two men entered. They fired six bullets into the shop’s owner, James DuBois, two into Terrell’s stomach. DuBois was DOA
; Terrell was rushed to Jefferson Hospital where, within four hours, he was listed in stable condition.

  Nothing of value was stolen.

  Police investigated the case, but neighbors, as expected, saw nothing, heard nothing. Another phantom killer in the city of Philadelphia. Word on the street was that a North Philly drug dealer named DeRon Wilson had done it as a payback to Terrell because Terrell had disrespected Wilson by not joining the gang.

  A week later Terrell Hightower was released from Jefferson Hospital in a wheelchair. He went back to school, but his heart was no longer in his studies, as his legs were no longer able to carry him to victory on the track. He eventually walked again, with a cane, but his dreams of an athletic scholarship vaporized. After high school Terrell worked briefly as a mechanic in Camden, but the jobs didn’t last. He went from there to minimum-wage jobs, to disability, to the pipe.

  Ten minutes into the day that would be his nineteenth birthday Terrell Hightower put the barrel of a 9mm pistol against the soft palate in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Around his neck were two dozen ribbons he had won on the tracks of southeastern Pennsylvania.

  It was with these images in mind that Kevin Byrne pulled over near the corner of Third and Indiana. He knew he could be seen from any number of vantage points, had already been spotted. He wanted to be seen.

  Byrne reached into the glove compartment, took out a cold Colt .38 revolver. He checked the cylinder, snapped it back, thinking:

  In this city, any city, you are the hunter, or you are food.

  Byrne put the weapon on the seat next to him, six words stalking the corners of his mind:

  Terrell didn’t bang like they say.

  THREE

  As an icy draft knifes across the basement, the young man sits rigidly on a wooden chair. He is naked: Adam banished to this bleak and frigid garden. There are myriad whispers here, the last pleadings of the faithless.

  He has been here one full day.

  She looks at him, sees the bones beneath his skin. This is a moment for which she has waited all her days. In her fingertips now lives an ancient magic, a power that gives her dominion over the thieves, the fornicators, the usurers.

  ‘It is time,’ she says.

  The young man begins to cry.

  ‘You must tell him what you said. Word for word. I want you to think carefully. It is very important.’

  ‘I … I don’t remember,’ he says.

  She steps forward, lifts his chin, looks into his eyes. ‘Do you want me to tell you what you said?’

  The young man nods. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said: “I would do anything not to get AIDS. I would even sell my soul to the devil.”’

  The young man does not respond to this. No response was expected. He glances at the opening into the other room. ‘I can’t look at him. When it happens, I can’t look at him.’

  She removes her coat, folds it gently onto the altar cloth on the floor.

  ‘Your name has meaning in the Bible,’ she says. ‘Did you know that?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Your name means “God is my judge.”’ She reaches into her bag, removes the hypodermic, prepares it. ‘According to the Word, Daniel was brought to Babylon. It is said he could interpret dreams.’

  Seconds later, as the first drop of blood falls, as it did that terrible day on Calvary, she knows that the screams of the children of disobedience will soon fill the city.

  All contracts are due.

  The devil has returned to Philadelphia.

  FOUR

  Get it together, Jess. If you don’t, you’re going to die right here, right now.

  Detective Jessica Balzano looked up. The mass of humanity that stood no more than ten feet away from her had the purest form of evil in its eyes she had ever seen. And she had seen a lot. In her time in the Philadelphia Police Department she had squared off with all types of miscreants, deviants, criminals and gangsters, had gone toe to toe with men almost double her weight. She had always come out on top.

  How? A combination of things. Flexibility, speed, excellent peripheral vision, an innate ability to sense the next move. These things had served her well on the streets, in uniform, and in the Homicide Unit.

  But not today. If she didn’t get her shit together, and get it together quickly, she was dead.

  The bell rang. ‘Let’s go,’ Joe said. ‘Give me two hard minutes.’

  Jessica was in the ring at the Joe Hand Boxing Gym on North Third, stepping into the third round of a three-round sparring session. She was in training for an upcoming exhibition bout for the Police Athletic League annual boxing tournament.

  Her opponent this day was a young woman named Valentine Rhames, a nineteen-year-old who boxed out of the Rock Ministry Boxing Club on Kensington Avenue.

  Jessica was no expert, but she figured girls named Valentine weren’t supposed to have fourteen-inch biceps and shoulders like Sasquatch. Not to mention fists the size of canned hams. The kid was built like Ving Rhames.

