The Killing Room (Richard Montanari) - By Richard Montanari Page 0,4

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