“Hell yeah,” Sal said, and both men, in their imported suits, in their Italian shoes, ran as if they were thieves in the night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Everything slowed when Reno and Sal walked into the penthouse and saw Trina standing there. She had been anxiously pacing the room, unable to keep still, but stopped when she saw Reno. He looked his usual frazzled self, with his beautiful hair all over his beautiful head, with his suit of clothes hanging on him as if they had never been tailored-made for him, and with his intense blue eyes so focused on her that they looked like lasers.
Reno couldn’t help that he was overly focused on her. He’d been overly worried about her since their fight the night she didn’t show up at that restaurant. And now this. Her small arms were folded across herself, as if hugging herself, and although she looked well put together to most people, Reno could see the devastation in her big hazel eyes even from where he stood.
And he felt two ways about it. He was relieved that she was in their penthouse and in one piece, and he was crippled with fear that her togetherness was only skin deep. He knew she had been talking to the Feds. He knew she had been going in and out of motel rooms meeting with them. Now she said she was in trouble. She was in trouble. That was the part that worried Reno the most. He would rather she had snitched on him, and brought him down, than for this shit to twist on her.
When Trina saw Reno walk through that door, all of the distress of being alone in the battle melted away from her. She needed him, unlike she had ever needed him before, and he came. He came, she knew, because he loved her. He came because he was worried sick about the way their relationship had been going. He came because he was that kind of man. “Reno,” she said heartfelt, as if his presence alone was her relief, and ran to him.
Reno’s own heart swelled with so much emotion when she began running to him, as if he was her knight again, that he began hurrying to her. When they finally closed the breech that had been swallowing both of them, he opened his big, muscular arms to her, and she fell into those arms. She began sobbing, as he held her tightly. Her pain broke his heart. “It’s going to be alright, baby,” he was saying to her, comforting her. “I promise you it’s going to be alright.”
Even Sal was taken aback by the emotion Trina was displaying. She was always so strong in his eyes. Like a well-grounded tree, as if she had earned her nickname. Even when they first entered the penthouse, he was impressed with her dignity. Shit was going on, some serious shit if those videos were to be believed, but she still had that style about her. Her red pantsuit was still crisp even this late in the day. Her thick, bouncy hair was still immaculate. Her heels were so steep that most women would walk like penguins in them, but Trina glided in them even when she ran to Reno. But she was sobbing in her husband’s arms. She had phoned and said she was in trouble. Even trees, he knew, needed to be nourished. Tree needed Reno.
When her sobbing eased, Reno pulled slightly back and placed his hand on her chin. Her beautiful eyes were wet, but her relief that he held her in his arms still shined through. “What’s the matter, babe?” he asked her, looking from one eye to the other eye as if he could somehow find the answer within those orbs. “What happened?”
Trina knew she had to come clean, completely clean, to keep him in her corner. Only she wasn’t at all sure, once he heard what she had to say, if he would stay there. “Sit down, Reno,” she said. “I need to tell you something.”
Reno’s heart was hammering as she clasped his hand and they walked to the sofa. Sal’s heart was hammering too as he followed them and sat in the flanking chair. He loved Reno and Tree. He loved them so deeply that it could not have hurt him more even if it was he and his own wife going through this turmoil. He crossed his legs. Reno and Trina sat on the edge of the sofa, turned toward each other, still holding hands. What Sal loved most about the two of them was that they trusted him so much that they never once asked each other if it was okay for him to hear whatever they had to say. They knew it was okay.
“I met with two operatives affiliated with the FBI, Reno,” Trina admitted off the top.
Reno felt relieved that she admitted it, but still concerned. “I know,” he said.
Trina looked at him. “You know?”
“I had my men following you. I know I promised I wouldn’t have you followed anymore, but I know you, Tree. Something was wrong. My gut told me so. Your actions told me so. After we had our argument, I put a detail on you. They saw you meeting with the two guys, did their due diligence, and found out they were both FBI. So I know you met with them. What I don’t know is why.”
