Clara giggled.
“Aren’t you going to be late?” Stella said.
I looked down at my watch. Nearly five o’clock. “Crap.” I started back down the hill. “Meet at Mineo’s at seven?” I yelled back at them as I broke into a run.
“Say hello for us!” Stella shouted.
2
State Correctional Institution, known as Western Pen to the locals, is a medium security correctional facility operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Sitting on a little over twenty-one acres on the banks of the Ohio River, the prison was about five miles out of town. I got there in a record nineteen minutes.
I never did recover my old Jeep from the hospital parking lot in Minden, but I bought a shiny new Wrangler last year. With the exception of my driver’s license, I emptied my pockets in the car and left everything on the passenger seat. Experience taught me the security lines moved much faster when you traveled light. I removed my belt, too.
I crossed the parking lot and managed to get in line about a minute before the guards closed up the doors behind me. That meant I’d have about twenty minutes inside before visiting hours officially ended.
On the other side of security, I followed the green line on the floor to the visitation room—more of a hallway, really. Pay phones lined the wall on the left while small cubicles lined the right. I took an empty seat in the second to last space and waited.
Dunk hobbled in about a minute later on a plastic cane. It bent slightly under his weight. Because metal or wood could be fashioned into a weapon, only plastic canes were permitted. Dunk managed to break at least one each week, but the department of corrections seemed to have an endless supply. This particular cane was pink.
I picked up the telephone receiver and pressed it to my ear, trying not to think about all the nastiness that probably came in contact with the plastic prior to me today.
Dunk dropped into the seat on his side of the thick glass and picked up the telephone receiver. “Tell me again, why did I turn myself in?”
“Because you’re a good guy at heart, and one day you’ll get out of here, completely rehabilitated, and you’ll open a taco stand down by the river and make something of yourself.”
“I’m not sure tacos have enough of a profit margin.”
With Dewitt Matteo at his side, Dunk turned himself in August 13, 1998, about one hour after the horrible events of that night came to an end. I actually tried to talk him out of it. Not because I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. I simply didn’t feel he was in the right state of mind to make such a decision. We didn’t find a single live person inside Carrie Furnace. Nearly his entire crew perished with David’s final command. If anyone survived, Stella’s implosion finished them off. Dunk was completely in shock. He was alone. He told me he had already been working with the feds to take down Rufus Stano. I had no idea. Stano was one of the few people Dunk answered to and considered a much bigger fish than even Duncan Bellino in the eyes of the authorities. Because of his cooperation, he received a shorter sentence. He had three years remaining but would be eligible for parole in another month.
“Stella and the kids say hello.”
“Hello back.”
A nasty bruise peppered the left side of Dunk’s jaw. When I asked him about it, he shrugged. “I wanted to watchThe Big Bang Theorylast night. I was in the minority. Happens.”
“One month to parole, buddy. Best to keep your head down.”
A guard leaned in from the hallway. “Five minutes!”
“Shit! Sorry, man, I got here late.”
Dunk shrugged, “One month to parole.” He moved the receiver to his other ear. “That reminds me, I had a weird visitor last week.”
“Who?”
“Willy Trudeau.”
“Willy?”
Dunk nodded. “He said he has a job for me when I get out.”
“A job doing what?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Careful with that guy. I never trusted him.”
“Yes, Mom.”
