Mob Boss 4: Romancing Trina Gabrini (27 page)

“How’s the girl?” Trina asked.

“They said she’s okay.
 
She’s not in any life threatening
situation.
 
But they’re still calling it
attempted murder.”

“And your boy is saying he doesn’t even know
her?” Reno asked.

“He doesn’t know her.
 
They allowed him one phone call and he called
and told me he doesn’t even know the girl, Reno.”

“But where was he when he was arrested?
 
Was he home with you?
 
Can you give him an alibi?”

But Nell was shaking her head.
 
“They found him two blocks away,
running.
 
With blood
all over him.”

Reno frowned.
 
“Blood?”

Nell nodded her head.

“What was he running for?”

“I don’t know. They won’t let me see him, and
they won’t give me any more details.”

Reno exhaled.
 
Ran his hand through his hair.
 
He hated to be blunt at a time like this, but
he had to be.
 
“You figure he did it?” he
asked her.

Nell looked at him, stunned.
 
“Of course he didn’t do it!
 
How could you say something like that?”

“What you mean how can I say it?
 
I’m no fan of cops, but they usually don’t
arrest people for rape and attempted murder just for the hell of it.
 
They have reasons.”

“Jimmy is a good boy,” Nell said, her tears
freely dropping now. “He’s a kind boy.
 
He an honor student who makes the A-B honor
roll
every semester!
 
There was no reason for
them to arrest my son.”

“He’s a good kid, I know.
 
A good little honor student with blood all
over him running from the scene of a horrific crime.
 
Now if that’s not reason enough to arrest
somebody, honor student or no fucking honor student, I don’t know what is!”

Trina knew Reno was being harsh, but she also
knew Nell had better face the truth now.
 
She couldn’t count how many times she’d heard this song before.
 
All of these trusting mothers who were
shocked to find out that their wonderful sons were stoned cold killers or other
kind of criminals and weren’t worth a damn.
 
Especially with the evidence they seemed to have on Nell’s son.

Nell, however, didn’t seem ready to face any
such truth.
 
She simply stared at Reno.

“I know you love the boy, Nell,” Reno tried to
explain, “and I know he can do no wrong in your eyes.
 
But from what you’re telling me, it doesn’t
look so good for him.
 
Does he have an
attorney?”

Nell felt overwhelmed.
 
“I don’t. . . I haven’t. . . I can’t afford
to pay for---”

“No problem,” Reno said.
 
“I’ll take care of it.
 
We’ll get him the best attorney in town---”

“No,” Nell said, shaking her head.
 
“I want the best in the country.
 
There’s no great attorneys
in Crane and you know it.
 
I want the
best in the country for my son.”

“I know you do,” he said to her, “but we have
to work with what we have available to us.”

“Would you?” Nell asked him pointblank.

Reno frowned.
 
“Would I what?”

“Would you work with what’s available if it
was your son?
 
If Jimmy
was yours?”

“That has nothing to do with it, Nell.”

“Would you have even fixed your mouth to ask
if he was guilty if it was your boy?”

“Nell, I’m trying to help you here.
 
What’s your problem?”

Nell stood to her feet.
 
“I want the best for my son,” she said
proudly. “Just like you and your wife would!
 
He’s my son, Reno.
 
And I won’t
stand up here and let you blow me off by promising to hire some cheap attorney
who’s probably in bed with these cops around here and won’t give a damn about
my child.
 
I want the best.
 
And you’re going to get me the best.”
 

“Now you hold on,” Trina said, rising
too.
 
She’d had just about all she was
going to take of this arrogant woman.
 
“We know this is a devastating time for you.
  
But my husband didn’t arrest your son.
 
My husband didn’t find him running with blood
all over him.
 
So why you’re getting all
hot with Reno and acting like he owes you something makes no sense to me.
 
He said he would help you.”

“With nothing help,” Nell said.

“With an attorney,” Reno said.
 

“Who won’t be worth a
damn.
”

“Look,” Reno said, “what do you want from
me?
 
I don’t know your son from
Adam.
 
You can tell me he’s innocent
until you’re blue in the face, but I don’t have this confidence you have.
 
I want to help.
 
Let me help you.
 
If the local mouthpiece isn’t worth a damn
then we’ll see what we can do about fixing that problem.
 
But don’t make it a problem before we even
determine that it is a problem.”

Nell stared at Reno.
 
“Would you hire one of these local boys if
Jimmy was your son?” she asked him again.

But her persistence on a point that seemed
completely irrelevant to Reno made him angry.
 
“Why do you keep harping on that?
 
He’s not my son!
 
Why do you
keep---”

As if a bulb was turned on in a darkened room,
Reno saw the light.
 

His heart hammered against his chest.

“What is it?” Trina asked him, staring at him.

But Reno was staring at Nell.
 
“How . . .,” he could barely bring himself to
ask it.
 

He continued staring at her.
 
