“Damn near!”
Jimmy exhaled. Reno began pacing, thinking, plotting.
“It’s not looking good for us, guys,” Shelton said in the silence. “I’ll be derelict in my duties if I told you otherwise.”
Jimmy looked at his father. Shelton looked at him too. Reno ultimately stopped pacing. “We’ve got to get those charges dropped,” he said. “There’s no way around it.”
“I agree,” Shelton said. Then he looked at Jimmy. “If that man dies it’ll be a murder charge, and you won’t survive that.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you get before a judge and jury with a murder charge riding with you?” Shelton shook his head. “You wouldn’t stand a chance. There’s no way a judge and jury is going to pass on a chance to convict a Gabrini. No way.”
“That’s why I can’t let it happen,” Reno said.
“The best I can see,” Shelton said to protect himself, knowing that Reno had less-than-legal ways in mind, “is that James cut a deal with Bruni’s office, with the prosecution. Get it reduced and hope for ten years or so.”
“Ten years?” Jimmy was incredulous. He looked at his father. It all seemed so real to him now. This was no game. No game at all. Tears began to appear in Jimmy’s already sad eyes.
Reno’s heart broke watching his son, a kid who had been through so much already in his young life. Now this. He went to him, and pulled him into his muscular arms. “I’ll get you out of this,” he said softly, his hand resting on the back of his head. “You hear me, James? I’ll make them understand it was a fight, a fair fight, and nothing more. You hear me?” Reno moved back from Jimmy, to make sure they were eyeball to eyeball. “Do you hear me, son?”
Jimmy nodded, ashamed of his own tears and overwhelmed by it all. “Yes, sir,” he said. But when Jimmy saw the dread in his father’s eyes, the tears regained momentum and poured with a vengeance. And Reno pulled Jimmy, once again, into his arms.
Val stood from her seat in the waiting room when Reno walked out.
“They wouldn’t let me see him,” she said anxiously as Reno approached her. It was nearly two in the morning by now, and there were only a few people in the police waiting area. But Reno still wasn’t going to discuss anything in front of the few.
“Come on,” he said as he began walking briskly for the exit. Val hurried behind him.
But she was still too anxious. “Did you see him?”
“I saw him, yes.”
“Is he all right?”
“No,” Reno said, glancing back at her. “Of course not. But he’ll get through it.”
They made it outside, in the fresh, late night air. They began walking toward the parking area. Her heaviness was as real as that air. Reno took her by the arm and stopped her progression. “It’s going to be all right, Val. He’s going to be all right.”
“I didn’t think,” she started, but didn’t finish. And they began walking in silence.
When they arrived at her car, Reno turned her toward him and held her small hand. “Don’t give up on him,” he said to her. She looked at Reno with weary eyes. “He comes from a tough family, yes, he does. But he’s the best one of us all. The absolute best. Don’t you dare give up on him.”
Val nodded her head, but Reno could see the doubt all over her. It would take time for Jimmy to reestablish himself in her eyes. Time and love. But right now, if Reno were to be honest about it, her relationship with Jimmy was the last thing on his mind. Getting Jimmy out of there consumed his every thought.
He hugged Val, and Val cried in Reno’s arms, then she got into her car and drove off. Reno began heading for his Porsche. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that his sins were being visited upon his son. He couldn’t shake the feeling that what happened tonight, and all of that rage of Jimmy’s that was probably pinned up from years and years of suppression, was Reno’s own damn fault.
FIVE
Oliver Lancaster, the manager at Skillian’s, sat behind his desk in his small, paneled office. Four big men, all Reno’s men, stood around that office. They would deny it to his face, but he was nobody’s fool. These men were essentially holding him hostage in his own establishment. He’d asked to leave countless times, but they kept saying not yet. It was almost three in the morning, the bar was already closed, and his bouncers and staff were already gone.
It would be another ten minutes longer, but eventually there was a knock on the bar’s back door. It was a door that could only be opened from Oliver’s office. It was a door that only he was authorized to ever use.
