Sal Gabrini: His House of Cards (19 page)

Reno and
Tommy were beginning to feel better about the situation.
 
Gemma was clear and forceful to them.
 
They looked at Sal.
 
He looked pleased too.

“Then,”
Gemma continued, “the D.A. insisted that Mr. Gabrini was a menace to society, a
murderer even, and to set bail for his release would be tantamount, he said, to
granting bail to a serial killer.
 
How’s
that?
 
Where’s the proof of that?
 
Mr. Gabrini has never been convicted of any
crime, let alone a series of murders.
 
He
runs a major corporation, so he’s absolutely no flight risk.
 
The idea that he has been running around
disrupting this city is a farce.
 
Mr.
Gabrini is a successful businessman handling his own business.
 
He’s not menacing anybody.
 
I would ask that bail be granted, and I ask,
given Mr. Gabrini’s true record, not the D.A. fantasy record, that the bail be
set at no more than two hundred thousand dollars.”

Gemma sat
down.
 
She knew the bail amount she
requested was woefully small, but that was by intention.
 
She needed to give the judge room to appear
fair and impartial.
 
He could grant Sal
bail, but he could grant it at an astronomical amount.
 
Sal and Gemma didn’t care about the
amount.
 
They just wanted the judge to
grant bail.
 

And he
did.
 
The D.A. speculative claims were
dismissed.
 
“Bail will be set,” the judge
said, “at five million dollars.”

Gemma stood
up.
 
“Thank you, your Honor,” she said,
and sat back down beside Sal.
 
Sal
squeezed her hand.

But before Sal
could be processed out, Victor Grotski came in and confessed to the murder of
Blanche Delilah.
 
He came with
irrefutable evidence, with information the State had not released to the
public, and eagerly confessed.
 
Court was
reconvened later that afternoon, and all charges against Salvatore Gabrini were
dropped.

Although
Reno and Tommy sat mute, they were bursting with gladness inside.
 
But they were in a court of law.
 
They weren’t about to let cops and judges get
any rise out of them, happy or sad.

Besides,
they knew they had their work cut out for them.
 
Rudy Red was still on the loose.
 
Sal’s supposed son was in Rudy’s camp.
 
They had more work to do.

As soon as
they made it home, Sal headed to his home office.
 
Reno and Tommy hurried behind him.
 
Gemma hurried behind them.

When she
arrived, Sal had already opened the wall that hid his massive gun collection,
and was pulling out weapons.

“We need to
talk, Sal,” Tommy said.

Sal stopped
pulling out guns and exhaled.
 
They were
all standing around his desk.
 
Gemma
stood beside Tommy.

“Is it
clean?” Sal asked.

Reno
nodded.
 
“It’s clean.
 
My men did a full sweep.
 
It’s clean.”

Gemma knew
what they meant.
 
Reno’s men had entered
their home and checked it inside out for any listening devices the police or
anybody else might have planted.
 
She
wasn’t crazy about the idea of others entering her home without her permission,
but Reno was there to supervise.
 
It was
the price of being a Gabrini.
 
A price
well worth the cost.

“Did you
guys talk to Ang?” Sal asked.

“We talked
to him,” Tommy said.
 
“We talked to
Victor too.”

Sal
nodded.
 
“I already figured that one out
when they told me he confessed.
 
Was it a
payoff,” he added, “or did he really ice Blanche?”

“It was no
payoff,” Reno said. “He snuffed her out alright.
 
He says Rudy Red made him do it.”

Gemma
frowned.
 
“Who’s Rudy Red?”

Tommy and
Reno didn’t look at her.
 
They looked at
Sal.
 
This was yet another ghost in his
closet that could strangle his relationship with Gem.
 
And they didn’t like it.

Sal didn’t
like it either.
 
But there was nothing he
could do to change it now.
 
“He’s a hood
I knew when we first moved to the west coast.
 
Drug dealer mainly.
 
He ran
operations from Seattle to L.A. to here in Vegas.
 
He was much older than I was.
  
I was like eighteen-nineteen.
 
He was like thirty-something.
 
But his old lady was more around my age.
 
And she was tired of what he was putting
out.
 
So she came to me.”

