But Tommy, they also agreed, was so unhinged, so devastated, they couldn’t believe it was him.
They all remained in the living room, unable to face even the remote possibility that those gunshots were what that caller wanted Tommy to think they were: an assassination. The women were seated and still had tears in their eyes, while the men, except for Mick, who sat in a wingback chair, were walking or standing around, unable to sit. But none of the men, including Mick, could hide their fear.
They had searched everywhere they could think to search, while Branson Nash and their armies of men were searching everywhere else, but Grace and the children were still missing. And their crying voices, begging Tommy to save them, just before the gunshots rang out, was still ringing in Tommy’s head. He could not get their voices, and the sound of those gunshots, out of his head!
But he refused to believe that his family was no more.
“What I don’t understand,” Reno said, “is why would Henry turn on Tommy. I still can’t believe that shit Jimmy told me.”
“Believe it,” Sal said. “Where’s Henry’s ass if he ain’t in on it? We had a pile of men searching his place. Not a trace of his ass. That motorcyclist said Henry’s the one who paid him to take out Pauley Sabbatino. He claimed it was just to harm him, but we know better than that. Our asses were there.”
“That’s some heavy shit right there,” Reno said. “When my son told me Henry might be involved, I was shocked. Henry turning on Tommy? I thought he was in love with Tommy the way he was so protective of him.”
Sal nodded. “That’s what I’m saying too. But what’s got me convinced is the fact that we can’t find him all of a sudden. Why wouldn’t he come and help his friend, if he really was a friend to Tommy?”
They all had no answers; just a lot of questions, and Tommy knew it too. That was why he continued to pace. They were standing around. Tommy was moving.
“And what’s all this shit about Joe DeLuca?” Reno asked. “I never heard of him before today. And then I hear he’s out of fucking Alabama? How in hell he could have the kind of reach to go up against Tommy and the rest of us? Does he have that kind of reach?”
“No,” Sal said bluntly. “No way.”
“Then who has that kind of power?” Reno asked. “Other than Uncle Mick, who could get men that loyal to Tommy to turn on him the way they did? Who would snatch Grace and the kids? Who would have the balls?”
“We don’t know,” Sal said. “That’s the most frustrating part about this shit. We don’t know!”
“I just want Grace and those kids to be okay,” Trina said, wiping her big, hazel eyes again. She and Gemma couldn’t seem to stop crying! “I just pray they’re okay and will be back home with us. That’s all I care about.”
Reno hated to see his wife that distraught. “It’ll be alright, Tree, you know it will. It always is with us.”
“But Jimmy said they heard gunshots,” Trina said, refusing to be comforted. “Jimmy said they heard Grace and the children crying for Tommy, and then gunshots.”
Tommy frowned and placed a trembling hand to his forehead. “We’ve got to find them,” he said as he paced. “I’ve got to find my family! They are not dead. They were not shot. I refuse to believe they are. I would feel it if something like that had happened to them.” Then he balled his hands into fists. “Oh, God,” he cried, “I can’t bear this!”
Mick, to everybody’s surprise, jumped up quickly and went to Tommy. When he pulled Tommy in his arms, and held him, you could hear a pin drop in that room. Everybody was shocked. They all loved Mick, but he was the coldest motherfucker they’d ever known. Nobody could believe he was showing such affection for Tommy. Nobody, that was, except for Mick’s wife Roz. She knew how close Mick and Tommy were. She knew how much Mick loved Tommy.
“Falling apart will not help them,” Mick whispered in Tommy’s ear. “You hear me?”
Tommy nodded. “I know.”
“Pull yourself together,” Mick added. “That’s an order.”
Tommy nodded again, and they stopped embracing.
Tommy knew Uncle Mick was right. He was no good to anybody the way he was. And when he realized the rest of the group were looking at him, the man who was usually their levelheaded leader, he exhaled. “I’m okay,” he said to reassure them. “I’ll be okay. I just want my family home too.”
