Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair (5 page)

Earnestine laughed.
 
“I believe you,” she said.

Then Trina poured a glass of water and stood at the
peninsular.
 
She stared at her
mother.
 
“I think me and the kids are
going to go back to Vegas, Ma,” she said.

Earnestine was concerned.
 
“Oh, Katrina, why?
 
You only have four more days left.
 
The children are having such fun.
 
And Cecil, oh my goodness.
 
He’s having the time of his life.”

“I know,” Trina said.
 
“But Reno needs me.”

“And in four days he’ll have you.”

But Trina was shaking her head.
 
“He needs me now, Ma.”

“I don’t understand.
 
I declare I don’t!”

Trina didn’t want to go there, but she knew she had
to explain herself.
 
“I didn’t marry an
average joe.”

Earnestine nodded.
 
“I understand that.”

“And it’s not just because of his temperament, or
the things he’s had to do.
 
But women
love him, Ma.
 
They want to get next to
him.
 
Some of them will go to great
lengths to get next to him.
 
You couple
all those women that want him with his ferocious sexual appetite, and then add
in the fact that I’m all the way in Florida for two weeks, and you’ve got
yourself a train wreck waiting to happen.”

Earnestine stared at her daughter.
 
She’d heard the rumors about Reno’s
infidelity too.
 
“It’s tough to stop a train,
baby girl,” she said.

“I know that too,” Trina agreed.
 
“But Reno’s doing his part.
 
That’s why he came all this way.
 
He could have kept his butt right there in Vegas,
selected any random female he wanted, and did his thing.
 
But he came to me instead.
 
I’m not tempting fate twice.”

Earnestine nodded.
 
She fully understood what Trina meant.
 
Then she exhaled.
 
“He’s a good
man, Tree.
 
And I’m sure he’s worth the
effort.
 
But I don’t envy your position.”

Trina understood what she meant.
 
Being with Reno was not an easy thing.
 
It was hard.
 
But Trina disagreed with her mother.
 
Women did envy her.
 
Many of them
wanted to take her place.
 
And if she was
in their shoes, she would want to be next to Reno too.
 
Trina felt blessed every time she thought about
the fact that he was her man, and she was his woman.
 
“You may not envy my position,” she said,
“but there are plenty of other women who do.
 
I’ve got to go back home, Ma.”

Earnestine exhaled.
 
“It’s going to break Cecil’s heart to have to part with our grandkids
this soon.
 
Could they stay for the four
days?
 
We’ll take care of them.
 
You know we will.
 
Reno can send the plane for them then.”

Trina smiled.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“I don’t think
they’re ready to leave anyway.”

Earnestine smiled.
 
“Now I’m happy again,” she said.
 
“Not that we don’t love you, because we do,” she added.
 
“But loving those grandkids is love on an
entirely different level.
 
There’s no
comparison.
 
But believe you me, we won’t
step on your toes.
 
After four days of
dealing with Dommi, we are probably going to be anxious to give them back.”

Trina laughed.

“But Reno won’t say no, will he?” Earnestine
asked.
 
She was no fool.
 
She knew Reno ran that household.

“He knows Daddy can handle Dommi.
 
Otherwise, he would say no.
 
So don’t worry.
 
They’re yours for the next four days.”

Earnestine nodded.
 
“Good times all around,” she said.
   

Five days later and Dommi was not only back in
Vegas, but was back to his old tricks again.
 
Which meant he slipped off of the indoor playground in the back of the
PaLargio, slipped away from the other children out there, and made his way
through the lobby.
 
Although Sophie’s
school started today, Dommi’s school wasn’t back in session until tomorrow.
 
He wanted to have more of those good times
while he still had a chance.

He was no stranger to the valets.
 
Every chance he could, he’d go outside of the
lobby and laugh and talk with the happy-go-lucky valets that assisted the
guests.
 
And to a man they loved little
Dommi.
 
He had a way about him, a
style
even, that elevated him from just
another snot-nosed kid bothering them, to a kid they actually enjoyed being
around.
 
They knew their outsized view of
him had a lot to do with the fact that he was Reno Gabrini’s snot-nosed
kid.
 
But the rest of their admiration
was all Dommi’s doing.

That was why, when he came out of the lobby and
stood under the portico by the valet podium, Lopez, one of the younger valets,
smiled.
 
“What’s up, Dom?” he asked.

“What’s up, ‘Pez?” Dommi responded.

Lopez grinned.
 
“‘Pez,” he said to his fellow valets.
 
“Check this kid out.
 
He calls me
‘Pez.”

“That’s the thing,” Marcus, the valet supervisor,
said to Lopez.
 
