“Sit down, Tommy, sit down,” Reno ordered, and Tommy took a seat on the sofa. Sal Luca immediately took a seat beside him.
Reno took a seat in the chair opposite them, then ordered Carmine to get drinks for everybody.
“What y’all having?” Carmine asked.
“Black and Tan,” Sal Luca said.
“Gin Rickey,” said Tommy Gabrini.
“One B. and T. and one G.R. coming up,” Carmine said as he headed for the full, massive bar along the back wall. He already knew what Reno wanted.
“So how’s life in Seattle, Tommy?” Reno asked as he leaned back in a slouched position.
“Life is good,” Tommy said, his legs crossed, his perfectly tailored clothes, his never-a-strand-out-of-place blondish-brown hair, his imported shoes, Rolex watch, diamond ring, all an education in elegance. In the Gabrini family Reno was renowned for being the toughest of any tough guy, for always being the leader, the go-to man, the boss. But Tommy was renowned for having the brains, for having that rare ability to reason on a level the rest of them weren’t even considering. They used to be close, Tommy and Reno, until the feud between their fathers caused them to have no choice but to severe ties. A split they both regretted.
“It rains too much up there for me,” Reno said with a grimace. “Every time I go there it’s raining.”
“Stop believing old wives tales, Reno,” Tommy said with a smile. “Seattle has its wet days, but no more than any other city in our great county.”
"“I still hate it,” Reno said with a frown. “But talk to me. How’s business? I knew you were in the security business, but last I heard you owned restaurants too?”
“Only a couple, yeah. Diamante’s and my new one, Taste of Southern it’s called. A completely different concept. The security business can be grinding. Too many variables. My restaurants are my passion. When I want relaxing work, I hang out at those particular establishments.”
“I also hear your firm’s been handling security detail for movie stars and shit now.”
“Unfortunately, yeah,” Tommy said.
“Tough gig, hun?”
“Pains in the asses you wouldn’t believe,” Tommy said to Reno’s laughter. “But I have good people working for me. They know how to handle their business. It’s just been too much of it lately. Stalkers, and crazed fans, and every 90-day wonder of a just popped up pop star want top dollar protection. So we give them top dollar protection.”
“And as if you didn’t have enough on your plate, here I come bothering you with more.”
“You don’t have to say that to me, Dominic,” Tommy said, his bright green eyes wide with offense. “You’re family. You’re number one in my book. You call, I come. You’re the kid who used to beat up other kids for taking my lunch money.”
Reno laughed, remembering their childhood days, remembering how he always had to defend his brother, sisters, cousins, everybody, even those that were older and bigger than he was. “And then you’d get angry with me all the way home from school, angry because I stuck up for you, figuring your skills of persuasion would win the day when those thugs didn’t give a damn about your skills. I remember it well.”
“I’m just glad you gave me a call,” Tommy said. “I haven’t had to deal with any underground work for a few years, but I still have some pretty good connections.”
“So do I,” Sal said, “and I’m telling you Reno, what y’all did with Frank Partanna was a major fuck up.”
Reno looked at Sal. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that hit on Partanna, what you think I’m talking about? You fucked up. You hit him and left the brains of his organization untouched.”
“If we would have known he had an organization beyond himself, Sal, we would have took care of it. As it happened, we didn’t know.”
“Right. You fucked up.”
For a hot moment Reno wanted to kick Sal Luca’s ass, he was one of those obnoxious men that made his blood boil, but Carmine returned with the drinks, handed them to everyone, and the moment passed. Carmine sat on the arm of Reno’s chair.
Reno looked at Tommy. “What’s going on, Tommy? It’s like everything’s fuzzy, nothing’s clear. My people been all over the east, calling in all kinds of favors, but they aren’t getting any answers.”
“Your people are too well known on the east coast, and that’s where the action is, that’s where Partanna’s underground network is operating. My people, and me and Sal, aren’t known like that.”
“You got answers?”
“We’ve got answers,” Tommy said.
“What is it?” Carmine asked. “Pags running the show?”
“Willard Pagnini?” Tommy asked. “No.”
“Well, that’s where we differ,” Sal said. “I say he is running it, that this idea that he’s the backup man, the button only, I ain’t buying it. It’s that same sleight of hands shit Partanna been pulling all his life.”
