“Bet you I’ll win,” Jimmy said. “Bet that.”
“How much you wanna bet?” Clovis asked. “I was shooting hoops before you were born, boy!”
“Whatever, Clov!”
“I’m serious! I know how to play. I was high school All-American, man. I had the kind of moves to soothe the savage beast, one writer wrote. If I hadn’t blown out my knee, I would have been big as MJ.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Let’s take it out in the courtyard you don’t believe me. Let’s shoot some hoops right now. I got game, nigga. MJ ain’t got nothing on me!”
Jimmy began laughing. But just as he did, another employee and friend, Earlie, who had just gone outside to take a smoke, quickly ran back into the lobby. “The cops are out there, Jimmy!” he yelled.
Jimmy frowned. “The cops? What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said! The cops are out there!”
“So what?” Clovis asked. “Maybe they need a room.”
“How many?” Jimmy asked.
“The entire Dover police department, for starters. And probably cops from Rollinsford and Somersworth too! It’s that many!”
Jimmy’s heart began to pound. He hurried behind the front desk to get to the phone. But before he could even pick up the receiver, a contingent of cops wearing what Jimmy could only describe as riot gear, hurried into the lobby. The lead cop, a big belly older man, started ordering his underlings to “fan out.”
Jimmy hurried from behind the counter. “What are you doing?” he asked angrily. “They can’t just go from room to room! What is this?”
“This is a raid,” the lead cop responded. “Are you the boss?”
“Yes, I’m the boss. And I’ll have my lawyers here so fast it’ll make your head spin!”
“Give them this when they get here,” the lead cop said as he slapped a sheet of paper against Jimmy’s chest, making his head spin.
“What is this?” Jimmy asked, taking it and looking at it.
“A search warrant,” the lead cop said as groups of men began knocking on the doors downstairs, and other groups began running upstairs to do the same.
“We need the master key,” the cop said to Clovis, and Clovis, no stranger to police warrants, quickly obliged and gave the lead officer the master key.
But Jimmy was still stunned. What if they knew? What if they went to the rooms he had reserved for Noonie’s drug operation? He needed to warn them to clear that shit up! He had to warn them! He pulled out his cellphone to do just that.
But just as he did, he began receiving text message after text message after text message. And every message made it clear that they already knew.
Police raiding the hotel. This from his hotel manager in Rhode Island.
Cops here. Raiding the place. This from his hotel manager in Connecticut.
Police Raid, Jimmy! They have a warrant. From Boston.
And more and more texts poured in. One after the other after the other. It was obvious that every PaLargio East was being raided, and being raided at the exact same time!
“Jimmy, what are we going to do?” Clovis was asking. “They’ll scare away every guest we have. Look at them. It’s crazy! What can we do?”
What was obvious to Jimmy, as he leaned against the front desk in total defeat and anguish, was that he couldn’t do a damn thing. Because his father, when he got the news of this raid, and why there was a raid to begin with, was going to do all the damage for him, and to him.
Reno and Trina were sound asleep in bed when the call came in. It was Reno who reached over to the nightstand and felt his way until he was able to grab the phone. He didn’t bother to look at the Caller ID. When he received calls at three a.m., it was usually because there was trouble in his casino. Trouble that couldn’t wait.
“Yeah?” His voice was gravely, barely audible.
“We’ve got a situation, Dad.” It was Jimmy.
Reno could hear the panic in his voice. He opened his eyes. “What situation?” he asked.
“They raided the place. All the hotels.”
Reno frowned. “All my hotels? Who raided them?”
Trina, who was waking up herself, turned toward Reno when she heard the word raided.
“It’s awful, Dad. From Rhode Island to Boston they’re pulling this shit.”
“What shit? What are you talking about, Jimmy? Speak plain, boy!”
“The cops are raiding all of your New England hotels! Is that plain enough?”
Reno threw the sheet off and got out of bed, his dick dangling against his naked form. “Why would cops be raiding my hotels? What the fuck is going on?”
Trina, naked herself, got out of bed too.
