When the gunfire finally ceased, and all that could be heard was the sound of car tires screeching, Sal jumped up. “Get in the back!” he was yelling to Gemma. “Get Ma and get in the back!”
He ran to the front door, pulling out his own gun as he did, and ran out of the house. He ran out to the end of the yard and saw the car just as it was swerving around a corner, practically out of control in its getaway. Then he ran back into the house. He ran on pure adrenalin alone.
“Gemma!” he was yelling. “Gemma! Gemma were you hit?”
Gemma ran up front, with Sprig behind her. “I’m okay, Sal,” she was saying, as she could hear the panic in his voice. “We’re okay!”
“Good,” Sal said, when he finally saw her face, and saw for himself that she was truly all right.
Then he looked at his mother, who was unharmed as well. And something wasn’t adding up. She went to the crooked cops three weeks ago, but the Noose was just getting around to even attempting a hit on her? And the attempt came just after the Noose denied any contract, any Stanley on his team, any of the shit she was spewing? “Who the fuck are you mixed up with?” he asked her. But then he just stood there, as if he realized something profound. And then he fell, face first, to the floor.
“Sal!” Gemma screamed and ran to him. It was only then did she see the blood. He’d been hit. Maybe more than once, she realized. When he jumped on top of her, to save her life, it may have cost him his.
Sprig called 911 as Gemma cried for Sal to respond to her. She cried and she cried. But Sal was down and Sal was out.
And even the deafening sirens of the ambulance, as it arrived in minutes that felt like hours to Gemma, couldn’t drown out her cries.
CHAPTER TWELVE
You could hear a pin drop in the hospital waiting room. Gemma sat in one of the small metal chairs near the window, while Sprig was pouring herself a cup of coffee at the table against the wall. Gemma was so thrown by what happened that even when the door of the waiting room opened, it startled her. When she saw that it was Brent walking in, his hat in hand, and another man behind him, she settled back down. But his presence didn’t ease her pain. Sal never responded. Not as she cried and begged him not to leave her, not as she rode with him in the ambulance holding his lifeless hand, not as she sat in this waiting room now, his blood still stained in her skirt, waiting for word.
The gentleman with Brent was his brother Tony, and as soon as he saw his aunt pouring coffee, he hurried to her side. “Aunt Sprig!” he said, hurrying toward her. He took her hands in his. “Are you all right? When Brent told me there was some sort of drive-by shooting at your house, I was floored. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Sprig said, although she remained a little shaken. “I’m okay.”
“What the hell happened?” Tony wanted to know.
“I don’t know. It happened so fast. We were talking and then the next thing I know . . .” She began to cry. Tony hugged her.
Brent’s attention was on Gemma. He walked over to her. She was in quite a state, there was no denying it, but he needed answers. Sprig was never going to give him a straight response, he already knew that. But Gemma seemed like a straight shooter to him. “How is he?” he asked her. “Any word yet?”
“He’s in surgery. They took him right in.”
Brent looked down, at her hands. She had a wad of tissue twisting around in her nervous little hands, tissue that was so torn apart from the wetness of her tears that it looked like shreds. Brent removed his handkerchief from his suit coat pocket, crotched down in front of her, and gave it to her. He took the tissues out of her hand.
“Thank-you,” she said.
“He’s going to pull through, Gemma,” he said. “Sal’s strong. No bullet’s stopping him.”
Gemma attempted to smile in agreement, but it was more of a grimace than a smile.
Brent held her hand, and they remained as they were, in silence.
But soon, Brent’s brother joined them. And silence wasn’t one of his attributes. “Hey,” he said as he approached.
When Gemma looked up, and saw him coming toward them, she didn’t know who he was. But he had those odd green eyes, that wavy black hair, those sculptured facial features that made it clear he was a Sinatra.
Brent rose to his feet. “Meet Gemma,” he said.
“Hello, Gemma.”
“Hey,” Gemma managed to say.
“Poor thing. You look awful. They may need to put you in one of these beds.”
