“If not Pags,” Carmine asked, “who’s running the show?”
“That’s the thing,” Drago jumped in. “Nobody knows. None of Vito’s people know, none of my people know. Nobody knows.”
Reno shook his head. He should have known not to rely so heavily on Vito Giancarlo’s word. He used to tell his Pop not to do so, then he turned around and did so. Vito was a good man, but he wasn’t the sharpest knife in any drawer and often got it wrong more than he got it right. But he was so certain about Partanna, he was so certain that Partanna was so fucked up that what you saw was what you got, when Partanna was probably playing them all and wanted them to think that very thing. Reno shook his head.
When his cell phone began ringing he, at first, didn’t even want to answer it. But eventually he pulled it out and glanced at the Caller ID. When he saw that it was Joe Ralston, the man who was keeping an eye on Tree, he clicked it on quickly.
“What’s up, JoeJoe?”
All he could hear, at first, was the sound of sirens and Joe’s heavy breathing. “We didn’t see it coming, Reno,” he said, barely able to catch his breath.
Reno’s heart immediately began pounding. “Didn’t see what coming?”
“We didn’t see it coming!”
“Didn’t see what coming?”
“Katrina,” Joe said.
As soon as he said that name Reno flew to his feet like a linebacker ready to attack a defensive line, flew to his feet so fast that his chair flipped backwards and crashed to the floor.
“What about Katrina?” he asked. Carmine stood still.
“It happened so fast,” Joe said.
“What about Katrina, motherfucker, what about Katrina?!” Reno felt as if his heart was going to come out of his chest. All he could hear were sirens in the background, all he could think about was Tree
“There was an explosion,” Joe said, “at her parents’ home.”
“Was she inside the house when it exploded?”
Drago, Fabruccio and Lenzeni immediately jumped to their feet. Vito leaned forward. Carmine stared at Reno.
“Yes, Reno,” Joe said. “She was inside.”
Reno could barely believe it. He began walking from behind his desk. “Where is she now? If you tell me my wife is dead I’ll kill you through this phone! Where is she now?”
“They took her to the hospital, that’s all I know. Her and her mother, they took’em to the hospital.”
Reno placed the phone against his chest. “Get the plane ready and contact my people in Vegas,” he ordered Carmine and Carmine immediately pulled out his cell phone as he ran out of the room.
“What is it, Reno?” Vito asked, standing now.
“That fuck Pags or some other dead motherfucker just tried to put a hit on my wife,” Reno said, looking terrified it seemed to Vito, as he hurried out of the room too.
The Drag looked at Vito. “What wife?” he asked him, and they both were dumbstruck.
***
The doors to the hospital in Jackson, Mississippi flew open and Reno, Carmine and what looked like an army of bodyguards rushed in. Two doctors met Reno at the entrance, two doctors his Vegas people had contacted and ordered to get to the hospital.
“Where is she?”
“She’s going to be all right, Mr. Gabrini,” one of the doctors, Dr. Kaye, said.
“Where is she?” Reno asked again, not breaking his stride. “Where is she?” He wasn’t taking some doctor’s word for it. He had to see his wife, he had to eyeball his woman.
Dr. Kaye got the message. “This way, sir,” he said sheepishly and hurried down the hospital’s corridor, the hospital staff standing around in their scrubs amazed by this grand intrusion of their otherwise small, and usually quiet, establishment.
But Reno was as unconcerned about how it looked as he was about his own existence at that moment in time. All he wanted was to see, to hold, to feel Trina again.
She was in a private room. Reno, Carmine and the doctors entered, while security stood guard at the room’s door.
She was lying in a hospital bed, looking almost serene, Reno thought, as he slowly approached her. Dr. Kaye was at his side.
“Is she in a coma?” Reno asked, nervous as hell. But for a small bruise on her arm, he could see no damage whatsoever.
“She’s under an anesthetic,” Dr. Kaye replied. “She was hysterical when she arrived here. She kept calling for her mother, and for you.” Reno and the doctor exchanged a quick glance. “But otherwise she’s going to be just fine. The explosion, from what I understand, took place in the front of the home, near the entrance. She had made her way to the kitchen area and had just opened the back door to put the cat out, from what she told the staff here, when the explosion occurred.”
“Praise God,” Reno said.
“Yes, she was truly blessed. She caught the blowback, but it was nothing compared to what . . .” He didn’t know if Reno was ready to hear more.
Reno looked at the doctor. “Compared to who? Her parents? What about her parents?”