Trina should have known she couldn’t put anything past Reno. She should have known. But she still had to tell him the truth. “I was at work, at Champagne’s,” she began, “when a UPS driver brought me this package. Two items were in it. One was a video.”
Sal frowned. “What’s with all of these fucking videos?” he asked. “First they have this video of Jimmy, and they blackmail him. Then these videos of you and the Feds. Now somebody’s sending you a video too. Are all of these things related?”
“Yes,” Trina said to Sal. “Jimmy’s video, the video of me meeting with the Feds, and the one they mailed to me are from the same people, if that’s what you mean. They discovered mine when Ice came up for parole, and then they pulled that sting on Jimmy. They purposely set him up. They said he was the trial run to see how Reno would handle it. When they didn’t hear back from some guy their inside person, they got their answer. So they knew they had to play this right. They had to go to me, not you.”
“But what was the video about?” Reno asked. “And who’s Ice?”
“Iceman Nelson was a big time drug dealer I knew back in Mississippi. I was managing a nightclub in Dale that he frequented a lot, and we began taking a shine to each other. What I didn’t know was that he was responsible for a lot of drive-bys when people didn’t pay up. He killed a lot of people. And the fact that he had been transporting drugs across state lines, brought the Feds in.”
Reno was surprised Trina had never mentioned the guy. But he held his fire.
“So one day, after we hooked up and he started recognizing me as his old lady, he told me he was trying to break into the big leagues and needed my help.”
“What kind of help?” Reno asked.
Trina hated to admit this part of her story. “He wanted me to provide girls for his major suppliers,” she said.
Sal was stunned. Reno frowned. “You mean pimp for him? He wanted you to pimp for him?”
Trina nodded. “I didn’t think of it that way back then,” she said, “but yeah, that’s what it amounted to.”
“But regardless, you said no, right? You told him to take a hike, right?”
Trina knew Reno had this image of her. Even when she would tell him that she was not now, nor ever had been some good little choirgirl, he wouldn’t accept it. “No, Reno,” she said. “I didn’t turn him down. I provided girls for his suppliers.”
Sal didn’t know what to think. He had this image of Trina as the epitome of morality always, even in her youth. And she used to be a madam? Sal was thrown.
Reno was thrown too. The idea of his virtuous wife providing girls for some trash barrel drug dealer didn’t sit right with him at all, but he knew it was long ago and far away, long before she ever met him. “Keep talking,” he said.
“One girl worked as a waitress at the club. She was very pretty and innocent and Ice really wanted her roped in. So I roped her in. I told her the guy was nice, and that she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do, and I really roped her in. Of course I didn’t know the guy. Had never even laid eyes on him before. But I offered her up to Ice and he offered her up to this so-called major client. The next day, I hear that same major client had brutally beaten and raped her.”
Sal let out a harsh exhale. Poor thing, he thought. Reno, however, was staring intensely at his wife. Trina, and what all this meant for her, was all he could t
hink about.
“They said she wouldn’t go to the hospital and wouldn’t call the cops, so I wanted to rush to her apartment and see for myself what that creep did to her. Ice wouldn’t let me go alone, so he had this dude named Stokey, his right hand man, drive me over there. I didn’t care at that point. I just needed to make sure Vern was okay.”
“Was she?” Sal asked.
Trina shook her head. “When we got to her apartment, and after Stokey jimmied the lock to let us in, we discovered that she had already hung herself.”
“Ah, man,” Sal said with a distressed look on his face. He looked at Reno. But Reno was still singularly focused, not on the misfortunes of some girl, but on Tree.
“I was devastated,” Trina said. “I knew then I was in some deep shit I didn’t even understand. I caused her death, Reno. I caused it. The only reason she went to meet up with that dude was because she trusted me. She figured I wouldn’t steer her wrong when I was steering my own self wrong back then. I loved bad boys and Ice was the bad. But seeing what happened to Vern, seeing her so ashamed that she would take her own life, woke me up. I had to get my black ass out of Mississippi, I knew that, and away from Ice, too, or I probably was going to end up like Vern.”
