“Where did they take her?”
“We don’t know yet. I just got back. Jimmy called me on my cell when they were first taking her away and I hurried to the police station. But the cops claimed she wasn’t there and wasn’t expected there and they didn’t know shit about it. I hate dealing with those Fed fuckers, but I hurried over to their field office. But they claimed they didn’t know a damn thing, either. So I called everybody I could think to call, got my men on the streets, and I came back here. I just got here.”
Tommy could feel Reno’s anguish. “We’ll find her, Reno,” he promised him.
Reno looked at Tommy. He was the one bright light in this whole affair. Other than his wife Trina and his son Jimmy Mack, Tommy was the only human being he trusted unconditionally. They called him Dapper Tom because of his sophisticated style, but Reno also knew his ruthless side, a side few others ever saw.
Reno managed to smile at him. “You have a knack for showing up right on time, you know that, brother?”
“Anything for you, Reno. But I need you to keep it together.”
Reno nodded. And then that anguished look returned as he, once again, thought about his beloved Trina.
Then his cell phone rang. He answered quickly.
“Tell me some good news or get the fuck off of this phone,” Reno blared.
Grace was taken aback by Reno’s bombastic style, there was no doubt about that. But she understood it. Trina had been taken. If she were in Reno’s shoes, she’d be equally pissed.
Reno frowned. “Where?” he asked into his phone. “Are you certain?” Then he shook his head. “Those fuckers!” he yelled. “I’m on my way.”
Reno killed the call.
“Where?” Tommy asked.
“Police station.”
Tommy shook his head. “The first place you went.”
“Right,” Reno said, hurrying for the coat rack. “They take my wife downtown like she’s some common criminal. Who do they think they’re fucking with?”
They’re about to find out, Tommy thought.
“Jimmy Mack, you stay here with the baby,” Reno ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy Mack said.
Then Reno looked at Grace as he put on his coat. His blue eyes looked her up and down as if he was just noticing her for the first time. “How are you, Grace?’ he asked.
“I’m okay,” she replied. “I just pray Trina’s okay.”
“Yeah,” Reno said. “You stay here with Jimmy and the baby,” he ordered her. “Tommy, you come with me. I need you.”
Tommy knew that Reno could never say those words to any other man, and was about to leave with him. But he looked at Grace and saw the apprehension, and the anxiety, in her big brown eyes. She wasn’t accustomed to the kind of razzle dazzle lifestyle that too often defined Reno’s existence.
He placed his hand in the small of her back. “She’s coming with us,” he told Reno, and then assisted her out of the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They took Reno’s limo and headed for the police station. Tommy and Grace sat on one side and Reno sat alone, on the seat across from them. Grace watched as he anguished over his wife’s fate, and as he and Tommy speculated on what might have caused his wife’s detention to begin with.
It seemed almost surreal to her. This Reno, first of all, was nothing like she expected. He seemed so concerned about his wife that it was almost touching, but he seemed so angry too. It was as if he experienced life from either extreme. It seemed to Grace that he was the kind of man who could be either deliriously happy, or devastatingly unhappy. Which made for an unsettling impression.
And by the time they arrived at the police station, her impression didn’t change when Reno’s temper took over at the first sign of resistance.
“You remember me?” he asked the desk sergeant who just told them that Trina was being interrogated and couldn’t have any visitors right now. “You’re the same fucker who told me my wife wasn’t here. I was running all over town because of your lies.”
Grace whispered to Tommy. “Don’t you think you ought to settle him down?”
“Hell no,” Tommy whispered back. “If they had rounded you up and brought you here I’d be raising hell too. Reno knows what he’s doing.”
And Reno kept the pressure on, too. “So after lying your ass off to me, you now expect me to believe that yes, she’s here, but she can’t see anybody? Not even her attorney here?” He motioned toward Tommy. Tommy was no attorney, but, the way Reno saw it, they didn’t know that. “I thought it was against the law to keep a client away from her attorney.”