“And they will come home, Tommy,” Sal’s wife Gemma said. “Everybody’s searching. They’ll turn up something eventually. Some good news real soon.”
“Gemma’s right,” Sal said. “We’ve got to stay positive here.”
“What about the money?” Roz asked, and everybody looked at her. She carried the same aura Mick carried, not only because she was his wife, but also because she was a well-respected Broadway actress in her own right. Whenever either one of them spoke, people listened.
“What about the money?” Mick asked her.
“Were they able to trace it to anybody at all? Five million dollars has to get the regulators’ attention at least.”
“And it did,” Sal said. “They’re on it too. They traced it to some fake company that moved it out of the account so fast and placed it around so many different places that it’s like a shell game trying to figure out who really owns what and where and how and where has the money really gone. Those fuckers knew what they were doing.”
“But it couldn’t have been about the money, anyway,” Reno said. “Jimmy said Tommy offered the kidnapper double and triple what he was asking, but it was like he didn’t care.”
“That’s true,” Sal said. “It was like they were going to do what they were doing anyway. It was like they just wanted to torment Tommy.”
“They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams,” Tommy said, and then that dread reappeared on his handsome face. He was on the brink of losing it, and they all knew it.
Mick knew it, too, that was why he stayed close by.
Then Sal looked at their uncle, a man who not only earned the title of uncle, but was their actual uncle. “What do you think, Uncle Mick?” he asked him, and everybody looked at Mick.
Mick placed his hands in the pants pockets of his expensive suit. And he exhaled. “I think shit comes out of the blue sometimes,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen.” Then he shook his head. “But not like this.”
Tommy knew it too. And became even more determined. “I’m going back out,” he said and began heading toward the front door.
“Out where, Tommy?” Reno asked. “We’ve searched everywhere. Tommy?”
Reno hurried to him, grabbed his arm, and turned him back around. The pain in Tommy’s eyes broke Reno’s heart. “Is there somewhere we haven’t searched?” he asked him.
“I’ve got to find DeLuca.”
“We searched for him already, Tommy.”
“Our guys are out there now still searching for him,” Sal said, walking up to his brother and cousin. “Where else is there to go?”
“I’m going back to the beginning,” Tommy said, and began heading out. “I’ve got to find him, and I can’t leave it up to somebody else to do it for me!”
Reno hurried behind him. Big Daddy stood up. “Mick, you and Sal go with him. Between me, Hammer, and Amelia, we’ll take care of the ladies and be here should Grace and the kids show up. But go.”
Mick agreed with his brother, and he and Sal hurried out too.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was familiar territory to Tommy and Sal as they, along with Mick and Reno, entered that coffee shop in Capitol Hill and made their way to the back office where Joe DeLuca had met with Tommy and Sal. They searched it previously, but DeLuca wasn’t there and nobody knew anything about him. Tommy was making a return trip.
A waitress tried to stop them as they headed for that back room, insisting the area was off limits to customers, but it was obvious to everybody but her that those four men were not customers in any sense of the word. They didn’t come to buy coffee. They came to kick ass.
And when they made it up to that office door, Sal leaned back and kicked the whole door down.
Like before, DeLuca wasn’t there. A group of men were in that office, but they were cutting and bagging cocaine. They immediately tried to pull their weapons, realizing they had gotten too comfortable for their own good, but when they recognized that those men weren’t just thieves looking to steal their product, but were the Gabrinis and Mick the Tick Sinatra, suited up in his infamous white coat and black trousers and turtleneck, they didn’t bother. They, instead, held up their hands.
Tommy grabbed the one who looked like the leader of the pack and slammed him against the wall. He wanted his family back, and he’d kill every fucker in that room to get them back. “Where’s DeLuca?” he angrily asked the leader.
First the leader went the dumb route. “Who’s DeLuca?” he asked Tommy.
Tommy put his gun to the man’s head. Sal went over by his brother. Mick and Reno kept their eyes on the leader’s crew. But they knew Tommy had it well in control.
