Reno Gabrini: I'm Losing You Read online

  Gemma couldn’t even front. “Briefly, yes.”

  “But not for this long,” Trina asked.

  “No,” Gemma admitted. “But it can happen.”

  “Yeah, well,” Trina said, as she opened the gift. “A major earthquake can happen too, but it rarely does. But I guess it’s earthquake time for me and Reno.” She said this with a smile, and then gushed over the beautiful Montblanc pen set Gemma had given her.

  But Gemma was still unsettled. Reno and Trina were the gold standard in the Gabrini family. They were the ones the rest of them looked up to when it came to love and marriage and how to weather the storms. When all wasn’t right with them, everybody else were shaken.

  “But you guys are going to be okay,” Gemma said. “Right?”

  “Oh, sure!” Trina said with a grand smile. “This is nothing but a thang. We’re just both working too hard and not paying enough attention to each other. It’ll blow over.”

  Used to be a time when Trina would view those words as gospel. She and Reno’s love on the rocks? No way. And even now she still believed the words she said. She just wasn’t able to believe them as forcefully as before.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next day, Reno felt as if it was slipping away. He couldn’t exactly identify what it was, but he kept feeling as if an essence, a strong, overwhelming presence was leaving his grip just as surely as he felt his own skin. And it spooked him.

  He shook his shoulders, as if he could shake off the feeling, as he got off of the freight elevator and made his way through the basement of the PaLargio Hotel and Casino. The Bowels, as they called it. And it was as dank and dingy a place as the rest of his building was elegant and luxurious. It lived up to its name.

  But Reno wasn’t thinking about the nasty job that awaited him in the room at the end of the hall. He wasn’t thinking about all the other nasty jobs he had to do in his life just to keep his ass afloat. He was thinking about his family. About his wife and how her schedule of late was always colliding with his own schedule to a point where they rarely saw each other. About his oldest son Jimmy and the unsatisfactory way he was running Reno’s east coast operations. About his two youngest children, who needed an active, involved father, but was stuck with him instead.

  Everything seemed to be missing everything else. They were all out of sync. And he knew it began at the top. He knew it began with him and with his inability to get his priorities straight, and to get Trina straight too.

  He buttoned his suit coat as he walked the plank. He couldn’t believe the neglect down in the Bowels. But he had to keep it this way because nothing good went down down there, and everybody summoned to this place had to understand that. But he also knew if his paying guests ever realized they were sleeping and gambling above such a hideous, unsanitary place, they’d want their money back.

  But the neglect of the Bowels only told part of the story. He’d been neglecting his wife too. And if truth be told, she’d been doing her own thing and neglecting him. There used to be a balance, where neither one of them would allow their ship to sail too far afield. Trina would slow her ass down. He would slow his ass down. They would come together. But Reno was beginning to realize that he may have allowed their ship to drift so far out to sea that it was going to be a monster of a job to pull it back in. Because they had too many commitments now, and too many obligations that could not be wished away. They were on the ropes.

  But Reno also knew, as he walked even slower toward the room, that this shit didn’t happen by osmosis. They made this shit happen. Trina was behaving as if she was a mother first, a businesswoman second, and a wife last. Even worse, he was behaving as if he were a businessman first, a father second, and a husband dead last. Either way they looked at it, their priorities were screwed.

  And his most of all.

  “Good morning, boss,” the man standing guard said to Reno as he approached the room. “Going to be a nice one today. Not too hot, not too cold. I like that kind of weather.”

  The best Reno could manage was a nod of his head. He felt too gruff for small talk; too engrossed in thoughts that didn’t have shit to do with that man in front of him or anybody else in the Bowels. And the man, like his entire security detail, understood when to let it go. They knew Reno’s moods. He therefore cut the small talk, slapped the grin off his face, and opened the door for Reno to enter.

  Two attractive, twenty-something African-American brothers, Bo and Aubree Jackson, were sitting in the middle of the room when Reno walked in. Four of Reno’s men were in there too, guarding them, but none of them even had a weapon drawn. They didn’t take the good-looking brothers seriously at all.

