Romancing Tommy Gabrini (37 page)

“I
see you still have your taste in females,” Clark said with a grin that made
Tommy cringe.
 
He just hated when anyone
referred to Grace as if she was just another one of his female friends.
 

“Yes,
I do,” he said.
 
“But this is Grace
McKinsey,” Tommy made clear.
 
“My lady.”

Clark
understood the distinction. He’d never before heard Tommy refer to any female
on his arms as his lady.
 
He nodded
toward Grace.
 
“Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Nice
to meet you,” Grace replied.

“And
you know Dominic,” Tommy said, referring to Reno.

“He
knows me,” Reno said impatiently.
 
“He’s
harassed me too many times to not know me.”

“Now
you hold on,” Clark started.

“No,
you hold on!” Reno finished.
 
“Where the
fuck is my wife?”

Clark
gave Reno a chilly look and then looked back at Tommy.
 
“So what brings you to my precinct?” he asked
his former colleague.

“Apparently
your precinct has detained my sister-in-law,” Tommy said, “and we need to know
why.”

“It
wasn’t us,” Clark said, looking from Tommy to Reno and back to Tommy.
 
“It’s those
got
damn Feds running in here and demanding that we give them an
interrogation room.
 
You know how they
are.
 
They could have just as easily
taken her to their place, but no.
 
They
have to throw their weight around here.
 
Get us involved.”

“All
of that, I’m sure, is true,” Tommy said, before Reno could interrupt.
 
“But the fact remains, I need to see my
sister-in-law.
 
And I need to see her
now, Des.”

Des
Clark glanced at Reno again.
 
And at
Grace. Then back to Tommy.
 
He always did
like Tommy.
 
Reno, he couldn’t stand, but
he always did like Dapper Tom.

“Come
with me,” he said and Tommy, Reno, and Grace followed the chief.

It
would take nearly ten more minutes before the chief would return to his office
and inform the threesome that the Feds weren’t thinking about him and he was
unable to secure her release.
 
It would
then take Tommy phoning every Washington contact he had, who, in turn, phoned
their contacts, who, eventually, was able to get in touch with the Attorney
General.
 
It was only after that did the
FBI stand down, and Trina was released.

They
all piled back into Reno’s limo, with Trina at his side.
 
Reno had his arm around Trina, and Tommy had
his arm around Grace.
 
For the initial
leg of their ride back to the PaLargio, all four remained silent.
 

Until
Reno broke the silence.
 
“They didn’t
hurt you or anything?” he asked Trina again.
 
It was the first question he had asked when she was first released.

“No,”
Trina said, obviously still a little shaken.
  
“They weren’t abusive at all.”

“Did
they question you about the PaLargio?” he asked.
 
“I heard they were cracking down on some of
the rigged casinos, but mine ain’t rigged.”

“No,
Reno.
 
They didn’t even mention the
PaLargio.”

Reno
frowned.
 
“Then what the fuck did they
want?
 
What were they questioning you
about?”

Trina
looked at Tommy.
 
“Tommy,” she said.

Grace’s
heart pounded.
 
Reno looked at Tommy,
too.
 
Tommy was staring at Trina.

“Me?”
he asked.

“They
barely mentioned Reno.
 
They wanted to
know all about you, Tommy, and if I knew some woman named Sheila Lindsey.”

Tommy’s
heart pounded.
 
Reno caught the change in
his demeanor.
 
Grace caught it too.

“What?”
Reno asked him.
 
“Who’s Sheila Lindsey?”

But
it was obvious to everyone that Tommy was thinking and thinking hard.
 
He even looked away from all of them and
stared out of the car’s window.
 

And
they all remained silent throughout the ride back to the PaLargio.
 
Because they all knew that Tommy would tell them
in his own time.
 
Even Grace, who was
perhaps more concerned than the others because this was all new to her, held
her peace.
 
They all allowed Tommy to
keep his own counsel until they were back at the PaLargio, inside the
penthouse, seated around the kitchen table.

The
baby was asleep and Jimmy Mack was preparing sandwiches.
 
Tommy had lit a cigarette, which Grace
discovered he always did whenever he was super-stressed, and everybody had
drinks in front of them.
 
And he was then
ready to talk.

“Did
they mention Carter Herns also?” he asked Trina.

Trina
nodded. “They did.
 
They wanted to know
if I’d ever seen the two of you together, or if I ever saw him with Sheila
Lindsey.
 
They even showed me photos.
 
I told them I didn’t know him or any Sheila
Lindsey and never heard of either one of them.”

“Did
they believe you?” Grace asked.

“Hell
nall,” Reno answered for his wife.
 
“Those Fed fuckers don’t believe anything you say.
 
Never.”

“You’re
right about that,” Trina said.
 
“They
wasn’t trying to believe me.
 
No matter
what I said.
 
They kept asking me why was
I protecting Tommy and if I was one of his women, too.”

Tommy
looked at her.
 
“They asked you that?”

“Yeah,”
Trina said.

“Why
is that important?” Reno asked Tommy.
 
“What’s this about, Tommy?
 
Who
the fuck’s Sheila Lindsey and Carter Herns?”

Although
all eyes were on Tommy, even Jimmy had all but stopped making those sandwiches
and was looking, Grace’s eyes were riveted on him.
 
And terror was in her eyes.
 
