Tommy Gabrini: Every Which Way But Loose Read online

  Tommy smiled and extended his hand. “How are you? How have you been?”

  “I’ve been good,” Cully said, shaking Tommy’s hand. “Until I got this.” Cully held up what appeared to be a post card. He handed it to Tommy.

  “Have a seat,” Tommy said as he accepted the card. Cully sat down, and Tommy, reading the card, sat down too.

  “I know what you did that winter,” Tommy read. Then he looked up at Cully. “What is this a joke?”

  “That’s what I thought,” Cully said. “Like some play on some dumbass kiddie movie. But then I checked out the postmark.”

  Tommy looked. The front of the card had what appeared to be trees and wetland. Then he looked at the postmark. Lagos, Nigeria. And suddenly Tommy understood. “When did you get this?” he asked Cully.

  “Yesterday,” Cully said. “I knew Sarge had moved to Vegas, so I couldn’t get to him fast enough. But I knew you still lived in Seattle. So I came here. My heart hasn’t stopped hammering since I got that card in the mail. What do you think it means, Cap? Blackmail?”

  Tommy was never a man to mince words. “Probably,” he said.

  “But why me? I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Give me your phone number,” Tommy said. Cully forked over one of his business cards. Tommy looked at the card. Then he smiled. “Used car salesman?”

  “And new. I sell new cars too. But yeah,” Cully admitted. “I opened up a place a few years ago. It’s small, but I’m the boss.”

  “And it’s right up your alley.”

  Cully chuckled. “With my mouth, I would agree with you. But don’t knock it. I’m no Gabrini Capital, but I ain’t doing bad. It pays the bills. I just don’t need a headache like that postcard right now.”

  “I’ll get in touch with my brother,” Tommy said, rising to his feet, prompting Cully to rise too. “He’ll look into it. When he finds anything out, I’ll let you know.”

  “So what do I do in the meantime? Sit tight?”

  Tommy nodded. “Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Cully would have preferred more of a sense of urgency about the situation, but he knew who he was dealing with. Tommy Gabrini. Dapper Tom. A cat who was always too cool for a man like Cully. “Okay, Cap,” he said. “I just hope Sarge can figure out what’s going on.” Then he looked Tommy in the eye. “And after he figures it out, take care of it.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” was all Tommy would commit to.

  And Cully, understanding that limitation, left.

  When he had gone, Tommy sat back down. Looked at the postcard. And remembered.

  It happened years ago. Tommy was a captain with the Seattle Police Department, and his brother Sal Gabrini was a sergeant in Vice. It was late night. Sal and his men sat in a souped-up Cutlass near the front of a low rent housing development. Sal was still on the phone with his snitch, even as they arrived in the neighborhood. “Which one?” he asked over the phone.

  “You’re on the street now?”

  “Yeah. Which one?”

  “1216. That’s where he keeps the dope. The other dope, the man himself, lives in the detached garage in the back of the house. That’s how paranoid his ass is.”

  “But the drugs are in the house?” Sal asked. “That shit don’t make no sense!”

  “I know that. Didn’t I tell you he was a nut job? But that’s how he does it. If shit goes down, he wants a chance to get away. That’s why he keeps himself and his product in separate places.”

  “But the drugs are in the house?”

  “Yeah, Sarge, damn. That’s what I said. How many times you’re gonna ask me that?”

  “As many times as I fucking want to,” Sal shot back. “Just answer the question.”

  “The drugs are there, aw’ight? I used to guard that shit. The dope is in the house, and Lacey’s in the garage. It’s not a normal garage. It looks like a palace in there. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “How many on guard now?” Sal asked.

  “Guarding the drugs? Two guys. Both should be sleep. Lazy pricks the both of them. Guarding Lace? Four men. That’s how scared his ass is. But when you go into the house, you’d better be prepared to take out the two guys quickly, and then defend the four coming over from the garage. You’ll have time, but you’d better be ready to be hit.”