“What you mean by that?” Carmine asked Sal.
“Everybody was running around thinking Frank Partanna was an idiot, a surface don just like Uncle Paulo was.”
“That’s enough, Sal,” Tommy warned.
“Well it’s true. Reno’s old man, our Uncle Paulo, didn’t have backup.”
“He had backup,” Carmine said, offended.
“He had you and Dirty,” Sal said, not backing down. “That’s not exactly a syndicate, Carmine, now is it?”
“He had Vito Giancarlo in his corner.”
“A man I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw,” Sal said. “But that’s not the point I’m making here.”
“What’s your point, Sal Luca?” Reno asked, staring at his cousin. “Spit it out.”
“What I’m saying is that everybody was thinking Partanna was the lone wolf, when we now find out he wasn’t. Now they got us thinking Pags ain’t the leader of the underground, that’s he’s just the underboss, when I ain’t buying it. Just as sure as my name is Salvatore Luciano Gabrini, I ain’t buying it. This business with Pags not being in control is a con too far as I’m concerned. They’re taking their con to a whole other level.”
Reno looked at Tommy, intrigued by what Sal had just said. Sal was a douche bag, but he was no moron. Used to, in fact, be a darn good cop who joined the force when Tommy joined it, and quit when Tommy called it quits. “But you don’t think that’s what’s going on, Tommy?” he asked his dapper cousin. “You don’t think Pagnini’s really running the show and we all got it wrong?”
“I don’t think he’s running the show, no,” Tommy said. “Sal does, but I don’t.”
Although Reno didn’t show it, he was relieved. Pags was always a loose cannon, too unpredictable to read. “Pags is second in command, though? He’s the underboss, though?”
“Yes, he’s number two,” Tommy said.
“But who’s number one? Who’s running this fucking show? I hate chasing ghosts!”
Tommy sipped from his Gin Rickey, his eyes intense, as if he was still working it out to his own satisfaction. “I believe Partanna has a son.”
Carmine stood to his feet. “Get the fuck outta here!”
Reno, amazed too, sat erect. “What?”
“I’m still working it out, I can’t say it with one hundred percent certainty, but yes, I believe he has a son.”
“Who? Where?”
“I believe he’s been hiding in plain sight, right there in Jersey.”
“Jersey?” Carmine said, astounded. “That ain’t possible.”
“And that ain’t all,” Sal said with a grin. “This far-fetched theory of Tommy’s just gets better and better.”
Reno stared at Tommy. “Who is he?”
“His name is Paul Brown,” Tommy said.
Carmine smiled. “Paul Brown? You got to be kidding me. What kind of name is that? Nobody has that plain a name. Especially an Italian.”
“An Italian hiding in plain sight has it,” Tommy said. “An Italian c
op hiding in plain sight has it.”
Reno’s mouth almost gaped open. “A cop?” he asked incredulously.
Sal smiled. “I told you.”
“He’s a cop?” Reno asked.
“An unassuming, uniformed police officer with the Newark, New Jersey police department.”
“Get the fuck outta here, Tommy!” Carmine yelled. “What you telling us here?”
“I’m telling you it’s complicated, that’s what I’m telling you,” Tommy said. “I’m still investigating but that’s what I’ve uncovered so far. And I believe it’s accurate intel. But we have to be careful with this, we still don’t have enough information to make any definitive conclusions. But I will say this,” he said, looking at Reno this time, “when we do get that definitive word, this Paul Brown character and Pags and everybody else associated with that syndicate will be brought to justice. And I don’t mean street justice, Reno. But justice. Understood?”
Reno leaned back. He was still trying to work out the fact that Partanna could be that smart to hide his son in plain sight as a legitimate, unassuming, police officer. He was so off base about the man, so wrong beyond his wildest dreams of how wrong he could be, that it spooked him. Because his miscalculations and assumptions almost cost his wife her life. What else, he wondered with an urgency that was now gripping him, was he overlooking? What else was he getting so wrong?
His cell phone rang. When he pulled it out and saw that it was Vito Giancarlo calling, he answered. “Vito, what’s up?” he said and everybody in the room looked at him.
“Reno, how you doing?” Vito said through the phone.
“I’m doing good, what’s up?” Reno knew Vito didn’t call unless something major was going down.
