Chapter 8
The words hung in the air.
"What are you talking about?" Tony demanded.
Marco laughed again.
"You think your father was just an innocent auto mechanic?" he said. "You think I walked into his shop one day and shot him for no reason?"
He looked at each of us in turn.
"Your father was running a chop shop," he said. "He was stealing cars, stripping them down, selling the parts. He made a lot of money doing it. And he owed me a cut."
"You're lying," I said. But my voice wasn't as sure as I wanted it to be.
"Am I?" Marco said. "Ask Detective Carter. He knew. He helped cover it up. Your father was his informant. He gave Carter information about other criminals in exchange for protection."
He shook his head.
"But your father got greedy," he said. "He wanted to keep all the money for himself. He refused to pay me what he owed. So I went to collect. And he pulled a gun on me. I shot him in self-defense."
"You're a liar," Vinnie growled.
"Am I?" Marco said again. "Go to the old shop. Look under the floorboards in the back room. You'll find the ledgers. Your father's handwriting. Everything you need to know."
He looked at Tony.
"Your father wasn't the hero you think he was," he said. "He was just as much of a criminal as I am. The only difference is, he was better at hiding it."
I looked at Tony.
I could see the doubt in his eyes.
The same doubt I was feeling.
Our father... a criminal?
It couldn't be true.
Could it?
"We don't have to listen to this," Tony said. But his voice was shaken.
"Don't you want to know the truth?" Marco taunted. "Don't you want to know what kind of man your father really was?"
Tony raised his gun.
"Shut up," he said again.
"Or what?" Marco said. "You'll kill me? Go ahead. But then you'll never know. You'll spend the rest of your lives wondering if I was telling the truth."
For a moment, I thought Tony might actually do it.
His hand was shaking. His face was pale.
Ten years of believing our father was a good man, an innocent victim... and now Marco was telling us it was all a lie.
But then Tony lowered the gun.
"We're not going to kill you," he said. "We're going to call the police. And you're going to tell them everything you just told us. And then we're going to find out the truth. One way or another."
He looked at me and Vinnie.
"Tie him up."
We tied Marco's hands behind his back with rope. We gagged him so he couldn't yell for help.
Then Tony called Detective Carter.
The detective arrived an hour later, with a team of officers.
He looked at Marco, then at us.
"You boys just couldn't stay out of it, could you?" he said, sighing.
"He had a gun," Tony said. "He would have shot us if we hadn't stopped him."
Detective Carter looked at Marco's injured wrist, at the gun lying on the ground.
He nodded.
"Okay," he said. "I'll take it from here. You boys go home. I'll be in touch."
As the officers led Marco away, he looked back at us.
He winked.
And then he was gone.
The drive back to the city was silent.
None of us knew what to say.
Marco's words hung between us, heavy and dark.
Our father.
A criminal.
A chop shop operator.
A liar.
When we got back to the restaurant, Joey and Tommy could tell something was wrong.
"What happened?" Tommy asked.
Tony told them everything.
About the cabin.
About Marco.
About what he'd said.
The room went silent.
"He's lying," Joey said finally. "He has to be. Dad would never do something like that."
"Would he?" Tony said. "Think about it. The money we had after he died. The way he always had cash on hand. The way he never wanted to talk about his business."
I thought about it.
There were things. Little things. Things we'd never questioned because we didn't want to.
The locked cabinet in his office.
The late nights.
The strangers who would come to the shop and talk to him in hushed voices.
The way Detective Carter had always been around, always friendly with our father.
Had it all been a lie?
"We need to go to the old shop," I said. "We need to see if those ledgers are really there."
We all looked at each other.
No one wanted to go.
No one wanted to find out the truth.
But we had to.
We drove to the old auto shop. It had been closed since our father died. We'd kept it, never having the heart to sell it.
The door was locked. Tony broke it open.
The air inside smelled like oil and dust and memory.
We walked to the back room.
The floor was old wood, worn smooth from years of use.
"Under the floorboards," Tony said.
We pried up a board.
And then another.
And another.
And there they were.
Books.
Old, leather-bound ledgers.
Tony pulled one out.
He opened it.
And his face went pale.
He handed the book to me.
I looked at the first page.
It was our father's handwriting.
Neat. Precise.
And it was a record of stolen cars.
VIN numbers.
Parts sold.
Money received.
Page after page.
Book after book.
Marco had been telling the truth.
May you like
Our father was a criminal.
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