It was surreal to Val, to hear this woman talk about plans that involved killing people, and to see her father sitting there, caught up in this craziness too. “What do you want from me?”
“What happened to Reno’s wife? Why didn’t Fred get to her?”
Val’s heart was already pounding fast, now it was so terrified it was almost stopping. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about what happened at the Gabrinis’ last night. We snatched you last night and then released you to confuse the matter, to distract Reno enough so Fred could get to Trina. But it didn’t happen. Why?”
Val shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What about Fred Ridgeway? Where is he? And you’d better answer that one right.”
Val swallowed hard. “I think he’s dead,” she said.
The woman shook her head.
“Damn,” the man behind Val said, disappointed too.
“I should have known not to send somebody untested like that,” the woman said.
“But he was Jimmy’s stepfather. He was an ex-cop. He was the only person we could find who could get close enough to Trina.”
“Nothing according to plan,” the woman said. “Not one damn thing. But that’s okay. That’s all right. ” Then she looked at the man standing near Buddy. “Release him,” she said.
Val was hopeful when the guy removed the ropes from her father and he was able to stand up. But her hopefulness disappeared when the women ordered the men to take Val and bound her instead.
The woman looked at Buddy Wellstone. “You go to Reno. And you deal directly with Reno and Reno alone. You tell him that the only way your daughter lives, is if a Gabrini dies. You tell him I want him to deliver to me either that wife of his, or one of his children. You tell him that if I don’t get what I’m asking for, I’ll blow her brains out.”
Buddy’s heart dropped. “But he’s not going to do that. He’s not going to sacrifice his child to save mine.”
“Reno won’t. Of course not. But Jimmy will. He supposedly loves this girl. He’ll come to her rescue. But you deal with Reno. I want him to make the call.”
“You just go and tell him what I just told you,” she said. “And Mr. Wellstone, if you want to see your daughter alive again, you had better not allow them to try any tricks. No cops, no tricks. And you know why I know they won’t try anything? Because you’re going to tell them about the bomb. You’re going to tell them that if they even think about breaking in or attempting any kind of rescue effort, this whole thing will blow, with your daughter right in the heart of the devastation. Understood?”
He was stunned. “Yes,” he said, as he looked at his daughter. “I understand.”
“So what are you waiting for? Go. Time is running out!”
“But,” Buddy said, thinking about this, “they’ll want to know who sent me.”
The woman smiled. “Tell him Miss New York sent you.”
Buddy frowned, but he hurried to do her bidding.
Nicky Minnelli sat in the empty bleachers on the soccer field and studied the game plan in the binder. The evening game was hours away, but he was already tweaking his plan. He had a lot on his plate, but volunteer coach to his daughter’s soccer team was the crowning achievement for him.
Just as he was but to drain down more of his bottled water, he saw the Bentley drive up. Reno’s Bentley. As soon as he saw it, his chest squeezed in a crippling fear. He couldn’t know, he thought. How in the world could he know?
But the car door opened, and Reno, the driver, stepped out. Then Tommy, Sal, and Jimmy stepped out too. And all four men, with Reno leading the way, began to head toward the bleachers. But just as they began to climb those bleachers, Nicky attempted to smile. He knew he had to make this moment the performance of his life.
“Reno,” he said jovially. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“Wanna talk to you,” Reno said.
“What’s this? You brought the whole family?”
Reno didn’t respond to that. It was obvious that he had.
“What’s up, Tommy?” Nicky said. “Long time no see. What’s up, Sal?”
“What’s up with you?” Sal asked. “Since when have you been into soccer?”
“Since I had a little girl. I coach her team, didn’t Reno tell you?”
Sal frowned. “What the fuck Reno gonna tell me something like that for? Why would I care what you’re coaching? It’s not that serious.”
Nicky laughed. “Pardon me, sir. I forgot who I was dealing with.” Then he looked at Jimmy. “You even brought your son with you. Jimmy Mack, right?”
“Right,” Jimmy said, although he didn’t remember ever seeing this guy before in his life.
“Fred Ridgeway,” Reno said, getting down to business. “You know him?”
Nicky thought about it. Then shook his head. “No. Not that I can recall anyway. Why? What about him?”
“You claim you don’t know him,” Sal said, “so what difference does it make?”
“I don’t know him,” Nicky said emphatically.
“He claims he knows you,” Reno said. “He claims you were the money man behind his drug activity.”
Nicky frowned. “Drugs? Are you serious?”
“No, we’re playing,” Sal said. “Does it look like we’re serious?”
“Reno,” Nicky said, “we’re partners. We have vested interest in different ventures here. What are you accusing me of?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. I want to know what you know.”
“I told you I don’t know nothing. Not about any drugs anyway. You know how I feel about that shit.”
“Then why did your name come up?” Tommy asked. “Why would Fred Ridgeway name you specifically?”
“I never even heard of Fred Ridgeway. Come on now. Me and drugs? Every one of you know me better than that.”
And on many levels it did sound improbable. Nicky Minnelli involved with drugs? Reno, Tommy, and Sal were beginning to see how far-fetched it was.
“Another misdirection by Fred?” Tommy asked Reno.
