“Then you need to learn to live in the moment. The past is gone, and the future is always just out of reach. Now is all that really matters.” She turned from me, her long hair rolling through the air as she started further down the path, calling after me. “Come, Pip! There is something else I wish to show you!”
She rounded a corner and disappeared from view.
I stood there for a moment and nearly turned around toward the house, but then I felt Ms. Oliver’s eyes on my back and knew she probably wanted me to do exactly that. She wanted me to leave this place, to leave Stella and never come back. And that thought was enough to make me follow after Stella, follow her down that cobblestone path through the trees.
7
Detective Faustino Brier sat on a bench on the sidewalk across the street from the apartment building where Duncan Bellino lived, a paperback copy ofJawsin his hand. The alley where Andy Olin Flack had been found was less than a block up on the right, and the diner where Flack most likely ate his last meal stood across the street from that.
The kid was in the building, he was sure of that. The kid wasn’t in his own apartment, he was sure of that, too. Bellino was under investigation for trafficking, and about three months earlier, Detective Horton in Narcotics asked a judge for a warrant to bug the boy’s apartment and it was granted. They tapped the telephone in the kitchen and placed five microphones within the apartment—one in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in each bedroom, and another in the bathroom. Detective Horton was currently in the red van with Carmine’s Carpet on the side parked half a block away along with three other Narcotics officers waiting for something worthwhile to get picked up. Faustino had known Horton for the better part of a decade, so when he asked if he could listen in today, Horton gave Faustino a portable receiver, and told him he owed him no less than four Steelers tickets. He could listen, but he couldn’t listen within the van. A homicide detective sitting in on a narcotics sting would only raise questions if the wrong person were to catch sight of him.
The receiver was in Faustino’s inside jacket pocket, a small wired earbud trailing out. He pressed the earbud deeper into his ear with his left hand and used his right hand to click the dial on the receiver from one microphone to the next. All were quiet.
Faustino was cycling back through the dial, when Horton sat down on the bench beside him and unfolded a newspaper. Faustino glanced at the headline. “You know that paper is about two weeks old, right?”
“It’s all we’ve got in the van. I think I have it memorized now. The closest thing we have to porn is this ad on page three for women’s panty hose at Jewel’s Groceries. This is the worst sting ever.”
Horton’s eyes were hidden behind aviator sunglasses. Tattoos covered his right arm—dragons, knights, and swords. Horton (like most of the people in Narcotics) went out of his way not to look like a cop. A necessary survival tactic when working undercover.
Horton pulled a pack of gum from his pocket, popped a piece in his mouth, and offered one to Faustino, who shook his head. “So what have you learned about this kid?”
Horton shrugged. “Not much yet. He popped up on our radar about two years ago. We collared a kid with a three-ounce bag of pot just off Brentwood High School property. It took all of three minutes for the boy to give up Bellino as his dealer. Bellino was still in middle school back then, but he’s moved on. He’s a solid student, B average. Couple scuffles in school, typical shit, nothing serious. Got picked up for shoplifting a few years back, and the judge let him off with a warning on account of the grades. It wasn’t exactly grand theft. He stole a box of mac and cheese from a convenience store. Comes from a broken home. No sign of the mother, looks like she split a long time ago. His old man isn’t much of a prize. Moved here from Chicago back in ’86 to run a coal plant, the place got shuttered not long after. Daddy does odd jobs now for work. He was an army ranger back in the war, but like most of those guys, not all of him came back. He held it together pretty well at the beginning but seems to be unraveling without steady work. Sleeps most days and he’s out most nights, stumbles in when the sun’s coming out. Rinse and repeat. The kid is more or less raising himself. All things considered, he’s doing a good job of it.”
“You mean, aside from the whole drug dealing thing?”
“Yeah, aside from that. When his pop got laid off, looks like he got into the petty stuff, probably dealing just to put food on the table. Kept it small. If he’d stuck with just pot, we’d probably let it go, but like I said, he gets good grades, and a smart dealer is a dangerous one. It didn’t take him long to use pot to set up a distribution channel, bring in a few employees, and get a small business going. His supplies are coming from one of the bigger players in town, a guy named Henry Crocket. We’ve been after him for a while but haven’t been able to make anything stick. Crocket is good at spotting potential, and it looks like he’s taken Bellino under his wing. A kid like this with a tutor is a problem in the making, so we’re hoping to cap it off earlier and maybe use the kid to take down Crocket. Bellino has gotten slick at the ripe old age of sixteen, though. He’s stepped up into the harder products—heroin, crack, coke, as well as prescription narcotics—and somehow he’s able to keep it under the radar. We don’t know where he stores his product, who exactly he’s got working with him, or just how far his crew branches out. He manages to keep himself clean while pulling the strings. We’ve had lenses on him whenever he goes out in public, and aside from catching a few quick meetings between him and Crocket, we haven’t picked up anything useful yet. Left unchecked, I see this guy growing up and taking over Crocket’s entire racket. We need to stomp him out before that happens.”
“When I was sixteen, I collected baseball cards and worked at a pizza place,” Faustino said.
“I said the kid was smart, I didn’t say anything about you. What makes you think he’s wrapped up in your Wall of Weird?”
Faustino nodded toward the diner down the street and told him about Flack’s body, found in the alley back in ’87.
“Well, that’s thin.”
“Like you said, I’m not that smart.”
Horton nodded up at the apartment building. “They’ve got a small arsenal up there. At least six weapons registered to the father, probably more that aren’t in the system. Bellino had a switchblade on him when he got picked up for shoplifting.”
The small speaker crackled in Faustino’s ear as someone from the van broke into the channel.“We found Bellino, spotted him in a window. The Gargery apartment on the third floor.”
“Who’s Gargery?”
Horton turned the page on his newspaper. “Forty-year-old waitress. She worked at your favorite diner down the street there, until some kind of cancer got hold of her. Aside from doctor visits, she doesn’t get out much. She’s got a nephew taking care of her. Looks like the nephew and Bellino might be working together. We think Bellino figured out his place is being monitored, so he’s running his business out of the Gargery apartment one floor up.”
“What’s the nephew’s name?”
“John Edward Thatch. Bellino calls him Jack. Sixteen years old, clean sheet.”
“No audio on the Gargery apartment?”
Horton shook his head. “Judge wouldn’t sign off. Won’t even let us watch Thatch outside the building because he’s a minor. It’s killing me, because we know he’s involved. Right before you got here, he bolted from the diner—he works in the kitchen—ran into the apartment building for a few minutes, then back out again. We’re not supposed to, but I had one of my guys tail him, anyway. He ran off into the cemetery, of all places. We had to drop back—too easy to get spotted in there.”
Faustino thought about this for a second. “So maybe this Thatch kid is working as some kind of go-between for Bellino and Crocket?”
“That’s the theory. Crocket knows not to get his hands dirty. He’s teaching Bellino the fine art of dealing so he keeps himself insulated, and Thatch is making some side money as a go-between.” Horton lowered his voice. “Remember how I said the aunt has cancer? She doesn’t have insurance, and her nephew has been footing the bills in cash—he’s not making that kind of money washing dishes.”
The radio crackled again.“Tall and Lanky, coming back out the front.”
