Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 Read online

  Quinn smiled. Jimmy was very perceptive, just like his old man. “Know how the Feds are always insinuating that your father is Mafia?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Mick Sinatra isn’t Mafia, no doubt about it, but he’s gangster inside out, even to a greater extent than your Dad was letting on. He runs what they call the Pennsylvania Poltergeist, and he runs it from Pittsburg to Philly and half of the rest of the East Coast too.”

  “Why in the world do they call it the Poltergeist?”

  “Because his network is like a ghost. Nobody sees it, nobody knows a thing about it, but it’s there.”

  “So what’s his poison?” Jimmy asked.

  “Mostly legitimate businesses mixed up with gambling, prostitution, some say drugs but I’m not saying that. Murder. You name it.”

  “That vast a network?”

  “Oh, yes,” Quinn said. “Mick Sinatra’s no joke. Your father had him checked out after Sal’s mother’s funeral. He wanted to know all there was to know about him. He wanted details. He was impressed by how difficult it was to get any intel on Sinatra. Your father was amazed by the breath of Sinatra’s reach, and that’s saying something. And he’s rich too.”

  “Dad’s rich. So what?”

  “You see all that your father has? The PaLargio and the rest of it?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Mick Sinatra has three times more.”

  “What you’re saying, then,” Jimmy said, “is that he’s almost my father’s equal?”

  Quinn stopped walking and looked cockeyed at Jimmy. Like her, Jimmy was biracial too. Only he was half-white and half-black. And all gorgeous, she thought. “Almost his equal?” she asked. “I said Sinatra owns three times what your father owns, Jimmy Mack.”

  “I heard what you said. But he’ll need to own more than that to be my Dad’s equal,” Jimmy replied boldly.

  Quinn shook her head and laughed. Reno was perfection in Jimmy’s eyes. “I guess so,” she said, and they caught back up with Reno.

  When they turned the corner and arrived at the suite, a group of beefy bodyguards were outside of the double doors.

  “Damn,” Jimmy said. “His men?” he asked Quinn.

  “His men,” Quinn nodded.

  As Reno stepped toward the door, he was allowed to walk on by. But Quinn and Jimmy were not.

  “What are you doing?” Jimmy asked as the men began frisking him. “My Dad owns this hotel!”

  The bodyguard looked at Reno.

  Reno held out his hands. “I don’t know the child,” he said with a smile on his face.

  “Dad!” Jimmy yelled as the bodyguards continued to frisk him.

  When they finished and Jimmy and Quinn made it up to the door as well, Jimmy was fuming. “Who’s the comedian now?” Reno asked.

  “Very funny,” Jimmy said.

  Reno laughed and knocked on the door. It was opened by a tall blonde who stood aside and allowed them in. “He’ll be with you shortly,” she said, escorted them to the sofa to sit down, and then disappeared into one of the suite’s many rooms.

  Reno and company sat down, but after five minutes of waiting, Jimmy was getting pissed.

  “Does he know who you are, Pop?” he asked.

  “He knows,” Reno responded.

  “I don’t think he does. Because if he really knew who you were, he would know you don’t have time for this. You’re like time itself. And time waits for no man.”

  Quinn laughed. “You are so crazy, Jimmy Mack,” she said.

  Reno smiled too. He appreciated how loyal his son was to him, and he felt blessed to have that kind of relationship with his oldest child. But it wasn’t going to change a thing. Because Reno wasn’t just waiting to welcome someone to the PaLargio. Unbeknownst to Jimmy, Reno needed advice from the man he used to idolize in his youth. A man even Reno’s deceased mob boss father respected and feared. He needed a one-on-one with the great Sinatra.

  But after another five minutes came and went, Jimmy was beyond pissed. He was getting angry. “I mean really, Dad,” he said. “All this time? People don’t even let me wait this long, and I’m just your son. Who does this guy think he is?”

  Quinn was the first to see him. And she seemed transfixed. The most beautiful man in the world, she thought, as she looked up the stairs.