“How old is your son?” he finally asked
her.
 
“How old is Jimmy?”

Trina looked from Reno to Nell.
 
Nell swallowed hard, lifted her head.
 
“Seventeen,” she said clearly.

Reno’s knees buckled.
 
He reached for the arm of the chair behind
him, and sat down.

“Reno, what is it?” Trina asked him.
 
She then knelt down to him, touching his
hand.
 
“What is it?
 
You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Reno continued to stare at Nell.
 
“I came?” he asked her, and Nell, tears
falling again, nodded her head.
 

Reno looked away.
 
“I had forgotten,” he said, looking around
the room.
 
“I came.”

But Trina was completely lost.
 
“What are you talking about, Reno?
 
You came where?”

Reno looked at his wife.
 
And tears began to appear in his eyes.
 
Not again, he thought.
 
He can’t take her through this shit again!

“Reno, tell me what’s wrong,” Trina demanded,
her heart pounding, too.
 
“Why are you
looking like this?
 
What’s happened?”

“I came inside of her, Tree.
 
I pulled out, but I pulled out after I came.”

Trina stared at him.
 
He pulled out, he came inside of her?
 
What in the world. . . Then she thought
again.
 
This was Nell.
 
This was the woman that he was forced to have
sex with to prevent his own father from raping her.
 
And he came inside of her?
 
He didn’t pull out?
 
It was what?
 
Fifteen, no, it was seventeen years ago.
 
It happened seventeen years ago!
 
And this Jimmy, this son of Nell’s was . . .

When it hit, it hit like a ton of bricks and
Trina stood to her feet.
 
She turned to
Nell.
 
Please, don’t let it be.
 
Please, don’t let it be!
 

“Is Jimmy, is your son, Reno’s son?” she asked
her.

Nell could see the anguish in Trina’s eyes,
but she couldn’t bear this alone.
 
Not
this!
 
Not when her son was going to need
the best help in America, not just in Crane.
 

“Yes,” she said, and Reno looked at her,
too.
 
“Jimmy is Reno’s son.”
 
She returned Reno’s stare.
 
“Jimmy is your child, Reno.”

And Reno just sat there.
 

An assassin’s bullet, at that moment in time,
would have been more tolerable.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Reno’s Porsche pulled up in front of the small
police station and stopped at the curb.
 
Nell’s Mustang was already there, and she had already gone inside.
 
Trina, who was driving the Porsche, expected
Reno to hurry out of the car and go inside too, but he didn’t.
 
He just sat there.
 
His eyes were hard and wide.
 
His face looked as if he had aged years in
minutes.
 
Trina could feel his
heaviness.
 
She leaned back.

“It’s going to be all right, Reno.”

Reno shook his head.
 
It was midnight, but he had on shades.

“She could be lying,” he said, in what they
both knew was a last gasp at hope that he hadn’t fathered another child out of
wedlock and left that child, and the mother, to fend for themselves.
 
He had one child that way, a beautiful ten
year old, and that ended up in the kid getting killed because of some problems
Reno was having with the mob.
 
Now he had
another kid that he knew nothing about?
   

“I thought about that,” Trina replied.
 
“She may be saying it to get help for her
son.”

Reno looked at Trina.
 
“You think that’s likely?”

“Go see him.
 
Maybe you’ll know after you see him.”

Reno placed his hand on the side of Trina’s
face.
 
The worse thing about this was the
fact that he was dragging his beloved into it, too.
 
Again.
 
And just when he thought their rough ride was
over.

He got out of the car.
 
He wore a pullover shirt and a pair of jeans,
and his hair looked uncombed.
 
Although
he looked completely disheveled, he felt far worse than he looked.
 
This was no walk in the park for him, and he
wasn’t going to pretend that it was.

He had thought to walk around and open the car
door for Trina when he first got out, but before he could even turn in that
direction, she was already coming around the car toward him.
 
But that was how he felt: slow and sinking.
 
As if life was spinning out of control, and
he was still trying to get some traction.
 

Trina placed his hand in hers as they headed
for the entrance.
 
They both looked as if
they were heading for a funeral.
 
Reno’s
shades at midnight didn’t help.
 
But he
wasn’t wearing them because of any sun shield, but because he had gone upstairs
and cried so much, that his eyes had become puffy and red.
 

Trina had gone upstairs too, to put on some
clothes, when she found Reno, leaned sideways against the wall of their
bedroom, crying his eyes out.

“Oh, Reno,” Trina said when she saw him, and
hurried to him.
 
“It’s going to be all
right.”

“How long, Tree?” he asked her.
 
“How long do I have to pay for my sins?
 
How many people have to be tainted by my
sins?
 
Now I have a son, a seventeen year
old boy I didn’t even know existed, and he’s in jail for some horrible crime?”

Trina pulled him into her arms.
 
“It’s all right, Reno,” she said, tears in
her own eyes. “It’s going to be all right.”