The desk sergeant seemed flustered, but he held to his guns. “I do as I’m told,” he said as a cop out, Grace thought. “And I was told that Katrina Gabrini is currently being interrogated and cannot see anyone right now.”
“You lying sonafabitch!” Reno blared. “Who do you think you’re dealing with? Don’t make me come across this desk and kick the living shit out of your gotdamn---”
“Get Chief Clark,” Tommy interrupted, mainly to spare Grace any more of Reno’s explosive use of the English language. He knew the police chief would have limited authority over who the Feds decided to interrogate, but it was the only card he could play right now.
The sergeant swallowed hard. He was hardnosed himself, but he knew about Reno Gabrini and his mob connections. He wasn’t about to put his own life at risk for the sake of some Federal agents who already thought they were superior to the local police. That was why he even entertained Tommy’s request.
“Chief Clark?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Tommy said. “Tell him I need to see him. I’m Tommy Gabrini. He knows me.”
Ordinarily, the sergeant would have resisted, but not this time. Not where these Gabrinis were involved. He picked up his phone and contacted his chief.
Reno ran his hands through his already messy hair and began walking around the lobby. Tommy walked Grace to the bench against the wall and they both sat down. He crossed his legs and placed his arm across her shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“I’m okay.” Then she looked at Reno. “I don’t know about him, though.”
“Don’t you worry about Reno. He can handle this.”
“He’s very bombastic, isn’t he?”
“You would be too,” Tommy pointed out, “if people messed with you and yours the way they were always messing with Reno. He can’t show any weakness or he’s done for.”
“But it doesn’t seem to working here.”
“No. But what else can he do? Thank them for their trouble and leave his wife in their hands?”
Grace realized that that was the point. Reno was in a tough spot. “He seems to really love Katrina.”
Tommy squeezed her upper arm and pulled her body closer against his. “You don’t know the half of it,” he said to her.
It would be another few minutes, however, but then Chief Clark came out and saw that it was, indeed, Tommy Gabrini.
“Captain Gabrini,” Clark said as he hurried toward Tommy and extended his hand. The sergeant was surprised by the title given to Tommy, and, in truth, so was Grace. She knew Tommy said he used to be a cop, but hearing somebody refer to him with his old cop title was kind of shocking.
Reno hurried over, too, as Tommy stood up and shook Clark’s hand. Grace stood up, too.
“Des, how are you?” Tommy asked.
“Overworked, underpaid, should follow in your footsteps.”
Tommy laughed. “You should,” he said.
Grace could tell that Reno wasn’t a man who finessed any matter and therefore seemed slightly impatient with Tommy’s more jovial style. But he apparently trusted Tommy to handle his business because he held his peace.
“I see you still have your taste in females,” Clark said with a grin that made Tommy cringe. He just hated when anyone referred to Grace as if she was just another one of his female friends.
“Yes, I do,” he s
aid. “But this is Grace McKinsey,” Tommy made clear. “My lady.”
Clark understood the distinction. He’d never before heard Tommy refer to any female on his arms as his lady. He nodded toward Grace. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Nice to meet you,” Grace replied.
“And you know Dominic,” Tommy said, referring to Reno.
“He knows me,” Reno said impatiently. “He’s harassed me too many times to not know me.”
“Now you hold on,” Clark started.
“No, you hold on!” Reno finished. “Where the fuck is my wife?”
Clark gave Reno a chilly look and then looked back at Tommy. “So what brings you to my precinct?” he asked his former colleague.
“Apparently your precinct has detained my sister-in-law,” Tommy said, “and we need to know why.”
“It wasn’t us,” Clark said, looking from Tommy to Reno and back to Tommy. “It’s those gotdamn Feds running in here and demanding that we give them an interrogation room. You know how they are. They could have just as easily taken her to their place, but no. They have to throw their weight around here. Get us involved.”
