MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) (20 page)

Jimmy
waited for his father to continue, but nothing more was said.
 
So Jimmy asked the question as he fought with
everything within him to maintain his composure.
 
“What’s the message?” he asked.

Sal
turned and looked at Jimmy.
 
“Don’t fuck
with Tufarna,” he said.
 
“What else?”

Jimmy’s
heart dropped.
 
He knew what that
meant.
 
He knew his father was now under
the gun.
 
He knew there would probably be
another mob war.
 
But it was all Reno’s
fault, as far as Jimmy was concerned.
 
He
should have never detained Ash and Coop.
 
If he wouldn’t have kept them at that so-called “safe” house, they would
be alive right now.
 
And there was no
getting around that cold, terrible fact, as far as Jimmy was concerned.

He
looked back out of the window, and refused to think about anything at all.

Reno’s
Bentley and the SUVs stopped at the entrance at the PaLargio and the armed
guards, with their weapons concealed, hurried out to escort Reno, Sal, and
Jimmy into the building.
 
Lou was waiting
for them in the lobby.

“My
family?” Reno asked as he walked up to Lou inside the crowded lobby.

“They’re
secure,” Lou said as he followed Reno and his entourage to the private
elevator.
 
“What about Eddie Dreeson?”

“I
told Briggs to move him.
 
But I don’t
want that discussed.
 
We’ve got us a
nasty breach and I want it sealed before anybody knows anything.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Did
you downsize?”

“I
did.
 
I pulled every man I didn’t
personally recruit off of the detail.
 
The only ones left are the vets.”

“That’s
not a one percent guarantee either, but it’s the best we’re going to be able to
do right now.
 
Get a list of the ones
remaining and give it to Sal.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“He’ll
have his people check out each and every one of them.”

“Will
do,” Lou said.
 
“What about Briggs?
 
You told him to downsize too?”

“Yeah,
I told
 
him.
 
Got
dammit.
 
Yeah.”

They
all stepped onto the private elevator, Reno, Jimmy, and Sal, and rode up.
 
They all stepped off at the penthouse.
 

Twenty
armed guards were roaming the corridor outside of the apartment.
 

Sal
laughed.
 
“Damn, Reno,” he said. “The
pope don’t get this much protection.
 
What are you doing?”

But
Reno would have none of that.
 
“My wife
and child are in that penthouse,” he said.
 
“What do you think?”

As
soon as they entered the penthouse, Trina ran to Reno and threw her arms around
him.
 
He swept her up into a big bear
hug.
 

“I’m
all right,” he said.

Trina
stopped hugging him to look him over.
 
“You look so tired,” she said.

“I’m
okay.”

The
phone began to ring.
 
Lou hurried to
answer it.
 

“What
happened?” she asked.
 
“Are they dead?”

Reno
exhaled, slung open his rumpled suit coat, and placed his hands on his
hips.
 
“Yes,” he said.

Trina
looked distraught. “Those poor children!”

Then
she looked at Jimmy.
 
Reno and Sal looked
too.

“I’m
so sorry, Mack,” Trina said.

Jimmy
murmured something that no-one could understand.

“Speak
up, kid, what did you say?” Sal asked him.

“I
said,” Jimmy said loudly this time, “who’s going to tell their parents?”

Reno’s
heart dropped.
 
It had certainly come
down to that.
 
He reached out to Jimmy,
but Jimmy pulled away.

“Telephone,
Reno,” Lou said as he held the house phone up.

“I’m
going to my apartment,” Jimmy insisted.

“No,”
Reno said firmly.
 
“Until I get a handle
on what exactly is going on here, you stay put.
 
I’m sorry, I know you can’t stand my guts right now, but no.
 
You aren’t going anywhere.”
 
Then Reno hurried to answer the phone.
 
Sal pulled out his cell phone, and began to
move away too.
 
He had to find out if any
of his contacts knew this safe house bombing was coming.

Trina
went over to Jimmy and rubbed his arm.
 
“It’s a rough time right now,” she said to him.
 
“But it’ll all work out.”

It
was obvious to her, however, that Jimmy didn’t want to hear that positive talk
right now.
 
But to her surprise he did
tolerate her show of affection.
 
At least
for a moment.
 
He fault back the tears
Trina knew he wanted to shed, and tolerated her kindness.
 
But as soon as the memories reappeared, of
that horrific explosion, of the fact that Ash and Coop were in that explosion,
he had to get away.
 
He tore away from
Trina and hurried down the long hallway inside the big penthouse. He entered
the bedroom that used to be his bedroom before Reno gave him his own apartment,
and slammed the door.

The
sun was going down again, but you wouldn’t know it by the energy along the
Vegas Strip as Reno and Trina sat quietly in patio chairs on the penthouse
balcony.
 
They sat in direct
contradiction to the energy around them, because both of them were emotionally
and physically drained.

Reno had
been making phone calls all day, talking to every mob boss he knew from here to
Palermo, but nobody knew a thing about Tony Tufarna’s whereabouts or even who
the heck Eddie Dreeson was.
 