  Sal was in deep concentration as Karl, the cop driving the Cutlass, drove slowly around the dilapidated neighborhood. Sal was with a new group of men, after his old team was disbanded due to too many questionable incidences, and his gut was bothering the shit out of him. “Look for 1216,” he finally said to the driver, who began looking at house numbers.

  “There it is, Sarge,” the driver said almost immediately.

  Sal and the three cops in the backseat looked over at the small house.

  “You found it?” the snitch asked.

  “We found it,” Sal responded over the phone. “Drive to the end of the street and turn around,” he said to the driver.

  “It should be a piece of cake once you get inside,” the snitch said. “And when you secure the stash, don’t forget me, Sarge.”

  “Your intel better be on point, that’s all you need to worry about.”

  “Yeah, but when do I get my cut?”

  Sal frowned. “When I get mine, you fucking moron. How am I going to give you a cut of shit I don’t even have yet? So shut the fuck up about it!” Then Sal ended the call, his youthful face a mask of concern.

  There were five cops in the car: Sal and the driver Karl in the front seat, and three cops in the back. One of the cops in the back, Joe Culligan, was angling to be Sal’s number two.

  “If Snitch is right,” Cully said, “we’re headed for a windfall of epic proportions, Sarge.”

  “But if he’s wrong,” another cop called Christie said, “we’re headed for a downfall of even epic-er proportions.”

  “Epic-er?” Cully asked. “That’s not even a word! What’s your problem, Chris?”

  “I ain’t got no problem,” Christie shot back. “What’s your problem? Sarge knows what I’m talking about.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t.”

  “I’ll bet he does.”

  But Sal wasn’t listening to either one of them. He was taking his own counsel.

  “So what’s the call, Sarge?” the driver asked, as he drove past the house for the second time.

  Sal continued thinking.

  “I say we go,” said the youngest cop in the car, a kid they called Rookie. “We can all retire if it’s as big a stash as Snitch’s claiming.”

  “Retire?” Christie asked. “What the fuck you know about retiring? Your ass just got here!”

  The others laughed. All except Sal.

  “So what’ll we do, Sarge?” the driver asked. “Stay or keep going?”

  “Park it down here,” Sal said, and the driver, happy to hear a decision was made, pulled over to the side of the road.

  Sal turned around to his men. “If Snitch is right, everything should be out in the open. So we go in and we see. See first, shoot last. I don’t want any fucking drama if there doesn’t have to be none, or Tommy will disband this group too. All we want is the stash. Remember that. We see first, then shoot if we have to. But only if they try to shoot at us. They should see they’re outnumbered if there’s only two guys like Snitch claimed. So let’s see what’s up first. See first, shoot last. Screw it up and you girls will answer to me.”

  Christie looked at Rookie. “No screw ups. Got it, Rookie?”

  Rookie frowned. “Hell yeah I got it. You got it?”

  “Don’t get smart, you little sawed-off weasel. I don’t know why you’re on the team anyway.”

  “Who are you calling a weasel?” Rookie fired back. “You fat tub of lard!”

  “Cut it out!” Sal said. “And concentrate. This shit ain’t no joke!”

  “Why are you so concerned, Sarge?” Cully asked. “It’s not like we haven’t done something like this a
hundred times. What are you worried about?”

  “What I’m always worried about,” Sal said, as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “Bad intel. More men than we expect. Everything going wrong.”

  “We’ll have more firepower than they ever will,” Cully said. “It’ll be a slam dunk, Sarge.”

  But Sal was never that certain. “Just concentrate. I don’t want any screw ups.”

  “We got this, boss,” Christie said confidently. “Stop worrying for two minutes. We know what we’re doing. All except Rookie here.”

  Rookie was about to zing him back, but Sal glanced at him. He didn’t say a word.

  Sal looked at the driver. “That’s the house. 1216. You stay put unless you hear gunfire. You hear gunfire, you pull up and take out any fucker that tries to get away. Got it?”

