“Four-hundred thousand apiece,” said the guard.
“Mother fuck!” said Reno, shocked.
“Damn,” said Mick. He knew Pump had the cash, but he never knew Pump to be willing to give it up that easily. Pump was a low-level mob boss. He wasn’t on Sal or Mick’s level on his best day.
“When did you meet with Pump?” Sal asked him. “And where?”
“We never met with him. He called us, told us the plan, but we never met in person.”
“How did you get paid?” Reno asked.
“The second half, we were paid this morning by his henchmen like I said, when it all went down. The Europeans paid us this morning. The first half was weeks ago. His old lady paid us that half.”
“His old lady?” Reno asked. They didn’t know Pump had somebody. “Who’s his old lady?”
“Some chick named Jazz,” he said. “Jazz Hannity. She’s Pump’s girlfriend.”
But Reno was stunned. “Did you say Jazz Hannity?”
“Yeah.”
“Black girl? On the short side?”
Sal and everybody else looked at Reno. The man nodded. “Yeah.”
“Who is she?” Sal asked Reno.
Reno looked at the man guarding the basement entrance door. “Get my wife,” he ordered him.
The man hurried out of the basement.
“What is it, Reno?”
“Trina knows her. She knows Jazz Hannity.”
Trina came down the stairs quickly. “What’s wrong?” she asked her husband.
“You remember your friend Jazz?”
“Jazz? Of course I remember her, Reno! But I wouldn’t call her my friend. She became more like a frenemy.”
“What’s her last name?”
“Hannity.”
Everybody looked at Trina. “Did you know she was Pump Futarda’s girlfriend?” Reno asked her.
Trina was shocked. “No. But I haven’t seen her in a while.” She saw the dead guard through her peripheral vision, and quickly looked away.
Sal looked at the surviving guard. “Who else was involved in this shit?” he asked him.
“Nobody else,” the guard said.
“Where can we find Jazz?” Reno asked.
“Pump’s place. She lived with Pump. We met there to get paid.”
But Reno had to make sure it was the same house he knew about. The one where Pump met his end. “Where is this house?” he asked the guard.
“On Manitock,” the guard said.
Sal looked at Reno. Reno nodded. It was the right street.
Sal looked at the guard. “And nobody else was involved?” he asked him.
“Nobody that I know of,” said the guard.
“Okay.” Sal looked at the others. “Do any of you have any questions for this loser?”
They all knew what that meant.
“I don’t,” said Tommy.
“Me neither,” said Reno.
Mick shook his head.
And then it was time. Sal lifted the guy up to where his back was sliding up the wall, until he was on his feet.
“Don’t. Please, Sal. Don’t. I’ll do anything, Sal. I’ll do anything!”
But it was too late for that.
Sal, just as he had done the first guard, commenced to utterly destroy the second guard. His rage had to be satisfied.
Reno had only to look at Trina, and she was heading back upstairs.
But within a mere minute after Sal threw his final punch and the guard slid down that wall to his death, and as Sal and the others were making their way out of the basement too, the first guard’s cell phone began ringing. Even Trina ran back downstairs, when she heard that phone ringing.
Everybody looked at each other. And then the consensus looked at Sal. Sal walked over to the dead body, grabbed the cell phone, put it on Speaker, and answered it. “Yes?”
“Is this Sal Luca?”
You could hear a pin drop as everybody looked at Sal. The guy on the phone also had a European accent.
“Who is this?” Sal asked.
“Hello, Sal. By virtue of the fact that you are answering this phone, it means you have found them. Not very smart people, your guards. You need to hire smarter people. But if you would not have found them, do not worry. I would have dropped you a simple clue or two.”
“Who is this?” Sal asked again.
“My name is Bartholomew Garbo. How’s that for simple?”
Sal knew him, but only by reputation. He wasn’t mob, but he was a nasty piece of work. A jewel thief as he recalled. “What do you want?” Sal asked.
“Thirty million dollars in uncut diamonds,” Bartholomew said. “Fifteen on delivery here in Slovakia. The other fifteen after I return your wife and child.”
