Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) (3 page)

Val smiled too.
 
She was no natural liar, and Reno liked that
about her.
 
“I was just. . . um . .
 
. I was freshening up,” she said.

Reno glanced at his son.
 
He knew exactly what kind of
freshening up
those two had been up to.

“Well you definitely look freshened up,”
Reno said.

“You don’t look bad yourself, Mr. Gabrini,”
Val said.
 
“Shades and all,” she added as
she leaned into Reno and they shared a pleasant, but hardly super-affectionate,
one-arm hug.

But that display didn’t help.
 
Because Jimmy knew his father’s history.
 
He knew that his father always kissed Tommy’s
wife Grace on the lips, and Sal’s girlfriend Gemma Jones on the lips.
 
But he barely hugged Val, and almost never
kissed her.
 
Although that should have
confirmed for Jimmy that there was no lustful intent on his father’s part
regarding his girlfriend, it had the exact opposite effect.
 
The fact that Reno treated Val differently
meant to Jimmy that he felt differently about her.
 
And given the way Reno was always blowing
Val’s horn whenever she wasn’t around, praising her no end to Jimmy, it
certainly couldn’t be any
bad
feelings he felt for her.

Reno looked down the length of his son’s
girlfriend.
 
“You’ve been taking care of
yourself?”

“Yes, sir.
 
Thank-you for asking.
 
And
thank-you so much for allowing Wellstone Realty to represent you on your quest
for this new business property.”

Reno lifted his shades and sat them on top
of his head.
 
As Jimmy suspected, his
father’s big blue eyes looked tired and drained.
 
“You think I’ll like this place?” Reno was
looking around, at the rustic parquet floors, at the dingy walls with peeling
paint, at the exposed beams in the ceiling that many people found chic and
attractive.
 
Reno wasn’t one of them.

“I think you’ll like it,” Val
responded.
 
“It’s a nice size with a nice
bar and kitchen.
 
I think it has the
potential to fulfill your needs admirably.”

Reno looked at Val.
 
“That was spoken like a committed real estate
lady. Now speak like Val.
 
Think I’m
gonna like this place?”

Val was always taken aback by Reno’s
bluntness, but she managed to smile.
 
“Yes, sir, I honestly think this place has potential and you are going
to like it.”

“Okay, good.
 
Show me around.”

Val was slightly nervous, but she did what
she had to do.
 
She began the hard
sell.
 
“As you can see from where we’re
standing,” she said, her hand sweeping around as she showed him the rows and
rows of tables in the center of the room, and the booths against the walls,
“there’s plenty of seating space.”

“Just in here?”

“Upstairs also.
 
But this would be the main dining area, yes,
sir.”

Reno looked at Jimmy.
 
“You’ve seen the whole place?”

“Most of it, yeah.”

“And?”

“And I love it,” Jimmy said.
 
“I mean, it needs a lot of work.
 
The floors will have to be replaced, and it’s
going to need paint, and I know you aren’t going for these exposed beams.”

“You got that right,” Reno said.
 

“But the dining space is good and the
kitchen is good, and you always said without those two major things a
restaurant is nothing.”

Reno smiled.
 
He always wondered if Jimmy was ever paying
attention to anything he had to say.
 
But
then Jimmy would drop one of Reno’s lines as if he was listening to everything
Reno said.
 
Reno looked at Val.
 
“How many does this joint seat?”

“Three-hundred-and-fifty people,” she
replied.
 
“Expandable to nearly five
hundred if you utilize the upstairs.”

“And I think we should,” Jimmy said.
 
“We can make a lounge up there, a supper
lounge with a torch singer, or something like that.”

Reno frowned.
 
“A torch singer?
 
What the fuck is a torch singer?”

Val used to be astounded by Reno’s use of
language when she first met him, but now it was just Reno.
 

Jimmy was smiling.
 
“A torch singer sings slow, sweet, but sad
kind of songs.
 
Like a blues singer,
Dad.”

“Then say blues singer.
 
Say she’s a B.B. King type or something.
 
I’ve been booking singers for years and not
one of them ever described themselves as
torch
anything.”

Val grinned, she couldn’t help it, and just
like that Jimmy felt like the third wheel.
 
“The point is, Pop,” he said, “I see a lot we can do with a place like
this.
 
I was doing some thinking as I was
checking out the place.”

“Yeah?
 
Thinking what?”

Here
goes
, Jimmy thought.
 
“That
maybe I can run it for you.”

Reno studied his son.
 
Did he just hear him right?
 
“Run what for me?”

Jimmy swallowed hard.
 
He knew it was going to be a harder sell than
even the kind Val was accustomed to.
 
“This restaurant.
 
This place.
 
I see what it can be, and I believe I can
make it happen.
 
I want to run it for
you.”

Val knew what was coming.
 
Jimmy should have known too, but he was
always so hopeful that his father wasn’t the hard man everybody else knew he
was.

“Just wait a minute here,” Reno said.
 
“You’re asking me if you can be in charge of
this
entire
restaurant?”

“When and if it opens, yes, sir.”

Reno just stared at him.
 
Stunned.

Reno’s silence flustered Jimmy.
 
“Why not, Pop?”

“What do you mean why not?
 
Because you’re a fucking kid!
 