Big money
was being passed around, and a few heard that something was shaking, but they
didn’t know any of the players.
 
Which
meant, to Reno, he was as much in the dark as he had ever been.

And
he hated the dark.

It
was that not-knowing, and that lack of concrete intel, that was eating him
alive.
 
He thought Tony was going to be
subtle with his scheme because he remembered him as a guy who couldn’t organize
a trip to a store, but then the safe house was taken out and now Reno didn’t
know what to think.
 
Now Reno felt
blindsided again.
 

“That
explosion didn’t feel like a move Tony would have made,” he said to Trina.

Trina
looked at him.
 
“You haven’t seen him in
years, Reno.”

“I
know.
 
And I know time can change
people.
 
But not that much.
 
At least that ain’t been my experience.
 
People are essentially who they are.
 
But until I know what I don’t know, I have
got to play this smart.
 
If I miss
something, even something simple and subtle, it’ll all blow up in my face.
 
I know it will.
 
And I can’t have that.”

Trina
grabbed his hand and held it.
 
“I thought
you were overreacting too when you detained Cooper and his sister.
 
But after this, after what happened at that
safe house, no.
 
You weren’t
overreacting.
 
Something’s happening.”

Reno
nodded his head.
 
That was another reason
why he loved Tree so much.
 
He could talk
to her. “I knew it wasn’t about Jimmy,” he said.
 
“When you have me as your old man you have to
pay attention to things.
 
I can’t get
Jimmy to understand that.
 
Even after
what he went through with that girl in Crane he still lets a pretty face
control his ass.
 
Now his girlfriend can
get all hysterical about a dead man in her house, and instead of questioning
the sense of it, he goes into
Knight in
shining armor
mode.
 
Forget that a
dead body is in her house.
 
Forget that
she doesn’t want him to call the cops.
 
She
gives him a plausible explanation and his pussy-whipped ass springs into
action.”

“He
should have called you,” Trina said.

“Damn
straight he should have!
 
Shit like that
don’t happen to regular people.
 
I told
him that.
 
I told him if he sees anything
strange, anything at all, he had to contact me.
 
I don’t care where I am in this world, he was to call me and I would get
my people to check it out.”

“But
he calls me instead of you.”

“Thank
God he did that much.
 
Imagine what would
have happened if his stupid ass would have went to that body dump location
Ashley wanted to get him to.”
 

Trina
sighed a worried sigh at just the thought of what could have been.
 
It was bad enough, especially for Ash and
Coop, but it could have been horrific too for Jimmy.

She looked
at Reno.
 
“So what are you planning to do
going forward?”

“I
told Briggs to bring him here.”

“Bring
who here?”

“Eddie
Dreeson.”

“Ashley’s
boyfriend?”

“The
one Jimmy still thinks doesn’t exist, yes.”

“But
is that necessary, Reno?
 
Is the breach
that widespread that you can’t trust any of your safe houses now?”

“I
don’t know.
 
That’s the thing.
 
I don’t have a gotdamn clue, Tree.
 
And Dreeson’s dried up.
 
Won’t tell Briggs a thing.”

They
were seated side by side in patio chairs, with a small, round table between
them.
 
Trina was sipping a bottled water,
and Reno was drinking a bottle of beer.
 

She
looked at her husband.
 
“Do you really
think some small-timer like Eddie Dreeson would have the balls to blow up one
of your safe houses?”

“No,”
Reno said.
 
“But he might know a person
who knows a person and that person might have the balls.
 
But so far Briggs isn’t getting shit out of
him.
 
I told him to lay off, give him
time to think.
 
When I get through with
him he’ll talk.
 
But I didn’t want to go
in blind.
 
I thought I could get some
intel first.”

“But
nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“What
about Sal Luca?
 
Has he heard anything?”

“Not
a word.
 
Everybody thought Tony had
dropped off the face of this earth.”

Trina
shook her head.
 
“This is weird, isn’t
it?
 
Somebody usually knows
something.”
 
Then she thought about
it.
 
“Maybe he’s in disguise, Reno.
 
Maybe he had plastic surgery and you can’t recognize
whoever it is anymore.”

Reno
shook his head.
 
“Maybe he went to the
moon and came back a moon bean, who the fuck knows?
 
I can’t deal in maybes.
 
I have to deal in the facts, even at a time
when I don’t have a single one.”

Trina
thought about that and took another sip.
 
Then she jumped when they heard the sound of a crash from inside the
penthouse, and then loud voices.
 
Reno,
followed by Trina, hurried from the balcony and ran inside.
 
Jimmy was at the front door, attempting to
leave.
 
But Sal was stopping him.
 
Lou and Artie, also in the room, were at the
ready too.

“You
can’t make me stay here!” Jimmy insisted, attempting to push pass his
uncle.
 

But
Sal was too strong.
 
“Ain’t happening,
pal,” he said, pushing Jimmy back.

“What’s
this about?” Reno asked as he began walking up to his son.

Jimmy
looked at him.
 
The trance was gone.
 
The anger and bitterness was on full
display.
 
“I’m leaving.”

“No,
you’re not.”