Everybody stood at attention. Sal’s heart was pounding. This was the fucker who had them? A fucking jewel thief?
But what was he saying about diamonds and Slo-where? “Let me talk to my wife,” Sal said. “Let me know she’s alright.”
“She’s just fine. She’s on her way here, to Slovakia. She and your baby. You will not talk to them, you will talk to me. Deliver to me the diamonds, and I will deliver your loved ones to you. That is the deal. And oh, by the way: you have twenty-four hours to get those precious jewels to me.”
“Twenty-four hours? Where the fuck I’m supposed to get uncut diamonds from in twenty-four hours?”
“I’m sure you will find a way,” said Bartholomew. “Those jewels for your jewels. I think mine is worth more, but what do I know? Keep this phone I am calling from. I will call you with the location in Slovakia soon.”
“But let me talk to my wife,” Sal demanded.
But the call went dead.
And Sal was near-panic now. “Where the fuck am I supposed to get thirty million dollars in diamonds and be in Slovenia in twenty-four hours? I don’t even know where the fuck Slovenia is!”
“Slovakia,” Mick corrected him. “And don’t worry. I have a contact.”
Everybody looked at Mick. “A diamond dealer here?” Sal asked. “In Vegas?”
“In L.A.,” Mick said, pulling out his phone and thumbing through his rolodex of numbers. “But he might have a contact here.”
“You know this Garbo guy?” Tommy asked his brother.
“I know him,” Sal said, “but I don’t know him. I saw him a time or two when I was handling business.”
“What is he? Russian mob?”
“A jewel thief,” Sal said.
That surprised Reno and Tommy both. “A jewel thief?” Tommy asked.
“A jewel thief,” Sal said. “Why the fuck you think he wants diamonds?”
Reno looked at Mick. “You know him too?” he asked him.
“I know him,” Mick said the same way Sal had said it, “but I don’t know him.”
Reno and Tommy looked at each other. “Okay,” Reno said. “Whatever.”
“Got it!” Mick said when he found the number. He began heading up the stairs and out of the basement as he phoned his contact.
“I’ll go with Uncle Mick,” Sal said to his brother. “You and Reno check out that woman, to see what she knows. And be quick about it. You heard what that fucker said. Twenty-four hours.”
Tommy grabbed Sal by the arm. Sal looked at him. “We’re going to find them, Sal Luca,” he said. “I promise you that.”
Sal actually felt reassured by Tommy’s words. He had that much faith in his big brother. But he knew he didn’t have any way of delivering on that promise than Sal had. But he had to hold onto something. “Thanks,” Sal said, and hurried out of the basement.
“Let’s go,” Reno said. “Tree, you’re coming too.”
Tommy was surprised by the way Reno included Trina in nearly every run now. “You think that’s a good idea?” he asked as they hurried out of the basement.
“What?” Reno asked.
“Trina going with us,” Tommy said as they walked. Because of the obvious danger involved, he tried his best to shield G
race from any runs with him.
But Trina answered for Reno. “He thinks it’s a fabulous idea,” she said. “I’m the one Jazz knows. She’ll open the door if it’s me.”
“Even though she just paid these assholes four-hundred thousand dollars to get rid of you?” Tommy asked.
Reno looked at Trina too. It was a good question.
It gave Trina some pause as well. She shuddered to think that Jazz could sink that low, although she’d come close before. “She’ll open the door if it’s me,” was all Trina could manage to say.
And the threesome, knowing that time was not on their side, got in a hurry.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The SUV, driven by one of Sal’s men, stopped a block away from Pump Futarda’s house. Reno and Tommy got out. Trina remained inside, on the front passenger seat, with the driver. She pressed down the passenger side window, and Reno stood next to it.
“Be careful, Tree,” he said to her as he pulled out his piece and slid it open to make certain it was loaded. “Don’t underestimate that woman.”
“I won’t,” Trina said. “But Jazz would never hurt me like that.”