  But it wasn’t their money the Jacksons had siphoned. It was Reno’s money. And Reno wasn’t about to be as considerate. As soon as he dawned that door, and began walking toward the brothers, he forgot all about his own family drama. He, instead, began assessing what drama he was going to inflict upon this family.

  Bo was the weak link. Reno could see it in his big, brown eyes. He was the one who would spill the beans at the first sign of trouble. Reno pulled out a pair of brass knuckles, placed them on his own knuckles, and decided to give him that sign.

  Bo looked calm and collected, trying his best to put on a brave face. But Reno immediately took him off his game. Because without saying so much as a how do, Reno took his fist and rammed it into Aubree Jackson’s pretty face. Aubree rocked backwards in his chair as a gapping gash opened up on his cheek, and it opened so wide that blood immediately began to gush out.

  Bo stood up stunned and terrified for his brother, but Luggi, Reno’s man, grabbed him by the shoulder. “Sit the fuck down!” he yelled, as he slammed him back down.

  Aubree was now hysterical as he held the side of his face and began crying in pain. “What you do that for?” he asked Reno, as if he was stunned by this treatment. As if he was as innocent as his big eyes made him out to be.

  But Reno didn’t see innocence. He saw a thief. A smart, calculating, manipulative thief. “The same reason you stole my money,” he said. “Because I could.”

  “But we didn’t steal any money,” Aubree tried to explain. “I told your boys we didn’t steal anything! They have the wrong dudes!”

  “Where’s my money?” Reno asked, disregarding Aubree’s not guilty plea.

  “I told you,” Aubree started saying again, but Reno, enraged, slammed his brass-knuckled fist across Aubree’s other cheek, slashing it open too.

  Aubree fell out of his chair and to the floor in agony. He was crying out for help as he fell. But Reno looked at Bo now. He was tired of this shit. “Where’s my money?” he asked him.

  Reno’s supposition, borne out by years of experience in these kind of situations, proved accurate. Bo didn’t put up roadblocks of fake denials the way his brother had. He didn’t have the stomach for it. “I can get it,” he said.

  “How much?” Reno asked. They had calculated the two brothers had robbed their blackjack tables slightly north of half a million dollars. If Bo didn’t at least name that amount, Reno would know he was still playing games.

  “Two million,” Bo said.

  Reno’s men stood erect, astounded. Two million? They all looked at Reno. Reno was astounded too, but it wasn’t showing. He was staring at Bo. Studying him. He needed to know more. “Who helped you?” he asked.

  “Nobody helped us.”

  Reno raised his fist to give Bo a taste of his brother’s pain, but Bo wouldn’t relent. “Nobody helped us!” he cried. Then he settled back down. “We have a system. A system that we, that I, invented.”

  “What system? What’s it called?”

  “Rig and play.”

  Reno frowned. “What the fuck are you talking you invented it? Rig and play is the oldest trick in the book!”

  “But we don’t skim off the bottom,” Bo said. “We skim off the top.”

  Reno didn’t think that was possible. “How?”

  Bo looked Reno dead in the eyes.
“I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  Reno’s men couldn’t believe it. Luggi even slapped Bo upside his head. “Answer Mr. Gabrini, who do you think you are?”

  But Reno was staring at Bo. If he was going to tell him something he didn’t know; something that could help him catch more thieves, he was willing to listen. “What’s your proposition?”

  “I propose,” Bo said, “that you hire my brother and I.” Although his brother was still agonizing in pain, he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t look up at Bo with shock in his eyes. What was he doing?

  “Why would I hire two crooks like you?” Reno asked. “So you can steal in my face instead of behind my back?”

  “So that we can let you know those guests who are stealing from you,” Bo said calmly. “And they’re stealing even more than the two million we stole. Far more. They’re the real crooks. We’re the good guys compared to them.”