  Mick Sinatra, in a wide open, ankle-length white overcoat, a pair of black slacks, and a black turtleneck sweater, stood at the top of the stairs of the two-story suite. He was looking down at his visitors as if he was assessing risk rather than assessing who they were. With his thick swath of dark brown hair parted on the right and pushed back off of an angular face of full eyebrows, a straight nose, and a cleft in his chin, he struck a dashing pose. His eyelashes were naturally long, longer than a woman’s, and seemed to stand guard over his big, expressive green eyes as if he never wanted anybody to see too much of him. One of those eyes was a sleepy eye, or a dead eye as the old folks called it, and had been a constant source of taunts and derision when Mick was a kid. Now women found it sexy as hell. Mick didn’t give a fuck either way.

  When Reno and Jimmy followed Quinn’s gaze and looked up the stairs too, Mick plastered on a smile and began marching down as if he, not Reno, owned the joint. Reno and Jimmy stood, and Quinn with them, as he made his approach. He walked with such an air of confidence and determination that his overcoat flared out like wings around his tall, athletic frame as if it was High Noon and he was approaching the OK Corral. Jimmy and Quinn couldn’t tell it, but Reno saw right away just how guarded Mick was.

  “It is so good to see you again, my friend,” Mick said with his hand outstretched as Reno hurried toward him, his hand outstretched as well. Their hands clasped each other’s as they met, with both men placing their second hand on the other’s elbow. “How have you been keeping yourself since last we met? Keeping the assholes out, I hope.”

  Reno laughed. “It’s too many to keep out. But yeah, I’ve been good. What about yourself?”

  “Ah,” Mick responded, and Reno was willing to bet that was all he was going to say about it. Reno had already realized, while hanging out with him at Sprig’s funeral, how he rarely ever spoke about himself.

  And sure enough, Mick looked pass Reno at the two people coming up behind him. “This must be that son you told me about,” he said as he extended his hand to Jimmy.

  Reno turned toward Jimmy and Quinn. “That’s my oldest,” he said. “James Maxwell Gabrini.”

  “Nice to meet you James Maxwell,” Mick said as he and Jimmy shook hands.

  His eyes were staring so hard at Jimmy that it made him uncomfortable. “Hello, Mr. Sinatra.”

  “From what I understand we are related, no? In some cockeyed way.”

  Jimmy smiled and nodded his head. “Cockeyed is right,” he said. Then he caught himself. “I didn’t mean to imply your eye was cockeyed.” Reno rolled his eyes. That boy!

  But Mick found it amusing. He turned to Quinn. Her pretty, Asian eyes were riveted on him.

  “And that’s Roslyn Chan,” Reno said. “She’s my senior executive assistant.”

  Quinn extended her hand, and Mick kissed it. “Hello, Ms. Chan.”

  “Quinn, please,” Quinn said with delight.

  “Hello, Quinn,” Mick corrected himself.

  When Mick released her hand, she was still entranced. “Excuse me but,” she said, “has anybody ever told you that you look just like Cary Grant?”

  All the time, Mick thought. But it was his way to let others talk, so that he could learn more about them than they would ever learn about him. “No,” he said to Quinn.

  “Well it’s the truth.” Quinn looked at Reno. “Isn’t it, boss?”

  Who the fuck cares, Reno thought. “Yeah, they favor,” he said as if he didn’t want to bother saying that much.

  Jimmy smiled. He knew his father was uncomfortable with that line of conversation. He remembered how Reno used to wonder if he was gay and would be highly concerned about i
t too. Reno never enjoyed assessing another man’s looks, even as innocently as Quinn was asking it.

  But even that simple reply by Reno surprised Quinn. “They favor?” she asked. “It’s far more than that, boss. He’s the spitting image of Cary Grant, are you kidding me? They look exactly alike, down to the cleft chin. Don’t they, Jimmy?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Jimmy responded, “since I’ve never heard of Cary Grant or Gary Grant or whatever you said.”

  Mick laughed. “Our age is showing, Quinn,” he told her.

