House Reckoning Read Free Page B

did was that Gino was smarter than most of the other dummies Carmine employed, but if he ever disobeyed an order again . . .
    By this time, he and Maureen were fighting all the time. Well, they weren’t fighting; she was fighting. She cried. She screamed. She begged him to quit. She threatened to take Joe and leave him—which he knew she would never do. She ranted how he was going to end up in jail and how she’d be left alone with a son she couldn’t provide for, which, of course, made him feel like shit. He endured days of stony silence and it seemed as if he slept more on the couch than he did in their bed.
    The worst part was, he wasn’t making all that much money. If he’d been able to get steady work as a longshoreman, put in forty hours a week with a little overtime now and then, he would have made more on the docks than he was making working for Carmine. But he couldn’t find work. He tried to tell Maureen this but she didn’t want to hear it. So he did what a man does: he provided for his family, which meant he kept working for Carmine.
    Every week he got paid what amounted to a base salary, but it varied and he could never tell if it varied due to the mood Carmine was in or how much cash the outfit took in that week. If he took part in a job, then he’d make more—like a commission—but how much more wasn’t tied to anything specific, like how much risk was involved or how much money they made on the job. There were a few months when he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to make the mortgage and he had to go to Enzo and beg for an advance, but he never told Maureen that.
    Everything changed the day he killed Mario Colombo.
    Mario Colombo—no relation to the Colombo family in New York—showed up in Queens one day with a dozen guys, mostly men he’d met in prison. Colombo was insane, a violent psychopath who for some reason thought he could just muscle in on Carmine’s operation. Carmine had a reputation for avoiding violence because violence was bad for business. He’d kill if he had to, but only as a last resort. So maybe Colombo thought Carmine was soft or unwilling to risk losing a bunch of his troops in a major war. But how could he possibly think that Carmine would give up without a fight? It made no sense.
    Whatever the case, Colombo roughed up a guy who owned a bar in Carmine’s territory, threatened to rape the guy’s daughter, and took over the bar to use for his headquarters. All the drinks were now on the house. A couple of days later, Carmine heard about this and sent two men over to find out what the hell was going on. They just went to talk to Colombo, to let him know he was making a serious mistake, but Colombo’s guys beat Carmine’s guys so badly they both ended up in the hospital. That same night, Colombo’s crew hit a numbers operation that Carmine’s cousin ran. They pistol-whipped his cousin and stole almost six grand in cash.
    Carmine held a meeting the next day with his senior guys. Gino was only there because he’d been assigned as Carmine’s bodyguard until things were settled with Colombo. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss taking Colombo out; it was apparent he wouldn’t listen to reason. Carmine wanted it done quietly. He didn’t want guys using machine guns, leaving a dozen dead bodies lying in the street. He said he didn’t want to read in the papers any nonsense about gangland massacres because then, the next thing you know, the FBI is assigning some cockamamie task force.
    As they were all grousing about the best way to do the job, Gino said, “How much will you pay the guy who kills him?” Carmine looked at him for a long time before he said, “Three grand. Why? Are you volunteering?” Everybody else in the room laughed. They laughed because Gino already had a reputation for not being willing to take part in the rough stuff. Carmine ignored the laughter. He had always seen something in Gino the others hadn’t.
    “Yeah, I am,” Gino