Gemma nodded her head. “I understand,” she said.
“Then don’t ask me what I’m going to do. I’m going to handle this problem so that it will never be a problem again,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
Donnell Lundy walked out of the convenience store down the street from the Lincoln Court Projects with a bottle of beer in a bag under his armpit, scratching off a lottery ticket. By the time he got to his car, an old Monte Carlo, he realized the ticket was a loser. He tossed it in the gutter, with the rest of the discarded trash, and got into his car. He stared at the fast-tailed girls walking toward the store as he screwed off the bottle top and took a long swig of beer. He didn’t look into his rearview mirror until he was ready to take his second swig. When he glanced through, and saw that he had company, he nearly choked on the liquid soother.
He quickly turned in his seat. He didn’t know the white dude’s name by face alone. But he was willing to bet he knew exactly who he was. “What the fuck are you doing in my car like this?”
“What the fuck were you doing recording my woman like that?”
Donnell smiled. “So you’re Sal Gabrini. So you’re Gemma’s sugar daddy.”
“Where’s the tape?” Sal asked him.
“It ain’t here, that’s for damn sure,” Donnell said.
“Who else knows about this tape?”
“My partners, that’s who. So don’t even try no shit right here. That won’t solve anything.”
“Let’s go get the tape.”
“And then?”
“Call a meeting with your partners.”
“You got the dough? The two mill?”
“You give me that tape, and any copies lying around, and you will get your money.”
Donnell smiled. “Yeah, I know. Because of that pussy, isn’t it? The best I ever ate. And the way she do you. . .”
Sal’s jaw tightened. “Get the tape, call your partners,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
Donnell laughed, certain he had hit a chord, and cranked up.
There were three of them. All smalltime hoodlums just as Sal had thought. They were standing outside of an abandoned building on the back side of Lincoln. Sal and Donnell got out of Donnell’s Monte Carlo, and began walking toward them. Sal carried a briefcase and began looking around, to make sure this was no ambush, as he lifted his imported shoes over the high weeds and puddles, following Donnell.
“He gave you the cash?” one of the men asked Donnell as they approached.
“Just chill, alright? I got this,” Donnell made clear.
Sal and Donnell stood beside each other, facing the three men.
“What’s this about?” another of the three asked.
“I understand you have a tape that I want,” Sal said.
“What tape?” the man frowned. “We ain’t got no tape! Donnell got that tape. He wouldn’t give us a copy.”
Donnell smiled. “I told you they had a copy,” he said, “as insurance, that’s all. Nobody else has a copy, I’m not stupid. They could have taken their copy and blackmailed Gemma, and left me out of the loop. No thanks. I have the only copy. When you pay, you get the copy I have. These guys here are my witnesses. These guys here are going to make sure you pay me. Then they get a little cut too.”
That perked the threesome up.
“Hand it over,” Sal said.
One of the three men smiled. “What’s to stop us from putting a cap in your ass right now, and just taking that money?”
Sal didn’t mix words. “My name,” he said. “You touch a Gabrini, you touch death. And not just your death. Yours, your families, your relatives, your friends, every fucking human being who ever farted in the direction of your ass. Everybody bites the dust, if you even think about harming a Gabrini. Does that answer your question?”
The young man swallowed hard. What in the world, his face seemed to say, had Donnell gotten him into?
“Okay, wise guy,” Sal said to Donnell. “Hand it over.”
Donnell pulled the camera out of his pocket. “Even exchange.”
“Play it,” Sal said.
And Donnell did. Sal watched the tape. It felt odd for him to see Gemma’s beautiful face and to hear her tortured voice. She looked so young! “I can’t lie,” she kept saying. “I can’t put my word out there like that, Donnell.”
But he was the king manipulator and convinced that twenty year old college kid to lie through her teeth. And she agreed. It was definitely on tape.
“Now show me the money,” Donnell said with a grin, rubbing his hands together.
Sal held the briefcase up against his stomach and popped it open. As soon as it opened, he pulled out the gun that was inside the otherwise empty briefcase, and put a bullet through Donnell’s head. His three partners couldn’t believe it, as Donnell fell straight down at their feet.
Then Sal aimed the gun at the three men. They backed up further. “Fuck with me or my woman and what just happened to your partner here is going to happen to you. If there’s any copies of that conversation, or any other conversation lying around in your possession or somebody else’s, I’ll come looking for you. And I’ll bring my posse with me this time. In other words, don’t fuck with me. Am I getting through to you fellas?”
“Yes, sir,” they were saying, as they looked down at Donnell and back up at the super-calm Sal Gabrini. “Oh, yes. You sure are!”
Sal exhaled. “Now get the fuck out of my face,” he ordered, and he didn’t have to say it twice. They ran.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gemma was naked in bed by the time Sal made it back home. And he was pleased. He need to fuck her bad.
