The beefy bodyguards hurried up to room two-ninety-two, which was midway along the corridor. On the finger count of three, they swiped the card at the door’s key slot and bum-rushed inside, relying on the element of immediate surprise.
Reno, Tommy, and Sal continued to wait. When the signal came, they hurried to the room, entered, and the door was shut behind them.
Inside was indeed little Nicholas, strapped to a chair in the hotel’s one-bedroom suite, black drapes covering all of the walls. Reno, Tommy, and Sal stopped, just as security had, because he was strapped into the chair with explosives around his neck. Reno moved toward him, but a voice, not to mention Tommy’s hand, stopped him.
“Don’t come any closer, Reno.” It was Pags voice. Coming from the closed bedroom door just behind the chair. “That kid will be history if you even think about coming any closer!”
“What do you want, Pags?” Reno asked, his heart pounding.
“If you don’t have that wife of yours here within the next minute, it’s over. And don’t try me.”
Reno motioned to Tommy, wondering if Pags was able to see them. Tommy motioned at a clock on the side table that he was willing to bet was a camera.
“You heard me, Reno. Your wife for your son’s life.”
Tommy whispered to Sal to go and get Katrina.
“But Reno,” Sal said.
“Just get her and get her now,” Tommy ordered.
Sal looked at Reno, who was still talking with Pags, and left the room.
“Where’s he going?”
“To get Mrs. Gabrini,” Tommy offered.
Reno turned and looked at Tommy, astounded. “My wife isn’t coming here. Got that?”
“Your wife or this kid,” Pags said. And I’m not playing Reno!” Pags shouted. “I want her here and I want her here now or this kid will be blown to more pieces than a Jigsaw puzzle!” The little boy started crying. “All I have to do is press this button, Reno, and he’s through!”
“Okay,” Reno said. “She’s coming. She’s on her way. Just don’t do anything stupid, Pags.” Then Reno looked at the young boy. “It’s okay, son. It’ll be okay.”
“I want my mommy,” young Nicholas said.
“You’ll have her. Don’t worry. She’s here. Everything will be just fine.”
“How did you find out he was here?” Pags suddenly asked.
Reno looked at Tommy. Tommy nodded. “Paul Brown sent us,” Reno said. “He’s right downstairs, in fact.”
“Paul . . . But how did you . . .?” Then there appeared to be some movement. Reno assumed he was making a phone call, to confirm that his boss had been snatched.
“Still there, Pags?” Reno said after a long few moments. “Because we have a proposition too.”
“Paul is on his usual patrol. You don’t have Paul. What are you talking about?”
“Tell your goons to look closer,” Reno suggested.
There was an even longer pause. Then: “What proposition?” Pags eventually asked.
“The kid for your boss.”
“I want your wife. There’s no ands, ifs, or buts about that.”
“You don’t understand,” Reno assured him. “We will kill Paul Brown, aka your boss, if you don’t let this kid go and let him go unharmed now.”
“What the fuck you mean I don’t understand! You don’t understand. I want your wife.”
“And what about Paul Brown? What about your boss?”
Trina and Marcy entered the room with Sal Luca. As soon as Marcy saw her son she ran toward him, with Reno being the last man able to catch her and hold her back.
“Don’t you dare come any further, Marcy!” Pags yelled.
“It’s all right, Nicky, okay? It’s all right.”
“Hello, Marce,” Pags said.
“Where are you?” Marcy asked, looking around. Reno motioned toward the closed door.
“He can see us,” Reno said. “Let us handle this.”
“I can also hear you, Reno,” Pags said. “So stop the sidebars.”
Reno looked back. To his relief, Tommy had a hand on Trina.
“You didn’t answer my question, Pags,” Reno said. “What about your boss?”
“What about him?”
“The boy’s life for his life.”
“No thanks,” Pags said as if he was unaffected.
Reno frowned. “What do you mean no thanks? You don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand! Telling me I don’t understand. You don’t understand! It must be your wife. It was my father, it must be your wife!”
Reno was dumbstruck, terrified that they’d just made another miscalculation. “Your father?”
“You iced Frank Partanna. You iced my father.”
“Your father, what do I look stupid to you? You was his henchman, you was his button. You never was any kin to Frank Partanna!”
