TWELVE
After Carmine went to pour drinks, and Reno went downstairs to talk with Dirty about the hit at the Spring Valley compound and to eyeball his mother and sisters, Trina and Marcy sat on the sofa and talked. Reno knew it was risky, leaving the two of them together, but he figured Marcy would be too worried about her son to lie on him, or pretend they were still an item, anything like that.
He was wrong.
“So you married the great Reno Gabrini,” Marcy said to Trina, her legs crossed, her big blue eyes almost devoid of emotion.
“Reno doesn’t seem to think they’ll harm your son,” Trina said instead, not about to let this woman get all up in her marriage to Reno.
“You mean our son, don’t you?” Marcy corrected her. When Trina didn’t respond, wasn’t playing her game, she kept trying. “I don’t know what they’ll do,” she said. “These gangsters can be very unpredictable. But I have total faith in Reno. He knows what he’s doing. He’s considered a very good catch, you know,” Marcy continued, surprising Trina with her unwillingness to discuss the weightier matters. It could be a defense mechanism. Trina could only imagine how a mother would feel knowing that her child had been kidnapped; knowing that her baby was in harm’s way. But Marcy’s almost lackadaisical reaction still disarmed her.
“Everybody assumed we were going to get married,” Marcy went on as Carmine, who was ordered to keep Trina and Marcy in his sight, handed them their drinks. “Didn’t they, Carmine?”
Marcy assumed he would be in her corner. She never took Carmine as the kind of Italian that was particularly partial to blacks.
But Carmine looked at her with a frown on his face. What she didn’t know was that he knew the whole story, from her sleeping with Paulo Gabrini’s enemies for a fee, to her sleeping with Paulo himself, and, ultimately, sleeping with Reno. It was sordid and it was despicable to him. “Didn’t they what?” he asked her.
She hesitated, seeing that look of disgust on Carmine’s face. “Didn’t everybody think Reno and I would be married?”
“How should I know what everybody thought? All I know is that Reno found him a good, honest, trustworthy woman and he loves her and married her. That’s all I know. Besides, who the fuck cares? Your child is missing, at least that’s what you’re claiming. How can you sit up here talking about some love affair you may or may not have had with Reno at a time like this?”
Trina almost smiled. And Marcy caught herself. She had messed up again. “You talk like you don’t believe me,” she said, deciding to jump defensive. “You talk like I’d use my own son to what, Carmine? Tell me what are you insinuating I’d use my own son for? This my boy we’re talking about! They took him and I have the scars to prove it. Ask Reno. He saw the scars.”
“He saw’em?” Carmine asked with disbelief in his voice. “Where they at? I don’t see no scars.”
“I would have to be naked to show them to you,” she said with relish. “And that ain’t happening in your lifetime.”
Carmine glanced at Trina. Trina looked into her gin and bitters and began to slosh around the angostura. This woman was trying to make her jealous at a time like this, she thought. What kind of mother was she? Or was Carmine right after all and she was using her own son? But why? Why would she do it? To get back with Reno? Did she want Reno back? Trina couldn’t imagine any of his girlfriends not wanting him back. Especially the way he handled his business in bed.
Or was she working with Partanna’s people?
She didn’t know, but what she did know was that she didn’t trust this woman. Didn’t trust a word that was coming out of her mouth.
Marcy was surprised by Trina’s calm. Here was a woman sobbing on Reno’s shoulder like some lost kid before she realized they had company, and now she was Miss Cool. It unnerved Marcy, if truth be told. Not only was she great looking and curvaceous, but she had brains too, something sorely lacking in most of the women she’d heard Reno hooked up with after her. She had to keep her eyes on this one, she thought. This one might just have Reno’s back.
To Trina’s relief, Reno didn’t stay away long. But when he returned, he returned with two other men. The cousins, she suspected. One was tall, slender, and elegant, a man who was actually better looking than Reno, something she had thought wasn’t possible. But he was just that gorgeous. He, in fact, was a man with such a suave appearance that Trina found herself a little taken aback by his beauty too. The other guy, the younger one, had that bull dog, low, compact, scruffy look. If the elegant one looked like a modern day Cary Grant, the shorter one looked more like James Cagney.
“Tree, I want you to meet my cousins, Tommy and Sal Luca,” Reno said as he hurried toward the bar. “Tommy and Sal, that’s my wife.”
“How you doing?” Sal asked, keeping his distance. The idea that Reno would marry some black chick with all of these Italian girls around this town just didn’t sit right with him. What she’s got that an Italian girl didn’t have, he wanted to know. Nothing, from the looks of her, he thought.
His big brother Tommy, however, held a different view. As soon as he walked up to Trina to shake her extended hand he got it, he understood without reservation what Reno was so excited about. Reno had talked to him about this woman as if she was the cure for cancer; as if she was the answer to any man’s dreams. She wasn’t, of course, just looking at her. Tommy could point out women just as beautiful any day of the week. Even Marcy there.