  “I got it, Sarge,” the driver said. “Be careful.”

  Sal and his men, in tactical gear and carrying rifles, jumped out of the Cutlass and ran across the neighbors grass until they were hurrying up on the porch of their target house. Sal motioned for Cully and Rookie to move over to the opposite side of the door, with Christie remaining beside Sal, and then Sal held up three fingers. When he pulled down all three, he kicked in the door himself, and then they all went in, rifles pointed with night vision scopes showing the way. But they saw nothing. No drugs, no guards, nothing.

  Sal quickly motioned for them to split up. Cully and Rookie ran toward the right side of the house, toward one bedroom, while Christie followed Sal toward the left side, into another bedroom. Sal and Christie kicked the bedroom door open and squatted down as they turned their bodies into the room, pointing their weapons. Suddenly, instead of men guarding drugs, children began waking up in bed and crying. There were three children in the bed. Three kids. Sal knew a lot about Al Lacey, and he knew Lace wouldn’t have kids around his drugs. What the fuck?

  But as soon as Sal and Christie realized they had made some mistake, gunfire could be heard on the right side of the house.

  Sal’s heart dropped through his shoe, as he and Christie ran away from the crying children to the sound of the gunfire.

  When they went into the bedroom, Rookie’s gun was still smoking, and two people in a bed, an old man and an old woman, two dark-skinned blacks, appeared dead. Shot to death by Sal’s man.

  “He shot’em, Sarge!” Cully was saying with shock in his voice. “He panicked and shot’em, Sarge!”

  Sal’s heart was hammering. He knew it was going sideways fast when he saw those kids, but he never dreamed it would veer this off course. But he had to stay focused. And he did when he remembered what Snitch had told him about Lacey, the fact that he had four gunmen in the detached garage out back.

  Sal took off running. “What do we do?” Rookie was asking.

  “What the fuck you care?” Cully responded. “You didn’t ask anybody when you were killing these old folks!”

  “Just wait here,” Christie responded angrily, even as Rookie and Cully continued arguing. “And shut the fuck up!” Christie added, and then took off behind Sal.

  Sal ran through the living room, through the tiny kitchen, and out of the home’s back door, looking for the detached garage. But there was no garage at all, detached nor otherwise. Just a tiny, empty, backyard.

  “What is it, Sarge?” Christie asked, running out behind him, the screen door clanging against the jamb.

  Sal was stumped. Was Snitch setting them up? He ran around the side of the house to the front of the house. He looked up and down the street, and then he looked across the street. That was when he saw, three houses over, a car speeding out of a driveway and taking off. And this was no ordinary drive off. This was a getaway.

  “They’re getting away!” Sal yelled, and began running across the street toward the getaway car, firing as he ran. Christie, following Sal, ran too, firing too. But the car was gone. By the time Karl drove up to where the gunfire could be heard, the car was turning a corner and out of sight.

  Karl jumped out of the car. “Everybody okay, Sarge?” he asked, pulling out his own weapon.

  But Sal ran in the back of the house where the getaway car had just left, and ran into the detached garage, with Christie behind him. And like Snitch said, it was a palace inside. But nobody was inside. He ran inside the house, as the back door was still wide open, but everybody, including any drugs and drug money, were gone. Everything was gone. Sal couldn’t believe it. They had two dead old people, and nothing else!

  “This is a nightmare,” Christie said, when he realized they had nothing to show for their troubles, nor for the trouble they were now in.

  But Sal, still reeling from this colossal fuck up, didn’t have time for conversation. He had a thought. A crazy, wild thought. And he, along with Christie, ran through the house to the front door. He looked at the house number outside of the door. The house was numbered 1216.

  “1216?” Christie asked, stunned.

  “What the fuck,” Sal said, stunned too. How could they have gotten it this wrong?