But this was a different night. One of the men, Boz, walked over to the door and, without so much as asking who it was, opened it. And Reno walked in. Oliver looked, wondering who was this new face. Although this man wore a suit and had an air of distinction about him, he was certain he was a thug too. He hid his thuggery better, but Oliver could smell the type a mile away.
But oddly enough, instead of speaking to the manager, Reno’s entire attention turned to Boz, his chief of security, and his other men. He always used Boz to personally handle his most delicate jobs. “Did you get it?”
Boz was a tall black man Reno knew since the early days of his career, a man he could always rely on. But Boz was shaking his head tonight. “We got nothing,” Boz hated to say. “He won’t give it up.”
But that response didn’t sit right with Reno. “What do you mean he won’t give it up?”
“I mean,” Boz clarified, “that we have a gentleman here who seems to be under the impression that he has a right to refuse our request and, as he puts it, to preserve the so-called evidence, not for us, but for the cops.”
Reno looked at Oliver. “That’s your impression?” he asked him. “Who gave you that impression?”
“Look,” Oliver started, but Reno interrupted him.
“I said who gave you that impression?”
Oliver stared at Reno. He was not backing down. “I don’t know who you people are, or what kind of goons you purport to be, but understand something about me. I will not be intimidated by you, your goons, or anyone else. Those tapes are to remain in my custody whether the cops get a warrant to see them or not. But I am not about to give them up to people like you. Not tonight. Not any night.”
Reno looked at the guy. He respected a man who stood on principal. But he picked the wrong night to stand. “What’s your name?”
But Oliver wasn’t going along. “My name is irrelevant to this discussion.”
Reno looked at Boz.
Boz smiled. “His name is Oliver,” he said. “Oliver Lancaster.”
“Oliver Lancaster,” Reno said, smiling too. “Mind if I call you Ollie?”
“What you call me is of no consequence to me.”
Reno looked at the guy, and just looking at him made his blood boil. His son was rotting in a jail cell and this arrogant ass was trying to make some statement? Reno suddenly reached over, grabbed Oliver by the catch of his shirt, causing Oliver to screech in horror, and then Reno pulled him all the way across the desk. “Now you listen to me you little prick! You think I’m here for my health? You think I have time to play with your retarded ass? You get that fucking tape and you get it now or I’ll shove your fucking balls down your fucking throat!” Reno then pushed Oliver away from him. Oliver fell back against the desk, stunned by the display.
Reno began straightening up his suit. He hated to lose his cool, he hated to have to go there, but these people keep trying him as if he was some chump they knew. He looked at the manager, to see if he still was trying him or just had a general death wish.
Apparently not, Reno thought, because Oliver straightened his own suit of clothes, stood erect, and walked over to the safe. When he opened the safe, he pulled out the tape in question, a tape he had put away in memorial of the devastating fight. Boz snatched it from him and placed it in the office recorder. He and his men began reviewing the footage to make certain the manager wasn’t pulling a fast one.
“Is there a copy?” R
eno asked Oliver.
“No,” Oliver said reluctantly.
“If a copy ever surfaces,” Reno made clear, “you’re dead. You understand that, right?”
“There’s no copy.” Then Oliver shook his head. “Some nigger boy beats up a white man and you’re all up in arms. Why? I don’t get it.”
Reno looked at Boz. Boz gave him the thumbs up: the tape was legit. Then he began removing the tape from the recorder.
Reno looked at the manager. “Cops come asking for it,” he said, “you tell them somebody forgot to set the recorder. The camera was broken. The camera never existed. Whatever the hell you want to tell them. But you make certain, at the end of that explanation, that you tell them you got nothing. Get cute and mention this meeting, and every human being near and dear to you will pay for your cuteness. And you’ll pay with your life. We understand each other, Ollie?”
Oliver stared at Reno with pure hate on his face.