But they wouldn’t have her style. They wouldn’t have her grace. They wouldn’t know how to smile that bright white smile that not only seduced men with her mouth but caused her hazel eyes to sing with sensuality. And it wasn’t forced either. He knew forced when he saw it. But she was just being herself, and it was that self of hers that was the draw. Her nice figure, Tommy also noticed as he glanced down, didn’t hurt either.
“Nice to meet you,” he said as he took her hand and kissed it. “Reno has understated your beauty,” he added.
Trina smiled. “Oh, you’re smooth,” she said, eliciting a grin from Tommy. “You could give Reno a run for his money.”
“Don’t get fresh with my cousin,” Reno yelled jokingly from behind the bar. “He’ll break your heart in the end.”
“Him? A heart breaker? I don’t believe it. Not this gorgeous hunk of human being!”
“I know that’s right!” Marcy said, laughing and giving Trina a high-five. Reno and Tommy exchanged glances. And as Marcy continued laughing and telling Trina about men and what made a good looking one, Tommy made his way over to his cousin.
“You buying it?” he asked Reno in a voice low enough for only Reno to hear.
“Her kidnapping story?” Reno asked. “Hell nall. Marcy is a lot of things, but she wouldn’t be high-fiving and joking around if her kid was somewhere in danger. That ain’t Marcy.”
Tommy looked at her. “My people are telling me that she was a button for Partanna after your old man kicked her to the curb, that she was one of his best black widows. I’m wondering if that’s why she’s here, to try and get you in her web and take you out.”
“I know. I’m wondering the same thing. That’s why I took her in that back room before we left Jersey.”
Tommy looked at Reno. “I thought you took her back there to fuck her.”
“Yeah, that’s what she was thinking too. And I let her think it too. I laid her out on that bad and scanned every inch of her, had my fingers up her ass and her pussy, to make sure she wasn’t packing a damn thing. She’s not packing a damn thing. So I’m safe for now. Besides, they wouldn’t make it as easy as that or they would have put her in the shadows.” Then Reno frowned “But it is worrisome,” he admitted.
“It’s nothing like Partanna’s style,” Tommy said. “I have a couple of guys working for me who used to be FBI. They say this is so unlike Frank Partanna. All of these hits off target. Your wife, your mother and sisters. It’s not like him. Partanna always went for the target, with collateral damage secondary. This new boss in Partanna’s organiz
ation goes for the collateral damage instead. It’s crazy.”
“That’s apparently the point. But I don’t know, Tommy. I feel as if we’re playing checkers and they’re playing chess, that they’re so far ahead of us that it ain’t even funny. And I don’t know what to believe at this point. But until I get it confirmed that that kid is safe, we have to see this through.”
“You certain it’s your kid?”
“Mine or my old man’s, which, given that my old man is dead and gone, amounts to the same thing. So yeah,” Reno said with more than a little uneasiness, “I believe the kid is mine.”
Tommy exhaled. “What do you want me to do?”
Reno looked at his cousin. “We may have to bring him in.”
“Here to Vegas?”
“Yeah.”
“That could be very risky, Reno.”
“You’re doubting it now? You’re doubting that this Paul Brown character could be the mastermind?”
“No,” Tommy assured him. “I believe it even more based on the way he’s handling his revenge targets. But he’s a cop, at least that’s his cover, a regular patrol officer for the Newark, New Jersey police department for crying out loud. That’s damned ingenious, Reno. This guy knows what he’s doing.”
“That’s why it must be orchestrated to the last detail,” Reno pointed out. “No short cuts. No overlooking anything. He’s working as a straight-laced patrol officer, but I’ll bet the PaLargio that he has a security detail watching his every move to rival the President of the United States security detail. That’s why you can’t cut any corners. That’s why you have to make certain your pocket-padders in the police department are completely on our side.”
“They are. Don’t worry, they are.” Then Tommy stared at Reno. “If we’re forced to take that riskiest of risky moves and bring him in.”
Reno closed his tired eyes, knowing how many things could go wrong if he made the call to bring in Paul Brown. Then he opened them again. “Right,” he said, hoisting down a Black and Tan.
After more small talk with Tommy, Reno eventually threw back another stiff one and then dismissed the room. Marcy was to stay with Tommy and Sal Luca in one of the hotel’s suites, becoming what even she described as their prisoner until he could get a handle on the alleged kidnapping, until another phone call came in.
Carmine, who handed Marcy’s cell phone to Tommy, was ordered to go to the suite downstairs to be with his wife and keep an eye on the family. Dirty was doing the job, but he wanted Carmine to get a break, too. Nothing could be gained, he assured him, by worrying themselves to death.