“You need to come to Jersey, Reno. I need to see you.”
“See me about what?”
“We can’t discuss this over the phone. But you know me, right?”
“Yeah I know you. What you ask me if I know you for?”
“Because you need to trust that I know what I’m asking here. You need to come see me in Jersey. You need to get on your plane and get here as soon as you can.”
Reno hesitated. “Is it about Partanna?” he asked.
“What you think?” Vito said. “Of course it’s about Partanna. Big time.”
Reno closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll be there.”
There was what sounded like a sigh of relief. “Good move, Reno,” Vito said. “I’ll see you when you get here. Come to my place.”
“Okay,” Reno said and hung up the phone.
“What Vito Giancarlo want?” Carmine asked.
“Says he needs to see me. I’m going to have to fly out to Jersey in the morning.”
“You mentioned Frank Partanna,” Tommy said. “What about him?”
“He won’t say over the phone.”
“Maybe he agrees with me that it’s Pags who’s running the show and he wants to warn you,” Sal Luca said. “Although with that fucker you can never tell what he’s really up to.”
“Where does he want to meet you?” Tommy asked.
“At his place over in Newark.”
Tommy was shaking his head before Reno could complete his sentence. “Not a good idea,” he said. “You could be walking into a trap.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Reno said a little snappishly. “Who you telling? I told him okay, I’ll meet him at his place, but I ain’t going nowhere near his place. I’ll meet him at a hotel, and I’ll call him after I get to that particular hotel.”
Tommy smiled, as did Carmine and Sal Luca. “Does your brain ever sleep, Reno?” Carmine asked with admiration.
But Reno didn’t answer. The fact that he had to constantly calculate and recalculate, calibrate and recalibrate wasn’t something he was proud of. And especially not now, with his responsibilities to Trina, with this phone call from Giancarlo.
“Don’t look so worried, Reno,” Carmine said. “Maybe Vito will just rehash what Tommy and Sal Luca already told us about Partanna, maybe that’s all this meeting is about.”
Reno stared forward, thinking. “Maybe,” he said, although it didn’t feel that simple. If Vito was insisting on a face to face, that automatically meant it wasn’t as simple as information sharing, it wasn’t simple at all. Something was up. Something big.
He looked at Tommy. Tommy was staring at him.
***
Vito Giancarlo hung up the phone too. Seated in the study of his New Jersey home, he looked across his desk. In front of his desk, puffing on a cigarette for the first time in nearly six years, was Marcy Davenport, looking radiant and determined, he thought, but also looking flustered and terrified.
“He’s coming?” she asked him.
“He’ll be here,” Vito assured her.
She doused her cigarette in the ashtray on the desk and walked over to the window. Vito had never seen her so nervous.
“You need to calm yourself down,” he advised.
“The one thing I said I’d never do in this life is to have anything more to do with that Gabrini family. Now the first sign of trouble and I’m calling Reno.”
“But this is big trouble,” Vito said. “You need Reno.”
Marcy turned around, leaned her lithe body against the side of the window and folded her arms, her wariness showing. “I know. That’s the only reason I’m allowing it.”
Vito looked at her magnificent body, his penis throbbing at just the sight of it. “He’s married now.”
“You told me.”
“That may change things for him.”
“That doesn’t change a damn thing,” Marcy snapped. “She’s just a placeholder. A black placeholder at that.”
Vito stared at her. “You’re serious? You gonna try and win him back?”
“If they’re pulling me back into the game,” she said, “I may as well be with the best in the business.”
“And Reno’s the best.”
“Reno’s the best,” she admitted. “The asshole.”
“You should have told him the truth from the beginning, Marcy, you know how righteous Reno can be. If you would have told him the truth, he wouldn’t have left you.”
“If he loved me he wouldn’t have walked out on me. He wouldn’t have let his old man treat me the way he did. If he loved me the way he was claiming he did.”
“Love,” Vito said dismissively. “What’s love? I don’t think that ruthless son-of-a-bitch Reno Gabrini is capable of love.”
“He’s capable,” Marcy said with confidence. “And he did love me once,” she added. Still does, she was also convinced, just as she was equally convinced about her own hatred for him, hatred that only began after he refused to give her a second chance. Reno was hard like that. Screw him once and he was through with you. But he loved her once. Oh how he loved her once.
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