Brent was accustomed to his brother’s bluntness, but this was not the time. “She’s fine, Tony, alright? She’s traumatized.”
“Why is she so traumatized? Who is she?”
Brent looked at his brother with a please behave look on his face. “She’s Sal’s girlfriend.”
Tony’s big eyes stretched even larger. “Sal? With a black girlfriend? Now that’s what I call surprising.”
Brent was horrified by his brother’s behavior, but it actually made Gemma smile.
“Yeah, in a lot of ways it is surprising,” she said, remembering how she first met Sal. “All my girlfriends used to call him the little racist.”
“Right? So did I!” Tony admitted. “Whenever we talked he was always going on and on about how much he detested his brother’s thing for black women, and why couldn’t Tommy find himself a good Italian girl, and now he ends up with a black girl too? That’s Sal.”
“That’s Sal,” Gemma agreed, nodding her head. “The man everybody dismissed as a racist turned out to be, in his heart, the least racist human being I’ve ever met.”
Tony hesitated. He was touched by that. “Yeah,” he said. “Sal’s got a big heart. At least that’ what I’ve heard. He’s always helping people.” Then he pointed at her skirt. “You’ve got blood on your skirt. Sal’s?”
She looked down at it and fought back the tears. “Sal’s,” she said.
Tony sat next to her. For some reason, he felt an immediate connection to her. “He’s going to be alright, Gemma. You know Sal. He’s a tough old bastard.”
“Old?” she asked with a smile. “Sal is not old, okay?”
“I’m thirty-four. Sal is what? Thirty-five, thirty-six? Anybody older than I am is old. Those are the rules.”
Gemma actually managed a weak laugh. She actually liked this guy. When she first saw him, with his shorter hair and expensive suit, she assumed he was more conservative than Brent. But she was wrong. This guy was wild.
“I’m Anthony by the way,” he said, “but everybody calls me Tony.”
“He’s a doctor,” Sprig said proudly from across the room.
Gemma looked at him as if he could tell her something about Sal’s condition.
“Not that kind of doctor,” Tony quickly interjected. “I have a PhD.”
“Two PhDs,” Sprig said. “In Divinity and in Psychology.”
“Neither of which he uses,” Brent pointed out.
“My prerogative,” Tony pointed out.
“Good to meet you, Tony,” Gemma said.
“You too,” Tony said with the most charming smile. “Not the best of circumstances surely.”
“Far from it.”
“Trying times and all of that. Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately.”
“But if anybody’s getting out of this alive,” Tony said, “it’ll be Sal.”
Gemma couldn’t smile, but she managed to nod her head. “I agree,” she said.
Brent pulled a chair in front of Gemma and Tony. Then he looked at his aunt. “Aunt Sprig,” he asked, “could you come over here please? I need to ask you ladies a couple questions.”
Tony rolled his big, green eyes. “Oh, Brent, leave it out for once in your life! Must you play the cop right now? At a time like this?”
“If I expect to find out who did this to Sal, yes,” Brent said. He looked, once again, at his aunt. “Aunt Sprig?”
Sprig didn’t want to do it, but she made her way across the room and sat d
own beside Gemma. She took Gemma’s hand.
Brent sat down in front of them.
“I need you ladies to tell me exactly what happened.”
But Sprig was already shaking her head. “Too much,” she said. “Who wants to relive that?”
“I have to know the details, Aunt.”
“It’s a long story. Suffice it to say it’s a long story.”
Brent looked at Gemma. “Gemma?” he asked.
Gemma exhaled, and a frown of distress appeared on her face. She didn’t want to relive it either. But she knew, if they were ever going to find out who did this to her man, she had to tell all she knew. “The incident itself was your classic drive-by shooting,” she said, “but I think the backstory can be instructive.”
Tony looked at her. As he suspected when he first saw her, she was no airhead pretty girl like those bimbos Sal used to date.
Brent, too, was impressed. “What’s the backstory, Gemma?” he asked her.
“Sprig told Sal that a man they called Nicky the Noose had a contract out on her.”
Tony looked at his aunt and shook his head. “Where do you find these people?” he asked her.