“Maybe,” Reno said.
“But you had him dead to rights, Reno,” Sal said. “He was a guy with nothing to lose. Why would he lie?”
“Cover for somebody else?” Tommy asked.
“Somebody near and dear to him?” Reno suggested.
“But who?” Sal asked.
But as they spoke, there was a slight movement. So slight that only Jimmy, who was not involved in the conversation, caught it. His father and his uncles knew Nicky Minnelli, and they were biased in his favor, but Jimmy didn’t have such allegiance. All he saw was a worm trying to squirm out of the net. And then he realized what was happening. He realized what that almost negligible movement was about. The guy knew he was done for, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.
Jimmy realized it just as Nicky reached under his bookbinder. But Jimmy was faster. He pulled out his gun and put a bullet in Nicky’s brain before Nicky knew what hit him. Reno, Tommy, and Sal all were stunned and quickly pulled out their weapons too. Nicky fell back, the binder dropped from his lap, and a gun, on his lap, was exposed.
Reno, Sal, and Tommy all looked at Jimmy. Nicky might not have taken all of them out, but he would have certainly taken out one or two.
Their hearts pounded against their grateful chests.
FIFTEEN
The drive back to the PaLargio was a slow one. Sal drove, Tommy sat on the front passenger seat, and Reno and Jimmy sat in the back. Reno had already phoned his people and told them to handle the scene at the soccer field, but that still didn’t erase his uneasiness. He kept thinking about his son, and how he was no kid anymore. He looked at him.
“What are you thinking about?”
A stormy look came over Jimmy. “Val,” he said.
“What about Nicky Minnelli? No thoughts about him?”
“He would have killed one of us if I didn’t do what I did
. So hell no. I’m not thinking about him.”
Sal glanced through the rearview mirror at Jimmy. “The kid’s right,” he said.
Reno nodded. “Yeah, I know. And the kid’s no kid anymore,” he added.
“Yeah, I know,” said Sal.
“Val will come around, Jimmy,” Tommy said.
This interested Jimmy. He knew his Uncle Tommy knew all there was to know about females. “She’s very delicate,” Jimmy said. “I don’t know if she can come around.”
“She will.”
“And he should know,” Sal said. “His old lady was just as delicate as Val, and she came around. Somewhat,” Sal added and he and Tommy exchanged glances.
Reno’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out and looked at his Caller ID. “My security chief,” he said.
“Put him on Speaker, Reno,” Tommy said.
Reno placed the call on Speaker when he answered it. “Yeah, Boz, what’s up?”
“We still can’t find any connection to Nicky Minnelli and drugs.”
This surprised Reno. “None?”
“Nothing, boss. We checked up and down the line. Nothing. He’s clean. He’s got shares in a lot of small businesses, including a few with you.”
“Right.”
“And it all looks legit. There may be some behind the curtain shit we can’t decipher, but I doubt it. We checked up and down the line.”
“So you’re telling us,” Jimmy said, “that a guy who tries to pull a gun after Pop accuses him of being hooked up with drugs, isn’t hooked up with drugs? That’s what you’re telling us, Boz?”
“Who the fuck I’m talking to?”
“Jimmy Mack, who the fuck you think?”
Sal laughed. Reno and Tommy were still getting used to it.
“Go on, Boz,” Reno said.
“The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling y’all. Nicky Minnelli is clean.”
“How far back did you go?” Jimmy asked. “Maybe it’s not so recent.”
“We covered it, Jimmy, all right? We went all the way back. He was born to middle class parents in Schenectady, New York. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father drove trucks. He has one sister named Marcy and a brother named Ryan. He graduated high school but never attended college. He never married, he has no children. He has his hands in a lot of businesses, all of which are clean. We did our homework.”
“Good,” Reno said. “Now what about that mess at the soccer field?”
“It’s being cleaned up as we speak,” Boz said. “Nothing to see over there.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” Reno said. “We’re on our way in,” he added, and killed the call.
“That’s some strange shit,” Sal said. “Nicky Minnelli is clean as a whistle, but he tries to put a cap in one of us? No way. That shit ain’t flying with me.”
“Me either,” Jimmy said. “They missed something.”
“Had to,” Sal agreed.
Reno didn’t respond. Because they weren’t saying anything he didn’t already know. He, instead, was thinking. If it wasn’t drugs, what was it?
Buddy Wellstone stood at the information desk inside the PaLargio trying to explain to the security chief that he needed to see Reno. He had just arrived, and wanted to go up to the PaLargio, but was detained. But he walked away from Reno’s security chief as soon as he saw the Gabrini men enter the lobby. Boz followed him, to make certain he was who he said he was, but the Gabrinis, it seemed to Boz, were already eyeing him suspiciously. Jimmy, in fact, moved in front of his father as if he were his protector when he saw the older man approaching.
“What’s he doing here?” Reno asked, as Jimmy moved in front of him.
“Val probably told him what went down,” Jimmy replied, “and now he wants to confront me about it.”
“Mr. Wellstone,” Jimmy said when Buddy arrived in front of them. “Val’s not here. She went home earlier.”