“He’s no kid.”

“Tell him, Markie,” Dommi responded.

The other valets laughed.
 
But Marcus, not at all enamored with that
nickname, looked at Dom.
 
“Do I look like
a
Markie
to you?” he asked.

“Yeah, you do,” Lopez said between his
laughter.
 
“Dom hit it right on the
head!”

Cars began to arrive in succession and the valets
began getting back to work.

“You get out there too, ‘
Pez
,” Marcus said with a smile.

“Yes, sir,
Markie
,”
Lopez said with a smile of his own.
 
“I’m
getting back to work right away,
Markie
,”
he added as he left.

“Real funny!” Marcus yelled back.
 
Then he looked at Dommi.
 
“So you’re Dom Rickles now?
 
Got you a show here in Vegas now?
 
Very funny for a little kid.”

Dommi didn’t know whom Dom Rickles was, but he
ignored that part.
 
“I’m no kid,” he said
instead.
 
“Even you said that.
 
I’m in fifth grade now.”

Marcus grinned.
 
“Yeah, you’re a regular old man.
 
Ready for retirement now.
 
Real
smart, kid.
 
Are you smarter than a fifth
grader?
 
That’s what they used to ask.”

Dommi looked at Marcus.
 
“Well are you?”

“I’m smarter than your ass!
 
You’ve got street smarts, little man, yeah,
you do.
 
I don’t know how you got’em,
being all rich and shit, but you’ve got’em.
 
But I question your book knowledge.
 
And books are where it’s at.
 
And
what are you doing out here this time of day anyway?
 
Shouldn’t you be in school learning or
something?”

“Maybe,” Dommi said as he watched a car pull up near
the back of the line of cars the valets were suddenly overseeing.
 
A car that interested him.
 
“Maybe not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“My school isn’t back in session until tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Marcus said, nodding.
 
“So what are you up to then?
 
Other than insulting me?
 
Mr. G. knows you’re out here?
 
Does Mrs. G. know?”

“Maybe,” Dommi said again, still looking at that one
particular car in the back of the line.
 
“Maybe not.”

“So why are you out here then?”

I’m waiting,” Dommi said.
 
“What does it look like?”

“Waiting for what?” Marcus asked.
 
“Your gambling partners?
 
Your co-workers?
 
Or maybe a hooker,” Marcus said with a smile.
 
“Looking for a trick, Dominic?”

“Tricks are for kids,” Dommi said with a half-cocked
smile, and Marcus laughed.

But Dommi’s attention was elsewhere.
 
Soon Marcus’s was too.
 
Especially when not only were guests
arriving, but many other guests were coming out of the hotel asking for their
cars.
 
It became so busy so fast that
even Marcus had to pitch in.
 
He left
Dommi’s side.
 
Dommi looked around.
 
The valet station was now crazy busy.
 
But he knew an opportunity when he saw one.

His Uncle Sal had taught him the mechanics.
 
Many times did he allow him to sit on his lap
and learn whenever he could.
 
He felt he
knew how to drive better than most grownups.
 
But cars intimidated him.
 
They
were just too big.
 
Until today, when
that little Fiat drove up.

He grabbed a ticket pad from the valet rack and
hurried over to the Fiat that sat quietly waiting its turn.
 
It was going to be a long wait, as the valets
were super-busy.
 
But Dommi came to their
rescue.
 
The driver pressed down the
car’s window.

“If you’ll go around these cars and pull up to the
very front of the line, sir,” Dommi said to the driver as he pointed toward the
end of the circle of the front entrance portico, “I’ll get you signed in.”

The driver was at first doubtful, but who was he to
complain?
 
He thought it would be a long
wait, and he was already getting service?
 
“Very well,” he said, and did as Dom had instructed.

“He looks awfully young,” the man’s wife said as
they drove past numerous cars and made their way around the circle to the front
of the pack.
 
“Like a child.”

“Why would they have a child valet?” the driver
asked.
 
“Come on, now.
 
Don’t be foolish.
 
He’s small because he’s a midget.”

“Little person, dear.
 
They like to be called little people, not
midgets anymore.
 
But I don’t see how
that’s possible.
 
He doesn’t have a big
head or anything.”

The driver rolled his eyes.
 
His wife was getting on his nerves before
their vacation even began.
 
“All midgets
do not have big heads, Ethel.
 
Look at
that pint-sized guy on Game of Thrones.
 
His head isn’t big.”
 
Then he
thought about it.
 
“Is it?”

While they pondered the question, Dom was running
toward their car.
 
Once there, he filled
out a valet ticket, gave the driver the bottom stud, and asked for the keys.

“You guys can check in,” Dom said.
 