“They find me!” Sprig declared. “I don’t go out looking for them!”
“Why would anybody have a contract out on her?” Brent asked Gemma. Asking Sprig, he knew, was a waste of time.
Gemma responded. “She said it’s because Nicky the Noose killed this man who worked for him, a guy named Stanley. Stanley, according to Sprig, was her former boyfriend and she wasn’t going to let him die in vain. So she told the Brooklyn cops about what Nicky had done to him.”
Brent frowned and looked at his aunt. “But who’s Stanley? I don’t recall you dating any Stanley.”
“Me either,” Tony chimed in.
“It was before I came here,” Sprig said. “We weren’t dating anymore when they killed him. We were just friends when he died.”
“So Sal paid a visit to Nick the Noose,” Gemma said.
“That’s why he went out of town this morning?” Brent asked.
“That’s the reason,” Gemma said. “And he confronted the guy. But it turned out to be a big lie. There was no Stanley. There was no hit. There was no going to the cops. There wasn’t even a contract.”
Brent and Tony both looked at Sprig. What in the world was going on with her?
“We were talking about it,” Gemma went on, “when the gunfire erupted. Sal jumped on top of me, and pushed Sprig out of harm’s way too, but by jumping on top of me, he took the bullet that should have hit me.” Tears reappeared in her eyes. Sprig squeezed her hand.
“And that’s what happened,” Gemma said.
Brent leaned back in his chair. “Tell us what’s going on, Sprig,” he said to her.
“Nothing’s going on,” Sprig said as she jumped from her seat. “Everything I said was the truth, I don’t care what Nicky told Sal. Who would believe a thug like him over me anyway? My son, that’s who. And he wonders why I never wanted to have anything to do with his ass.” She snorted. “Yeah, right.”
Tony watched her carefully as she went back over to the table to continue preparing coffee that should have been prepared by now. Tony knew the deal. Fumbling with coffee mugs and coffee creamers kept her out of the way. It kept her from having to confront her issues. And she had tons.
Brent returned his attention to Gemma. “And you didn’t see the car or---?”
“We didn’t see anything,” Gemma said. “Sal somehow managed to get up and run out of the door, so he might have seen something, but he made Sprig and I run into the bedroom. We stayed away from any windows.”
Brent leaned his head back and ran his hands through his thick, black hair. His men were canvassing the neighborhood, to find out if anybody saw the car or anything else, and that might be where their leads came from. Or from Sal, he thought, who might know and might have seen a whole lot more than Gemma realized.
He hated to go there, but he knew he had to. “I’m going to ask you this question, Gemma,” he said, “and please forgive me for asking it. But this is my town. This crime happened under my watch. I need to know what I’m up against.”
Gemma stared at him. “What’s your question?”
Brent glanced at Tony, who was staring at him too, and then he exhaled. “Is Sal involved with the Mafia?”
There was no immediate of course not kind of response, which stunned Tony. But it didn’t stun Brent.
“I don’t know,” Gemma ultimately said.
Brent squeezed her hand. He appreciated her honesty. “Thank-you for that,” he said. Then he stood up, went out into the hall, and contacted the station. He ordered two of his men to get to the hospital and get here now, as around-the-clock guards for Sal Gabrini.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I still can’t believe he came here,” Reno said as the SUV whisked him, Tommy, and Jimmy Mack from the Jericho airstrip to the town’s only hospital. There was another SUV, behind them, carrying their men. “If she was my mother and she would have called me, after all these years of not wanting to have anything to do with me, I would have told her to kiss my ass.”
“I tried to tell him the same thing,” Tommy said. He was Sal’s older brother, and Sal’s best friend, and he couldn’t get to that hospital fast enough. “But he wouldn’t listen to me. He had to come and see about her, he said.”
“But why?” Reno wanted to know. “She treated him like crap when he was a kid, I remember the treatment. She treated you far better than she ever treated Sal Luca. Why would he bother?”
“Because she’s his mother,” Jimmy Mack said. He was seated up front, with the driver. “You can’t just throw your mother away.”