Gemma
smiled.
 
“And you obliged her I’m sure.”

Sal wasn’t
able to smile, but he only hoped, as he told her more, she would hold onto that
smile.
 
“I obliged her,” he said.
 
“But we had to be careful.
 
Neither one of us had any power back then,
and Rudy Red had plenty.
 
We played
around behind his back.”

Then Gemma
hesitated.
 
She frowned.
 
“Blanche Delilah?” she asked.
 
“Rudy Red’s girlfriend was Blanche Delilah?”

Sal knew
that wasn’t the main story.
 
“Yes,
Gemma,” he said.
 
“It was Blanche.”

“So you
think she hooked up with this Rudy Red and thought telling me about your
relationship would take you down?”

Sal
nodded.
 
“That’s what we think, yeah.”

“But why
would something like that take you down?” Gemma asked.

“It almost
did,” Tommy said.

“Don’t
underestimate the love a man has for his woman, Gem,” Reno said.
 
“In our game, it’s called leverage.
 
Rudy must have known how much Sal loves you,
and he wanted to exploit that knowledge.”

“He wanted
to turn the people I love most against me,” Sal said.
 
“He wanted to turn you against me with
Blanche.
 
He wanted to turn Tommy against
me with that discrimination lawsuit.”

“But how
would that turn Tommy against you?” Gemma asked.

“Because it
could have destroyed the corporation Tommy worked so hard to build,” Reno
said.
 
“Everybody knows Tommy don’t play
when it comes to his coins.”

Tommy
smiled.
 
“That’s true,” he said.

“So you
figure this Rudy Red was behind all of this?” Gemma asked.

Reno
nodded.
 
“He’s behind it.
 
Sal’s people have been beating the
pavements.
 
My people have been beating
the pavements.
 
They all come back to the
same name: Rudy Red Balotti.”

“But when
none of that shit worked,” Sal said, “he tries to gun you down at that
courthouse.”

Gemma stared
at Sal.
 
“So you think I was the target?”

Sal
nodded.
 
“Yeah, Gem.
 
I think so.
 
He wanted to take it to another level.”

“How do you
mean?”

“When his
henchmen missed you,” Sal said, “he knew he had to stop working around the
edges and come straight for me.”

“By setting
you up for Blanche Delilah’s murder?” Gemma asked.

Sal
nodded.
 
“Yeah.”

“But what if
it’s not him?
 
What if this Rudy Red
turns out to be innocent?”

“It’s him,”
Reno said.
 
“We didn’t just take Victor
Grotski’s word for it.
 
Like I told you,
once we got a name; once we knew the fucker behind this shit was Rudy Red, my
people and Sal’s people were able to go to the right sources.
 
They all confirmed that it’s Rudy.
 
It’s him.”

Tommy looked
at Sal.
 
“He’ll be here in Vegas in a
couple days,” he said.

Sal was
pleased to hear it.
 
“Good.
 
Where’s his hangout?”

“He runs
some chop shop across town,” Tommy said.
 
“A major operation in a warehouse that looks condemned.
 
Every end of month he comes down to pick up
the loot.”

“He’s always
been a creature of habit,” Sal said.

Tommy
nodded.
 
“That’s what you can count
on.
 
But you can’t get close to him.
 
Don’t even try it.
 
They call him Fort Knox Walking when he goes
anywhere because of the level of security around him.
 
But the thing is, where he goes, his security
goes.
 
Even inside buildings.
 
They don’t hang outside.”

“His driver
too?” Sal asked.

Tommy
smiled.
 
“His driver too.”

“So it’ll have
to be the car,” Sal said.

“When he and
his men go inside,” Tommy suggested, “that’s when your men will have to
strike.”

Sal
nodded.
 
“Me and my crew can handle
it.
 
We shouldn’t need any backup.
 
It has to be a small operation by
definition.”

“Does that
mean I can go back to my life now?” Tommy asked with a smile.

Sal smiled
too.
 
“You can go back.
 
And thanks for coming.”

“But don’t
do any remote control shit, Sal,” Reno warned.
 
“If it’s going to blow, it’ll have to be the old fashioned way.”

“You mean
plant the bomb and go?” Sal asked.