“He was my father. And you murdered him. Now I will murder what’s near and dear to you.”
“No!” Marcy cried. “You can’t kill my child, Pags. You said you wouldn’t harm him. You said I had to bring Reno to you, and I did that.”
“Don’t worry Marcy. Your child will be fine. As long as Reno takes his wife and replace her in that chair. Then I will disarm your son’s explosives, you can remove them, and he can go home with you tonight.”
Marcy looked at Reno.
“No, Pags,” he said, shaking his head. “Not my wife.”
“Reno,” Trina said. Reno turned to her. “He’s a child, Reno,” she said, with pleading in her voice.
“No,” Reno said. “No!” Then he turned toward the camera. “You can have me, Pags. I’ll sit in your chair. You can have me! I’m the villain here. I’m the one who ordered your father’s hit. Take me. But not my wife.”
“Your wife or your son’s life,” Pags said.
“Me! Only me, Pags!”
“Your wife or your son’s life.”
“Listen to me!” Reno yelled.
“One, two, ” Pags began the countdown.
“Reno!” Marcy yelled. “Don’t let my baby die!”
Reno’s heart felt as if it was coming out of his chest. “Pags, you can’t do this. Listen to me, Pags!”
“Three, four,” Pags continued.
“Put her in that chair, Reno!” Marcy yelled. “Put that black bitch in that chair!”
“Take me, Pags!” Reno yelled. “Take me!”
“Your wife or your son’s life, Reno. Five, six.”
“Get out of here, Tree!” Reno screamed as he ran toward the chair. Trina’s heart dropped through her shoe.
“Seven, eight.”
“No, Reno!” Trina screamed, as she saw what her husband was about to do.
“Reno, save my son!” Marcy screamed, as she saw what Reno was doing.
“Nine,” Pags said as Reno lifted the vest from over his son’s head, pushed his son away, and fell on top of the vest.
And like the calm before the storm, everything went momentarily still.
“Ten,” Pags said. “You lose, Reno.”
And then the explosion.
It wasn’t as big as they had expected it to be, but it was powerful enough to knock Trina, Tommy, Marcy, and most of the guards backwards and off of their feet. Trina, Tommy, and Sal immediately looked at Reno. They knew he was gone. They knew a body on top of those kind of explosives could not possibly live.
But Reno, to his own shock, was fine. Above them all, he was perfectly fine.
Then they heard the low groan of agony. It was Marcy. She was crawling toward her son, who had been tossed, by Reno, against the wall. And it was immediately obvious that the boy was still wired, that the explosive vest wasn’t the detonation point, but the explosives inside of his shirt. Explosives they didn’t even know about. Chess, not checkers.
While his security team knocked down the bedroom door, only to find Pags with a self-inflicted bullet through his head, Reno sat on his haunches in disbelief. Staring at the d
ead child. Staring at Marcy’s grief as she held him in her loving arms. He felt as if he was dreaming. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. But it was. It was atonement, retribution, payback for all of his sins.
He stood up, still staring at Marcy, still staring at that dead child in her arms, a child that was supposed to be his but that he knew no better than he’d know a stranger on a street corner, and he headed for the exit door.
Trina stood up too, staring at Reno, her eyes so stunned they couldn’t blink. When Reno walked up to her, he stopped by her side.
“Leave me,” he said with anguish in his voice, looking not at her, but straight ahead. “Please leave me.”
And then he left.
Tommy stood up too, pulling a now crying Trina into his arms, his eyes still fixated on Marcy and her deceased child.
Sal Luca followed Reno.
But he could barely keep up. Reno had that swagger, had that kill or be killed animal look that scared him. And he walked with that kind of purpose down the second floor corridor. By now hotel guests were in the hall, terrified by the explosion, but Reno didn’t even see them. He ran down the back stairs again, ran until he was in the basement again, ran until he was down the hall and into the soundproof room where Paul Brown was being held.
Sal Luca had just come into the room as Reno walked up to Paul Brown, pulled out a revolver, and shot the mob boss, mob style, between the eyes. He was dead instantaneously.
Reno then turned around and left.
Sal looked at Carmine, amazed. But Carmine immediately made a phone call. “Get a cleanup crew down here now,” he ordered, ordered Sal out, and then locked the door.