  Luggi laughed and shook his head. “Fucking nuts! You steal from Boss like he’s your piggybank, and now you want him to hire you? What balls he’s got, Boss. What nerve!”

  But Reno was still staring at Bo. “How do you skim off the top?” he asked.

  “We rig the game before it even starts,” Bo said. “Your dealers play with our cards, our boards, our everything. They just don’t realize it.”

  And as Bo recited chapter and verse how intricately it was done, and how nobody, not even Reno’s cameras, caught them, Reno was fascinated. He even managed to smile. This fucker didn’t have balls. Luggi was wrong. This fucker had brains. The kind of crooked brains Reno needed in his organization.

  “Get me my money,” Reno said to Bo. “Luggi, you go with him.” Then he looked at Bo’s brother Aubree. “Leave Scarface here for insurance,” he added.

  “So are we hired?” Bo asked.

  “You get me my money,” Reno said, “then we’ll talk. But if I find out you took more than what you’re claiming today, and if I find out you’re trying to pull a fast one on me again, you won’t live to talk your way out of it. You feel me, son?

  Bo swallowed hard. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “They say I might be a mob boss,” Reno added, still staring at Bo. “You know that, right?”

  Bo swallowed hard again. His heart was hammering. “Yes, sir.”

  “If you fuck with me,” Reno said, “I want you to drop the words might be. Because I’ll go boss on your smart ass. You and your brother both.” He pointed at Bo. “Don’t fuck with me!”

  “I won’t, sir,” Bo said sincerely. “I promise.”

  Reno, satisfied that he got his point across, began to leave.

  “But my brother, sir,” Bo quickly said.

  Reno turned around.

  Bo knew he was taking his life in his hands by saying another word to Reno, but he had no choice. “Will you please get him some medical attention while I’m gone?”

  Luggi and the other men smiled and shook their head. The nerve of this guy!

  But Reno wasn’t smiling. “Get me my money, motherfucker,” he said firmly. “Then we’ll talk.”

  And Reno, leaving, wasn’t about to turn back around again. Until Bo said, “what about the guy?”

  Reno turned around again.

  “What guy?” Luggi asked him.

  Bo’s eyes did not leave Reno’s. “The guy that hired us. The one who has your money.”

  Reno went still. His men went still. “Who hired you?” Reno asked him. “Who’s got my money?”

  “I never met the big man, but one of his workers caught us one night.”

  “Caught you how?” Reno asked.

  “Caught us stealing at the tables,” Bo answered. “We didn’t have enough big money to bet, so we weren’t stealing big money back then. But he propositioned us.”

  “That word again,” Luggi said.

  “He said he’d provide the money for big payoffs, and me and my brother could keep ten percent of all of our winnings. So I can get you the two hundred thousand we kept. Or, at least, most of it. We live off of it. But I can’t get you the rest of it. They have the rest of it.”

  “This sounds like a crock of shit to me, Boss,” Luggi said. “They can take you to the two hundred thou, but not the two million they stole. Yeah, right!”

  “What you can take me to,” Reno said to Bo, “is the man who propositioned you.”

  “He says he’s not from Vegas, and I don’t know where he’s from. We’re supposed to meet up in a couple days. I can take you to him then.”

  Reno looked at Luggi. “When you reviewed the tape, did you see some guy around him?”

  “No,” Luggi said. “Not once. Or we would have pulled his ass in too.”

  “That’s because he never stepped foot in your casino, Mr. Gabrini,” Bo said. “Apparently, he has cameras inside your place of business. He showed us, on film, what we were doing. He really knows his stuff.”

  Luggi looked at Reno. “Who the fuck would pull that kind of shit on you, Boss? Who would have the nerve?”

  “Describe the guy,” Reno said to Bo.

  “Can’t,” Bo said. “Except that he’s a white guy with short, black hair. We meet in a limo whenever we meet. My brother and I sit in the backseat. He sits up front. He never turns around. Not ever.”

  Reno rubbed his forehead. This was getting to be too much.

