House Reckoning Read Online Free PDF Page A

him of his wife. His wife, daughter, and granddaughter were like those Russian boxes: you opened one box, and inside it was an identical smaller box. Then you open that box, and . . .
    Finally he gets them both out of the room and shuts the door.
    He didn’t need to make a phone call. He just needed to think.
    Like he’d told Enzo, he needed the kid; the kid was an investment in the future whereas DeMarco, as good as he was, had too many scruples and was a hard guy to control. The other thing, and nobody knew this but him, was that he’d ordered the kid to kill Jerry Kennedy. If DeMarco ever found that out . . . Well, he couldn’t take the chance.
    Kennedy had always been a drunk, but most of the time he kept the drinking under control. The gambling, however, got way out of hand. Kennedy was a compulsive gambler, the kind of guy who couldn’t control the urge—the kind of guy who would bet on a cockroach race—and he ended up owing a bookie in Atlantic City more than twenty grand.
    Then, a week ago, Kennedy gets nabbed by the feds. Unbeknownst to Carmine, Kennedy had been transporting dope for a guy in Trenton, trying to make enough money to pay off the bookie in Atlantic City, and the dumb shit sells the dope to an NYPD undercover. The feds immediately took over the case for interstate trafficking, but according to Carmine’s source, the feds really took it over because they thought they might be able to force Kennedy to testify against Carmine. The feds didn’t even arraign Kennedy—they didn’t want Carmine to know they had him—and they were hiding him somewhere, trying to make a deal with him. And, by the way, they were offering him Witness Protection if he agreed to cooperate.
    Carmine wouldn’t even have known about Kennedy’s arrest if it wasn’t for his source in the Bureau, who was just a secretary. Carmine had thought that Kennedy was off on a bender or shacked up with some broad, and that’s why he hadn’t seen the damn guy in a while. But the secretary heard about Kennedy getting arrested and she knew Kennedy worked for Carmine.
    The secretary worked for a big shot down at Federal Plaza, near Foley Square, and she kept her ears open for things that might concern Carmine. The only reason she helped him was that she had a daughter with a weird skin disease and couldn’t afford the cream and shit her daughter needed. If the government had paid her better, she probably wouldn’t have told Carmine anything. The problem, however, was the secretary didn’t know where they were keeping Kennedy and she couldn’t find out—and Carmine needed to know because he needed Jerry Kennedy dead.
    Carmine figured that Kennedy’s nuts were in a three-way vise. The guy from Trenton whose dope he’d lost probably wanted Kennedy to pay for that, the Atlantic City bookie definitely wanted his money back, and the feds were going to put Kennedy in jail for years if he didn’t cooperate. Witness Protection would solve all of Kennedy’s problems. He’d be a fool not to make a deal.
    So Carmine needed Kennedy dead, but he couldn’t use DeMarco because DeMarco would never agree to kill his best friend. He didn’t really want any of his other guys to kill Kennedy, either. For one thing, none of them was as good as DeMarco but the main thing was, people could never keep their damn mouths shut. If he used one of his own people, the word would eventually get back to DeMarco.
    He finally decided to force the kid to kill Kennedy.
    The kid’s name was Quinn. Brian Quinn. He was a cop. He was a tall, slim, good-looking young guy who would eventually end up with the kind of face you expected generals and presidents to have. He fit in well at the NYPD, which was a lot like the Catholic Church in America, where all the bishops and cardinals were wops and micks. Quinn’s dad had been a well-liked NYPD detective, two of his uncles were cops, and Quinn’s rabbi—his mentor in the department—was currently the chief of