“All of that, I’m sure, is true,” Tommy said, before Reno could interrupt. “But the fact remains, I need to see my sister-in-law. And I need to see her now, Des.”
Des Clark glanced at Reno again. And at Grace. Then back to Tommy. He always did like Tommy. Reno, he couldn’t stand, but he always did like Dapper Tom.
“Come with me,” he said and Tommy, Reno, and Grace followed the chief.
It would take nearly ten more minutes before the chief would return to his office and inform the threesome that the Feds weren’t thinking about him and he was unable to secure her release. It would then take Tommy phoning every Washington contact he had, who, in turn, phoned their contacts, who, eventually, was able to get in touch with the Attorney General. It was only after that did the FBI stand down, and Trina was released.
They all piled back into Reno’s limo, with Trina at his side. Reno had his arm around Trina, and Tommy had his arm around Grace. For the initial leg of their ride back to the PaLargio, all four remained silent.
Until Reno broke the silence. “They didn’t hurt you or anything?” he asked Trina again. It was the first question he had asked when she was first released.
“No,” Trina said, obviously still a little shaken. “They weren’t abusive at all.”
“Did they question you about the PaLargio?” he asked. “I heard they were cracking down on some of the rigged casinos, but mine ain’t rigged.”
“No, Reno. They didn’t even mention the PaLargio.”
Reno frowned. “Then what the fuck did they want? What were they questioning you about?”
Trina looked at Tommy. “Tommy,” she said.
Grace’s heart pounded. Reno looked at Tommy, too. Tommy was staring at Trina.
“Me?” he asked.
“They barely mentioned Reno. They wanted to know all about you, Tommy, and if I knew some woman named Sheila Lindsey.”
Tommy’s heart pounded. Reno caught the change in his demeanor. Grace caught it too.
“What?” Reno asked him. “Who’s Sheila Lindsey?”
But it was obvious to everyone that Tommy was thinking and thinking hard. He even looked away from all of them and stared out of the car’s window.
And they all remained silent throughout the ride back to the PaLargio. Because they all knew that Tommy would tell them in his own time. Even Grace, who was perhaps more concerned than the others because this was all new to her, held her peace. They all allowed Tommy to keep his own counsel until they were back at the PaLargio, inside the penthouse, seated around the kitchen table.
The baby was asleep and Jimmy Mack was preparing sandwiches. Tommy had lit a cigarette, which Grace discovered he always did whenever he was super-stressed, and everybody had drinks in front of them. And he was then ready to talk.
“Did they mention Carter Herns also?” he asked Trina.
Trina nodded. “They did. They wanted to know if I’d ever seen the two of you together, or if I ever saw him with Sheila Lindsey. They even showed me photos. I told them I didn’t know him or any Sheila Lindsey and never heard of either one of them.”
“Did they believe you?” Grace asked.
“Hell nall,” Reno answered for his wife. “Those Fed fuckers don’t believe anything you say. Never.”
“You’re right about that,” Trina said. “They wasn’t trying to believe me. No matter what I said. They kept asking me why was I protecting Tommy and if I was one of his women, too.”
Tommy looked at her. “They asked you that?”
“Yeah,” Trina said.
“Why is that important?” Reno asked Tommy. “What’s this about, Tommy? Who the fuck’s Sheila Lindsey and Carter Herns?”
Although all eyes were on Tommy, even Jimmy had all but stopped making those sandwiches and was looking, Grace’s eyes were riveted on him. And terror was in her eyes. Why would the F.B.I., she wondered, be questioning Trina about Tommy? About her Tommy?
Tommy took a slow drag on his cigarette, and then he leaned forward and doused the ash into the tray on the table.
“Sheila Lindsey,” he began, “used to be a friend of mine.”
“A girlfriend?” Reno asked.
There was a slight hesitation. “Yes,” he said. Grace’s body tensed more.
“We met years ago,” Tommy went on, “at a dinner party.”
Grace continued to stare at Tommy, although the fact that they had met at a dinner party, too, wasn’t lost on her.