“Fuck that!” Reno said angrily. “Stop talking about what that bitch won’t do! Your ass better be careful!”
Trina saw the anger in Reno’s eyes, but she saw the fear too. He needed her on this assignment. He agreed that she was the best one for the job. But that didn’t mean it scared the shit out of him. “I’ll keep my guard up, Reno, stop worrying,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”
“Don’t move too fast,” Tommy said, standing behind Reno. “Give us a chance to get in place.”
Trina said she would do that, too, and then Reno and Tommy made their way around the front side of the house. With Pump dead, the dons in his syndicate dead, and their security detail dead right along with them, Sal’s men had already determined that the rest of his crime family members had deserted their post. It was one thing to protect the boss. They didn’t give a shit about protecting the surviving girlfriend.
If Jazz was inside, they concluded, she was inside alone.
After several minutes of waiting for the men to get in place, Trina nodded and the driver drove the SUV a block up and then onto an isolated street. He drove up to the home’s front door. Trina glanced over across the lawn, to where the foliage was, but she did not see her husband nor Tommy. But that, in her mind, was a good thing because if she could see them, so could Jazz. She got out of the vehicle.
To say she wasn’t nervous would be a lie. Her heart was pounding. She hadn’t seen Jazz in a very long time, and the last time she did see her, when Jazz got shot because of her scheming, it was a dramatic time. But she walked up to that front door and knocked.
Behind her, across the lawn in the thick foliage, was Reno and Tommy: both armed and ready. But when Trina rang that doorbell, and the door opened automatically, Reno’s heart skipped a beat.
“I don’t like that,” Tommy said, his heart unsettled too. Automatic doors meant security cameras. They avoided any detection that they could see. But they could never be one hundred percent about that.
But Reno was worried for a different reason. He wanted to see Jazz’s face, to make certain that was who they were dealing with. He didn’t want Trina walking in blind. “Don’t go in that house, Trina,” he said, although he knew she couldn’t hear him. “Don’t go in that fucking house.”
Trina began entering the house.
“Shit!” Reno said. “What the fuck is she doing?”
He was about to run up to that door and enter with her, but Tommy stopped him. “Look,” he said. “Look what she’s doing.”
Reno looked as Trina had enough presence of mind to pull a hairpin from her hair and, pretending to peep in cautiously and then slowly begin making her way across the threshold, she placed the pin on the plate of the door hinge. It was an old trick, but a good one: the door would appear to close, but it would not latch.
Tommy smiled. “Gotdamn that’s one smart lady,” he said.
“She’s married to me,” said Reno, as if he wasn’t the one about to jump out of his skin when he saw her entering the home. “What do you expect?”
But as soon as that door appeared to close, Reno and Tommy hurried out of the foliage where they had been perched, and made their way toward that very door.
But Trina, by contrast, was in no hurry at all. She walked into a quiet, empty foyer, and into a house that smelled like mold. “Jazz?” she called out. “Jazz?” But she received no answer.
It wasn’t until she walked around the foyer and into the living room did she see what she came to see.
Jazz Hannity. Her old, old friend.
Looking the same as if Trina had just seen her yesterday.
Except, and to Trina’s shock, she was in a wheelchair.
Now Trina’s calling of Jazz’s name was less of a Jazz, where are you tone, and more of a Jazz, what happened tone. She walked up to the wheelchair.
“Hello, Trina.”
“Hey.”
“You look the same.”
“You do, too,” Trina said. “Except for the chair.”
Jazz smiled, and then she laughed. “Leave it to Katrina Hathaway to put it that way!”
“What happened?”
The door to the home was opened gingerly and Reno and Tommy entered. When Reno peeped around the foyer, and saw Jazz and Trina, he pulled back. And held Tommy back. “Wheelchair,” he whispered to Tommy. “She’s in a wheelchair.”
Tommy was surprised. “That Jazz person?”
Reno nodded.
“Was she always?” Tommy asked in a whisper too.
“Shit no,” said Reno.
And they remained against the foyer wall, out of sight, and listened. Reno’s fear all along was that Jazz, who hated him for taking Trina away from her, would not speak candidly, or at all, if she saw his face.
