Laughter in Nighthawks

I am writing about "laughter" from the story "Nighthawks". One character that stood out to me, even though he never really enters the story was uncle Tassos. Even though we dont get to actually meet Tassos i think Stuart Dybek gives the reader a good sense of what he is like. He does this by using words like "secret" and "sneek" when referring to the narrators relationship with Tassos' niece. Also by making his job a worker on an ore barge Dybek leads the reader to believe that Tassos is a hard, tough man. I liked how Dybek was able to give this impression using just a couple of sentences.