  But Sal didn’t delay. He ran across the street and then across front lawns three doors down to the house where he and his men had originally broken into, and ran up to its’ front door. He looked at the house number on that door. It said 1216 too. But then he realized what he should have realized from the beginning. The number 6 in 1216 was dangling. Sal turned it right side up. It now read 1219. By the time Christie ran up behind Sal, and Cully and Rookie ran from inside the house to the front door too, they saw the problem.

  “It’s 1219, not 1216?” Cully asked. “We hit the wrong house? We hit the wrong fucking house?!”

  Sal couldn’t believe it either. He couldn’t believe how sideways this had all gone. And although he would order Rookie to go and check out the house across the street again, the real 1216, he wasn’t thinking about any drug stash. He wasn’t thinking about any money grab. All he could think about was Tommy, his boss and big brother.

  “We’re fucked,” he said to his men. “We are so fucked!”

  But the look on their faces made it clear he wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know themselves.

  It was all in the grind. That was what Shelby James loved most about Tommy Gabrini. The way he knew how to grind her. He was naked and on top, pushing deeper into her, and all she could do was hold onto his fine body and let him do his thing. She could see him through the mirror on her dresser, as his tight ass squeezed every time he pushed into her, and she tried to touch that ass. But her arms were too short. She reached for his fully inflated balls instead, and squeezed those.

  Tommy lifted his head when she touched him in that sensitive place, and he bore into her deeper. He looked down into her smooth brown face. She was a gorgeous girl. He loved doing her.

  But when she looked up at him, he knew she was loving more than the sex. She was loving him. And it was a shame. Because he knew what that look meant. She was going to want a commitment from him too. She was going to put a demand on the table he couldn’t meet. Most of his women didn’t bother, because they wanted their freedom too, but there were always that very few who believed they were going to change his mind.

  He leaned down and held her as he fucked her. He was sorry it would end. He liked Shelby. He enjoyed her company. He enjoyed doing her. But he didn’t enjoy any of it nearly enough to commit his life to her. He was nowhere near that kind of joy.

  But just as he was moving such thoughts out of his mind, and was just beginning to hit his stride and fuck her even harder, his cell phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” Shelby said anxiously, holding him tighter. “It feels too good, Tommy!”

  And it did feel good. She was right about that. But he was a captain with the Seattle Police Department. His cellphone ringing at one a.m. was substantially different than a regular joe’s cellphone ring. He had to answer.

  He reached onto the night stand and grabbed his phone. “Gabrini,” he said in a voice he knew sounded far too husky.

/>   “Cap, it’s Stone. Sorry to bother you this late, but we’ve got a problem.”

  “What?” Tommy asked.

  “There’s been an officer-involved shooting.”

  “Where?”

  “At a house on Tacoma. Two civilians down.”

  “Any officers hurt?”

  “No, sir, but . . .”

  Tommy waited.

  “Your brother is involved, sir,” Stone continued. “And not in a good way.”

  Tommy dropped his head and shook it. Sal again. Sal and those fucking band of thugs of his again! He exhaled. “I’m on my way,” he told his lieutenant, and ended the call.

  Tommy’s Corvette drove onto a scene swamped with blue lights and police cars. Every available officer apparently responded to the call and their undoubted overreaction got the media’s attention. They were out in force too.

  Lt. Mike Stone lifted the yellow police tape and met Tommy’s car just as Tommy was stepping out. This time of night, Stone thought, and Gabrini was dressed to the nines in a designer suit. How did the guy do it, he wondered.

  “This way, Cap,” he said, as he lifted the tape for Tommy to lean down and walk under.

  “Just Sal?” Tommy asked as they headed for the house.

  “And his crew of course,” Stone said. “I thought when we disbanded the first group that would slow him down. It hasn’t.”

  Tommy didn’t respond. He never spoke ill of his kid brother to anybody but his kid brother. Besides, the media was its own distraction as the pool of reporters on the far side of the tape kept shouting questions he wasn’t about to answer.