  And Quinn laughed too. To share an inside joke with a man like him was music to her ears. She was a beauty in her thirties who knew experience when she saw it. And that was what she saw in Mick: an older, great looking hunk of a man who undoubtedly knew every trick of the trade when he got you in bed. Which was where, Quinn decided, was going to be her next encounter with him.

  But Reno was getting antsy. He was a very busy man who always had a hundred things to do and a hundred places to be. And right now he needed to speak privately with Sinatra. “Now that they’ve met the mysterious man in the Presidential,” he said, “they’re going to get back to work.”

  But Quinn wasn’t about to leave that easily. She smiled. “Actually, boss, my schedule is clear for the remainder of the day. The meeting I was to chair has been canceled and I have nothing but time on my hands.”

  Bad move, Jimmy thought. Quinn had worked for his father long enough to know that she should have taken the hint when his father was politely giving it, because he wasn’t going to give it that way again.

  And sure enough, Reno looked at his smiling deputy and did not mix words. “Beat it,” he said to her.

  Mick looked at Quinn as embarrassment crept into her smile. But she didn’t delay. She, along with Jimmy, beat a path to the suite’s exit doors as if she was running for her life. What Mick liked was the fear he saw in Quinn’s eyes. She was afraid of Reno. Which meant Gabrini was no softy, but handled his business the way a man was supposed to handle business: iron fist or nothing. Mick was pleased.

  But not just for the hell of it. He was a man who needed to expand his legitimate business dealings, to keep the Feds at bay, and he needed a partner like Gabrini with the heft to make it happen. This wasn’t some altruistic trip to Vegas on Mick’s part. He didn’t just come here because Reno asked him to drop through. He needed a one-on-one with Gabrini as much as Gabrini needed a one-on-one with him.

  After Jimmy and Quinn had gone, Mick and Reno settled down on the suite’s living room sofa. “You look dressed for the streets,” Reno said as he unbuttoned his suitcoat and turned his body toward his guest. “On the move again?”

  When he was not at his own home, he was never relaxed. But that was his business. “No,” he said. Then he motioned a hand toward Reno. “You first. What do you wish to see me about?”

  “Thank-you for coming, Mick,” Reno responded. “Let me say that up front. I know you, like me, don’t deal in lightweight schedules.”

  “Anything for Paulo’s son. Your father was a great man.”

  “My father was a ruthless man.”

  “A mob boss who is not ruthless,” Mick responded, “is not a mob boss.”

  Reno smiled, and nodded his head.

  “Your father was a good boss,” Mick continued. “He knew how to take care of business. I looked up to him.”

  “Until?” Reno asked. There had been a falling out between his father and Sinatra. He heard about it when he was younger.

  “He was a good boss, and I looked up to him,” Mick repeated himself, “until the day he attempted to boss me. I was young, you see. I am not that much older than you. Men like your father thought a kid like me could be manipulated and controlled.”

  Reno knew exactly what he meant. His father had tried to control him once upon a time too. It didn’t work. “You had a falling out with him?”

  Mick paused, as if the memories of that long ago time were still raw. “To put it mildly, yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I kicked his ass. I took over half of what was his. I went to war with him. Something that was never done by an outsider like me.”

  “But it worked.”

  “He came to realize there was no honor in me. I would not show mercy. Mick the Tick was my nickname, because they viewed me as a ticking time bomb, and I lived up to it. So he left me alone.” Mick looked Reno dead in the eyes. “Powerful men, Dominic, only respond to might. Not power. That is the misperception. They already have power. Power does not impress power. But might does. Strength does. Being willing to push the world and all of its inhabitants into the gotdamn ocean before giving up an inch does.”

  And that was Mick the Tick that Reno had heard about in his youth. He didn’t know he was a Sinatra then. He didn’t know he was Sal’s uncle then. He just knew there was a badass kid who once went toe-to-toe with Reno’s badass father, and won. Reno couldn’t help but respect a man like that.

  So he got down to business. “Stanislav Provenzano,” he said.

  Reno could see a change in Mick’s expression. Mick’s jaw tightened. “Yes?” he asked.

  “Do you know him?”