“Does it look like I’m fucking with you?” Tommy asked the leader. “Where’s DeLuca? Tell me!”
“We don’t know,” said the leader.
“Bullshit!” said Sal.
“We don’t know! I’m telling you we don’t know. He left.”
“And went where?”
“We don’t know where he went. I’m not lying, though. He doesn’t tell us what his ass is up to. He want us to bag this shit and get it on the streets. That’s all we need to know!”
“Did he go back to Alabama?” Tommy asked.
“He said he was staying around.”
“Why was he staying around?”
“He didn’t tell us that. He just said he had to stay around.”
“He’s renting a house?” Tommy asked.
“I don’t know where he’s staying. I’m telling you he don’t go into details like that with us. We don’t know anything about that!”
Tommy exhaled. He wasn’t sure if he believed him, but he knew he had to keep moving. “What about Dale?” he asked.
“Dale?”
“Yeah, Dale, motherfucker,” said Sal. “Pauley’s guy. You know who he’s talking about!”
“Oh, that Dale!”
“Where is he?” asked Tommy.
The leader realized he had to give them what they wanted. “He’s at his old lady’s house,” he said.
“What old lady?” Sal asked.
“His ex-wife. They separated when he started slinging for DeLuca. And when he said he was moving to Alabama to work full-time alongside Pauley, she divorced him.”
“Where does she live?” Tommy asked.
“On Round Lake Road.”
Tommy frowned. “Where the fuck is that?” he asked.
“Tiny street off Blackburn,” the leader said. “There are only two houses on the whole street. It’s the one with the porch.”
Tommy looked at Sal. “I know the area,” Sal said. “Which house?” he asked the leader.
“The green one,” the leader responded.
Tommy looked at the leader again. Then he aimed his gun between his eyes.
“What are you doing? I don’t know anything about it.”
“That’s not your misfortune,” Tommy said. “Your misfortune is that you work for him. Your misfortune is that my wife and children are missing, and I’ve got to make sure Joe DeLuca understands he’s fucking with the wrong one now.”
“But Tommy,” Sal said, “we aren’t sure if DeLuca’s involved yet.”
“I’m sure,” Tommy said. “Shit happens out of the blue, like Uncle Mick said. But not like this.”
And Tommy didn’t wince. He pulled the trigger and the leader dropped dead.
Then he looked at the remaining drug dealers, all of whom were staring at him. “Pre-warn Dale and you’re dead,” he said to them, and then he left.
But as Sal and Reno followed Tommy out, Mick the Tick gave the remaining men a hard look. And they all stood still: terrified. “If any of you assholes see Joey DeLuca around,” he said, “you tell him Mick Sinatra’s looking for him. And you tell him if he did to my nephew’s family what that phone call implied was done to them, everybody that ever knew him will get the same treatment. Including everybody in this fucking room.”
Then Mick added: “He may think I’m threatening him. But it’s not a threat. I don’t waste my time on fucking threats. It’s a guarantee. Not if it will happen, but when. If he harmed a hair on any member of my nephew’s family, it will happen.” Then he looked at the man he took to be their new leader now: the one who had been the second-in-command. “You tell him that personally. Got it?”
“Sure, Mr. Mick, sure,” said the new leader nervously. “We’ll tell him, sir. We’ll let him know every word you said!”
Mick stared at all of them a moment longer, as if daring them to show him even a hint of disrespect, and then left too.
The new leader, still reeling, and who had already pissed in his pants when Mick addressed him, stumbled to a chair.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dale Birch was in bed, making love to his ex-wife, when they both heard loud bangs on her front door.
Dale looked at her. “Who’s that? What joker you got coming here?”
“I don’t have nobody coming here,” she responded angrily. “Why are you asking me something that stupid? Stupid ass!”
Then more knocks were heard, and then a distressed voice yelling, “Police! Police! Open up!”
