Reno had been making phone calls all day, talking to every mob boss he knew from here to Palermo, but nobody knew a thing about Tony Tufarna’s whereabouts or even who the heck Eddie Dreeson was. Big money was being passed around, and a few heard that something was shaking, but they didn’t know any of the players. Which meant, to Reno, he was as much in the dark as he had ever been.
And he hated the dark.
It was that not-knowing, and that lack of concrete intel, that was eating him alive. He thought Tony was going to be subtle with his scheme because he remembered him as a guy who couldn’t organize a trip to a store, but then the safe house was taken out and now Reno didn’t know what to think. Now Reno felt blindsided again.
“That explosion didn’t feel like a move Tony would have made,” he said to Trina.
Trina looked at him. “You haven’t seen him in years, Reno.”
“I know. And I know time can change people. But not that much. At least that ain’t been my experience. People are essentially who they are. But until I know what I don’t know, I have got to play this smart. If I miss something, even something simple and subtle, it’ll all blow up in my face. I know it will. And I can’t have that.”
Trina grabbed his hand and held it. “I thought you were overreacting too when you detained Cooper and his sister. But after this, after what happened at that safe house, no. You weren’t overreacting. Something’s happening.”
Reno nodded his head. That was another reason why he loved Tree so much. He could talk to her. “I knew it wasn’t about Jimmy,” he said. “When you have me as your old man you have to pay attention to things. I can’t get Jimmy to understand that. Even after what he went through with that girl in Crane he still lets a pretty face control his ass. Now his girlfriend can get all hysterical about a dead man in her house, and instead of questioning the sense of it, he goes into Knight in shining armor mode. Forget that a dead body is in her house. Forget that she doesn’t want him to call the cops. She gives him a plausible explanation and his pussy-whipped ass springs into action.”
“He should have called you,” Trina said.
“Damn straight he should have! Shit like that don’t happen to regular people. I told him that. I told him if he sees anything strange, anything at all, he had to contact me. I don’t care where I am in this world, he was to call me and I would get my people to check it out.”
“But he calls me instead of you.”
“Thank God he did that much. Imagine what would have happened if his stupid ass would have went to that body dump location Ashley wanted to get him to.”
Trina sighed a worried sigh at just the thought of what could have been. It was bad enough, especially for Ash and Coop, but it could have been horrific too for Jimmy.
She looked at Reno. “So what are you planning to do going forward?”
“I told Briggs to bring him here.”
“Bring who here?”
“Eddie Dreeson.”
“Ashley’s boyfriend?”
“The one Jimmy still thinks doesn’t exist, yes.”
“But is that necessary, Reno? Is the breach that widespread that you can’t trust any of your safe houses now?”
“I don’t know. That’s the thing. I don’t have a gotdamn clue, Tree. And Dreeson’s dried up. Won’t tell Briggs a thing.”
They were seated side by side in patio chairs, with a small, round table between them. Trina was sipping a bottled water, and Reno was drinking a bottle of beer.
She looked at her husband. “Do you really think some small-timer like Eddie Dreeson would have the balls to blow up one of your safe houses?”
“No,” Reno said. “But he might know a person who knows a person and that person might have the balls. But so far Briggs isn’t getting shit out of him. I told him to lay off, give him time to think. When I get through with him he’ll talk. But I didn’t want to go in blind. I thought I could get some intel first.”
“But nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“What about Sal Luca? Has he heard anything?”
“Not a word. Everybody thought Tony had dropped off the face of this earth.”
Trina shook her head. “This is weird, isn’t it? Somebody usually knows something.” Then she thought about it. “Maybe he’s in disguise, Reno. Maybe he had plastic surgery and you can’t recognize whoever it is anymore.”
Reno shook his head. “Maybe he went to the moon and came back a moon bean, who the fuck knows? I can’t deal in maybes. I have to deal in the facts, even at a time when I don’t have a single one.”