“I have a message,” Buddy said, looking beyond Jimmy, at Reno. “For you.”
Reno stepped back in front. Boz, too, moved closer. “Who is this message from?”
“She said to tell you it’s from Miss New York.”
Sal frowned. “Miss New York? Who the fuck is Miss New York?”
Then Reno and Tommy looked at each other. “Wasn’t Marcy Davenport Miss New York?”
“Runner up,” Reno said. “Describe her?” Reno asked Buddy.
“Tall white woman, blonde hair, thin.”
Reno and Tommy nodded at each other. But then Reno remembered something else. He looked at Boz. “Didn’t you say Nicky had a sister?”
“Yeah,” Boz said. “Marcy Minnelli.”
Tommy looked at Reno. “Wasn’t she married once?”
“Don’t remember. But I know she changed her name at some point.”
“Last I heard she was on drugs,” Tommy said.
“Yeah. I heard that too.”
“And Fred declared Nicky was a dealer.”
Reno nodded. “Boz and his men didn’t crack the code, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t one to crack. Maybe he kept it intimate. Maybe he only supplied certain people. People like an ex-cop. People like his sister.”
“Who is she anyway?” Buddy asked.
“Somebody I used to know,” Reno said. “Where is she now? Did she follow you here?”
“No. She’s at my daughter’s house.”
Jimmy looked at him. “At Val’s house? Where’s Val?”
“She’s there too,” Buddy said. “I was gonna go to the police. I was gonna leave my house and go straight to the police. But the explosives. She said she has a bomb.”
“A bomb?” Jimmy asked this too loud and Tommy immediately suggested they take it upstairs. And they did. Reno told Buddy to follow him, and they all began to head for the private elevators.
“High alert, boss?” Boz asked as Reno walked by him.
“The highest,” Reno ordered, and Boz hurried for his office to add more men.
As a precaution, Buddy was carefully frisked by Tommy before they got onto the elevator, but not a question was asked until they were inside the penthouse great room and had sat the obviously rattled older man down.
Trina was in the kitchen when she heard them enter. She was hanging out with her parents, who Reno had flown in, and her two youngest children. She immediately stood up and handed baby Sophia to her mother, Earnestine Hathaway.
Cecil Hathaway, Trina’s father, was disappointed. “Why is it that you always get to hold her? Why is it that I never get to hold her?”
“Because this is a baby, not a golf club,” Earnestine said, and Trina laughed as she made her way out of the kitchen and into the living area. When she saw that Buddy Wellstone was with Reno and the guys, she stopped in her tracks. Tommy saw her standing near the back side of the room, but no-one else did.
“And she didn’t tell you anything?” Reno was asking. He sat on the coffee table in front of Buddy. Tommy sat in the flanking chair, Sal sat on the arm of that chair, but Jimmy was standing up.
“She didn’t tell me anything.”
“How did you end up there?” Sal asked.
“I went by my daughter’s house late last night after I got back in town, because Jimmy had called me earlier saying he hadn’t heard from her, and she wasn’t answering my phone calls either. So I went by to check on her. As soon as I walked up to her front door, I saw where somebody had jimmied the lock. I opened the door, but as soon as I did I was pulled inside.”
“Who by?”
“These two men. And then there’s this woman standing in my daughter’s living room. The woman is the ringleader. And she started talking about how she hadn’t heard from somebody named Fred, and that how he was supposed to call in but he didn’t. Everything changes after that. She has to come up with a different plan. Then Val showed up this morning, and they untied me, tied up Val, and told me to come here.”
“What did she tell you to say?”
“That my daughter will liv
e only if you sacrifice your wife or one of your children. You can’t be the sacrifice. Only your wife can, or one of your children.”
“That’s fucking insane!” Sal said. “Why would you sacrifice your kids for somebody else’s kid? That makes no sense.”
But it made perfect sense to Reno. “Payback,” Reno said.
“For what?” Sal asked.
“Nicky,” Reno said.
And all of the Gabrinis immediately understood.
“Who’s Nicky?” Buddy asked.
“Reno’s son,” Tommy said. “He was killed. Marcy Davenport, who we believe is the woman at your daughter’s house, was Nicky’s mother.”
“And the kid was undoubtedly named after his uncle, after Nicky Minnelli,” Sal suggested. “Dammit! That damn Marcy’s back again.” Then Sal frowned, as something suddenly occurred to him. “Oh, no,” he said.
Reno and Tommy looked at him. “What?”
Sal looked at Reno. “Remember how Nicky died? You think she’s . . .”
Reno nodded, realizing it too. “Yeah,” he said. “I think that’s her plan.”
“What?” Buddy asked, concerned. “How did Nicky die?” But no-one answered him. Everybody was in deep contemplation. He looked at Jimmy. “How did he die, Jimmy?”
Jimmy exhaled. He hated to admit it. “Explosion,” he said. “He died in an explosion.”
Buddy’s heart dropped through his shoe. If he thought Val was in trouble before, it couldn’t be more starker now.
Jimmy looked at Reno. “She’s going to be my wife,” he said. “So she’s my responsibility. I’ve got to go and get her.”
Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) Page 16