He got naked, got on top of her, and was inside of her right away. No foreplay this time. He wanted to feel that pussy Donnell was bragging about, and he wanted to feel it with his dick. Gemma wrapped him in her arms as he fucked her. She knew what he was doing. This was all feeling. This wasn’t about the love. This was all about the feeling. Sal needed to feel better. He needed to feel human again. He undoubtedly did something that no human being should do, and he had to reassert his right to be a part of the human race again. That was why he entered her before she was moist. He wanted the friction, the resistance, and yes, the pain that it caused her. She winced in pain, because he was so big and she wasn’t ready yet, but she endured it for his sake. Sal was a giving lover, a kind, compassionate man. By taking it, because he needed it this way, she was giving back.
For a long time he fucked her. Even though the pain eased for her within minutes, and was virtually nonexistence thereafter, he grunted and groaned with a plaintiff wail. It felt wonderful to him, and warm and comforting, but it felt tortuous as well. He protected her. He did what he had to do. But at the end of the day, that still didn’t make it right. At the end of the day, he still needed that reestablishment.
That was why, after nearly half an hour of his gyrations, she put him on his back, got on top of him, and rode his dick so hard, and with such loving expertise, that she rode him on home.
He came on the back of Gemma’s efforts.
He came and then closed his eyes in agony.
She looked at him, and was sorry that she put him through that, and she felt guilty for what she had done. But Sal would have none of it. He reached for her, and pulled her down to him. And he fell asleep, with his lady in his arms.
His cell phone rang early that next morning. Gem was still fast asleep, and Sal was barely alert himself. He had to grab his pants from the floor beside the bed, pull out his phone, and then answer. “Yeah?” He sounded hoarse.
“Salvatore?” It was a woman’s voice.
Sal frowned. “Yeah, who is it?”
“It’s your mother, Salvie.”
Salvie? Nobody had called him that name since . . . his mother called him that name. He threw the covers off of his naked body, and got out of bed.
“Are you still there?” she asked him.
“I’m here,” he said. Then he ran hi
s hand through his hair. “What do you want?”
She didn’t hesitate. “You,” she said.
Sal had wanted to hear those words his entire life. His mother wanted him. But somehow it rang hollow now. Not genuine. Suspicious. He began pacing the floor of Gemma’s bedroom. “So you want me now. What do you want me for?” he asked her.
“I need you to come.”
“Come where?”
“Jericho. I’m still here. I need your help, Sal.”
He was right to be suspicious then. She didn’t want him, she needed him. Big difference, he felt. “Why do you need my help?”
“Because I’m in trouble and you’re my son and you’re supposed to help me. You know how they treat me here.”
That offended Sal. “How should I know how they treat you? You wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“Because your father was still alive then, and you loved your father. I couldn’t take that chance, what are you talking? But now he’s dead, thankfully, and now I need you, Sal. Will you come?”
Sal frowned. “What do you think I’m made of stone here? You think you can just call me out of the blue like this, after all these years, after all of that rejection, and I just coming running? Will you come, you ask, like it’s nothing you’re asking of me. Yeah right!”
Then there was a pause, where his mother said nothing and where Sal calmed back down. “I’ll see,” he said. “I’ll see.”
“I really need you to do this for me, Sal. Please, Sal.”
“Don’t beg me!” Sal yelled. “What’s your problem? You’re my mother, what are you begging me for? I said I’ll see.”
There was a pause on the other end. “You can reach me at this number,” his mother finally said. “It’ll be on your Caller ID. I’ll wait to hear from you, Salvie.” And then she killed the call.
Sal just stood there, holding his phone. Then he killed the call too. But the more he thought about the nerve of her, the angrier he became. He became so enraged that he threw his phone across the room. It crashed against the wall and broke into pieces. It broke into pieces just as he did all those years ago, when his mother decided to leave him.
But then he thought about the only other woman he ever loved. He thought about Gemma, and looked at her to see if his antics had awaken her. But even in the midst of all of his rage, his girl was still out like a light. Still at peace with the world. And for that he was grateful.
By the time she did wake up, later that morning, Sal, still naked, was standing at her bedroom window. She looked at him, at his sleek body first, at his dangling penis that was still large even though it was supposed to be at rest, and then at his face. His worried, anguished face. Had that incident with Donnell affected him this harshly? “What’s wrong, Sal?” she asked him.
“I got a call.”
“A call? From who?”
“My mother,” Sal said, and Gemma stared at him. His mother? She was stunned.
“What did she want?”
“Says she needs to see me. She needs my help.”
Gemma continued to stare at him. She knew how raw the subject of his mother was with him. She knew how long it had been.
“Does she still live in Seattle?”
“No. She left there years ago. Went back to live with her people.”
“Her people?”
“Yeah, she was a Sinatra before she married my old man.”
“A Sinatra?” Gemma smiled. “As in Frank?”
Even Sal had to smile at that one. “They wish. No. As in the Sinatras of Jericho County. In Maine.”
“Wow. They sound like a far cry from the Gabrinis of New Jersey.”