“What did you do?” Sal asked her.
Trina was surprised that Reno wasn’t asking her any questions, just staring at her as if he was going to explode with rage at any moment, but she answered Sal’s question. “I first knew I had to get away from Ice, and I had to have time to get away. If I tried to run away from Stokey at that moment, I knew he would only tell Ice and they would track me down easily. So I had to get some space.”
“What did you do?” Sal asked again.
“As soon as Stokey took me back to Ice’s apartment to wait for Ice to make it home, and as soon as Stokey turned his back, I made my move. I grabbed the first thing I could lay my hands on, which was the base of a lamp, and slammed it over his head. It worked. He passed out. Then I went to the payphone in the apartment building and called another friend, Jeffrey Graham, and told him I needed to get out of town and I needed to get out right now. He agreed to come and get me. I know I told you that I left Dale because I was all in love with Jeffrey. But that was only partially true. Jeffrey was in love with me, and I depended on that love to get myself out of Dale.”
Reno continued to just sit there and listen. It was tough to hear, but he wasn’t hearing it the way Trina thought he was hearing it. It wasn’t a story of lies and deceit to him. It was a story of survival. “Keep going,” he said to her.
Trina glanced at Sal. Sal, too, was surprised by Reno’s lack of reaction. But Trina kept going. “I wiped my fingerprints off of the lamp and the doorknob and anything else I remembered touching, and within the hour me and Jeffrey were heading out of town. When I got far enough away, I went to a payphone, called the Dale police department, and reported a fight between Iceman and Stokey at Ice’s apartment. I figured the cops would arrest Ice and hold him at least overnight, and Stokey wouldn’t be in any shape to track me down. I would have a chance to get away. So we got away. We didn’t look back.”
Trina looked at Reno. “I didn’t tell you the whole story when I told you about Jeffrey. I never told anybody the whole story. But that was the real story behind my sudden departure from my hometown.”
“Go on,” Reno said.
“We eventually ended up in Reno, Nevada, Jeffrey ended up trying to control me just like Ice had tried, and I ended up leaving him too. I was done with men. I ended up here in Vegas, waiting tables at Boyzie’s, but that was the main reason why I refused to strip. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that kind of life. If I could have waited tables in a different place, I would have. But I had to take what I could get back then. Then I met you.” Then Trina let out a distressed exhale. “I had no idea Stokey had died from that blow over the head,” she said, “until I got that newspaper clipping.”
Reno and Sal were stunned. “He died?” Reno asked.
Trina nodded, fighting back tears. “He died. The way I hit him caused his brain to hemorrhage, and he died in that apartment. I just wanted to knock him out long enough to get out of town, I swear I did. That’s all I wanted. But I killed him. I just found out, when I read that newspaper clipping, that I actually killed that man.”
Reno’s heart rammed against his chest. He put his arm around her waist, to comfort her, but he was still uneasy himself. Trina had murdered that man. In the eyes of the law, Trina had murdered that man.
“You said the feds were on to your boyfriend Ice?” Sal asked her.
But Trina was still dealing with what she had done. “I never dreamed he would die,” she said. “I never dreamed I would have caused him to lose his life. Now it wasn’t just Vern’s blood on my hands, but Stokey’s too.”
Reno rubbed her back, but he was still too intensely involved with hearing the full story to show the kind of affection she wanted. When it was a matter of life and death, and especially Trina’s life and death, affection was the last thing he was trying to display.
Trina felt his chill too. She knew he wouldn’t understand. He always held her to this unrealistic standard, and he was doing it right now. Context meant nothing to him when it came to her. “That was so long ago, Reno. Many years ago,” she said, trying to get him to understand. “I was a kid.”