“You need to get here, Dad,” Jimmy said. Reno could hear the cry in his voice. “You need to get here right now!”
Reno paused. He knew his child. “What did you do?” he asked him.
He heard sniffling. Trina, putting on her robe, hurried over to Reno, reached over, and pressed the Speaker icon. Jimmy was on Speaker now. But he still wasn’t speaking.
“What did you do?” Reno asked him again.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Jimmy said. “It was easy money. It was supposed to be easy money!”
Reno’s heart dropped. Trina’s did too. There was no such thing as easy money. “What did you do, Jimmy?” It was Trina who asked him this time.
There was yet another pause. And then he spoke. “I rented out rooms to this guy. It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal.”
“What were they doing in the rooms?” Trina asked.
More sniffling.
“Answer your mother,” Reno ordered. “What were they doing?”
“Selling drugs,” Jimmy said. “Okay? They were selling drugs!”
Reno and Trina couldn’t believe it. Reno even slapped his own forehead. They looked at each other. Surely Jimmy, surely their son, couldn’t be that foolish!
“Somebody must have snitched. No cops were supposed to know.”
Reno wanted to strangle that boy. He didn’t want to hear that shit about who wasn’t supposed to know. But if it was true, and if Jimmy allowed drug distribution in his hotels, not only was his hotels in danger of being shut down, but Jimmy was in danger too. And Jimmy, despite the fact that he wanted to kill that boy, was his number one concern. “I’m on my way,” Reno said, and ended the call.
As Reno began putting on clothes, Trina took his cellphone to alert their lawyers and Reno’s pilot. She wanted to go with him. She wanted to see for herself just what kind of mess Jimmy had gotten himself into. And regardless of what he had gotten himself into, she wanted to hug her stepson, and let him know, no matter what, they still loved him and would stand by him. But they had little ones that had to have breakfast and had to go to school in a matter of hours. Leaving Dommi into somebody else’s care wasn’t an option. She had to stay.
And then the pilot was on the line. “Get it ready asap,” she said. “He’s going to New Hampshire.”
Then she looked at Reno. She could see the disgust, the utter dread and fear, in his big eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The limousine stopped under the portico of the Hotel New Hampshire PaLargio East and opened its back-passenger door. Jimmy Mack, who was standing outside after receiving the call, dropped his cigarette, smashed it beneath his feet, and nervously got inside. He sat on one side of the limo, and his father sat alone across from him.
“So you’re smoking now?” Reno asked.
“Not drugs,” Jimmy said quickly and defensively. Then he realized what Reno meant. “Only when I’m nervous,” he said.
Reno gave a disgusted head shake and looked out of the side window. Then he looked at his son again. James Maxwell Gabrini. Jimmy Mack. Decked down in his double-breasted suit, with his curly hair and high-yellow skin. His handsome face. He was looking more and more like Reno, and was definitely dressing like him. But his judgement, geez! His judgment was whacked. After all t
he work. After all the teachings. After Reno trusted him to run his east coast hotels even though he knew he was young and still had a lot to learn. Reno’s old man always told him you can’t teach street smarts. You either had it or you didn’t. Jimmy was no street kid. He didn’t have it. And this decision he made, the way he allowed himself to be manipulated into doing something this big-ass dumb, proved that very point.
But he was still the apple of Reno’s eye despite the shit he put him through. And Reno was going to move mountains, if it came to that, to keep him out of jeopardy.
“I see the cops are still here,” Reno said. There were police cars in plentiful supply still outside of the hotel. The only reason Reno’s limo got through was because he was the owner. “Are they questioning your staff?”
Jimmy nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be next.”
“That’s what I’m figuring, yes, sir.”
Reno exhaled, and then leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He was in a suit too, a well-worn suit, and his blue eyes looked drained. “I spoke with the Sheriff,” he said. “He’s spearheading the regional drug crackdown and his word is final. It required a payoff. A big one. But he notified the chief to give you and your staff the benefit of the doubt. If the chief exonerates you and your staff, that’ll be the end of it.” Reno looked at Jimmy. “Your staff isn’t involved, right?”
