Reno's Gift (Mob Boss Series) (20 page)

He
looked at Trina.

“I
can protect myself,” she said to him.
 
“Dommi and me will be fine.
 
You
go handle your business.”

Reno
loved this woman.
 
He loved her with
words that couldn’t be uttered.
 
And the
thought that she could have been killed tonight just for being with him cut to
the heart of him. He leaned over and kissed her hard on the mouth.
 
Trina knew it wasn’t a sensual kiss.
 
She knew it was the kiss of a man fed up.
 

Then
Reno placed his fingers to his mouth, and then tapped them on Dommi’s
forehead.
 
“Take care of my wife,” he
said to him.

“Okay,”
Dommi replied.
 
And then Reno, Jimmy, and
Frankie Spillane walked out of that door.

Although
Trina didn’t know it, Reno ordered Frank and his men to remain outside of the
house, protecting his wife and child.
 
Reno and Jimmy then got into Trina’s Mercedes, and left.

When
they arrived at the Smoke-n-Gun tavern, Reno drove around the small
establishment, sizing it up front to back.
 
Then he parked in the front parking lot, and he and Jimmy got out and
went inside.
  

After
getting a customer to point him out, Reno and Jimmy walked slowly toward a big,
burly black man at the bar.
 
The crowd
was animated, all white except for Lefty Gromes, and the country and western
music was on full blast.
 
Reno sat on one
side of the counter and Jimmy on the other.
 
Sandwiched between them was Lefty Gromes, a big man with an egg-shaped
ball head.

Lefty
looked first at Jimmy, and was about to object to his closeness, until he
looked at Reno.
 
He started to make a
quick move to get up, but Reno placed his hand on his shoulder and pushed him
back down.

“We
can handle it here, Left, or we can handle it in the back of this joint.
 
But either way,” Reno made clear, “we’re
going to handle it.”

Lefty
stared at Reno, as if he thought he still had a choice, and then he regained
his senses and got up.
 
And escorted
father and son down a long, dark hall that led to a small office.
 
As soon as he opened the door and walked in,
and Jimmy and Reno walked in beside him, Jimmy slammed the door shut and Reno
slammed Lefty Gromes against the now-closed door.

“What
did I do?” Lefty pleaded.

“Who
hired you?” Reno asked.

“What
are you talking about?
 
Nobody hired me.”

“Who
hired you?” Reno asked him again.

“I
don’t know what you’re talking about, man.
 
Who hired me for what?
 
To work
here?”

Reno
released Lefty and stood erect.
 
He had a
wise guy on his hand.
 
He looked at
Jimmy.
 
Jimmy was watching him as if he
was watching some gangster movie he couldn’t get enough of.
 
He wanted to grab him and tell him that this
was no damn movie, and that what he was doing was something he should never
want to emulate, but his son was no fucking fool.
 
He knew what his father was about.
 
It broke Reno’s heart, but his son was, in a
lot of ways, just like him.

Reno
therefore pulled out his revolver, grabbed Lefty and slammed him, back first,
on the desk, forced open his mouth, and then shoved the gun deep down inside of
it.
 
Lefty struggled and gagged, but
could not break free from Reno’s muscular hold.

“Two
things are going to happen tonight,” Reno said, fighting to maintain control of
the big man.
 
“Either you’re going to
tell me who hired you to take me out, or I’m going to take you out.
 
Those are the options.
 
There is no third choice.
 
And if you think for a second that my word is
not my bond, then you should phone Ollie.
 
Heard from Ollie lately?”

Reno
could see the heightened fear enter Lefty’s eyes.
 
Reno’s eyes strengthened too. Only they
strengthened with rage.
 
“Now you talk to
me, motherfucker,” he said, “or you’ll be talking to the daisies in the hole
they toss your ass in!”
 

Reno
then removed his gun from Lefty’s mouth.
 
“Now who hired you?
 
You tell me
the truth!”

Lefty
started shaking his head, as if to convey that he truly didn’t know, but Reno
grabbed him by the catch of his collar and began banging his head into the
desktop repeatedly.
 
Lefty was crying
that he didn’t know anything, but Reno kept banging.
 
Jimmy was silently egging is father on.
 
But Reno needed no encouragement.

And
after about the eighth bang, Lefty yelled okay, okay, he did know something
after all.

Reno
banged him one last time for good measure, and then lifted him up.
 
Blood was streaming out of his ear.
 

“Talk,”
Reno said.

“I
don’t know the name,” Lefty said, touching his hand to his ear and looking at
the hand, and his own blood.
 
“I wasn’t
given a name.”

“Describe
him.”

“Her,”
Lefty said.

Reno
hesitated.
 
“Her?”

“It
was a woman, not a man.”

Jimmy
looked at his father.
 
Reno was staring
at Lefty.
 
“Describe this woman,” he
said.

Lefty
looked as if he was trying to remember.
 
“She was white,” he said, “average height, kind of skinny, blue eyes,
how the hell should I know?
 
All you
motherfuckers look alike to me.”

“Call
her,” Reno ordered.
 
“Tell her you want
to meet with her.”

“I
told you I don’t know her like that.
 
I
don’t have her number.”
 

Reno
was about to grab him again, but his instincts told him to ease up.
 