I’m not putting an entire restaurant in the
hands of some kid!
 
What do you know about
running a restaurant?”

Jimmy fought back.
 
“You were in your early twenties when you
first started running the PaLargio, and that’s an entire hotel and casino.
 
Compared to that, this’ll be a piece of cake
for me!”

“Yeah, right,” Reno said, moving from side
to side, his irritation growing.
 
“It’ll
be a piece of cake.
 
A cakewalk.
 
It’ll be easy as pie.”
 

“I didn’t say it’s going to be easy.”

But Reno was still too angry to hear
him.
 
“Comparing yourself to me!
 
When I was barely eighteen years old I almost
killed my father for trying to rape your mother.
 
What about that comparison?
 
I was on my own with nothing going for me but
my toughness.
 
You’re a pampered rich kid
who’s been living under me all your adult life, what the fuck would you know
about tough? You won’t even get your own place and leave the PaLargio because
you decided it’s easier for you to stay in an apartment I’m paying for, and
have a job I gave to you where you only have to walk downstairs to go to work
every day.
 
If you wanna call it
work.
 
I make you a pit boss, put you in
charge of one section of my casino, and you’re barely doing that right.
 
And I know what I’m talking about.
 
I check on your ass on a daily basis.
 
Yet you want me to give you more, just give
it to you?
 
Get the fuck outta here!
 
Get some balls first and then come talk to me
about running something!”
 

Reno knew his words were harsh, but he felt
Jimmy needed a swift kick in the ass.
 
He
had expected Jimmy to be on the ball by now, more than ready to take on more
responsibility around the PaLargio.
 
But
it wasn’t happening.
 
Jimmy seemed
content to hang out with his friends and smoke pot like it was nobody’s
business, hang out with his girl, and continue to lay up under Reno and his
wife like he was still their minor child.
 
Reno wanted more for his son, a hell of a lot more, and he was beginning
to wonder if tough love was the only way to make it happen.

Val, however, wasn’t privy to Reno’s inner
thoughts, just his outer words, and she was astounded by the harshness of those
words.
 
How could he say such terrible
things to a nice guy like Jimmy?
 
She
looked at Jimmy.
 
He was just standing
there, inwardly brooding the way he always did, but showing strength too by taking
it without comment.
 
She, too, knew Jimmy
was a laidback young man who stopped taking the few college courses he was
taking and was hanging out more.
 
But he
was no different than many twenty-two year olds.
 

She was a year older than he was, had her
own place, and had a partnership in her father’s realty company, but that didn’t
make Jimmy any slouch.
 
He was one of the
good guys.

She looked at him.
 
“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jimmy said with an edge to his
voice.
 
“Go on and show Dad around the
place.
 
That’s why he’s here.”

Val looked at Reno.
 
But Reno was staring at Jimmy.
 
“What do you want?” he asked his son.
 
“Want me to sugarcoat it for you?
 
Want me to tell you what you wanna hear?”

But Jimmy’s anger flared.
 
“I don’t want you to do shit for me!”

Reno didn’t flinch.
 
He saw the place it was coming from, he saw
the pain.
 
Jimmy had a toughness about
him, that was where the anger came from, but he had a softness too.
 
And that softness was a sweetness that could
take over his son if his son wasn’t careful.
 
And Reno wasn’t having that.
 
Jimmy was a Gabrini.
 
A soft
Gabrini meant a dead Gabrini, and that wasn’t going to happen.
 
Not on Reno’s watch.
 
He wanted the best for Jimmy.
 
Sometimes he felt as if he loved his son so
much, and wanted to protect him so much, that it literally hurt him to his
core.
 
Reno stayed awake many nights,
worrying about him.

And that was why, despite Jimmy’s
resistance when Reno first reached for him, Reno reached anyway and pulled his
son into his arms.

Val felt much better when Reno embraced
Jimmy.
 
Because she, too, knew that Jimmy
was as delicate as he was tough.
 
But the
harshness Reno had spoken to Jimmy still bothered her.
 
There might have been two sides to Jimmy, but
there weren’t two sides to Reno.
 
He was
so hard on Jimmy, and sometimes unflinchingly brutal, it seemed to her.

Jimmy fought back tears as his father held
him.
 
There was no way he was going to
let Reno or Val or anybody else see him cry.
 
They all thought he was weak-kneed anyway.
 
He wasn’t about to prove it.

They stopped embracing.
 
Reno kept his hand on the back of Jimmy’s neck,
keeping him close.
 
“Show me you’re ready
for more,” Reno said to him, “and I’ll give you more.
 
You know I will.
 
But you’ve got to show me something,
son.
 
I desperately want you to make it,
but I’m not going to pretend you’re where you need to be, because you
aren’t.
 
I can’t pretend with you.
 
I love you too much for that, Jimmy.
 
You have to do a whole lot better before you
start talking about running anything of mine.
 
Understood?”

Jimmy nodded, but Reno knew it wasn’t a nod
of agreement, but a nod just so Reno could release him from his grasp.
 
He kissed Jimmy first, and then released him.

Val attempted to regain control of what was
the biggest showing of her career, and she knew her sympathy for Jimmy couldn’t
get in the way.
 
“Ready to see the rest
of the place, Mr. Gabrini?”
 
She
attempted to smile, to play it off.