“No, sir. They don’t know anything,” Jimmy said. “I made sure of that.”
At least he had enough sense to protect his people, Reno thought.
But Jimmy wasn’t thinking. He was inwardly elated. His old man was coming through for him again! But he knew he had to maintain his cool. His father hated when his children did their dirt and, because he was forced to pull strings, got away with it.
“This is what you’re going to say when they call you in,” Reno said. “You’re going to play dumb like a motherfuck. Drugs? What drugs? What type of drugs? You’re going to talk shit like that. You’re going to make it clear that there was no way you could have been involved in such an enterprise, and you’re going to be convincing. You cop to nothing. You say they targeted our hotels because of our stellar reputation. You lay it on thick, Jimmy. Apparently, from what I’m hearing, none of the operatives are talking. Nobody’s snitching on anybody else, so they at least respect, or may be fearful of their leader. I don’t give a shit. But my son won’t be ratting out anybody. You’re going to play dumb as dirt and get the fuck out of there. Understand me?”
Jimmy nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir.” He never dreamed there could be a way out for him! “I understand, sir.”
Reno continued to stare at Jimmy. He hated that so little worked out for him, from his disastrous relationships, including his current bad marriage, to his numerous ventures that went nowhere. Reno thought getting him away from Vegas, and giving him the power he craved, would change all of that. And it did for a minute. But Jimmy reverted back to form. Hiring friends who were doing nothing but ruining the business. Getting in trouble when there should have been none to get into. Poor margins. This shit here was his doing.
Jimmy knew it too. And he desperately wanted to make amends. “Dad,” he started saying, “I know I’ve let you down.”
But before he could continue, Reno put up a hand. “Tell that shit to the birds,” he said. “Because I don’t want to hear it. You focus on what you’ve got to do to keep your ass out of prison. That’s what you worry about. Feel me?”
Jimmy nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, and leaned back. But a part of him was fuming too. His father could be so cold sometimes! He understood why. He would be cold too if he had a fucked-up son like him. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. That didn’t mean Jimmy sometimes wanted to get as far away from his father’s heavy hand as he could get, and live his own life on his own terms.
Reno continued to stare at Jimmy. “Why, Jimmy?” he asked him. “I don’t want any half-hearted, sorry-ass apologies, I want to know why. Why did you do something like this?”
Jimmy thought it was obvious. “Because you demoted me,” he said.
Reno stared at him as if he could have strangled him. But he let him have his say.
“You demoted me,” Jimmy continued, “so I was open to somebody else offering me the big time again. I was open to the possibilities.”
“So it was all my fault,” Reno said. “That what you’re saying?”
Jimmy looked at Reno as if he was shocked by such a conclusion. “That’s not what I’m saying at all! No, sir.”
But Reno continued to stare at Jimmy with such a distaste in his eyes that Jimmy had to look away. And he was fuming again. If Reno didn’t change, Jimmy felt, he was going to look up one day and Jimmy was going to be gone, Trina was going to be gone, and even Dommi and Sophie were going to leave him too. And then his mean ass was going to be all alone. And then his mean ass was going to know how Jimmy felt every day of his sorry life.
A knock was heard on the car’s window. Jimmy leaned over and pressed the button. It was Clovis.
“The Chief’s ready for you, Jimmy,” he said as he glanced over at Jimmy’s father. He didn’t have the nerve to speak to him, however.
Jimmy nodded, and rolled the window back up.
Reno sat in the conference room with the Dover police chief and listened to him grill Jimmy over and over about his involvement in the drug trafficking operation that had as its headquarters all of the PaLargio East hotels. At first, it was rocky. When Jimmy found out that the drugs being sold weren’t weed the way Noonie had said it was, but was actually heroin, he was thrown. He was so thrown that Reno thought he would not recover.
“They were selling heroin?” Jimmy asked. “Heroin?”
