Richard Montanari: The Killing Room

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.

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.

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 load 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.