“When did Bellino’s, Dunk’s, favorite boothbecomehis favorite booth?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Six months ago, nine months ago. He just started sitting there instead, said he liked to be able to see what was happening out on the street. He asked Krendal to start holding that one for him during rushes. He ate at the diner all the time, so Krendal took care of him.”
Faustino and Horton both looked at each other, unspoken words passing between them. Horton went on. “A little under a year ago, we picked up a conversation between your friend, Dunk, and one of the other guys who works for Crocket, low-level guy named Alonzo Seppala. They were in the park; we got them with a long-range microphone. They were talking about ways to get Crocket out of the picture, take over the business. One of the suggestions that came up was to lure Crocket to a meeting and set him up for a roadside hit.”
I was shaking my head. “That’s ridiculous. Dunk would never do something like that. He doesn’t have it in him. Sure, he’s into some bad stuff, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Bellino started sitting in that booth two days after the conversation with Alonzo Seppala,” Horton said. “Moved from the booth in the back, your booth, to that one in the front. Always the same side, facing out toward the street.”
“So he could see what was happening out there, something to watch while he ate, that’s all.”
Horton reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph. This time he did drop it on the bed in front of me. “The surveillance we had on Bellino, the van you know so well, caught this.”
I looked down at the photograph but didn’t pick it up. A blue BMW parked in the handicap spot in front of Krendal’s Diner, four men climbing out with guns. The driver was circled with red marker.
“That’s Alonzo Seppala. Your friend, Duncan Bellino, set this all up.”
6
After the hospital, Detective Faustino Brier returned to the Pittsburgh PD Homicide Division’s pen. He pulled the Wall of Weird out from the corner and turned the board around, studied the pictures and text and the last dozen or more years of his life. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the copy of Jack Thatch’s letter he made at the Xerox store off 79 on his way to Mercy to talk to the kid with Horton.
He pinned the letter to the board in the bottom right corner, right next to the hand-sketched poster of the girl followed by the message,Have You Seen Me?Beside both of those were three surveillance photos of Jack Thatch hanging the posters on Brownsville Road and down 51, dozens of them.
From his desk, he retrieved the folder containing all the data on the 1978 murders—the man and woman found brutally murdered in the Dormont house, 98 Beverly, the three bodies found upstairs in the room that appeared to belong to a child.
He leaned into the letter—
Eddie, they know about the baby.
The baby.
Later in the letter, he saysshe’swalking, the baby.
Faustino never had children, never married, but he knew many people who did, and their kids all started walking around a year old, maybe a year and a half.
Walking!The letter said.
Just started walking, in 1978.
That would make her about sixteen or seventeen now.
About the same age as Jack Thatch.
You get it. You’ve got a boy.
About the same age as this girl in the poster.
My best to Katy and your boy.
Definitely Jack’s parents.
Stay safe—Richard Nettleton.
Who the hell was Richard Nettleton?
Faustino made a pot of coffee—he’d be here awhile.
7