FOURTEEN
Six months later
Lee Jones took the elevator to the thirtieth floor and entered the suite of offices that made up the office of the CEO. The executive secretary smiled as he walked up.
“Is she in?” he asked, a file folder dangling from his hand.
“She’s in,” the secretary said, “but she’s in a meeting.”
Lee hit his file against the side of his leg, his patience wearing thin. They had to get the position filled. He couldn’t go another night without a decision. “I’ll wait,” he said and took a seat against the wall.
As he sat against the wall with his legs crossed and his head leaned back for nearly ten minutes, the office door finally opened and Trina, along with two Japanese businessmen, stood at the entranceway. Lee immediately stood to his feet. He was amazed at how well Trina was handling the situation, how she had grown in a matter of a few months into her role perfectly. She even looked the part, in her short, dark blue skirt suit, tailored to perfection against her busty body.
After promising to get back with the businessmen, and after they bowed and left, smiling at Lee as they did, Trina began to head out of the office.
“We need to talk, Trina,” Lee said as she stopped at her secretary’s desk.
“Is Wasserman still waiting?” she asked her secretary.
“Yes, ma’am, he said he’d be in the casino.”
“Call Stan. Tell him to find him now and get him in his office. I’m on my way.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the secretary said as she immediately picked up the phone.
Trina could only glance at Lee. “Hello Lee,” she said as she continued to walk. “I’m in a hurry, Lee.”
She was always in a hurry, he thought. Her way, he also figured, of coping. “We’ve got to make a decision,” Lee said, walking with her.
“How did it go last night?” she asked as they exited out of her suite of offices and headed for the private elevators.
“It went fine last night,” Lee said. “It goes fine every night. But that’s not the issue, Tree. We’ve got to make a decision.”
“And a decision will be made. When Reno gets back he’ll make it.”
“Tree,” Lee said, shaking his head. “Reno’s been gone for six months. If he was coming back he would have been back. He blames himself for that child’s death. You can’t live with guilt like that over your head. He’s gone. Probably trying to start over somewhere by himself. He’s not coming back.”
Trina stared at Lee. Didn’t he realize what he was doing? Didn’t he see how he was snatching away the last piece of bark that kept her from drifting out to sea, from being swallowed up by the raging sea? And the fact that he didn’t see it, or was so certain about what he was saying that it no longer mattered that he saw it, angered her. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” she asked him.
The elevator doors opened and the operator waited for them to get onboard. But they just stood there, staring at each other. Lee knew her anguish, he knew how badly she wanted her husband back. But he also knew how badly they had to make a decision. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was out of line. But Tree, when Amos Logan resigned rather than work under your command, you gave me his job. You made me the new general manager. But I can’t be general manager and still manage the Taffeta too. We have got to get a new manager on board.”
Trina placed her fingers to her forehead, the low grade headache she’d been nursing all day beginning to throb. She stepped onto the elevator. Lee followed her.
“The casino, Wade.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the operator said and the doors closed them in.
Trina, at first, said nothing. Just took the nonstop ride in silence. Then she looked at Lee. He was right. He usually was. “Do you have somebody in mind?”
“Yes. He’s over at the MGM Grand, but he’s ready to make a move.”
“Will he come over on an interim basis? Until Reno can . . .In case Reno doesn’t like the pick?”
Lee shook his head. “No, Tree, he won’t. This guy is first rate. He’s not leaving MGM on a maybe. It has got to be a guarantee.”
“Of course you’re right.” She nodded. “Bring him to my office tomorrow morning. I’ll talk to him. If I don’t see or hear any red flags, I’ll go along with it.”
The elevator doors opened. “But I will be as critical of him as Reno is of new managers, especially if we plan to put him over at the Taffeta. So don’t promise him anything. Just an interview with me.”
“Thanks, Tree,” Lee said as she stepped off and the elevator took him back up.
Trina hadn’t rounded the first corridor when she saw Jazz, standing over by the public elevators, talking with what appeared to be a male hotel guest. Trina shook her head. Hadn’t she learned anything? She walked over to her.
As soon as Jazz saw her old friend coming, she immediately stood erect. “And we can discuss that matter tomorrow morning,” she said to the man she was just a second ago flirting with. The man, taken aback by her sudden business-like tone, smiled. Until he saw Trina. Her supervisor, perhaps?
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