“We understand each---”
“Yes,” Oliver interrupted. “You don’t have to ask it again. Yes, I understand. I understand that we don’t have a rule of law in this country any more, just a bunch of gangsters.”
Boz laughed. Reno wasn’t in the mood. He began to leave out of the same door he entered in. But just as he was passing Oliver, he grabbed him by the hand, bent that hand back so far, and with such brute force, that he could hear the bones break. Oliver yelped and screamed in pain, as his legs suddenly started jumping up and down, doing the River Dance, because of the agony. But Reno continued to bend the hand, oblivious to the man’s anguish. He, instead, looked him dead in the eye. “Asshole calls my son the n-word and thinks he can get away with that. Why? I don’t get it.”
Then Reno stared at the crying man a moment longer, and then released his crushed, decrepit hand, and left.
Reno sat in his Porsche, under a streetlight, on a little used, side street in the hood. His head was leaned back against the leather headrest, and his eyes were half-lidded as he watched the darkness and quiet around him. It was nearly four in the morning. He was so tired he could barely see straight. The only reason he was still able to so much as bat an eye was because of his devotion to his son, and his determination to get him out of that jail cell.
His cell phone rang just as a car turned onto the side street, but kept on going. He looked at the Caller ID. It was Trina.
“Didn’t I tell you to get some sleep,” he said to her as soon as he pressed the button.
“Where are you?”
Reno wasn’t about to tell her his whereabouts. “Here and there,” he said.
Trina was used to it. “What are you doing here and there?”
“Handling the situation.”
“Legally I hope.”
“You hope for too much.”
“But you’re taking care of it.”
“I’m taking care of it.”
“Good. You do what you have to do. For Jimmy.”
“Right.”
“Did you see him?”
“I saw him.”
“How was he?
“He’s not great, that’s for sure. He’s scared.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah, right. That poor kid got his own ass in this sling. That’s what I always fear about him. He doesn’t know how to finesse it. Now he nearly kills a man.”
“Don’t say that, Reno. Let’s pray the guy pulls through. And who is he, anyway? I know you had your people look into his background.”
“They looked. His name is Herman Fromme or something like that. They call him Costco on account of he’s always trying to get something for nothing, to get a great deal, but there’s a million guys out there like that. His drinking caused his wife and kids to leave him, he works for his brother-in-law at some used car lot. That’s it. That’s all we know.”
Another car, a shiny Town car, turned onto the side street also, but this one stopped across the street, at the curb.
“Listen, babe, I’ve got to go. Talk to you later.”
“Be safe.”
“I will.” Then Reno killed the call.
He waited for the signal: the lights flashing twice. Once that happened, he got out of his Porsche, buttoned his suit coat, and made his way across the street. The backdoor of the Town car opened, and Reno got inside.
John Bruni, the district attorney for Clark County, sat in the backseat.
“Nice suit, Reno,” he said as Reno stepped in. “Too bad you don’t know how to keep a nice suit nice.”
“It’s too damn late for your jokes, Brune.” Reno sat down.
“Alright already. No jokes. All serious now. I reviewed the case.”
“Yeah and?”
“It’s messy with a capital M. Best I can do is a reduced charge.”
“No.”
“It’s the best I can do, Reno.”
“You’ve got to do better than that. I don’t want a reduced charge, I want no charge. I want all charges against my son dropped.”
“Oh, Reno, come on! He nearly killed a man.”
“He ain’t dead yet. That’s why you drop charges now, just in case. You make it clear that just because Jimmy won the fight doesn’t make it an unfair fight. It was just a bar fight.”
But Bruni shook his head. “You’re asking for the impossible.”
“I’m not asking for shit,” Reno said. “I’m paying for the impossible. And I expect a full return on my hard-earned money.”
Bruni looked at him. “Why do I let you do this?”
“Because you’re a greedy, slimy, corrupt motherfucker,” Reno said. “For starters.”