  You and your brother will stay here,” he said, “until that meeting time.”

  “But what about Aubree?” Bo asked. “He needs medical attention, sir!”

  Reno looked at Aubree. He was still in grave pain. “That’s tough,” Reno responded. “He’d better be glad he’s still alive. So should you. Who the fuck you think you’re dealing with?” Then Reno looked at Luggi. “I want a sweep of my entire casino. Any recording device you find, you give to the tech team. See if they can trace the origin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Reno stared at Bo a little longer, glanced at Aubree, and then left the room for good.

  Luggi shook his head. “You’re one lucky ass bastard,” he said to Bo. “That’s all I got to say.”

  Reno entered Trina’s suite of offices upstairs at the PaLargio and headed for her office door. “She in?” he asked her secretary as he walked past her desk.

  “No, sir,” the secretary responded.

  Reno, surprised, stopped and looked at the secretary. “No?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then where is she?” She told him that she’d be in her office all day. Paperwork day, she’d said. They had argued yesterday morning, after he stayed out all night long. But he made a point to be home for dinner last night, and he and Trina were actually amicable this morning. He came upstairs to see if she wanted to have lunch with him later.

  The secretary, like most of the employees, respected and admired Reno, but were afraid of him too. She hated to be on the spot like this. “She had a meeting, sir,” she said.

  “Here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “At Champagne’s?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Sharon,” Reno said frustratingly. “Where?”

  “In Kingman, sir.”

  Reno frowned. “Kingman? Kingman, Arizona?”

  “She drove over there, yes, sir. It’s an hour-and-a-half away. She should be back this afternoon.”

  Reno felt like a damn dunce. This secretary knew more about his wife’s whereabouts than he did? This shit was getting out of hand. But he knew it wasn’t Sharon’s fault. Trina was the blame for this shit. “Thank you, Shar,” he said, and left the suite, slamming the door behind him.

  Sharon made the exaggerated motion of collapsing in her chair, as if she’d just dodged a bullet with you’re fired written on it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Her Mercedes pulled into the slanted parking space in front of the Burger Barn diner, and she couldn’t help but smile. Small town. Small diner. Was this guy for real? Gemma seemed to think so. The jury was still out for Tree.


  She grabbed her phone and keys and got out of her car. When she entered the diner, it was only half-full, and the patrons that were present all seemed to be meaty truck drivers or other blue-collar males. She was the only female in the place. Which meant she immediately attracted attention. Which meant she had to endure several assessing looks before she made her way to a table.

  Another female came from what was apparently the kitchen area and arrived at her table. At least the service was swift, Trina thought.

  “Just coffee,” she said to the waitress.

  “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black,” Trina responded, and the waitress left her side.

  Trina leaned back. Was about to check her messages. But then a very nice Lexus drove up, and a nicely dressed black man stepped out. Because he looked as out of place as she did, she was reasonably certain that he was Garry Marshall. He was her potential investor.

  He had no trouble reaching that conclusion about Trina, either, as he made his way to her table. He wasn’t particularly tall or good looking or had any attractive features about him whatsoever. He was, in fact, a very plain looking man. But when he approached her and smiled his big, toothy smile, a warmness came over Tree and she stood to her feet.

  “Katrina Gabrini?” he asked as he extended his hand.

  “Garry Marshall?” she asked as she shook his hand.

  “I am he,” Garry said. “And no, I didn’t create Laverne and Shirley. I had nothing to do with Happy Days. And Mork and Mindy are alien to me.”

  Trina laughed. “Very cute,” she said.

  “Wow,” Garry said. He was staring at her as if she fascinated him.

  Trina found his stare a bit unnerving. “What?” she asked.

  “You’re the first one.”

  Trina frowned. “The first one what?”

  “You’re the first person who understood my references to Garry Marshall the television producer. Every time I say no, I didn’t create Laverne and Shirley, and mention his other shows, I get weird looks. You’re the only one who got it.”

  “It wasn’t that hard, come on,” Trina said.