Reno and Sal Gabrini: Fire with Fire Read online

  But all Reno had to do was glance back at his cousin’s face, and he knew something else was wrong. He stopped his progression and turned to him. “What is it?” he asked him.

  “They took Dommi,” Sal said.

  Reno frowned. “Who took Dommi?”

  “The cops arrested Dom, Reno.”

  Reno’s heart dropped. “Arrested him? But those fuckers said they weren’t going to press charges!”

  “Not for that school shit,” Sal said. “That’s not why they took him.”

  “Then why?” Reno asked anxiously.

  Sal exhaled. “Murder,” he said in a voice he didn’t realized had gone too low.

  Reno went still. “Murder?” His heart began pounding. “What are you talking?”

  “They arrested Dommi for the murder of Pump Futarda.”

  Reno was stunned. “Dommi? They arrested Dommi for . . .” He could hardly believe it. The cops had his son? The cops had Dommi?

  His heart began hammering. “I’ve got to get down there!” He hurried inside his walk-in closet.

  Sal knew Reno was going to the station. But to what end was his concern. “Get down there,” he said as he followed Reno into the closet, “and do what, Reno?”

  Reno frowned again. “What the fuck you think? I’ve got to tell their asses they have the wrong Gabrini!”

  It was exactly what Sal had feared. That was why he didn’t let Jimmy handle this task. “Reno, look at me. Reno!”

  Reno looked at him.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Sal asked him. “You can’t, Reno!”

  But Reno was puzzled. “What you mean I can’t? They have my son!”

  “Trina’s gone to the station. And Jim’s gonna tell Gemma. They’ll get him out. You can’t go down there confessing to shit!”

  But Reno wasn’t thinking about Sal. He was quickly putting on clothes.

  “Look, Reno, I know you’re the one who iced Pump. You know it and I know it!”

  Reno ignored him.

  “And those cops know it, too,” Sal continued. “That’s why they arrested Dommi. He’s a kid. A juvenile. They’re just trying to get to you through him. You know how they operate. You have to let this shit play out!”

  Reno looked at Sal. “Let it play out? And you’re asking if I’m the one out of my fucking mind? You think I’ll let a child of mine go down for a crime I committed? You think I’ll let that happen? Your ass won’t! You think I will?”

  “But they don’t have shit on you, Reno, or they would have arrested you. But they know how you feel about your children. They know you’ll do anything for them. They want a confession and they’re squeezing Dommi to get to you!”

  Reno knew it, too. But what the fuck did Sal expect him to do? He dressed quickly and began hurrying out of the closet.

  But Sal knew he had to act fast. If Reno confessed, they’d throw the book at his ass. Reno would get Death or Life in prison plus ninety-nine years, or whatever the worse amount allowable would be. He would never see the light of day again! That was why Sal didn’t rush downtown too. He knew he had to contain him.

  But how could he contain a fucking pit bull like Reno?

  But he had to do it.

  He pulled out the brass knuckles he kept handily available in his pocket; knuckles he kept specifically for days like this. “Reno?” he yelled. He was walking right behind him.

  But Reno kept walking.

  “Reno?”

  “What?” Reno still didn’t turn around or break his stride.

  “Reno?” Sal yelled again.

  Reno finally turned around with an exasperated look on his face. This shit had him sideways enough!

  But as soon as he turned around, Sal did it. He leaned back and hit Reno, as hard as he could, with his brass knuckled-fist. He hit him right on the chin where the lights went out.

  And they did.

  Reno’s legs wobbled, his eyes glazed over, and he was knocked out like a prizefighter caught with an uppercut. Sal caught his limp, unconscious body and assisted it to the floor. But when he realized Reno was out cold, even Sal became a little jittery. His ass was dead when Reno regained consciousness. Nobody, not even Sal, was going to get away with that!

  But he knew it was all a matter of time. Time had to stay on his side! He pulled out his cell phone and called Tommy Gabrini, his big brother and Reno’s best friend.

  “You’ve got to get here now,” he said as soon as Tommy answered his phone. “They arrested Dommi for a murder somebody else committed.” Even on the phone Sal wasn’t going to link Reno to any crime.