“I’m
telling you the truth, man!” Lefty blared.
 
“I don’t have her number.
 
She
didn’t give me one.
 
She paid me half
now, and she said she’d meet me tomorrow night and give me the other half.
 
That’s how we planned to do it.”

“Where
were you supposed to meet her?”

“Here.
 
In this office.
 
Tomorrow night at eight-thirty.”

“How
much did she pay up front?”

“Couple
thousand.”

“How
much did you pay Ollie?” Jimmy asked.

Reno
almost rolled his eyes.
 
What the fuck
difference did that make, he wanted to yell at his son.
 
But he didn’t.
 
Because he understood what was going on.
 
He understood that Jimmy was new to the game
and wanted all of the salacious details.
 
In time he would know better.
 
In
time, Reno thought sadly, he would lame, maim or kill to get his answers and
then get the hell away from there.

“You
heard my son,” Reno said to Lefty.
 
“How
much of that cut did Ollie get?”

Lefty
did roll his eyes.
 
“One,” he said.

“Thousand?”
Jimmy asked.

“Hundred,”
Lefty replied.

“You
cheap bastard,” Jimmy said with a smile.
 
“What a terrible thing to do to your fellow man.
  
Pop you ought to shoot him just for being
such a bad paymaster.”

Reno
didn’t joke around when it came to business.
 
He was handling his business.
 
He
therefore ignored Jimmy’s advice and released his grasp on Lefty, pushing him
away from him.

“What
time tomorrow?”

“Around
eight was all she said.”

Reno
stared at Lefty, then nodded his head.
 
“I’ll be back tomorrow at seven.
 
When she arrive, you point that bitch out to me,” he said.

Lefty
seemed taken aback by Reno’s seeming capitulation, but gladly nodded his
head.
 
“I will,” he said.
 
“Don’t you worry.”

“Fuck
with me and you’ll live to regret it,” Reno warned.
 
Lefty again promised to point her out to him
tomorrow night, and that he wasn’t trying to fuck with anybody.
 
And then Reno and Jimmy left.

Jimmy
was stunned.
 
“How can you believe that
guy, Pop?” he asked as they made their way to the Mercedes.
 
“That guy’s lying through his teeth.”

Reno
got into his wife’s car and Jimmy got in on the passenger seat.
 
“Pop,” he said.
 
“How can you believe him?”

“I
don’t believe him,” Reno said as he drove out of the tavern’s parking lot.

“You
mean you’re not going to wait until tomorrow night?”

“Are
you on drugs?
 
Whatta I look like to
you?”

“But
you told him---”

“I
know what I told him.
 
He knows what I
told him too.”

 
Reno drove down the street as if he was well
on his way, but then he drove around the corner and came back onto the same
street, and placed the car in park three doors down from the tavern.

“What
are you doing?” Jimmy asked him.

“I’m
waiting,” replied Reno.

“Waiting
for what?” Jimmy asked.
 

But
Reno didn’t respond.
 
He was too busy
staring at the tavern.
 
Jimmy was always
struck by how serious his father could always be, but seeing him now, handling
his business as he liked to call it, was different.
 
Reno had taken seriousness to another
level.
 
His intensity, his singular
focus, unnerved Jimmy.
  

“Pop?”
he asked Reno.

“What?”

“Why
are you so serious?
 
You already took
care of the guy who actually rammed your car.”

Reno looked
at him.
 
“How would you know what I took
care of?”

Jimmy
decided to test a theory.
 
“Mom told me,”
he said.

“Quit
lying.
 
Trina didn’t tell you shit.”

Jimmy
smiled.
 
“Okay, she didn’t tell me.
 
But I know you, Pop.
 
I know what you’re capable of.”

Reno
exhaled with a harsh exhale when his son said those words.
 
Then he looked back out of the car’s
window.
 
Jimmy would never know how much
the fact that he knew what his father was capable of hurt Reno to his core.

“What
I don’t
 
understand,” Jimmy went on, “is
why it matters who paid the guy.
 
The guy
who actually did the deed has been taken care of.”

Reno
looked at his son.
 
“What are you an
idiot?
 
Yeah, the guy who rammed us was
taken care of.
 
But why did he ram me,
Jimmy?
 
That’s what you’ve got to
know.
 
Don’t you dare think that just
because you’ve got the front man, the deed is done.
 
Like hell it is!
 
My wife, your stepmother, was in that
car.
 
That car rammed us from the
passenger side, from the side where my wife was sitting.
 
They could have killed Tree.
 
I need to know who was behind this shit or it
won’t end.
 
So, yeah, I’m serious as a
heart attack when somebody puts my wife in danger.
 
Nobody’s taken care of until I get to the
bottom of this.
 
No fucker’s taking me
down some blind-ass road again and I just sit back and let them.”

Jimmy
understood exactly what Reno was talking about.
 
He remembered just months ago when his father deposited him and Dommi
and Trina in Seattle, and told his uncle Tommy to take care of them.
 
For two long months they didn’t see Reno or
hear from him.
 
He had to walk that road
alone.
 
Jimmy couldn’t bear it if they
had to go down that road again.

A
banana yellow Corvette came out of the tavern’s parking lot and Reno took off
following it.

“That’s
Lefty?” Jimmy asked.