House Reckoning by Mike Lawson Read Free Book Online Page A

you might as well tell me.”
    “It’s DeMarco,” Carmine said. “Gino DeMarco.”
    And five days later, Enzo came to Carmine’s house while he was feeding his fish and told him that Gino had identified the man who had killed Jerry Kennedy: a young cop named Quinn.

6
    Joe DeMarco walked into the house and the odor of whatever was cooking in the kitchen made him smile. His mother, an Irish girl who barely knew how to scramble an egg when she first got married, was one of the best Italian cooks in Queens. She was so good that Joe rarely went to Italian restaurants because he knew the food wouldn’t be as good as his mom’s.
    He dropped his bag on the floor by the front door and walked into the kitchen. His mother hadn’t heard him come in, and she was standing at the counter, whacking an onion into small chunks with a big knife, like she was mad at the onion. He could also see her lips moving, talking to somebody who wasn’t there, which would have made him smile if she hadn’t looked so angry. Which meant the imaginary person she was talking to was most likely his father.
    “Hey, Ma,” he said.
    She jumped. “Oh, my God! You’re gonna give me a heart attack, sneaking up on me like that.”
    She put down the knife and rushed over and hugged him. “Are you hungry?”
    It seemed like that was the first question she asked every time she saw him, like he’d walked from D.C. to New York, foraging for food on the way.
    “You want me to make you a sandwich?”
    He held her for a moment and looked at her. She was slim but not frail, and there wasn’t that much gray in her hair. But she was starting to look old, older than his dad looked, and they were both the same age. He figured it was fear etching the lines into her face: fear that her husband was going to be arrested one day, fear that he would be killed one day, fear that she wouldn’t be able to support herself when he was gone. And maybe the biggest fear: fear that her only son might be sucked into his father’s world.
    He had seen pictures of her when she was young, before he was born, and she looked like . . . well, like somebody who would be fun . Now there was nothing fun about her, nothing joyful, nothing playful. Now she looked like who she was, a person always knotted up inside, perpetually angry at the man she married, maybe angry at the whole damn world.
    But Joe knew she would never leave his father. Being Catholic was one reason why; the other reason was that she came from a class and generation that equated divorce with failure. More than anything else, however, he knew she still loved his father; he knew this even if she didn’t. No, she’d never leave Gino DeMarco—she just wouldn’t ever forgive him for being who he was.
    Joe didn’t feel the way she did about his dad. He loved the man unconditionally.
    When he was young, like when he was eight or nine, he’d ask his mom what his dad did at work and why he didn’t come home some nights, and she’d put him off saying things like “Oh, you know, he just works for a man. He fixes things for him, like the way he fixes things here around the house. And sometimes things have to be fixed at night. Now go clean up your room like I told you.”
    He was ten when he found out his dad worked for Carmine Taliaferro and who Taliaferro was. A kid named Jimmy Moskovey had asked him if his dad was a gangster and if he had gun. “What?” Joe had said. “What are you talking about?” “Well, he works for old man Taliaferro and everyone knows Taliaferro’s a big gangster.” The only thing Joe knew about Mr. Taliaferro at that time was that he was rich and he donated the uniforms for his Little League team. “My dad’s no gangster,” Joe told Jimmy, “and if you ever say that again, I’m gonna punch you.”
    But when he got home from school that afternoon, he asked his mom, “Does dad work for Mr. Taliaferro? Jimmy Moskovey said he’s a gangster.” His mom closed her eyes, like she’d been