“We talked,” Tommy continued, “and ended up sleeping together a few times. And I thought that was that. But she didn’t. She continued to want to get together, I continued to tell her I wasn’t interested, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Eventually she moved on. But then she went missing.”
“Oh, that was the one?” Reno asked, surprised.
“Sheila Lindsey was that case, yes,” Tommy said to Reno. Then he exhaled again. “When she was found, something like three weeks later, it was ruled a suicide.”
“Her car had been found in a lake, right, and she was in it?” Reno asked.
“Right. Well, Carson Herns was her boyfriend at the time and he tried to convince authorities that I somehow murdered her, and that it wasn’t suicide. Since I had mobsters in my family, he also tried to implicate Reno.”
“Reno?” Trina asked.
“Yeah,” Reno said. “That clown tried to claim that Sheila Lindsey was harassing Tommy, so Tommy came to me and I took care of it for him. Tommy couldn’t do it, Herns’ story went, because he was a former law enforcement officer. But me and my gangster ass had no such inhibitions. It was nonsense.”
“But Herns kept trying to feed that nonsense to the Feds,” Tommy continued. “He figured the local police would protect their own, but if he included Reno, or the mob, the Feds would have jurisdiction. It didn’t go anywhere then, because it wasn’t true, and I didn’t hear any more about Herns. That was years ago.”
Reno looked at Tommy. “We need to find out what boyfriend’s been up to lately.”
“Right,” Tommy said. “I’m going to get my people on it.”
“So you think Herns was the feeder?” Trina asked.
“Has to be,” Reno said.
“What’s a feeder?” Grace asked.
Tommy looked at her and touched her hand. He hated that this would come up just when their relationship was at its best point yet. “A feeder,” he said, “is somebody who goes to the Feds with information on somebody else.”
“Like a snitch?”
“Right,” Reno said. “Herns is more than likely the person trying to re-litigate Sheila Lindsey’s suicide. Tommy’s got to find out why he would drag up that shit now.”
“But why would they call in Trina?” Grace asked. “That’s what I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t they just call you in, Tommy?”
“Because
they’re crooked as crooked can get,” Reno said. “They’re trying to backdoor me.”
“That’s what I think,” Trina said. “They barely mentioned your name,” she said to Reno, “but you were the elephant in the room the entire time I was there.”
Tommy could see Grace was getting more, not less, confused. “What we’re saying is that they called in Trina,” he said, “because they wanted her to turn on me to save Reno. They wanted her to confess to knowing something about the Lindsey case and claim that I had mentioned something to her about needing to get rid of Lindsey, or that I thought at the time that Sheila was stalking me and was an aggravation, something.”
“Was she stalking you?” Grace asked.
“She was bothering me, yes,” Tommy admitted. “For a good while she wouldn’t take no for an answer. But I wouldn’t call it stalking, no.”
Grace looked as if she was going to go to pieces with anguish. She knew that she was in love with a complicated man. His looks alone made him a target for women who wanted the best for themselves, too. But she wondered if this Sheila person was just the beginning of her pain. She wondered how many more women were out there, who didn’t kill themselves but were actively still pursuing Tommy. A look of great pain crossed her big eyes.
Tommy stood up. And reached out his hand.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said to her.
Grace looked at his hand, as if she was seriously considering turning him down. Then she took his hand and stood up. Reno, Trina, and Jimmy Mack watched as they left.
“Poor kid,” Trina said. “I don’t know if she’s ready for this.”
“She can handle it,” Reno said assuredly. “Tommy won’t put her through half the shit I put you through.”
Trina and Jimmy looked at Reno. It was a searing truth to Reno, that his mob connections had caused Trina great pain throughout their marriage, and it was still the biggest regret of his life.
“You did what you had to do, Pop,” Jimmy said. “You didn’t ask for any of those fights. You would have given Tree an easy life too if all those assholes would have left you alone.”
ROMANCING TOMMY GABRINI Page 21