“That’s right,” the police chief said. “We have that problem in these neck of the woods. Heroin addiction may be our number one problem. Our kids are going to hell in a handbasket and we’re going to crack down on every dealer we can get our hands on. This is a major-league problem in New Hampshire. We arrested one of the dealers, who didn’t know who the supplier was, but knew where he was getting his drugs from, and where other dealers were getting theirs from too. So we raided every PaLargio hotel in this region, as a joint-regional effort, and found a heroin distribution operation in every hotel we raided.”
When Jimmy continued to talk about how shocked he was, Reno almost was going to interject, to get his ass back on track. But it wasn’t necessary. Jimmy caught himself, and dropped that line of questioning.
Jimmy, remembering his father’s every word, got back on script and pled ignorance to every question asked thereafter. He claimed he had no idea they were selling drugs in his hotels, and if he had known he would have called the police himself. Reno sat beside his son and listened. It was a game and he knew it. The Sheriff had already been paid off. The chief, Reno was certain, was going to get his cut. All the chiefs and sheriffs in the region were going to get theirs too. All Jimmy had to do was say the right words. All Jimmy had to do was admit to nothing. And Jimmy played that tune convincingly enough that the chief decided he had nothing to do with it, and was free to go. The chief also told Reno that he would recommend to the Sheriff that the PaLargio was just a waystation the drug dealers decided to exploit, and was also not involved.
Jimmy was so relieved that he smiled as he and Reno walked out of the conference room and across the lobby toward the elevators. The raid was over, and most of the cops had packed up and gone, but the aftermath, of guests in the lobby, with some leaving early, was very much visible. Reno was so beside himself he could hardly contain himself.
“There he is,” Clovis said as he and Earlie stood behind the front desk and watched Jimmy and Reno make their way to the elevators.
But Earlie was shocked. “That’s his father? Dang, Clo. I mean, he’s white.”
Clovis smiled. “No shit? What do you think Jimmy is?”
“I know he’s biracial or whatever. I know he’s half-white. But that dude’s really wh
ite!”
“And he’s really an asshole too,” Clovis said, “so watch yourself.”
“They say he’s a mob boss,” Earlie said. “He looks like a regular businessman to me.”
“Yeah, that’s his cover,” Clovis said. “But don’t you believe it. He’s a thug from way back. Jimmy told me that.”
“I wish his white ass would get in my face,” Earlie said. “I’ll show him what a thug really is!”
Clovis and Earlie laughed. Reno and Jimmy didn’t hear that laughter as they stepped onto the elevator and made their way to Jimmy’s penthouse apartment on the top floor. Jimmy looked at his father, and tried to apologize again.
“I hate what I did,” he said. “I’m real sorry about that. But I had no idea it was heroin, Pop. I swear I had no idea. They said it was going to be weed. Nothing more. They said I needed to get in on the racket now, before that shit becomes legal. So I did. I never dreamed they were shitting me. I thought they were going to be selling weed.”
The elevator door opened and they made their way to Jimmy’s apartment. Once Jimmy opened the door, and they both stepped inside, Reno’s calm and cool demeanor swiftly changed. And now, in the privacy of Jimmy’s apartment, he let loose.
He slapped Jimmy so hard across his face that Jimmy leaned sideways. And then Reno pounced.
He beat Jimmy from one room to the other room to yet another room. He beat the shit out of his son. Jimmy was falling over furniture and fighting to get away, and begging Reno to understand he never knew it was anything more than weed, but Reno wasn’t thinking about the type of drug. He was thinking about the fact that they were selling drugs, regardless of what kind, in his hotels. In his hotels! And just that thought alone kept him pounding on his son.
When Jimmy was so badly beaten that he collapsed on the sofa, Reno grabbed him by the catch of his collar and leaned him toward him. They were now man to man, face to face. “I have worked my entire adult life to build up the PaLargio brand,” Reno said between clenched teeth. “In one night, one night, you have decimated that brand. You allowed those fuckers to sell drugs out of my hotels? Are you out of your fucking mind? Drugs?”
Reno Gabrini: I'm Losing You Page 5
