Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 (4 page)

“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 it 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.”