And as for Trina, he wanted his face between her legs so badly he could already taste her. That was why, as soon as their penthouse was emptied of guests and he had her in the bedroom closing the door, he slammed her against that door and began kissing her hard. He couldn’t get enough of her.
***
Tommy and Sal, along with Marcy and a team of security, took the elevator down to the fifteenth floor, where their assigned suite was located. Sal was appeasing Marcy, undoubtedly to get her in his bed tonight, and Tommy was staring at Marcy, watching her every move, her every interplay.
“He gave up you for her?” Sal was saying.
“I know,” Marcy agreed.
“He’s out of his mind,” Sal continued. “You? A gorgeous woman like you? For that black ink spot--”
“That’s enough, Sal,” Tommy warned as Marcy laughed.
Sal looked at Marcy, who was smiling. “Don’t mind him,” he said. “He likes those African-Americans too.” Marcy laughed again. “And the blacker the better far as he’s concerned. He’s had so many tar baby girlfriends I wondered if he wasn’t black himself. And they can be plump, too, and he still finds them so attractive. Not me. I like my women blonde, blue-eyed and slim as Jim. Just like you.” He said this to Marcy and Marcy grinned. Tommy rolled his eyes.
But they weren’t in the apartment ten minutes before Marcy’s cell phone began to ring. Tommy had manipulated the phone so that it would ring into his phone also. He and Marcy answered at the same time.
“This Marcy,” she said.
“You with Reno?” Pags asked.
Marcy looked at Tommy. Tommy nodded. “Yes,” she said into the phone.
“Tell Reno a package has been waiting downstairs for him for nearly two days now. It contains a tape. Tell him to watch it. Our instructions will be on that tape. Oh, and tell Reno it’s under the name of Capone, Alvin.” Then Pags laughed, and clicked off.
“Al Capone?” Sal asked. “What kind of game are they playing at?”
“Get Reno,” Tommy ordered in a tone Sal knew not to dispute. He hurried to get Reno.
***
Reno was in bed fucking Trina so hard that the entire bed was bouncing. She was on her stomach, her ass pushed up to him, and he was riding her hard. His hands were squeezing her breasts as he fucked her, as his penis kept slicing in and out of her with a preciseness that amazed her. He kept hitting her spot, kept sliding just where she needed him to slide to give her that sensual, euphoric feeling of pleasure that tingled down through her toes. She was holding onto the coverings, but they kept sliding too, as he banged her, as he made her feel that nothing else in this world mattered but the way he was making her feel at this moment in time.
Sal Luca, like Tommy, had carte blanche through the many layers of security guarding Reno, and after knocking and getting no answer at the front door, walked on in. He could hear them pounding as soon as he crossed the threshold. He could hear her screaming. He could hear Reno grunting. He was getting a hard on just hearing her screams, just hearing the bed bouncing, just hearing Reno’s grunts.
But this was business. He pounded on the bedroom door.
Reno didn’t hear it at first, he was just that lost in the feeling Trina’s ass was giving to him. He could have fucked her for another hour, he was nowhere near finished, even though he had released inside of her already. Then he heard Sal’s voice, and he was able to stop himself.
He and Trina both collapsed down onto the bed that now looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane. “What is it?” he yelled back.
“Marcy’s got the phone call. They left a package for you.”
Reno looked at Trina and then they both jumped up and threw on clothes. Reno threw on a pair of jeans and a shirt, Trina threw back on her shorts and a t-shirt. And they, along with Sal, who was staring at Trina, hurried to Tommy’s room.
The tape had already arrived by the time Reno and Trina walked into the hotel suite. They immediately gathered around the television set, with Reno sitting Trina on his lap, Marcy seated in a chair flanking them, and Tommy played the tape.
The scene was of a small room. It could have been a bedroom, an office, or even part of a warehouse somewhere. It was too difficult to tell. Everything, it seemed, was covered in black. But there was an empty chair in that room and for nearly a minute nothing happened. Then a voice could be heard, a distorted but clear voice. It wasn’t Pags.
“Reno, hello. I knew Marcy would come through for us. She was always good at pleasing men.” He laughed as if it was a joke.
“She told you about your son I take it? About the fact that he had been kidnapped and she had been badly bruised? Did she show you the bruise? That was her idea. Reno would ask for proof, she said.”
“That lying motherfucker!” Marcy screamed but Reno hushed her. His eyes were riveted on the screen, totally concentrated on that voice. He didn’t realize it, but his hand around Trina’s waist was squeezing her too tightly. But she didn’t complain. She was tense too, she was terrified that those fools was going to show them a dead baby or something, just to prove some point to Reno.
“But that’s what she said,” the voice on the tape said. “She said you’d want evidence of a dragging. So we gave it to her. Gave it to her where she would have to strip to show you, which I’m sure she did. She is, after all, a freak.”
MOB BOSS 2 Page 14