“Just one parent was apparently at home. Her mother.”
“What about her mother?”
“She’s in bad shape, there’s no other way to put it. It’ll be a miracle if she lasts the night.”
Reno’s heart, which he didn’t think could drop any further, did. He looked at Trina, who could have been dead, thought about her mother fighting for her life, and all because of their association with him. All because of his selfish need to have a good woman in his life. And the guilt that was already agonizing enough, almost unbearable even before this craziness, felt like an ice pick through the heart that kept stabbing him over and over again. And Pags was back, that maniac Pagnini, ready to avenge Partanna’s death.
“Good Lord,” Reno thought with the anguish that only a drowning man could feel. Carmine and the doctor looked at him. “What have I done?”
FIVE
Earnestine Hathaway did make it through the night. It was touch and go, but she made it. Her husband would spend that night in her room, praying all night for her, and Reno and Carmine spent the night in Trina’s room, praying for them both.
Trina woke up a couple times through the night, and once she recognized Reno and he assured her, prematurely, that her mother would be fine, she would go back to sleep. Reno sat in a comfortable chair Dr. Kaye was able to wrangle for him, and watched her sleep. Her always smooth black skin had taken on an ash color, and her normally gorgeous eyes, whenever she did open them, looked glazed-over and unfocused. But miraculously all of the tests they ran on her were negative and the only damage was the actual small bruise on her arm. Reno couldn’t praise God enough. Although that guilt still clung to him like slime.
Carmine looked at his brother-in-law. He was the strongest man he’d ever known, and every time he was around him he understood more and more why Reno’s old man so much wanted Reno to be in the business with him. He knew how to handle situations.
Like Dirty for instance. Carmine hated doing it, but had no choice but to leave Dirty in charge of the family back in Jersey so that he could be Reno’s personal bodyguard to Mississippi. They had others around him, but they weren’t trusting anybody at this point.
But Carmine found out late last night, when he called Dirty to check on the situation there, that Reno had the entire family on a plane to Nevada, to the better fortified family compound in Spring Valley a few miles from the Strip, and he had his own Vegas people, not Vito Giancarlo or any of those east coast bosses, handling security. And Carmine thought Reno was so distraught that he could barely think straight, let alone handle anything. But that was Reno, he thought, staring at him. The only man he trusted without question. The only human being on the face of this earth he would die for.
“What is it?” Reno asked him. Although he was slumped down in that chair staring at Trina, he could see Carmine, through the corners of his eyes, staring at him. “What’s on your mind?”
“What’s the game plan
, Reno? It all seems like it’s kind of out of control right now.”
Reno closed his eyes then opened them back up again. Sometimes he wished he could just walk away from everything, to not have to deal with anything in his life for the rest of his life. “We need some backup,” he ultimately said.
“You mean Vito Giancarlo and the Drag and Fabruccio and those guys?”
“I mean Tommy and Sal Luca.”
Carmine stared at Reno as if he’d lost his mind. “You’re kidding me, right? Tommy and Sal Luca? As in Tommy and Sal Luca Gabrini? Your crazy-ass cousins?”
“What do you mean crazy? What’s crazy about them? They’re former cops for crying out loud!”
“Yeah, that’s why they’re crazy. Cops. Please. Your old man pissed on the ground their old man walked on.”
“I know what Pop did, and I know how he felt about his brother being a cop and his brother’s sons being cops. But I’m not Pop.” Reno sometimes wondered if he despised his father for getting the family caught up in so much crime and violence. He used to wish his father was more like his Uncle Benny, more like Tommy and Sal Luca’s old man. “I was glad they stayed out of the business quite frankly,” he went on. “I envy them for not getting dragged into this cockamamie business.”
“Yet you’re looking to drag them in now.”
“Hell yeah I’m dragging them in. Until I can get a handle on what’s going on here. I thought our hit on Partanna would be the end of it. I thought we had got’em all, Partanna and his entire crew, when we probably hadn’t even gotten most of them.” Reno looked at Trina. “They tried to kill my wife, and I don’t know who they are. That’s some scary shit, Carmine. That changes the game.”
Carmine didn’t think he’d ever seen Reno so uncertain, so flustered. “You know Joe Ralston’s disappeared,” he said.
“I know. That’s my point. Who can we trust?”
“Word on the street,” Carmine said carefully, “is that JoeJoe was working for Pags all along, and they had their eyes on you even before the Partanna hit.”