By Reno’s reaction, Trina might have thought he was judging her, or was gravely disappointed in her. But he wasn’t. He knew where this was leading. He knew what she said about calling the police and telling them that Iceman Nelson was the person who had hit Stokey. “Go on,” he said to her.
She was crushed by his reaction, but she went on. “Ice apparently wasn’t sure what had happened, or who did what, and he had no idea what had become of me. And he tried to put the blame on me, but they weren’t interested in me at all. They felt they had the big fish in Ice, and they arrested him for Stokey’s murder. Vern’s murder, too, according to that newspaper clipping, until the coroner ruled her death a suicide. They had no real evidence on Ice either, except for that anonymous call I made to the cops. But they were glad to lock up a menace like Ice. He was convicted of the murder I committed. He served years in prison.”
Reno frowned. This shit just got real to him. Somebody had a powerful reason to take Trina out. And the pain she had to be enduring! He wanted to comfort her, but he was too terrified for her safety to show it. He needed the whole story. “How does the Feds figure into this?” he asked her.
Trina was a little disappointed in his reaction. But she understood it. Reno was worried about her. He would comfort her when she was no longer in harm’s way. “At the time of the murder, what I didn’t know was that Stokey was working for the Feds. He was an FBI informant.”
Reno and Sal both were shocked. “He was a snitch?” Sal asked.
“According to the article, he was. And the Feds had Ice’s apartment wired at the time of the killing. The only reason the cops didn’t get a copy of that videotape was because the agents tracking him killed the feed before the cops arrived. But their videotape, the one they sent to me, clearly showed me hitting Stokey with the base of that lamp.”
Reno removed his hand from around her and ran both hands across his face. He looked at Sal. Sal was in a state of devastation too.
“And that’s the videotape that surfaced that day at Champagne’s?” Reno asked.
Trina nodded. “That videotape and the newspaper clipping told about the crime and the fact that Ice was about to be released from prison. Although the article only said that Stokey was believed to be an informant for the FBI, those two guys who contacted me said he was definitely an informant back then.”
Reno’s heart dropped. He looked at his wife. “So they let Ice go down for the murder. They let a man they knew wasn’t guilty serve years in prison for Stokey’s death. They buried that tape so that they could catch the big fish. Now they want you to go down for it too?”
“If I don’
t pay up, I will,” Trina said.
“How much do they want?” Reno asked.
“Twenty-five million,” Trina responded.
“Fuck,” Sal said, and looked at Reno. “Fuck!”
Tears were in Trina’s eyes. “They said I would get even more years than Ice received,” she said, “because I let another man be tried and convicted for a crime I committed.”
“That’s bull,” Sal said. “You didn’t know that snitch had died.”
“But how can she prove it?” Reno asked with anguish in his voice. “How can she prove it?”
Reno stood up quickly, and began to pace the room. He also continued to rake his hands through his hair. He was beside himself with anguish. Trina could see it all over his face.
Reno knew this was bad. Crooked agents were the worse scum of the earth to deal with. And he knew why they were being so greedy. Back then, Trina was just a young black girl barely getting by. Now, after revisiting the case, they apparently discovered that she was a rich’s man’s wife. They wanted big money because they knew they had Trina dead to rights. They wanted big money because they knew Reno would pay up easily if it meant protecting his wife. Because they had to know he loved Trina like that. But how would they know that? Then he suddenly stopped, thought about it, and then turned to Trina in even more anguish.
“Good Lord,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Reno had a shocked look on his face, as if he’d just discovered the answer to the riddle. “What is it?” Trina asked him anxiously.
“What is it?” Sal asked him, anxious too.
“The two guys you met with were the agents who had wired Stokey?” Reno asked her.
Trina shook her head. “No. Those agents no longer work for the agency, at least that’s what they told me. They said they were operatives with the FBI, whatever that means.”
Reno pulled out his cell phone, pulled up the number of the guy who ran background checks for him, the guy he called his tracker. It took several rings, but the guy answered. “It’s Reno.” Reno began pacing the room again. “I have a question.”
Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair Page 14