Trina thought about that and took another sip. Then she jumped when they heard the sound of a crash from inside the penthouse, and then loud voices. Reno, followed by Trina, hurried from the balcony and ran inside. Jimmy was at the front door, attempting to leave. But Sal was stopping him. Lou and Artie, also in the room, were at the ready too.
“You can’t make me stay here!” Jimmy insisted, attempting to push pass his uncle.
But Sal was too strong. “Ain’t happening, pal,” he said, pushing Jimmy back.
“What’s this about?” Reno asked as he began walking up to his son.
Jimmy looked at him. The trance was gone. The anger and bitterness was on full display. “I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you are not.”
Jimmy immediately gritted his teeth and pulled a gun from his pants belt as if he was a thug from way back. Trina let out a gasp of shock when Jimmy took that gun and put it to his father’s temple. Sal, Lou, and Artie all moved to react, pulling their own weapons. But Reno motioned for them to stand down.
“It’s okay,” he said, waving them off, his stark blue eyes never leaving his son’s wild eyes.
Trina’s heart was pounding as she looked on. She was frozen where she stood.
“Put the gun away, Jimmy,” Reno said calmly.
“I’ll blow you away from here,” Jimmy said, his hand trembling but his face showing nothing but raw determination. “I tell you I’ll do it!”
“You aren’t going to do anything, boy,” Reno said. “Now put the gun away.”
“You never believe me. But I’ll do it, I declare I will! You did it to ShoShawna Shanks, and I’ll do it to you.”
He did it to Shanks, Reno thought. What would he know about that? What the fuck?
“Put it away, Jimmy,” Sal said, “before somebody gets hurt.”
“I want him to try it,” Jimmy said, still staring at and pointing his gun at his father. “Try it, motherfucker! Try to hurt me like you hurt Ashley. Try it! You killed Ash and Coop as if you put a gun to their head the way I have one to yours. You didn’t have to detain them. You knew they didn’t have the information you was looking for. But you kept them anyway! We begged you to let them go, but you kept them anyway! You killed them. You can blame that bomb all you want. But in my eyes, you killed them!”
Tears began to appear in Trina’s eyes as she watched father and son. As she watched Jimmy cross over from that innocent boy to this confused young man. He was so filled with grief he could barely maintain any composure. It was only then did she know what Reno seemed to know all along: that Jimmy wasn’t about to harm his father. He was only trying to finally get his attention. If you would have listened to me, his every move seemed to say, then this would have never happened!
He finally dropped the gun to his side. Sal loved Jimmy but he wasn’t taking any chances. He removed the gun from the young man’s hand.
Reno stood toe to toe with Jimmy. Trina’s heart was hammering. Any other man who would have pulled a gun on Reno would be dead. But this was his son. A very confused, grief-stricken, embittered son. Reno opened his arms. Jimmy, broken, fell into them with uncontrollable sobbing.
Then Trina cleared the room.
CHAPTER TEN
Reno, Sal and Trina were sitting in the dining room at the elongated table. Dominic was in Trina’s lap play
ing with a toy, and Reno sitting next to them with his arm around Trina’s waist. Sal was seated across from them sipping from a bottle of beer and still trying to make sense out of what was happening.
“I spoke with Tommy,” he said.
Reno looked at him. “Oh, yeah? How’s he doing?”
“He’s having some trouble with some females in Seattle. You know the story. They can’t deal with the fact that he picked Grace instead of them.”
“Too damn bad,” Reno said.
“That’s what I said. But he’s handling his business. But even Tommy hasn’t heard anything about Tufarna and what he’s up to.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Reno said, shaking his head. “I got nothing. Now I’m waiting for them to deposit Dreeson downstairs so I can get what I can get out of him.”
Sal frowned. “What’s taking them so long anyway?”
“They’re going around the world to get around the corner. On purpose. To make triple sure they don’t have a tail. I would rather Tony think his boy Eddie’s holed up in one of the safe houses. I have activities around a few of them in particular to try and make that very point. But Briggs and his guys should be here within the hour.”