  The upcoming event was for charity, and nobody was supposed to get hurt, but as the sound of the bell ringing in round three began to fade, and Valentine stormed across the ring, it appeared that the young woman had not gotten the memo.

  Jessica sidestepped the onslaught with ease, and even though her headgear cut down on her peripheral vision, she was able to land a glancing right hand to the side of Valentine’s head. An illegal blow, technically speaking, but Jessica intended to worry about that at some point in the future.

  Two minutes later the bell rang again. Jessica was drenched in sweat, hurting all over. Her opponent bounced across the ring, fresh as a daisy, put her arms around Jessica. Valentine Rhames stepped back, and delivered the knockout blow.

  ‘Thanks for the workout, ma’am.’

  Ma’am.

  Jessica wanted to drop the kid like a cheap prom dress, but remembered she’d just had the opportunity to do so and failed miserably.

  *

  Jessica and Vincent Balzano spent the first eight years of their marriage with one child, and for a long time Jessica had all but believed that this single blessing would be their only one.

  For three years they tried mightily to conceive, consulting with their family physician many times, reading just about every book on the subject, stopping just short of visiting a fertility specialist.

  Then, last year, a miracle happened. A two-year-old boy named Carlos came into their lives. They adopted him and life began anew.

  To Jessica’s amazement, having a second child did not double the responsibility of being a mother. Somehow that responsibility increased fourfold. Somehow it was four times more work, took four times the planning, attention, caution. Jessica still thought about having another baby, but the past year had made her second guess herself in this area. She had grown up in a small family – by South Philly Italian Catholic standards anyway – with just herself and her brother Michael, so a boy and a girl, a few years apart, was just fine.

  Still, she wanted to have another child.

  A year earlier they moved from Lexington Park, in the northeast section of the city, back to South Philadelphia, just a few blocks from where Jessica was raised. The advantages were many – they were just a block from Sophie’s school, Sacred Heart of Jesus, and not far from the Italian Market. There was bread from Sarcone’s, sfogliatelle and cannoli from Termini’s, cheese from DiBruno’s.

  This morning, as Jessica put the cereal bowls on the table, her husband Vincent came breezing through the kitchen. In a flash he had his coffee poured into his travel mug, a power bar in hand, his coat on. He gave Jessica a kiss on the cheek, said ‘Love you, babe’, and was out the door.

  Jessica sipped her coffee, looked out the window. As she watched her husband cross the street, and get into his prized, restored TransAm, she considered just how much buckshot was loaded in that love you, babe. On the surface, it meant he loved her, and she could never hear those words enough. But the rest of the l
oad meant: for this little show of affection you get to make breakfast, dress both kids, make their lunches, close up the house, get them to school and pre-school, then get to work on time, doing a job that is at least as hard – the case could be made that it was harder – as mine.

  Love you, babe.

  Vincent Balzano was good. Really good. It was one of the reasons he was one of the most feared and respected detectives working out of the Narcotics Field Unit North. Vincent could turn a witness into a suspect without the person ever knowing they were giving it up. Jessica knew all his tricks, and Vincent mostly got over with his Italian charm and swarthy good looks because she let him.

  With breakfast more or less eaten, Jessica did a tornado cleanup of the kitchen, piling everything in the sink for later, wiping down the countertops. Sophie and Carlos sat at the table. They had a few minutes before they had to leave.

  ‘Okay,’ Sophie said to her little brother. ‘Do you remember how to play?’

  Carlos nodded. At three years old he was just learning to comb and part his hair, a vanity he fiercely guarded. Today, though, the part in his hair made the Schuylkill River look straight by comparison.

  ‘Okay.’ Sophie made a fist with her right hand, held it in front of her. ‘This is the rock.’

  Carlos mimicked his sister, clenching a small fist. ‘Rock.’

  Sophie flattened her hand, palm down. ‘This is paper.’

  ‘Paper.’ Carlos put his hand out palm up, then corrected himself, turning it palm down.

  Sophie made a V with her index and middle finger. ‘And this is scissors.’

  Again, Carlos followed the instructions. ‘Scissors.’

  ‘Okay. Do you remember what beats what?’

  Carlos nodded.

  ‘Ready?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Ready.’

  Sophie put her hand behind her back. Carlos followed suit. Sophie said, ‘One, two, three.’

  As Sophie pulled her fist from behind her back, and said ‘rock,’ Carlos threw out his hand – index finger and thumb extended – and yelled, ‘Gun!’