The Killing Room (2 page)

‘I already
had
a brother,’ the kid added, almost in a whisper.

Byrne rocked back on his heels, looked around, at the moment lost for words. ‘You made it here okay on the bus?’ he finally asked.

The kid smirked. ‘The bus go where the bus go. I was just on it, right? Not like I’m driving it.’

Before Byrne could respond, a PPD sector car, parked in front of Maggiano’s, a half-block away, fired up its lights and siren, taking off on a call. The only two people standing near the doors of Reading Terminal Market who didn’t look up were Byrne and the kid. Sirens were a big part of both their lives.

Byrne glanced at his watch, even though he knew exactly what time it was. ‘So, do you want to get some lunch?’

The kid shrugged.

‘What do you like to eat?’ Byrne asked.

Another shrug. Byrne had to do a quick remodeling of his own attitude. Usually, when he encountered this kind of wall, it was with a suspect. In those instances his inclination was to kick the wall, as well as the suspect, to the ground. This was different.

‘Chinese, KFC, hoagies?’ Byrne continued.

The kid looked back over his shoulder, his level of boredom nearing the red line. ‘They a’ight, I guess.’

‘What about roast pork?’ Byrne asked. ‘You like roast pork?’

Byrne saw the slightest upturn of one corner of the kid’s mouth. Nothing close to a smile. God forbid. The kid liked roast pork.

‘C’mon,’ Byrne said, reaching for the door handle. ‘They have the best roast pork sandwiches in the city in here.’

‘I ain’t got no money.’

‘That’s all right. My treat.’

The kid kicked at an imaginary pebble. ‘I don’t want you buying me
nothin’
.’

Byrne held the door open for a few seconds, letting two women in. Then two more. This was getting awkward. ‘Tell you what, I’ll buy us lunch today. If we like each other – and there’s no guarantee of that, believe me, I don’t like too many people – then the next time we get together you can buy
me
lunch. If not, I’ll send you a bill for half.’

The kid almost smiled again. To cover it, he looked up Filbert Street, making Byrne work. The moment drew out, but Byrne was ready for it this time. The kid had no idea who he was dealing with. Kevin Byrne had spent the past twenty years of his life as a homicide detective, at least half of that on stakeouts. He could outlast a cement block.

‘A’ight,’ the kid finally said. ‘Whatever. Cold out here anyway.’

And with that Gabriel ‘G-Flash’ Hightower rolled through the door, into Reading Terminal Market.

Detective Kevin Byrne followed.

As Byrne and the kid waited in line at DiNic’s neither of them spoke. Despite the cacophony of sounds – the half-dozen languages, the rattle of plates, the
swish
of slicing machines, the
steel spatulas scraping across grills – the silence between Gabriel and himself was profound. Byrne had no idea what to say. His own daughter Colleen, who was now in her first year at Gallaudet University, had grown up with so many advantages this kid had not. If you could call having a father like Kevin Byrne an advantage. Still, despite being deaf from birth, Colleen had flourished.

The kid standing next to him, hands still in his pockets, steely glare in place, had grown up in hell.

Byrne knew that Gabriel’s father had never been in the picture, and that his mother had died when the boy was three. Tanya Wilkins was a prostitute and a drug addict, and had frozen to death one frigid January night, passed out in an alley in Grays Ferry. Gabriel’s only brother, Terrell, committed suicide two years ago.

Since then, Gabriel rattled from one foster home to another. He’d had a few minor scrapes with the law, mostly shoplifting, but there was no doubt which way he was headed.

When they got to the counter Byrne ordered them a full sandwich each. The sandwiches from DiNic’s were so big that Byrne had only finished one by himself on a handful of occasions, but he ordered them one each anyway, instantly regretting it, acknowledging that he was trying to show off.

The kid’s eyes got wide when he saw that the huge sandwich was all for him – not to mention the additional bag of chips and a soda – but he went back to his pre-teen too cool for school posturing just as quickly.

They found a table, sat down, spread out, dug in.

As they ate in silence, Byrne tried to think of some kind of conversation with which to engage the kid. He imagined
sports would be a safe topic. Both the Flyers and the Sixers were playing. Instead, he remained silent.

Ten minutes later he looked at Gabriel, who was already more than half done. Byrne had to wonder when was the last time the kid had eaten.

‘Good sandwich, huh?’ he asked.

The kid shrugged. Byrne figured he was at that stage. Byrne had been a shrugger at around thirteen or fourteen, everything posed to him a conundrum, every question an interrogation. Instead of exposing his ignorance on a subject, like most young teenagers and pre-teens, he’d simply feign indifference with a shrug. Times were different now. Eleven, it seemed, was the new fourteen. Hell, eleven was probably the new
eighteen
.

As they finished their sandwiches Gabriel pushed up the sleeves on his hoodie. Despite Byrne’s best intentions he scanned the kid’s arms, hands, neck, looking for tattoos or burn marks or wounds that might have meant an initiation into a gang. If ever there was a kid ripe for recruitment, it was Gabriel Hightower.

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.