“Wanna bet?” Reno asked. “If my mother treated me the way Jackie Gabrini treated Sal, I would have thrown her ass to the gotdamn lions!”
“Sure Pop,” Jimmy said, not buying his father’s bravado for a second. “Your own sister tried to kill you, and you couldn’t bring yourself to so much as harm a hair on her head. Yet you’ll toss your mother to lions? Sure buddy.”
Reno had to smile about that, and he playfully slapped Jimmy upside his head. “Whatever,” he said. But when he thought about Sal, and Sal’s condition, all smiles were gone.
The two SUVs stopped in front of the Jericho Memorial Hospital and all three Gabrinis, along with five burly men in the second SUV, hurried out.
When they arrived in the private waiting room, only the Sinatras remained: Brent, Tony, and, to Tommy’s everlasting shock, his mother.
It felt as if the room narrowed when Tommy saw her. He couldn’t take his perceptive, greenish-blue eyes off of her. She used to be so beautiful to him. The most beautiful mother in the world to him. But she never protected him or Sal from his father’s abuse. She knew about the physical abuse, but said nothing. She was abused herself, and he understood that, but that was no excuse. He was a kid then, and she was a full-grown woman. He never forgave her for leaving him there, and he never would.
Brent and Tony stood up. Sprig remained seated.
“Tommy, hey,” Brent said as he walked over to the men. “Great to see you again.” He extended his hand.
Tommy snapped out of what had to be his stare down of his mother, and shook his cousin’s hand. “How are you, Brent?”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Since we were kids.”
“Sal kept in touch, but you certainly didn’t.”
“No,” Tommy agreed.
“You remember Anthony,” Brent said as his brother walked up beside him.
Tommy smiled. “Tony? Of course I remember Tony! Now how can I forget that mug?”
Tony laughed and he and Tommy hugged. The two men had one thing in common, Reno thought as he looked at them: their extraordinary good looks.
“How have you been, Tom Tom?” Tony asked. “It’s as if you dropped off the face of this earth. If Sal wouldn’t have given us updates, we would have assumed you
were dead, my cousin.”
And that would have been fine with me, Tommy thought. “You guys remember Reno?” he asked. “Or I guess you would know him as Dominic.”
“Dominic,” Brent said, smiling and extending his hand. “How are you guy?”
“I’m good,” Reno said, shaking his hand. “This is my boy, James Maxwell Gabrini. We call him Jimmy Mack.”
“Nice to meet you, Jimmy Mack,” Brent said. And Tony also shook his hand.
“Where’s my brother?” Tommy asked Brent.
“Still in surgery,” Brent said. “The surgeon will update us as soon as he can.”
“I want our men posted on him,” Tommy said.
“I have a couple of my men on him,” Brent said.
“I want our men posted on him,” Tommy said firmly.
If Brent had any questions about Sal’s mob status before, this need to have special security on him answered it for him. And since his police department was ill-equipped to handle any mob war or problems of that magnitude, he relented. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll set them up.”
Brent left, and the five bodyguards, with a nod from Reno, followed.
“You go too, Jimmy,” Reno said to his son, who was becoming his right hand man. “Supervise it.”
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy said, and followed the others.
Then Reno and Tommy turned their attention to Sprig. Reno couldn’t get over the change in her.
“Damn,” he said to Tommy, just low enough, he thought, not to be heard beyond their twosome. “She used to be so beautiful. Now she looks like a hag.”
“She does, doesn’t she?” Tony said, hearing Reno. Reno looked at him.
“That’s what abuse does to a person,” Tony continued. “It ages them. It steals their spark. My aunt had been to hell and back again when she was with your uncle. He nearly destroyed her. I say she deserves to let herself go. I say she deserves to be as quirky and non-conformist as she wants to be. She earned the right.”
Tommy wanted to lash out at his cousin and tell him he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he kept his peace. He wasn’t thinking about her or him or any of those damn Sinatras. His mind was on Sal. “Where’s Gemma?” he asked.
Sal Gabrini 3: Hard Love Page 12