  But Tommy was floored. “They arrested Dommi? Dommi? Fuck! Is he in custody right now?”

  “They have him, yes!”

  “You’ve got lawyers down there?”

  “Jimmy’s heading to my house now to get Gemma, and he’s calling in Reno’s team of lawyers too. We’ve got all the mouthpieces in place. That ain’t the problem.”

  “I hope Dommi keep his trap shut,” Tommy said. “He may confess for the fun of it!”

  “Trina warned his ass. And so did I. I’m not worried about Dommi. He’s got street smarts like his daddy. He knows when to keep that trap closed. But we got a bigger problem than that.”

  “Bigger? How can you have a bigger problem than our boy being arrested?”

  “Reno’s the problem,” Sal said. “His ass is trying to go downtown and confess to free Dommi!”

  Tommy nearly jumped out of the seat he was sitting in back in his Seattle corporate office. “You can’t let him!” he yelled. “That’s why they picked up Dommi. To get him to confess. They’ll fry Reno if he confesses, and they’ll come after us too! It’ll be open season on the Gabrinis!”

  “I told his ass that! But he still wants to go down there.”

  “So, what did you do, Sal? Let him?”

  “Hell no! I clocked his ass.”

  “He’s out?”

  “Like a light.”

  “He’s going to kill you when he comes to,” Tommy said, “but good. You did the right thing.”

  “But I can’t contain this fucker for long. You know how he is. You’ve got to get here.”

  “I’m on my way!”

  “And bring Uncle Mick with you, too,” Sal added. “He may be the only man alive who can talk some sense into his ass. We’re gonna need all the power we can get.”

  Tommy knew it too. “Consider it done,” he said. “In the meantime, you get every man at your disposal and keep Reno away from those cops. He can’t talk. I don’t care how much he wants to help Dommi. He can’t talk! Dommi will be okay. He didn’t do shit and they don’t have shit on him. It’s Reno they’re after.”

  “Just get here,” Sal said, and they ended the call.

  But Sal’s spirit was troubled. He looked at Reno, a man he respected above any man on this planet. And there he was. Out like a light. It was a scary sight.

  But like Sal, Reno would go through fire for all of them. But unlike Sal, Reno would go through it even if there was a better way around. It was Sal’s job, he felt, to make sure he found that better way.

  He called in the PaLargio’s resident doctor and Reno’s own security team, led by Stef Siranno, and together with them he was able to get Reno’s unconscious body onto the bed.

  “Tie him down,” Sal ordered.

  The men looked at him. It was one thing that he knocked their boss out cold. They understood why he did it. They agreed he had to do it. But he wanted them to tie him down on top of it?

  That was exactly what Sal wanted them to do. “What the fuck are you waiting on?” he yelled. “Do it!”

  They were as afraid of Sal Gabrini as they were of Reno. Besides, Reno would fire their asses if they went against an order from his cousin. They’d been told that Sal would be in charge if Reno was incapacitated. But they also knew Reno might fire them for obeying the order, too, since Sal was the one who incapacitated him. But at least both men wouldn’t be on their asses. And at
that moment, Sal was the conscious one. They began doing as they were told.

  And as they began tying up their own boss, Sal’s cellphone rang. When he saw that it was from his wife, he answered quickly.

  And all he heard was her blood-curling screams, and the terrifying cries of his baby boy. “Help! Help!” Gemma was screaming into the phone. “They’re taking Lucky! They’re taking Lucky! They have . . .”

  And then the line, painfully, incredibly, went dead.

  Before Reno’s men could turn to find out what the hell was going on, Sal, like a jet with an afterburner, had already taken off.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Before that devastating phone call, Sal had not only ordered Reno’s men to tie him down, but he had also ordered the PaLargio’s physician to sedate Reno and to keep him sedated. All in the name of not harming himself or others until reinforcements (Mick and Tommy) could arrive. It was also all in the name of something far more sinister: do it, or else. The medical staff knew Sal Gabrini. They knew Reno had standing orders that if he was ever immobilized, they were to take complete direction from Sal. No ands, ifs, or buts about it.