Sal shook his head. “The games you have to play just because you’re Paulo Gabrini’s son, and Paulo’s been dead for years.”
“Tell me about it,” Reno said. “I’ve never been in the mob one day of my life, but because my old man was a boss, they put it on me.”
Sal smiled. “You’re like the gunslinger from those old cowboy movies, Reno. Everybody’s trying to establish themselves by gunning for you, even though you’re nothing more than an innocent, law-abiding citizen.”
“Innocent?” Trina said. “You must be joking!”
Sal and Reno both laughed, but then they thought about the circumstances and eased back up.
“Hey, Tree, that reminds me,” Sal said, leaning forward. “What’s that girl’s name again? The one that was in your office the other day?”
“Who? Gemma?”
“That’s her! Gemma with a G. Who is she?”
Trina smiled inwardly. Sal was always railing about Italian girls and how they and they alone were the only beautiful females in his eyes. She knew all along he was blowing smoke. “She’s a friend of mine. She’s also my new business partner.”
“But what does she do for a living? Anything?”
“She’s a lawyer.”
“And a very good one,” Reno added.
“You know she’s good if Reno sometimes uses her services,” Trina added. “That’s how I met her.”
“She married?”
Reno looked at Sal. “What’s it to you?”
“It ain’t nothing to me. What you asking for? I’m just making a little conversation here. Can’t I make a little conversation?”
“No, she’s not married, Sal,” Trina said with an amused look on her face. “She’s not even dating right now.”
“A looker like her? Why not?”
“Because she gives as good as she gets and many men can’t deal with that.”
“I can deal with it,” Sal said before he realized he had said it. “I mean, if I happen to ever be her man, which I’m not, and won’t be, but I’m just making what you call a rhetorical point.”
Reno laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Your lovesick ass.”
“Lovesick? Over her? Go fuck yourself Reno!”
Trina looked over by the entrance of the dining room as she and Reno both laughed. Jimmy, to her surprise, was standing there.
“Hey, bud,” she said, and Reno and Sal looked too.
“Hey,” Jimmy said and began walking toward the table.
“Feel better?”
“A little,” Jimmy said as he sat down beside his father. “I got in a few minutes of sleep anyway.”
“That’s better than nothing.”
“I guess so,” Jimmy said. Then he looked at his father. “Have they identified the bodies yet?”
Reno hated that he had to go through this upheaval, but when Jimmy agreed to put a dead body in his car, he brought it on himself. “Yes,” he said. “And their mother has been notified.”
Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut briefly, and then opened them again. “It’s awful,” he said, “but I was still wrong to point that gun at you.” He looked at Reno. “I’m sorry, Dad. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I deserved it, all right. And more. And someday somebody may very well put a gun to my head. But it won’t be my son.”
“Don’t say that, Dad,” Jimmy said with distress in his voice. “Nobody’s putting any gun to your head.”
“That’s the gun I gave you, isn’t it?”
Jimmy nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“What did I tell you when I gave it to you?”
“That I wasn’t supposed to think about pulling it out unless it was to protect Ma and Dominic.”
“Was putting it to my head a way of protecting our family?”
Jimmy had to smile about that. “No, sir.”
“Don’t try it again.”
“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said heartfelt. “I really hate that I did that.”
Reno squeezed his shoulder. “You were distraught. It’s a hellava thing you witnessed over at the house. But what’s done is done. You have to learn to move on, son.”
“You didn’t kill them,” Jimmy said as if it was a revelation to him.
Trina and Reno looked at him.
“The man who tried to frame me killed them. I know that now. You were just trying to protect me. You couldn’t let them go free.”
“Don’t,” Reno said with a frown on his face.
Jimmy didn’t understand. “Don’t what?”
“Justify my behavior,” Reno said, and Sal looked at him.
“What do you mean?” Jimmy asked.