“Plant it
and go,” Reno agreed.
 
“That’s the only
way.
 
Just hang around close enough
should something malfunction.
 
But you
can’t try to detonate by remote.
 
The
Feds are too technologically sophisticated now.
 
I hear those fuckers can trace even a throwaway if it’s connected to a
bomb.
 
It’s not worth the risk.”

“I hear
you,” Sal said, nodding.
 
“I hear you,
Reno.”

“There’s a
vacant building across the alley from the warehouse,” Tommy said. “You and your
men can wait there and make sure there are no glitches.
 
Then take off around back before the cops get
there.”

“And if
there are glitches,” Sal said, “and we don’t get out of the area in time, then
I’ll have a backup story.
 
I was looking
to purchase that vacant building.”

“Good idea,”
Tommy said.
 
“But set it up today.
 
They will check it out you know.
 
Plan to meet with the realtor over there.”

“But it’ll
have to be somebody in our pocket,” Reno said.
 
“If the cops call, the realtor can claim he was running late, but your
alibi was right.
 
He was supposed to meet
you over there.”

“But
remember to call and schedule the appointment,” Tommy said.
 
“We need all the records in place should the
Feds check.
 
And they will check.”

Sal
nodded.
 
He understood.

There was a
time when Gemma would have left the room before she allowed herself to hear
about an assassination plot like the one the men were discussing.
 
But after that arrest and the jeopardy this
Rudy Red put her husband in, where the State was talking about giving Sal the
death penalty, she wasn’t thinking about Rudy Red’s welfare.
 
He started it, Sal was going to finish
it.
 
Her concern wasn’t about their
target.
 
It was about what was driving
their target.

“What I
don’t understand,” she said, “is why would he do all of this?
 
It can’t possibly be because Sal was sleeping
with his girlfriend twenty years ago, or however long it was.
 
That can’t possibly be the reason, right?”
 
Gemma looked from Sal to Tommy and Reno, and
then back to Sal.

Sal knew it
was time to have another come to Jesus meeting with Gem.
 
He couldn’t tell her while he was
incarcerated.
 
They both knew, even
though it wasn’t supposed to be allowed, that their conversations were more
than likely being listened to.
 
But he
was out now.
 
He had to come clean.
 
He looked at Tommy and Reno.
 
“Give us a minute,” he said.

As Tommy and
Reno left the room, Gemma’s heart began to pound.
 
What now?

“Sit down,
Gem,” Sal said, and she took a seat on the couch in the office.
 
Sal sat down beside her.

One night in
jail had aged him already, Gemma noticed.
 
He was not the kind of man who was going to be able to be locked
up.
 
He would kill himself first.
 
That was why, she decided right then and
there, that she was going to always be his attorney first.
 
She was always going to do everything in her
power to keep him free.

But when he
didn’t start talking, she became more concerned.
 
“What is it, Sal?” she asked him.

“Remember
when Blanche told you that I was the father of her child?”

Gemma’s
chest squeezed.
 
“Is it true?”

“I didn’t
know shit about it,” Sal said.
 
But then
an anguished look appeared on his face.
 
“But it might be true, yeah.”

Gemma’s
heart dropped.

“I found out
the morning the Feds arrested me.
 
She
had a boy, Gemma.
 
All along we were
thinking she meant some baby, or at least some minor child.”

“That’s how
she made it sound.”

“I
know.
 
But she got pregnant twenty years
ago, when we were kids fooling around.
 
She had to tell Rudy it was his kid or he would have killed her and me
both.
 
And he would have, Gem.
 
He was a bad man back then.
 
My old man might have been high ranking in
the police force, and I might have been gearing up for my own police career,
but that didn’t mean shit to gangsters then.
 
It just meant Rudy would have enjoyed icing me all the more.”

“But what
about this child?”
 
Gemma asked.
 
“How can you be certain he’s yours, Sal?
 
And I thought you said you never saw her
pregnant.”

“I didn’t,”
Sal said affirmatively.
 
“From what I understand
she got Rudy to let her go to Arizona while she was pregnant, to stay with his
mother or somebody.
 
I never saw her
pregnant.
 
Nobody did.”