  The doctor did what Sal told him to do.

  And it worked. Reno regained consciousness, but was quickly sedated by his own staff physician. And although Reno awakened several times, he was never fully awake. He kept teetering on consciousness and unconsciousness. And his mind was in overdrive. He kept trying to piece together what went wrong. He remembered Sal telling him about Dommi. He remembered the trauma of hearing that his youngest son had been arrested. He remembered Sal vehemently opposed to him going downtown and turning himself in. But it all got cloudy after that.

  But where did it all begin? He kept going back to where did it all begin? And he remembered that too.

  It began the night of Trina’s celebration. It began the night when Reno had to take matters into his own hands in a way that would eventually lead to a secret, a horrific secret, he thought he would carry to his grave. . ..

  ****

  SIX DAYS BEFORE THE ARREST

  It was Trina’s night that night, and Sal and Gemma were there to support her. They stood outside of the Chamber of Commerce Banquet Hall and waited for the guest of honor to arrive. But Sal, as usual, was getting impatient.

  “I’m here on time. You’re here on time,” he said to his wife. “Where the fuck’s Trina and Reno?”

  “It’s still early, Sal. We got here early.”

  “Look like the guest of honor should have gotten here early too.”

  Gemma agreed, but she wasn’t going to tell Sal so. If she did, she could expect minutes more of his complaints.

  More limos arrived. More locals made their way toward the entrance. And Sal, placing his hand around Gemma’s waist in a show of possession when a man looked at her too hard, looked at his Rolex again. “Are they fucking serious? Like I have time for this!”

  Gemma looked at him, and he returned her stare. He was dressed in a dark-blue suit that she felt made his bright-blue eyes pop, and she was dressed prettily in a form-fitting mother-of-pearl pink cocktail dress that he felt made her dark skin sparkle. Both looked elegant. And it was true: he didn’t have time for this.

  But Gemma knew her husband. She knew there was more going on than what he was telling. He was having trouble at the office, as he called it, but he had yet to talk to her about it. The main reason was because she was an attorney, an officer of the court, and he was the head of one of the most feared mob syndicates in the country. They had to be careful. It was his job, he felt, to keep her in the world of plausible deniability whenever possible.

  But whatever was going on, she could tell it was bothering him greatly. “Everything okay?” she asked him.

  “It’s okay,” he said as he moved his muscular body from side to side: his habit whenever he was on edge. “Can it be better? Yep. It can be better.” That was an understatement, Gemma was willing to bet. “But it’s okay,” Sal added, as his eyebrows furled.

  He was about to look at his watch yet again, and commence another round of complaints, but another limo drove up, the valet opened the back-passenger door, and this time Trina stepped out.

  “About time!” Sal said with some satisfaction. “But where the hell is Reno?”

  He wasn’t with Trina, it was obvious, as Trina stepped out alone in her gorgeous black gown that highlighted her curves as if it had been stitched onto her smooth, brown skin, and a diamond necklace around her neck. She smiled when she saw Sal and Gemma standing at the top of the steps, and they walked down to greet her.

  “She looks gorgeous,” Gemma said as they made their way down.

  “She looks good,” Sal admitted. “She always looks good. But not as good as you.”

  Gemma smiled. There was a time, she remembered, when Sal thought she just might be one of the ugliest women he’d ever seen. Now that he loved her, she was the prettiest woman in his eyes bar none. Nobody held a candle to her! And although Gemma knew it was a vast exaggeration on his part, she loved him for it. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Hey you two!” Trina said happily as the couple arrived at her side. She was gathering up the hem of her flowing gown. “You look beautiful, Gem.”

  “As do you!” Gemma and Trina air-kissed.

  Sal, who wasn’t as astute at protecting a woman’s makeup, gave Trina a wet one on the lips. She and Gemma both smiled. Trina would have to freshen up her lipstick again! “Hey, Sal Luca,” she said. “Don’t you look handsome.”

