But it was no use. The kid was dead. Tommy, still mortified, stood to his feet, strands of his always-in-place hair dropped down into his face. He had made a horrific error.
Sal returned to his brother’s side when he heard sirens in the far away distance, probably going to the scene of Pauley’s death. He also knew they would probably be heading their way soon after, because shots had been fired. It was no use continuing the search either: their suspect, Sal concluded, was gone.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said to his brother. Sal was sorry about the kid, too. He hated that an innocent had to die that way. But there was nothing they could do about it now. They had to get to their SUV, and get the hell out of the area.
But when Tommy resisted his tug, he looked at his brother. Sal was usually the emotional one, not Tommy. Tommy was always the levelheaded one, despite the situation. But this time Tommy looked stricken. “Tommy, let’s go,” Sal said. “The cops are coming.”
But Tommy continued to stand there, staring at that young man.
“Tommy?” Sal said again. “Tommy?” Then he knew he had no choice. He grabbed his brother and pulled him away from the kid’s body.
But Tommy snatched away. “We’re going to just leave him?” he asked.
It was a crazy question to Sal. “What else are we gonna do? Wait for the cops? What’s the matter with you?”
“It was an accident!” Tommy said.
“That’s what we’ll tell the cops? That it was an accident? And then what, Tommy? Let them arrest us while they investigate the matter? Come on! We’re fucking Gabrinis. They get our asses in custody, we aren’t getting out. And guess what? The kid’s still dead.” He grabbed his beloved brother again. “Let’s get out of here!” he insisted.
Tommy knew Sal spoke the truth. He was usually the one speaking that hard, harsh truth. And he was hearing the sirens too. He did come to his senses, and he did leave. But not without looking back at the lifeless body of that homeless young man who probably already had too many problems.
And he exhaled. A damnable business indeed, he thought.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was nearly five o’clock Sunday morning when Tommy finally made it home to his Seattle estate. Cops had blanketed the area where Pauley’s body was found, and was searching within that radius because of reports of shots fired. Pauley’s capo, Dale B, had apparently gotten his ass out before the cops could get there too. Tommy and Sal had to drive backstreets and side streets all the way to Tommy’s home before they made it out.
Sal dropped Tommy off at home and kept Tommy’s SUV. He decided to stay in town at least another day, at an apartment building he owned, to see if he could find who that biker was. He called his wife Gemma and notified her even as he was dropping off Tommy. Then he headed back to his own pad to get some sleep.
But when Tommy entered his own home, that biker wasn’t on his mind. Those cops that could have easily taken away his freedom wasn’t registering either. Grace was on his mind. All he wanted was the security, the normalcy, the warmth of his wife Grace.
She was asleep in their bed by the time he made it upstairs. To avoid waking her, he undressed and showered in the bedroom down the hall on the private wing of their massive home. His son and daughter were asleep downstairs. He had checked on them when he first arrived home. But seeing their beautiful, peaceful faces kept bringing back the tormented, unclean face of the kid he killed, and it mortified him all over again. He needed Grace!
After showering, he climbed in bed behind her, and pulled her body against his naked body. She wore a silk gown that dropped along her knees, but he lifted it up to her shoulders, and then took it all the way off, and pulled her closer. He needed to feel her soft, naked black body against his hard, white body.
And it was only after that, after he placed his arms around her waist and pulled her as close as he could, was he able to exhale. It had been a long day. He only told her he had to go out for a minute when Sal picked him up on word that Pauley was willing to meet and give intel. She was half-asleep then. Now she was fast asleep.
Pauley gave alright, Tommy thought as he laid there, holding his wife. Pauley gave his life. Greed was his motivator. He wasn’t doing it for any altruistic reasons, and Tommy knew it. Pauley was to be paid generously when the matter was resolved. But he still didn’t have to do it.
But just as she always did, Grace’s mere presence had a way of calming him down. Any other woman and he knew he’d be fucking his way to peace. Not giving a damn if they were getting there too. But with Grace, he didn’t have to do that. He just needed to hold her, and feel her against him, and he was already there.
He fell asleep with his peacefully sleeping wife who didn’t even realize she was being so useful, in his arms.
He woke up, in his silent home, with a sudden lift up of his head, as if he had been scared awake. A dresser was on the other side of the room in their huge bedroom, against the wall in front of the bed, and he could see his reflection in the dresser’s mirror. And there he was, Tommy Gabrini, the founder and CEO of Gabrini Capital, the man known far and wide as Dapper Tom because of his pristine appearance, looking a mess.
His hair disheveled, his face in need of a shave, he was alone on his back in his big, four-poster bed, looking at a man in the mirror he hardly recognized. He had tossed and turned so much after Grace had gotten out of bed, that his naked body was totally exposed, and their expensive bedding had been kicked to the floor. His penis in that mirror, that same penis so many women in his past declared was all they needed to get by, looked monstrous even at rest. How many hearts did he break by loving and leaving with that instrument of destruction, he wondered. And his eyes, his big, bright, expressive eyes, looked positively frightful.