“What do you want?” Jazz was asking.
“Good seeing you, too, Jazz. What happened?”
“As if you care.”
“That’s why I’m here. To see you,” Trina said. “I just want to know what happened to you.”
“That’s not why your ass here.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You’re here because those two guards got caught and spilled the beans. I know your ass, Trina Hathaway. That’s the only reason why you’re here. Reno’s still pimping you. He’s still got you doing his dirty work.”
Trina’s temper flared. “Bitch, I can snatch you out of that chair and beat your ass right now if I wanted to,” she responded. “So knock off the big talk. Why did you pay those guards all of that money? Who has Gemma and her child?”
Jazz stared at Trina. “I had me a mob boss too,” she said. “I was determined to get me one to take care of me just like you got you one to take care of you. I was going to follow in your footsteps, even though I couldn’t stand your ass. But I wanted out too. I was tired of stripping in them clubs. And it worked. I managed to win the heart of Pump Futarda.”
Sadness appeared in Jazz’s eyes. She apparently loved that dead asshole, Trina thought.
“He didn’t want me at first,” Jazz continued. “I’m not gonna lie. When I met him, I was in a bad place, and he was interested in me because one of the girls at the club where I was working said I used to be your friend. She’s a friend of Reno Gabrini’s wife, was how that chick put it. But I knew better than that. You and I haven’t been friends since you fired me from working at the PaLargio. Since you made it, and didn’t help me make it too.”
But Trina was shaking her head. “I’m not trying to hear that bullshit,” she said. “I gave you more chances than I should have to get yourself together, but you weren’t about the business. You were about the bullshit. You didn’t make it because you weren’t trying to make it.”
“Pump was obsessed with you,” Jazz said. “That’s what that girl told me. So I played on it. I pretended you and me were thick as thieves still.
I would tell him all kinds of stories about the two of us, and he loved it. And paid me to have sex with him while I talked about you. It had been years since you turned him down that night, but he still wanted you. Ain’t that a bitch? He still wanted you!”
Reno rubbed his forehead. All those motherfuckers trying to get next to his wife. And they wondered why Reno was so sensitive when it came to shielding her from that. Some men liked the fact that other men found their wives attracted. Reno didn’t like that shit. He didn’t like it one bit.
But it wasn’t about him. Or Trina. It was about finding out what this Jazz bitch knew to help them find Gemma and Lucky.
Trina knew it too. That was why she kept her eyes on Jazz as another look appeared all over Jazz’s face. A bitter look. “One day we saw you, at the market. He told me to go to you, and invite you to dinner. Like a double date, he said. So I did it. I hurried across that busy street to catch up with you. But the cars were coming so fast, and you were getting into your fancy Mercedes, acting like you owned Vegas because your husband was Reno Gabrini, and before I could make it across the street, you drove away. You never even looked in my direction.”
Jazz sat erect in her wheelchair. “So I headed back across the street. Not fast enough for one car. I was hit. I was hospitalized. I was paralyzed for life.”
Jazz looked at Trina. “Pump stood by me. And took care of me. He even learned to love me. And he learned to hate you. He blamed you for what happened to me.”
Trina was floored. How in hell could that be her fault? But she didn’t go there.
“That’s why Pump joined forces with Bartholomew,” Jazz said.
Reno and Tommy looked at each other anxiously. That was the name of the man who claimed to have Gemma and Lucky!
Trina knew it too. But she wanted intel. “Bartholomew? Who’s Bartholomew?”
“He was a jewel thief, but he was also a dope dealer. He was Pump’s supplier.”
“Supplier of what?”
“Dope. What else?” Jazz said. “When Pump found out Bartholomew wanted the Gabrinis dead, he volunteered to help. Bartholomew was glad to have him. He was thrilled. I was glad to do my part too.”
Then Jazz pulled a gun from beneath the blanket that covered her lap. “I’m still glad to do my part.”
Reno and Sal Gabrini: Fire with Fire Page 15