  But Sal had that cousin of his on his mind. “Where’s Reno?” he asked. “I know Jimmy’s keeping our kids. What’s his excuse? And don’t you dare tell me he’s not coming.”

  “He’s coming. It’s not everyday somebody wants to honor me, and that’s the truth! But he had some problems at the PaLargio he had to iron out first. But he’s already on his way.”

  “Not straight from work?” Gemma asked. They all knew how Reno and his expensive suits fared over the course of a work day: wrinkled and stained and ready for the dry cleaners, not a banquet hall!

  “He changed first,” Trina said. “Don’t worry. I told his ass he better not come up in here embarrassing me.”

  They laughed. Trina would tell him that! “How’s Neeco?” she asked as they all three began heading up the steps toward the entrance.

  “His ass alright,” said Sal. “Him and Bruce went to see wrestling. They think that shit’s real.”

  Trina laughed. But before they could get halfway up the steps, they heard the loud rev of what sounded like Reno’s Porsche, and they all turned toward the valet station. And sure enough, it was Reno flying in and slamming on his brakes with his trademark, flashy sudden stop.

  Trina and Gemma smiled. Sal shook his head. “Reno, Reno,” he said. “What a fucking show-off!”

  Both ladies looked at Sal. When he was behind the wheel of his Bugatti, nobody showed off more. “What a fucking hypocrite,” Gemma said to her husband, and even Sal had to smile at that.

  But when the Valet opened the driver-side door, and Reno stepped out in his black tuxedo, with his hair freshly cut, and with his usually bloodshot eyes from too much stress and strain at work clear and blue, nobody was smiling. They were too impressed.

  “He really cleans up well,” Gemma said as they watched Reno take the steps two at a time and make his way up to them.

  “Yes, he does,” Trina said as she watched him too. Reno might not have been the most handsome man on the planet, but he sure was the sexiest in her eyes!

  “I thought I was late,” he said as he made it up to them. “Unless we’re all late.”

  “Almost,” Sal said.

  “Don’t listen to Sal,” said Gemma. “We’re all on time.”

  Reno smiled at Gemma. She really was a beautiful woman to him. But his eyes moved to Trina and stayed there. “You look great, babe,” he said, as he placed an arm of possession around her too.

  “You don’t look bad yourself,” Trina said with
a smile. “Now let’s get inside and get this shit over with,” she added, and they all laughed.

  Reno loved that about Trina. She never let big-deal awards and accolades get in her head. Even when she was voted the most beautiful woman in Vegas by some supposedly objective panel of judges, and everybody was fawning all over her about it, she never took that seriously either. “Just another shit-show to me,” she said to Reno, and didn’t even go to collect her award.

  But this award, Reno knew, as they made their way inside the banquet hall, was different. Trina had been voted businesswoman of the year and, alongside some stiff they named as businessman of the year, she was about to be honored.

  Reno was happier for her than she was for herself. Mainly because he knew what an honor it truly was. He owned the largest hotel and casino on the Vegas Strip, but even he had never been named businessman of the year, at least not by the Chamber. He was named the most powerful man in Vegas many years running by magazines that rated such things. But never the best businessman, although most would agree he ran his business like a well-oiled machine. But two words, they all knew, would sum up why he was never even considered for such a prestigious award: mob ties. He wasn’t mob himself, and they knew it. But it ran deep in his family, beginning with the man that entered that banquet hall with him. They knew that too.

  But it didn’t affect their judgment of Trina’s worth, and that was what most pleased Reno. They weren’t holding his past against her! He wasn’t holding her back. That was worth all the money in this world to Reno.

  But what pleased Trina the most, as the usher showed them to their table near the front of the hall, was who was already sitting at their table when they arrived in the crowded, boisterous hall. She nearly stopped in her tracks as the men at her table rose to welcome her. She looked at Reno. Because it wasn’t just anybody at their table, but Sal’s big brother Tommy Gabrini and his wife Grace were there. The Gabrinis’ uncle, “Big Daddy” Charles Sinatra, along with his wife Jenay, were there. And even Big Daddy’s brother, Mick Sinatra, along with his wife Roz, made the journey to Vegas too. Trina was floored.