So frightful that he laid his head back down, even back onto his sweat-filled pillow, to avoid looking at himself a moment longer. He knew where he was, and he knew what time it was. It was Sunday morning. Ten-twenty-two according to the clock. Grace and the kids had already left for church. And he missed them already.
But he laid there, for several more minutes, staring up at the cathedral ceiling as if there was some answer to some riddle there. And then he turned over to get himself some more sleep. He was still bone tired.
But then he thought about that young man. That young, black, homeless kid. And getting more sleep became an impossibility.
He got out of bed, put on a robe, went downstairs, and made himself a tall, stiff drink.
Something was wrong with him, he knew, as he stood at the floor-to-ceiling window behind his full-sized bar and looked out over his massive property. But he couldn’t figure out why was he in such a funk. He’d had situations go horribly wrong before, and innocent people were iced then too. Why did this time feel so different?
Shake that shit off, Tommy, he tried telling himself. Shake that shit off!
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake it off.
Whatever it was, it was as much a part of him as his own skin.
He would have had to shake off himself to shake it off.
It was because of Grace. The fact that she was being targeted, and nobody seemed to know why, was bothering the shit out of him. He had her under tight security. That wasn’t his concern. He just wished his family didn’t have to live that way.
But fuck it, he finally said out loud, tired of worrying himself sick, and took a big gulp of his drink. But that only carried him so far. He was right back in that depressed funk again.
Instead of standing there torturing himself, he took his glass of wine and placed it back onto the bar counter, and made his way back upstairs. He needed his family around him. That, he decided, was his problem. He needed them.
Instead of moping around the house like some helpless fool, he was going where his family was. He was going to church. Hadn’t been there in a very long time, he knew. But he was going.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Grace, along with Destiny and
TJ, sat in the vestibule of the Mount Bethel Baptist Church and waited for Sunday school to end and morning worship to begin. They were early, as Grace always was, but so were two other African-American women with kids. But unlike Destiny and TJ, who sat with their heads buried in their iPhones, the other kids were ripping and running and roughhousing all over that vestibule as if it was a playground. Destiny rolled her eyes a couple times at the rambunctious kids. Young TJ ignored them altogether.
“I don’t know how you do it,” said the woman sitting across from where Grace and her children sat.
“Do what?” Grace asked with a smile.
“How do you get them to sit so quietly? Your children, I mean. How do you do it?”
It was an easy question for Grace. “Cell phones,” she answered without hesitation, and the woman laughed.
“Ain’t it a shame?” said the woman seated next to Grace. “We have to bribe our kids to behave nowadays. But back when we were kids,” she said, and then launched into a long discussion about how no-nonsense her parents were. Both women were considerably older than Grace, and both had their grandkids rather than their kids with them, but Grace understood the sentiment.
But the woman seated across from them felt the talkative woman next to Grace was hogging up the conversation. A conversation she, not the now-talkative woman, had initiated. She moved to change the subject.
“That’s why I don’t have my grandkids in Sunday school,” the talkative woman was saying. “I don’t trust them without me.”
“May I ask you a personal question?” the woman seated across from Grace asked her, interrupting the talkative woman.
“Sure,” Grace said affably. She appeared to be a good, Christian lady. What on earth could she possibly ask her that would not allow her to answer?
“Where did you get that outfit from?” the lady asked.
Grace looked down at the clothes she wore, and laughed. She hadn’t expected that question! She wore a black-and-silver vintage Bob Mackie beaded fringe dress with a high-low hem and a high-top collar, a gorgeous dress that fit her slender frame perfectly.
But before Grace could answer the question the woman had asked, the woman was answering it for her. “No, let me guess,” she said happily. “Nordstrom’s, right? No. That’s not it. “Barney’s? Oh, I know! Neiman Marcus?”
“Sorry,” Grace said, “but I honestly don’t know where it came from.”
The woman gave her a look that made clear she did not believe that answer. “I just thought the material looked very expensive, that’s all. I wasn’t going to go out and buy the same dress and wear it to church next Sunday. I’m not tacky like that. But you, on the other hand, with your I don’t know where it came from line?”
Grace was puzzled. What in the world was this woman’s problem? “Excuse me?” she asked her. And Destiny, fiercely protective of her whole family, but especially her mother, looked at the woman too.
“You don’t have to lie about it,” the woman said bluntly to Grace. “Like I said, I’m not tacky. I wasn’t going to try to copy your style. You didn’t have to lie.”
“She’s not lying,” Destiny made clear. “My daddy bought that dress for her. My mother doesn’t tell lies.”
Grace looked at her young, but feisty daughter. “It’s okay, Des,” she said to her.
“But she shouldn’t be going around calling people liars like that, Mommy.”
“I know. And you’re right. But I told you not to interfere in grown people’s conversations.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Destiny said, but she was still giving the woman a hard look.
Grace looked at the woman too. “I honestly don’t know where it was purchased from,” she said firmly. “That’s not a lie.”
“Yeah, sure,” the woman responded, her voice dripping with disbelief. “And I don’t know my name.”