Reno looked at Carmine. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why the--” Reno had to calm himself back down. He glanced at Trina, to make sure she was still asleep, and then back at Carmine. “Why wasn’t word on the street giving us this information before now? If word on the street is so damned reliable.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard, Reno. I worked my sources and that’s what they told me. They said no contract was out, nothing like that, but Partanna figured you would try a retaliatory strike. But there was no chatter, no evidence of it. Besides, they figured you was too legit, too moral, to ever go down a serious retaliation road. They didn’t think they had a beef with you. You know they call you Saint Dominic behind your back.”
Some saint, Reno thought, and looked at Trina.
Carmine looked at him. “You think Tommy and Sal Luca will even come?” he asked.
“They’ll come,” Reno assured him. “I asked them to come and they said they’ll come.”
“You asked them? What, already?” Carmine couldn’t believe it. “When Reno? I been with you twenty-four seven since we got here.”
“Before we got here,” Reno said. “On the plane. I knew JoeJoe was full of shit when he called me. He knew it too, that’s why he took off.”
“He’s a dead man, you know that?”
Trina opened her eyes. Reno jumped up and hurried to her side. He sat on the edge of her bed. “Hello, sweetheart.”
Trina touched the side of his face. “You look awful.”
“Me?” Reno said with a smile. “Check out yourself, sister. You don’t look like no beauty queen laying up there either, you know. I look awful? Please.”
Trina smiled, although she was sore and it was painful to do. But if Reno was joking, she thought, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as she thought it was. “How’s Ma?” she asked him.
“She’s good, Tree,” he said. “I saw her this morning. She’s a little beat up, I ain’t gonna lie to you, but she’s in no danger. Your father’s with her. He kept checking on you through the night too, kept coming in here. I told him I got you, don’t worry about you.”
Trina nodded. Then a serious look came over her. “Who did this, Reno?” she asked him.
“I’m not sure yet,” Reno said, “but I’m working on it.”
“But I thought you said they got everybody when they took care of Partanna.”
“Yeah, that was the thought.”
“But you were wrong?”
“Yes, I was wrong like I am ninety percent of the time. But stop worrying about that, you hear me? Just get well so I can get your gorgeous self out of this hick town and back safely at the PaLargio where you belong.”
“It’s a mob war, Reno,” she said, still worrying.
“A mob war,” Reno said with a smile. Looked at Carmine. “Check her out. A mob war.” Then he turned back to his wife. “Stop worrying, I mean it.”
“You’re worrying,” Trina said.
“I’m worrying? Says who? You? Do I look worried? Well, do I, Tree?”
“You don’t look worried, no.”
“Then what you worrying for? I want to get you out of this bed and back at the PaLargio. Then we’ll talk.”
Trina began drifting again. “Some honeymoon,” she said as she drifted off.
“Yeah,” Reno said, rubbing the hair out of her face, fighting back the tears. “I hear ya’, sister.”
***
Two hours later and the Sheriff entered the hospital room. By now Trina was awake again and talking with her father, who sat on the edge of her bed. Reno was further away, leaned against the back wall talking on his cell phone to Vegas, and Carmine was seated in a chair on his cell phone talking with his people in Jersey. They didn’t have any west coast mob connections where Partanna’s main base of operations were, so the information either one of them were getting was sketchy.
Cecil Hathaway, Trina’s tall, handsome father, stood to his feet when the Sheriff arrived. Although Reno and Carmine noticed the arrival, they continued their separate phone conversations.
“Good afternoon, Sheriff,” Cecil said. It seemed to Reno that he was eyeing that sheriff suspiciously.
“Afternoon, Cecil,” the Sheriff said as he walked further toward the bed. He was a big, burly man, tall and strapping, and had a tank-sized cowboy hat on his head and wore a blazer with a stitching of bullhorns on its back. Although he glanced at Reno and Carmine, his focus was on Trina. “Is this the victim?”
“Yes, sir, this here is my daughter Katrina.”
“I didn’t even know you had a daughter, Cecil, till they told me about the fire. Hello, there,” he addressed this to Trina.
“Hello.”
“Seems you got yourself in quite a mess here,” he said. “And just got in town, from what I understand. Which means you brought the mess with you. What kind of craziness you done got yourself caught up in, little girl? Nearly got your own mama killed.”
“Let me call you back,” Reno immediately said into his cell phone, flipped it shut and headed for the bed. Carmine cut his call too, and followed Reno.
“Hello, Sheriff,” Reno said, “can I help you?”
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