  As usual, Mick answered the question with a question of his own. “What is your dealings with him?”

  “He’s taking over territory.”

  “Yours?”

  “Hell no,” Reno responded. “He knows better than that. But he’s muscling some small operators. They came to me for help.”

  Mick stared at Reno. “Are these small operators as legitimate as you are, or are you as illegitimate as they are?”

  Reno looked Mick dead in the eye. “They’re legit,” he said, “when they need to be.”

  “And when they do not need to be?”

  “They aren’t,” Reno responded. “Like most businessmen from our background.”

  They spoke the same language, Mick thought, which was good. He nodded. “I know Provenzano,” he said.

  “Tough?”

  “He would say so.”

  “Would you say so?”

  Mick thought about it. “Yes. What is your main concern?”

  That was an easy one for Reno. “How far does he reach?”

  “Far,” Mick said.

  “Farther than you?”

  “Let me put it this way,” Mick said. “I do not fuck with him unless I have no fucking choice.”

  Reno smiled. “Your advice to me?”

  Mick didn’t hesitate. “Do not fuck with him. Unless you are willing to go to war. And I mean long, hard, nasty war.”

  Reno exhaled. “I don’t like bullies,” he said. “Provenzano is bullying the little guy.”

  “When a man decides to delegitimize his business, then that is on him,” Mick said. “He is swimming with sharks and if he is not equipped, he will get eaten alive. My advice is for you to stay out of it. You cannot bully a bully. Because those same small operators you wish to assist, are bullying smaller operators. It is tough out there, Dominic. A man who disturbs his own home inherits the wind. That’s Bible. Besides, the idea that Provenzano would take another man’s territory doesn’t have the ring of truth to it to me. That’s not Provensano’s style. He has to have a reason, and a very good reason, to reduce to that.” Then Mick smiled. “My view.”

  Reno could respect every word Mick spoke. He was no fool. He didn’t know this Stanislav Provenzano. Mick did. “I’ll take your view under advisement,” he said. “Thank-you.”

  “Not so fast,” Mick said. “One hand washes the other, no?”

  Reno smiled. “Your ruthlessness is showing,” he said.

  “As is yours,” Mick shot back. Then he moved to the edge of the sofa. Reno, understanding the gesture, moved to the edge too. The two powerful men were now shoulder to shoulder, and speaking quietly.

  “There’s heat on me,” Mick said. “A lot of heat. For what? We will not get into. But I need more to show.”

  “Legitimate?” Reno asked
.

  “Through and through. I need more legitimate businesses to show.”

  “I thought you had plenty up and down the East Coast.”

  “I do,” Mick responded. “But I need a global reach. I need the Feds wondering what the fuck is going on. I need a business partner in the global arena.”

  Reno was stunned by this development. A partner of the caliber of Mick Sinatra was a serious partner to have. But he came with serious drawbacks. Mick Sinatra the businessman was also Mick the Tick the gangster. Reno had his own share of Fed heat to deal with. He wasn’t so sure if he wanted to take on Mick’s also. “You do know your nephews, Sal and Tommy, have a global reach also.”

  “I have no dealings with my sister’s children. Especially Sal. One day I will have to come to terms with what he did to my sister, but that day has not yet appeared. And I do not move before it’s time to move.”

  Reno immediately went to Sal’s defense. “Sal Luca didn’t want to kill his own mother,” he said. “Not for a second did he want it to come to that. But his mother, your sister, was going to kill his wife. That’s a fact. He had no choice.”

  “I understand that,” Mick said. “But if that was your sister he killed, even with that fact in mind, would that matter to you?”

  Reno didn’t blink. “Yes, it would,” he responded.

  “Then we are not as alike as I thought,” Mick said. “Because it don’t mean shit to me.”

  Reno was surprised by his bluntness. But that was why he had enough sense to keep his friends close, but his enemies closer. And if this man had any ill intent regarding Sal Luca Gabrini any time in the future, Reno wanted to be in position to know about it. He, Sal, and Tommy were like brothers. You mess with one, you mess with all. “What kind of businesses were you interested in?” he asked Mick.