Although Destiny rolled her eyes and shook her head, Grace decided to ignore the woman altogether. It was Sunday morning, she was waiting for morning worship services, she was not about to let that judgmental person rob her joy. She’d been around women like her all her life. People who would jump to conclusions based on little or no facts, but decided their conclusions were facts because they believed what they thought to be true was true. Madness! Grace happily ignored the woman.
Besides, Grace had never been a fashion plate. Tommy was the style master in their family. He bought clothes for Grace from all over the world, and dressed her as if he knew her body better than she knew it. And he probably did, Grace thought with an inward smile, remembering how many times he’d felt it and been inside of it. But then she remembered where she was, and dismissed such thoughts!
She leaned her head back and listened over the speaker as the Pastor gave the Sunday school closing prayer.
It was at that moment, when they all stood up to head into the sanctuary for morning worship, did something that had never happened before happened: Tommy, dressed to perfection in a dark brown suit, dark brown Italian leather dress shoes, and a brown Derby hat, walked into the vestibule.
As soon as Destiny and TJ saw their father, their eyes lit up with excitement. “Daddy!” they both cried in unison, and ran to him. Grace was stunned and happy, too, as she hurried to him as well.
The woman who was sitting across from Grace, who had just minutes earlier called her an out-and-out liar, looked at Tommy, and then looked at the talkative woman, now standing, who had been sitting next to Grace. “Who’s that?” she asked her.
“Her husband,” said the woman.
“You lyin’!” the woman responded.
“No, I’m not either. You need to stop calling people liars. He’s her husband. He’s the one that girl said bought her that dress.”
“Wow,” the doubtful woman said. “That’s a beautiful man. And she got him? Her? How?”
“God, child,” the talkative woman said. “How else?”
“Child please,” the doubtful woman said. “Ain’t that much God in this world!”
But the woman found the doubtful woman as objectionable as Destiny had. She decided to get away from her as fast as she could. If lightning struck, she didn’t want to get hit too.
She gathered up her wild grandkids and headed into the sanctuary just as Tommy lifted his youngest child, and placed his arm around Destiny’s shoulder, pulling her against him too.
“We never in a million years would have expected to see you, Daddy,” Destiny was saying.
“Not in a billion,” said TJ.
“What brings you here?” asked Grace.
“I came to church,” said Tommy. “Can’t a man come to church with his family?” He was smiling. Just his family’s excited reaction to his presence gave him a lift.
“Yes, a man can come to church with his family,” Grace said, smiling too. “But you came,” she added, and they all laughed.
“Good morning, Sister Grace,” said a member of the church who had just walked into the vestibule, and she and Grace kissed on the cheeks and exchanged some information about the women’s health fair scheduled for next Saturday.
Tommy stared at his wife as she conversed with the church member. She looked simply regal to him, in a dress for which he paid a vintage dress collector in Paris a pretty penny to part with. But he did it because he knew it would look fabulous on Grace. And it did. She looked magnificent.
But more than that, she carried herself in a way that made her look fantastic to Tommy regardless of what she wore. The only reason he went all out for her is because he loved Grace and felt she deserved the best of everything, even when she felt she didn’t deserve it.
“Mommy, hurry up,” Destiny said impatiently as Grace and the woman continued to converse.
Tommy, surprised by his daughter’s impatience, had only to give Des a hard look and she shut it. She knew her father didn’t play. She leaned away from him, however, as her form of protest.
Tommy continued staring at Grace. It was a well-known fact that Tommy always h
ad a weakness for black women. They were his one and only preference for as long as he could remember. But when he met Grace it was different. It wasn’t about her skin tone or her curves or what she could do for him in bed. It was all about her, and how complete she made him feel, and how special he felt whenever he was with her. Not the other way around.
Not that they had an easy road. They never did. Every one of those women he used to fool around with reminded him constantly that she was the least-attractive woman he’d ever dated, bar none, especially compared to them and their beauty. Those same women were confounded senseless and shocked with envy when he married Grace. Those same women were overflowing with joy when Grace had what she now considered a terrible lapse in judgement and divorced him, putting that fine piece of meat, as the women viewed Tommy, back on the market. Those same women were shocked and confounded with disbelief once again when he and Grace came back together, dated again, and remarried. Now he and Grace were inseparable. And those women? Still shocked and confounded. A woman like Grace wasn’t supposed to win. That was their lane. They couldn’t understand how it happened!
But Grace understood. She attributed it to God’s grace. Something no man, nor woman, could take away from her.
When she finished her conversation, Tommy put TJ on his feet, removed his hat, placed his arm around Grace’s waist, and the Gabrini family walked into the Mount Bethel Baptist church sanctuary, as one unit, for the first time ever.
Grace wasn’t a bit surprised to see that most of the women in the historic African-American church took bold looks at Tommy, because it was their first time seeing her husband in service. This was mostly true because Tommy was raised a Catholic and would not have necessarily attended a Baptist church, but also because he was usually working or out of town on business and rarely went to church at all.
But he was glad he came that day. He was with his family, and they were thrilled to be with him.
Tommy Gabrini: A Family Man Page 9
