House Reckoning by Mike Lawson Read Free Book Online Page B

dreading this moment all her life. Finally she said, “Yes, he works for him but nobody knows for sure what Mr. Taliaferro does. People make up stories about him. And your father isn’t a gangster.” “But what does Dad do for him?” Joe persisted. “He just does stuff, but he doesn’t do anything bad. Now quit pestering me. I’ve got work to do.” His mother had never been much of a liar—she was too blunt and almost always said what was on her mind without caring what the consequences might be—but Joe, even at the age of ten, could tell she was lying. And that night, after his parents thought he was asleep, he could hear his mom yelling at his dad in the kitchen.
    By the time Joe was in his teens, he knew from the neighbors, the newspapers, and the kids in school exactly what Taliaferro did. He was involved in loansharking, prostitution, and drugs. His guys shook down store owners for protection money, hijacked trucks, and fenced stolen goods. He bribed politicians and cops to stay out of the can. He also had his hooks deep into the garbage haulers’ union, meaning everyone in Queens was basically paying him to take away their trash.
    But no matter what people said about Taliaferro, Joe couldn’t picture his father smacking around some little shopkeeper for protection money or beating up some guy who owed Taliaferro’s sharks. He couldn’t imagine him sneaking into some place and ripping stuff off. If anyone had ever said to his face that his dad was a thief or a drug dealer, Joe would have taken the guy’s head off.
    He eventually developed his own theory about what his father did. He didn’t have any facts to back up this theory, but it was one that fit his perception of the man he knew. He decided his dad probably provided protection for Taliaferro. Taliaferro had to have enemies, and his dad made sure they didn’t kill him. He could see his father’s broad form, like in a movie, standing in the shadows behind Taliaferro, silent and unmoving, arms crossed over his chest, being Taliaferro’s bodyguard. He probably also made sure that Taliaferro’s men—who really were thieves—didn’t steal from their boss. Plus Taliaferro, as everyone knew, had a lot of legitimate businesses: an auto body place, a company that painted houses, and half a dozen others. He had property all over the five boroughs. Joe could imagine his dad involved in some hazy way in those businesses, taking care of things, managing things, doing like his mom had told him when he was little: fixing things that were broken.
    Joe knew that his perception of what his father did for Taliaferro might be wrong and some might even consider him naïve, but he knew one thing for sure: Gino DeMarco was, and always had been, a great father to him. Gino didn’t just love him—he cherished him, he doted on him, he was always there for him—and Joe had never lacked for anything important. He knew one other thing about his dad that was hard for him to articulate but that he knew to be true: his father might do things that were illegal, but he’d never do something that was dishonorable.
    Joe really had only one complaint about his dad, and it was the same complaint his mother had: Gino DeMarco was a man who never opened up to anyone. Joe had tried countless times to get him to talk about what he did for a living—or if not what he did, then just how he felt about what he did. He just wanted to understand why a man like him would be associated with Carmine Taliaferro.
    But every time he tried to draw his father out, all he usually got in the way of a response was a head shake. The most his dad ever said to him was “Look, Joe, you need to quit asking me about what I do because I can’t tell you. All you need to know is that I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I didn’t even graduate from high school. I ended up where I am now because I’m stupid and because I thought I didn’t have a lot of other choices.”
    Joe knew his father