Bruni laughed. For some strange reason, he thought Reno was kidding. “Okay, you got me there.” Then he sobered up. “What about the cameras?”
“They weren’t on. And just in case they were, I have the tape.”
“Witnesses?”
Reno reached into his back pocket and pulled out a list. He handed it to Bruni. “Three names, three signed statements.”
“Let me guess: all three will declare that the other guy punched Jimmy first and Jimmy had no choice but to defend himself?”
“There ya’ go.”
“And he made no statements to the cops?”
“Who do you think you’re dealing with? That’s my son. Of course he didn’t talk to the cops, get outta here!”
Bruni nodded. “Okay. But you owe me, Reno.”
Reno reached inside his suit coat and pulled out a thick envelope filled with money. He handed it to the corrupt DA.
Bruni accepted the wad. “You still owe me,” he said as he began thumbing through it. Reno began getting out of the car. “I mean it, Reno. You’re still gonna owe me one.”
Reno looked back at Bruni. “Drop those charges,” he said, “and I’ll owe you two.”
And Reno headed back for his own car. He was so tired he could barely walk, but at least he felt as if he was getting somewhere.
Val got out of bed, put on her bathrobe, and made her way downstairs. The doorbell rang again as she looked through the peephole. When she saw that it was Jimmy on her porch, she opened the door without delay. “Jimmy!” She jumped into his arms. “How could you be out?” She looked at him, as if she was doubting that he was there. “They let you out?”
Jimmy laughed and lifted her into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his body as he kissed her and carried her back into her house, closing the door behind them. He was so elated to be free, to have Val in his arms again, to not have to deal with the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind anybody’s bars, that he could hardly contain himself.
Val was rubbing his face as he kissed her. When he finally stopped kissing her, she looked at him. “Tell me you’re free for real. Tell me everything’s good.”
Jimmy laughed. “Everything’s good,” he said. “And yes, I’m free. You don’t know how great I feel.”
“But what happened? They let you out on bail?”
“No bail. That’s the
beauty of it. The DA said there wasn’t enough evidence to even press any charges.”
Val was stunned. “No evidence? For real, Jimmy?”
“The cops arrest you, but the DA has to file the charges, and Mr. Bruni said there wasn’t enough evidence to file. So they had to let me go.”
Val smiled. “Well thank-you, Mr. Bruni, whoever he is.”
“It’s my Dad you need to thank,” he said. “He’s the one who got me out of this jam, not some DA. If my Dad wouldn’t have called in favors and did whatever he did for me, my butt would still be sitting in that jail cell. So bump Mr. Bruni. You thank my Daddy.”
“I will.” Then a look of concern came over Val’s pretty face. Jimmy saw the change. “What is it, Val?”
“It’s just that . . . Your dad and I kind of got into it when I called to tell him that you’d been arrested.”
Jimmy frowned. “You got into it? What does that mean? What did he do to you?”
“He didn’t do anything! He just spoke real rude to me and I told him I didn’t appreciate that.”
Jimmy smiled. “Oh, Val, that’s all? Don’t even waste your time thinking about that. He’s rude to everybody! But his heart is in the right place. You know that.”
“I know it. It’s just that . . .”
“It’s just that he’s spoiled you with kindness so you thought you were special in his eyes?”
Val had to smile. “Something like that, yes.”
“Everybody thinks that too. And you are special to him. Trust me on that.” Too special, if you asked Jimmy. “So please don’t give it a second thought. Dad was just worried about me.”
Val nodded. “That’s it then.”
Jimmy smiled too. “Oh, and what’s even better news is that the guy I fought is going to pull through.”
“Really?”
“Mr. Bruni says he’s going to be okay. He received a status update on him before he came to tell me I was free to go. He said the guy’s gonna pull through.”
“Oh, Jimmy, that’s wonderful!” Val wrapped her arms tighter around him, thrilled beyond words, and they began kissing again. “I’m so happy for you! I’m so happy!”
Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) Page 6