They jumped out of bed then. Both of them. Grabbing their clothes, hiding drugs, and Dale hiding his gun under the mattress.
“Wait!” Dale was saying as his ex-wife was beating him running toward that front door. “Don’t open that door. It could be a trap!”
“I don’t want them busting in my house shooting up everything moving, which includes me!”
“Gwen, wait!” he yelled again, and hurried behind her, but she was already opening the door.
Dale tried to slam it back shut, especially when he saw Tommy’s face, but it was too late. Mick and the Gabrinis overpowered him and knocked the whole door down, barely missing the ex-wife’s head, and almost knocking Dale to the floor. And then they barged on in.
“Ah, shit!” Dale said when he saw that it was more than just Tommy barging in, and he tried to make a run for it. But Tommy was too far up his ass for that to happen. He had already grabbed him and was slinging him into a chair. Tommy placed his knee on Dale’s stomach.
“Where do you think you’re going, Dale boy?” Tommy asked him angrily. “Where you think you’re going?”
“Who are you?” his ex-wife cried. “Who are you people?”
“Shut her up,” Mick said to Reno. “We don’t want that neighbor calling the cops.”
Reno looked at the woman, pointing at her. “Shut it,” he said firmly. The woman didn’t want to shut it, but she did.
“What do you want from me, Tommy?” Dale asked as he sat, slouched down the way he had been thrown, in that chair. “I don’t know anything. Why are you coming for me?”
“Tell me everything you know,” Tommy said.
“What am I supposed to know?”
Tommy grabbed his gun and started pistol-whipping Dale angrily. He was tired of these know-nothing motherfuckers. But the pain Tommy was inflicting on Dale caused his ex-wife to start screaming.
“Didn’t I tell you to shut the fuck up?” Reno yelled at her, which stopped her screams.
Dale had his hands up, in a defensive stance, trying with all he had to block as many of Tommy’s blows as he could.
“What the fuck happened?” Dale was asking as he was being hit. “What are you doing to me, man?”
But Tommy kept wailing on Dale. He was going to tell him something! But Mick placed his hand around Tommy’s wrist. “We need intel,” he reminded his nephew.
And it was only then was Tommy able to keep the big picture in front of him, rather than his anger at everybody ev
en remotely associated with his family’s disappearance, and stop raining down blows. He was breathing heavily. “Tell me everything you know,” Tommy said to him again. “And I don’t wanna hear any bullshit about any Mortimer Steele or DeLuca’s after my company.”
“He is after it,” Dale said.
“Didn’t I tell you not to lie to me?” Tommy said to Dale and started pistol-whipping him again. When Dale began bleeding from those massive blows, his ex-wife started screaming again.
“Shut the fuck up!” Reno yelled at her again. But the lady wouldn’t stop screaming this time.
“Shut the fuck up!” Sal yelled at her, too, but she kept on screaming.
When Mick saw that she was not going to be silenced, he took his fist and knocked her so hard he knocked her out cold with one lick.
“Damn!” Sal said, surprised.
But Reno understood. “That’s how you have to do that shit,” he said. In Reno’s mind, and Mick’s, it was either silence her, or deal with the cops before they got any intel. She, in their minds, was dealt with.
“What do you wanna know?” Dale said. “Just don’t hit me anymore. I’ll tell you anything you wanna know.”
“Is there such a person as Mortimer Steele?” Tommy asked him.
“No. It’s a name Joe DeLuca made up.”
“Was he targeting my company?”
“No,” Dale admitted.
“Then who was he targeting? My wife?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me he was targeting anybody.”
“Then why the fuck was he outbidding me, and why was Pauley telling us he was targeting GCI?” Tommy asked angrily. “What the fuck was that about?”
“I don’t know,” said Dale.
Tommy stared at Dale. “Did Pauley tell DeLuca that Sal wanted to meet with him behind DeLuca’s back?”
Tommy Gabrini: A Family Man Page 12