“It can’t be justified,” Reno said. “You hear me? You and Tree were right. I should have let them go. They were kids for crying out loud! But I didn’t and now they’re dead. Nothing I can do about that now. It’s another blot against me, I guess. But now I have to make sure the same fate isn’t visited upon you or Tree or Dominic. That’s all I can do now to make this right.”
Reno’s cell phone rang. He answered it right away. “Reno,” he said. Then listened. Then he said that he was on his way and hung up. He stood up.
Sal stood up too. “The package is delivered?”
Reno nodded.
“I’m going too,” Jimmy said, standing also. But Reno was already shaking his head.
“No way.”
“But why not?”
“You aren’t getting caught in this shit, that’s why not. Now you stay here with your brother and my wife---”
“No!” Jimmy exploded. “I have to be there. I have to find out why Ashley and Cooper did what they did. I have to know if this man was really her boyfriend. I have to know, Dad. For myself, I have to know.”
Reno stared at Jimmy. He was trembling with rage and despair and love and hate. His emotions were all over the place. He was trying to decide if he was going to hate his father for the rest of his life the way Reno once had to decide about his own old man. And Reno knew right then and there that trying to shield a man like Jimmy from that part of life Reno himself could barely stomach, wasn’t going to work.
“Let’s do this then,” Reno said with conviction, and regret, as he, Jimmy, and Sal left the room. Trina clutched her baby tighter.
Sal and Jimmy were leaned against the wall behind the chair. Reno was walking around the room, without looking at the man in the chair. His suit coat was opened and his expensive shoes were purposely scrapping the basement floor with every step he took.
Finally, the man in the chair, Eddie Dreeson, had had enough.
“I told your goons,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “that I don’t know a thing about anything. I’m just an honest businessman trying to make it in this co
ld and brutal world.”
Reno stopped walking and stood in front of Eddie’s chair. Jimmy, with arms folded, was staring intensely. But not at Eddie. He was staring at his father.
“Why were you trying to set up my son?” Reno asked him.
“Why would I set up your son?” Eddie answered with a question of his own. He was a tall, bald black man with that kind of charm that couldn’t be bought and sold. Looking at him you wouldn’t call him the best looking guy in the world. But he had what ladies liked. Reno could see a girl like Ashley falling hard for a dude like him.
“Well?” Eddie asked. “Answer my question. Why would an honest businessman like me be bothering with a nobody son like yours? I wasn’t thinking about your son! I didn’t tell him to put a dead body in his trunk, that’s a doggone fact. I mean, who does that?” Eddie said this with a laugh. He said it, it seemed to Jimmy, as if he was toying with Reno. Jimmy was getting angry about it too. Why wasn’t his father lashing back? Why was his father letting this clown toy with him?
“But that fool boy of yours sure did,” Eddie went on. “But you know what that says to an honest gentleman like me? That says that boy wasn’t raised right. That says more about your parenting skills, Mr. Gabrini, than sweet Ashley’s skills of persuasion. Sad, but true.”
Reno smiled. “They told me you were funny.”
“Oh, yeah? Haha or funny as in gay? You have to clarify nowadays you know.”
“Haha,” Reno clarified. “But it really won’t make much difference. At least,” Reno said as he looked at the Rolex watch on his wrist, “not in another, say, two-three minutes.”
Eddie smiled. “Going somewhere?”
“No, but you are.” Reno pulled out a gun that had been lodged in his belt in the small of his back.
But, to Jimmy’s amazement, this move only made Eddie laugh. He was so cocky. As if they couldn’t touch him.
“So you gonna shoot me now?” Eddie asked Reno.
“Yes,” Reno said, “unless you take that honesty you brag about and answer my questions.”
“You should have talked to your boys, Reno. I’m disappointed in you. Everybody talk about you like you’re some big man who make grown men tremble in their boots. But you’re pulling the same shit your boys tried to pull. They threatened me too, man. They said they were going to shoot me too. I told them to go for it, baby, go for it. I could use a little excitement.”
MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) Page 12