“How was he?” my mother said.

“He has that look,” my father said. He shook his head.

He was in the door after stopping to visit my Uncle Rocco on his way home from work. Rocco, my mother’s brother, my father’s lifelong friend, was back from the hospital. Lung cancer had spread to point there was nothing more the doctors could do to save him.

“Did he recognize you?”

“He knew who I was. We talked a bit. He remembered Vern’s. That perked him up.”

My mother smiled. “I’ll bet it did,” she said.

Vern’s was Vern’s Billiards, the pool hall by the Charles River my father and Rocco hung out at starting in their teens.

“It was their second home,” my mother told me more than once, always ending with a lift of her eyes.

Over the years I’d heard the stories from her and others. The gangsters and locals who went there to play pool and mingle. The bets made and arguments taken outside. The hustling that went on that my father and Rocco took part in.

While my father was good, better than good, Rocco was renowned.

“He could shoot some,” was how my father put it.

In his twenties Rocco moved on from Vern’s to pool halls in the North End and East Boston. That was where the best players in the area went looking for a game. According to my father, the nights were long, the atmosphere tense, the air smoke-filled, and Rocco won more than he lost.

While pool took up much of Rocco’s weekend activities, weekdays he ran the grocery store located in the building where he and his twelve siblings were raised. There were two apartments above it, and as the only unmarried child he lived on the second floor with my grandmother. That made him her favorite child, and she was protective of him.

Their apartment was also where, on Sunday afternoons, much of the extended family gathered for a big meal of homemade pasta rolled out on the long kitchen table and the cuts of meat Rocco butchered downstairs. On one of those Sundays a few years before I was born, the food was being prepared when the doorbell rang.

Expecting another family member, my Uncle John went down to the door to let them in. Instead of a familiar face, he was greeted by two strangers dressed in church-going clothes with fedoras on their heads. One of them held the large brown paper bag intended for Rocco. Taped closed, there was no way to see what was in it.

Back upstairs, John relayed the news. “Wake him up, they have something important they need to give him.”

“Let him sleep,” my grandmother said.

Rocco had been out late. Until early morning, I’ll assume.

“We should wake him, they won’t give it to me,” John said.

“No, no, Rocco needs his sleep,” my grandmother said. She blocked the doorway leading to Rocco’s bedroom.

Down at the door, John found out the bag contained Rocco’s poker winnings for the night; at some point he’d taken up card playing. It took a while, but he convinced the men he was Rocco’s brother, it was safe to leave the bag with him.

In the kitchen, John set the bag aside and the food preparation continued. As it went on interest in the bag’s contents grew until the curiosity became too much.

The family gathered to watch John tear it open and pull out two cellophane-wrapped bundles of cash. Thousands of dollars in multiple denominations, according to my mother.

“We should let him know it’s here,” John said.

“Let Rocco sleep!” my grandmother yelled.

The day after my father’s visit Rocco got the sleep he needed.