“They are. And don’t think they’re a bunch of yahoos, either, because they aren’t. At least most of them aren’t. They practically run that town they live in. That’s why Mom went back there. She knew Pop didn’t dare bother her there.”
“And she wants you to come to Maine?”
“Yeah. Claims she needs to see me.”
“About what?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
Gemma thought about how Sal had to drop everything and come and see about her, and how she wouldn’t tell him what it was about over the phone. “She sounds like me,” she said.
But Sal would have none of that. “No, she doesn’t!” he blared. “Don’t you ever compare yourself to her. You’re nothing like her. You would never leave your children, you wouldn’t care what that man was doing to you. You’d get away from him, but you’d take your children with you.”
Gemma couldn’t disagree with that. “Are you going?” she asked him.
“I don’t want to,” Sal said. “That woman hasn’t been any kind of mother to me at all, why should I go running to her just because she asked me to?”
“But?”
Sal exhaled. “But she’s still my mother.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I tried many times. But she wouldn’t see me. I was just like my daddy, as far as she was concerned. So it’s been years, over a decade now.”
“Damn, Sal. You haven’t seen her in that long?”
“It’s been even longer for Tommy I think. He doesn’t give a shit.”
Gemma considered him. “Why do you?” she asked.
Sal thought about that. “She’s my mother,” he said. That was the best he could come up with.
Gemma got out of bed and went up to him. She hugged him from behind, her naked body cozying up to his. “You’re a good man, Sal Luca,” she said.
“Or a coward,” he said. “It takes a lot of balls to hate your mother. I don’t have those kind of balls.”
“And for that I am grateful,” Gemma said, “because after that whipping those balls of yours put on me last night, no sir. You don’t need any more than what you already have.”
Sal had to laugh at that. Leave it to Gemma to lift his mood. He pulled her from behind him, and held her in front. “You’re the good one,” he said.
They kissed.
Sal began rubbing down her soft, short, natural hair. Her face was turned upward, looking at him, and in the light of the morning she looked angelic to him. “Will you come with me?” he asked her.
“So that means you’re going?”
He nodded. “I’m going. I have to go. But I want you by my side.”
Gemma had an idea why, but she wanted to hear it from him. “Why, Sal?” she asked him.
Sal knew he was about to admit an awful truth, but he had to verbalize it. To Gemma. “Because I need you there,” he said. “Because I’ve had to face down some of the hardest men ever created, there’s no chump in me anywhere, you can ask them that, but nothing scares the shit out of me more than facing my own mother.” He looked at her. “And that’s the truth.”
Gemma knew what it took for him to admit such vulnerability. She laid her head on his shoulder. “Then we’ll go,” she said.
Sal closed his eyes, grateful to have this woman in his corner, and held her tighter against him.
CHAPTER NINE
As the plane began to descend from the sky and head for the landing strip in Maine country, Sal looked up from the papers he was reviewing. Gemma was sitting across from him, and was looking out of the window with a face that lit up with so much whimsicalness and anticipation that it made him smile. This was going to be a traumatic trip for him, and he knew it, but her positive energy and her unusually youthful exuberance made it so much more bearable for him.
“You’re excited,” he said.
“I’ve never been to Maine before,” she said.
And those words alone was what he loved most about Gemma. She was a sophisticated lady. He’d never met a woman with more natural sophistication than Gemma Jones. But she was plain spoken too. She was excited because she’d never been to a decidedly unexcitable place like Maine, and she didn’t care if that was an odd thing for most people to hear. There were no airs about her. No hidden agendas. She was who she was. He loved that
about her.
“Buckle up,” he said, and she did as she was told.
When the plane finally landed at the airstrip in Jericho, it was after seven in the evening. But it still bore enough sunlight for Gemma to see where they were going. What caught her attention when they first touched down wasn’t the scenery of the airstrip, but the sight of a bright green sports car parked near the gate. When she saw that it was a Maserati, she was willing to bet any amount of money that it was the car Sal’s people arranged to be delivered for his use. She’d never known a Gabrini to drive anything but topline. Sal was no exception.
“That’s for you, isn’t it?” she asked him.
Sal looked at the car and smiled. “Looks like it,” he replied. But his attention moved further over, to the big, shiny white F-150 pickup truck parked alongside the car. When he saw a tall man, in a suit and a cowboy hat, come out of the private airstrip office and head toward the truck, his suspicion was confirmed. He wasn’t certain which one he was, but he could tell he was a Sinatra. They all had that same, unmistakable look his mother had.
“Better not be about any bullshit,” Sal found himself saying.
Gemma looked at the man, and then she looked at Sal. “You know him?”
“I know him,” Sal said, and they began to dismount.
By the time they were off of the plane and making their way toward Sal’s rental car, the man in the big hat was leaned against his truck watching them arrive. That was the thing Sal always hated about small towns. Everybody knew everybody’s business.
“Welcome to Jericho, Salvatore,” the man said when they made it within earshot of him. He stood erect. “Ma’am,” he added with a nod toward Gemma.
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