House Reckoning Read Free

Maureen put money down on the house.
    Right after that, right after he made the down payment and signed the mortgage, it all went to hell. He didn’t understand what was going on with the economy: on the news they talked about inflation and deregulation and foreign trade imbalance, and a lot of other shit he didn’t understand. All he knew was they cut back his hours, then sometimes he’d get work only a couple of days a week, and finally, because he didn’t have seniority and wasn’t related to anybody important, they laid him off. And when they did, Maureen was three months pregnant.
    Jerry asked him out for a beer one evening after he’d spent the day going to a dozen places looking for work. The first thing he noticed was that Jerry looked flush. He was wearing a good suit and his shoes had a shine. He paid for the beer with a fat roll he pulled from his pocket, tipping the waitress like he was a Rockefeller.
    He knew Jerry worked for Carmine Taliaferro, and he knew what Carmine was. He figured Jerry got the job because he married a Sicilian girl who was related to Carmine, but he didn’t know for sure. He also didn’t know what Jerry did for Carmine, and he never asked. He found out later, after it was too late, that Jerry didn’t make all that much and the roll he flashed that night came from one of his infrequent, lucky days at the track.
    When Jerry asked how things were going, Gino told him: no job and a pregnant wife.
    “You want me to ask my boss if he might have some work for you? I mean, just until you find something else.”
    Gino shook his head. He’d seen other guys go down that path and most of them ended up in jail. A few of them ended up dead.
    “Then how ’bout a loan to tide you over?”
    This was what Maureen didn’t understand about Jerry: he’d give you the shirt off his back if you were his friend.
    “Nah, that’s okay,” Gino said. “I’ll find work soon.”
    Two weeks later—he still hadn’t found a job—Jerry called. “I have to go down to Florida and drive a truck back up here without stopping. I need a wingman. You’ll make five hundred bucks.”
    In those days, when gas was fifty cents a gallon, five hundred dollars was a lot of money. Five hundred dollars was enough to pay the mortgage for two months.
    “What’s in the truck?” Gino asked.
    “I don’t know, and I’m not asking.”
    Gino thought at the time that he’d be a fool to take the job. The cops could be watching Carmine’s guys. Or they could be watching the guy whose stuff was in the truck. If it was guns, whoever was driving could go away for five years and crossing state lines made it a federal charge. But the thing was, the mortgage payment was due at the end of the month and he was going to have to ask somebody for a loan: his father, his father-in-law, maybe Jerry. Begging friends and relatives for money would be humiliating, particularly as he didn’t have any idea when he’d be able to pay them back. Then what would he do the month after that?
    He told Maureen he had a job driving a truck and would be gone a few days. When he saw her eyes light up, thinking he’d gotten on with the Teamsters, he told her it was just a one-time thing, that a guy just needed a backup driver. He didn’t tell her the guy was Jerry. He didn’t exactly lie to her—but it felt like a lie.
    And that’s how it all started. The next job came a couple of weeks later when Jerry said he needed someone to go with him to collect from a guy who owed Carmine money. “This guy’s big, bigger than both of us put together, and he’s kind of a nut. I just want someone backing me up in case he wants to fight.”
    “Okay, but I’m not carrying a gun.”
    “You won’t need a gun.”
    “And I’m not gonna pound on this guy if he won’t pay you.”
    “He’ll pay. Like I said, I just need you to pull him off me if he goes nuts.”
    In the beginning, he was always drawing lines in the sand, lines he said he’d never