Why would the F.B.I., she wondered, be
questioning Trina about Tommy?
 
About
her
Tommy?

Tommy
took a slow drag on his cigarette, and then he leaned forward and doused the
ash into the tray on the table.

“Sheila
Lindsey,” he began, “used to be a friend of mine.”

“A
girlfriend?” Reno asked.
 

There
was a slight hesitation.
 
“Yes,” he
said.
 
Grace’s body tensed more.

“We
met years ago,” Tommy went on, “at a dinner party.”

Grace
continued to stare at Tommy, although the fact that they had met at a dinner
party, too, wasn’t lost on her.

“We talked,”
Tommy continued, “and ended up sleeping together a few times.
 
And I thought that was that.
 
But she didn’t.
 
She continued to want to get together, I
continued to tell her I wasn’t interested, but she wouldn’t take no for an
answer.
 
Eventually she moved on.
 
But then she went missing.”

“Oh,
that was the one?”
 
Reno asked,
surprised.

“Sheila
Lindsey was that case, yes,” Tommy said to Reno.
 
Then he exhaled again.
 
“When she was found, something like three
weeks later, it was ruled a suicide.”

“Her
car had been found in a lake, right, and she was in it?” Reno asked.

“Right.
 
Well, Carson Herns was her boyfriend at the
time and he tried to convince authorities that I somehow murdered her, and that
it wasn’t suicide.
 
Since I had mobsters
in my family, he also tried to implicate Reno.”

“Reno?”
Trina asked.

“Yeah,”
Reno said.
 
“That clown tried to claim
that Sheila Lindsey was harassing Tommy, so Tommy came to me and I took care of
it for him.
 
Tommy couldn’t do it, Herns’
story went, because he was a former law enforcement officer.
 
But me and my gangster ass had no such
inhibitions.
 
It was nonsense.”

“But
Herns kept trying to feed that nonsense to the Feds,” Tommy continued.
 
“He figured the local police would protect
their own, but if he included Reno, or the mob, the Feds would have
jurisdiction.
 
It didn’t go anywhere
then, because it wasn’t true, and I didn’t hear any more about Herns.
 
That was years ago.”

Reno
looked at Tommy.
  
“We need to find out
what boyfriend’s been up to lately.”

“Right,”
Tommy said.
 
“I’m going to get my people
on it.”

“So
you think Herns was the feeder?” Trina asked.

“Has
to be,” Reno said.

“What’s
a feeder?” Grace asked.

Tommy
looked at her and touched her hand.
 
He
hated that this would come up just when their relationship was at its best
point yet.
 
“A feeder,” he said, “is
somebody who goes to the Feds with information on somebody else.”

“Like
a snitch?”

“Right,”
Reno said.
 
“Herns is more than likely
the person trying to re-litigate Sheila Lindsey’s suicide.
 
Tommy’s got to find out why he would drag up
that shit now.”

“But
why would they call in Trina?” Grace asked.
 
“That’s what I don’t understand.
 
Why wouldn’t they just call you in, Tommy?”

“Because
they’re crooked as crooked can get,” Reno said.
 
“They’re trying to backdoor me.”

“That’s
what I think,” Trina said.
 
“They barely
mentioned your name,” she said to Reno, “but you were the elephant in the room
the entire time I was there.”

Tommy
could see Grace was getting more, not less, confused.
 
“What we’re saying is that they called in
Trina,” he said, “because they wanted her to turn on me to save Reno.
 
They wanted her to confess to knowing
something about the Lindsey case and claim that I had mentioned something to
her about needing to get rid of Lindsey, or that I thought at the time that
Sheila was stalking me and was an aggravation, something.”

“Was
she stalking you?” Grace asked.

“She
was bothering me, yes,” Tommy admitted.
 
“For a good while she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
 
But I wouldn’t call it stalking, no.”
 

Grace
looked as if she was going to go to pieces with anguish.
 
She knew that she was in love with a
complicated man.
 
His looks alone made
him a target for women who wanted the best for themselves, too.
 
But she wondered if this Sheila person was just
the beginning of her pain.
 
She wondered
how many more women were out there, who didn’t kill themselves but were
actively still pursuing Tommy.
 
A look of
great pain crossed her big eyes.

Tommy
stood up.
 
And reached out his hand.

“Let’s
take a walk,” he said to her.

Grace
looked at his hand, as if she was seriously considering turning him down.
 
Then she took his hand and stood up.
 
Reno, Trina, and Jimmy Mack watched as they
left.

“Poor
kid,” Trina said.
 
“I don’t know if she’s
ready for this.”

“She can
handle it,” Reno said assuredly.
 
“Tommy
won’t put her through half the shit I put you through.”

Trina
and Jimmy looked at Reno.
 
It was a
searing truth to Reno, that his mob connections had caused Trina great pain
throughout their marriage, and it was still the biggest regret of his life.

“You
did what you had to do, Pop,” Jimmy said.
 
“You didn’t ask for any of those fights.
 
You would have given Tree an easy life too if all those assholes would
have left you alone.”

This
time Trina and Reno looked at Jimmy.
 
Trina was convinced that Jimmy Mack was going to follow, one hundred
percent, in Reno’s footsteps.
 
And it
scared her.

“You
just fix those sandwiches and shut the fuck up,” Reno said harshly to his son,
because it scared him, too.