“I’ll have a bellhop get your luggage and
meet you at the check-in counter.
 
I have
to tell you, though, it’s a long line.”

“Yes,” the driver said as he and his wife got
out.
 
“We figured that out already.”
 
He handed Dom the keys.

Dom hurried over to the outside phone and dialed
1022.
 
“This is Gabrini,” he said over
the phone.
 
“Send a bellhop out here
now!”

He didn’t say that he was Dominic Gabrini
, Junior
for a reason.
 
If they thought it was his father, or even
his big brother Jimmy, they would move faster.
 
If they knew it was him, they’d laugh.

The bellhop was surprised to hurry out and see that
it was him.
 
But when Dom instructed the
bellhop to get the luggage out of the Fiat and meet the owners at check-in, the
bellhop didn’t laugh.
 
Dommi was a kid,
but he was Reno Gabrini’s kid.

Dommi hurried into the lobby of his father’s grand
hotel and, once certain that the couple waiting in line at Check-in wasn’t
giving him a second glance, took his father’s private elevator upstairs to the
penthouse.
 
Once inside, he grabbed two
pillows and stuffed them into a garbage bag, grabbed a pair of Reno’s
sunglasses, and then made his way back downstairs, his heart pounding.

The valet station was still clogged and busy as heck
as he walked to the Fiat, careful not to run or appear overly excited.
 
He got in and put the pillows beneath his
butt.

And then, just like his Uncle Sal taught him, he
cranked up that baby, smiled his smile, and drove away. He was a happy boy,
even though he knew he was going to be a dead boy if his father, or even his
mother, ever found out about his big adventure.
 
But he was certain they wouldn’t.
 
He was certain he would be back long before they ever knew he had gone.

“There he is,” Quinn Chan said to the blackjack
player as they both looked toward the casino’s main entrance.
 
Reno Gabrini was making the rounds and had
just come into their view.

Trent Chappell first heard about Reno Gabrini when
he was a kid on the Strip finding johns for hookers, but he never laid eyes on
him until now.
 
On first glance, Chap
didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
 
Gabrini looked to him like nothing more than some rich casino owner in a
tailored suit, backslapping his male guests and putting his best charm
offensive on the females.
 
He moved from
table to table like a surgeon diagnosing his patients, not to make them feel
better about themselves, but to make them feel better about returning again and
again and blowing all their money inside his place of business.
 
Chap noticed that even the men seemed easily
enamored with Gabrini, but not necessarily because of the physical way he was
turning the ladies on, but because of the power the men knew he wielded.

But on second look, as Gabrini was walking away from
those guests and heading to his next table, to his next gullible marks, Chap
saw it.
 
He saw an intense, menacing look
began to emerge on Gabrini’s attractive face, and a hard edge that made it
clear he was not the one to trifle with.
 
Gabrini had a reputation as a badass you didn’t mess with.
 
He had a reputation as a man who was so mafia
nobody could pinpoint a single member of the crew he ran.
 
That was the man Chap saw as he moved away
from one table and headed to the next one.
 
Not some backslapper.
 
Not some
happy-go-lucky businessman.
 
That face of
menace was the Reno Gabrini he’d heard about, and even feared, when he was a
kid on the Strip.
 
He nodded his
head.
 
“I see what you mean,” he said to
Quinn.

“Now you see what I mean?” Quinn was excited, as if
she’d been vindicated.
 
She stood beside
his chair at the blackjack table.
 
She
was supposed to be working.
 
She was,
after all, one of Reno’s executive assistants, but work was the last thing on
her mind.
 
“Didn’t I tell you he was
sexy?”

“I don’t know about all that,” Chap made clear as he
tossed in a few more chips.
 
A lady and three
other men were playing at the big table too, but they were clean on the other
side engaged in their own conversations.
 
The blackjack dealer was also on the other side.
 
They couldn’t hear a word.
 
“I see what you mean about Gabrini’s
toughness.
 
I see what you mean about the
scale of the job.
 
That’s all I see.”

“But the scale of the man ain’t bad either,” Quinn
said with a grin.

Chap looked over his shoulder at her.
 
She was his baby sister.
 
They had the same mother, but different
fathers.
 
Although both were biracial
half-Asian and half-African-American, her extremely grayish-black complexion
gave off more of a Southeast-Asian vibe than an African-American one.
 
Chap’s browner complexion and almond eyes
gave off just the opposite vibe.
  
“Are
you sure you’re in this for what you’re telling me you’re in this for, sis?”

Quinn looked at him.
 
“Why would you ask that?
 
Yes, I’m
in it for what I said. I didn’t order you to come to Vegas under false
pretenses.”