Sal Gabrini: Just The Way You Are (13 page)

Sal
suspected that would be his answer.
 
“Do
you know who we are?”

“Yes,
sir.
 
You’re Sal Gabrini, my lawyer’s
husband.”

Reno wanted
to smile.

“And you’re
Reno Gabrini,” Shaun said.
 
“You own the
PaLargio.
 
You’re Mister Vegas.”

Reno did
smile.
 
“That’s right, child.
 
You got that right.”

Sal tossed
Reno’s phone to Shaun.
 
“Watch the
video,” he ordered.

“The video?”
Shaun said and looked at the phone.
 
When
he realized what he meant, he pressed Play and watched the video.
 
As soon as he saw what it was about, he
frowned.
 
“What the hell?”

He looked at
Sal, panic on his brown face.
 
“It wasn’t
her,” he said.
 
“I swear to you, Mr.
Gabrini, I never made love to my lawyer!
 
It was another woman.
 
They told
me to do her if I wanted to get off.
 
They told me to make love to this stranger woman if I wanted to see the
light of day again.”

“Who told
you this?” Reno asked him.

“The
cops.
 
Or the prosecution.
 
Whoever could get me off.”

“Yeah, but
who told you to make love to that woman?” Reno asked.

“Oh,” Shaun
said.
 
“My attorney.”

Reno
frowned.
 
“Your attorney?
 
Mrs. Gabrini?”

“No!
 
The other one.
 
Mark Price.
 
He represents me now.
 
He’s the
one who set it all up.”

Sal knew
it!
 
He knew that guy was crooked.
  
“Wasn’t he the one who told you to pay my
wife a visit in the first place?” Sal asked.

Shaun
nodded.
 
“Yes, sir, as a matter of
fact.
 
He was at the bar where I was
hiding out.
 
I was hiding because I heard
the cops were looking for me.
 
I heard
they wanted to question me about some murder.
 
He told me Miss G could get me off.
 
I didn’t know he worked at her firm until he became my attorney
too.
 
Then he told me not to tell her
anything about our meeting.
 
Then he told
me how I could get off scot free.”

Reno looked
at Sal.
 
“You think Gemma’s partner set
up the whole thing?
 
The murder and
everything?”

Sal
nodded.
 
“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“I’ll be
damn.”

But Shaun
wanted to tell it all.
 
“So I made love
to some woman like he told me to.
 
I
didn’t even know her name, honest I didn’t.
 
But they promised to drop the charges if I did it.
 
But first I had to testify at some hearing
about what happened.
 
I had no idea Mrs.
G was involved.”

“They were
going to tell you that too,” Sal said, “but only just before you had to testify
so that you wouldn’t have time to contact my wife or get cold feet.
 
They knew what they were doing.”

“So what am
I supposed to do now?
 
I never agreed to
harm Mrs. G.
 
Other than my mama, she’s
the only person who ever believed in me.”

“You go before
that conduct board and tell them everything you just told us,” Sal said.
 
“Tell them it wasn’t your attorney, but some
stranger.
 
Tell them how Mark Price set
the whole thing up.
 
You tell the truth.”

“Just don’t mention
this van ride with us,” Reno said as Sal hit the roof and the van pulled over
to the side of the road.

“You can
leave now,” Sal said.

“But what
about my mama’s car?” Shaun asked.

Sal pulled
out a wad of bills, handed him what amounted to a few thousand dollars.

“Thanks, Mr.
G,” Shaun said happily, and got out of the van.

When they
pulled out, Reno looked at Sal.
 
“That’s
a switch,” he said.
 
“I don’t think I’ve
ever gone on a run with you where somebody didn’t get their ass kicked.”

“Don’t
worry,” Sal said. “Somebody will.”

“The law
partner?” Reno asked.

“For
starters,” Sal said.

“Who is this
guy?”

“Some small
dick I always pegged as having a thing for Gem.
 
She doesn’t believe so, but I think he’s in love with her.”

“Some love,”
Reno said.
 
“That asshole tried to
destroy her reputation.”

“I think he
was trying to destroy her marriage.”

Reno looked
at Sal.
 
“Why you figure that?”

“He expected
me to see my wife making love to her client on that video, and flip out.
 
He figured I’d kick her ass and everything.
 
And there he would be, her knight in shining
armor, waiting to pick up the pieces.”

“That’s
where he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.
 
You wouldn’t divorce Gemma Jones even if it was her on that video.
 
Would you?”

Sal didn’t
respond.
 
Because that hit to the core of
his weakness.

“Would you,
Sal?” Reno asked again.

Sal looked
at Reno.
 
“If that was your wife on that
video, if that was Trina, would you leave her ass?”

There was a
time Reno would say hell yeah like it was crazy to even ask.
 
That time was gone.
 
“Whatever,” he said, and that was the end of
that.

Mark Price
was in his bed, in his Vegas condo, making love to his woman.
 
It was a warm night, and the sheet around
them was barely covering his pumping bare ass, and they were sweating as they
fucked.

But their
good feelings changed in an instant when the bedroom door was kicked open, and
two men he knew very well walked in.

Both lovers
jumped, with Mark jumping completely out of bed.
 
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked them
angrily.
 
“This is my home, man!”

“Do we look
like we give a fuck?” Sal asked.
 

The woman
began backing against the wall.
 
“What’s
going on, babe?” she asked Mark.

“Why did you
try to set up my wife?” Sal asked.

“I didn’t
set anybody up,” Mark responded.
 
“You’ve
got the wrong dude.”

Sal took his
fist and punched Mark so hard that he fell against the wall.
 
“Do I have the right dude now?” he yelled,
and began hitting him again and again.
 
Reno joined in, hitting him too.

It didn’t take
long before the pain became unbearable, and Mark gave in.
 
“Okay,” he finally said, as the blood began
to pour.
 
“Okay!”

Both men let
up, and stood up.
 
Mark, they felt, was
ready to surrender.
 
But they couldn’t
account for his female companion.
 
She
had been screaming as Sal and Reno attacked Mark, but she wasn’t so thrown that
she couldn’t pull open the nightstand drawer and pull out a gun.
 
Sal didn’t see her at all, he was
preoccupied, and Reno barely saw her.
 
By
the time he did, she pulled out the gun and fired.
 
It was a reckless aim, and she hit, not Sal
or Reno, but Mark.

Sal and
Reno, both reacting quickly, pulled their own guns and fired too.
 
They fired just as she was about to give it
another go, and better focus her aim on them.
 
But they already knew how to aim, and took her out easily.
 
Her gun went one way, and she dropped
down.
 
She died instantly.

But they
were both stunned.
 
Mark was down, and
his lady was dead.
 
Reno looked at
Sal.
 
“If she wasn’t such a bad shot,” he
said, “this would have ended very badly.
 
At least for us.”

Sal looked
at the now deceased woman.
 
“What did she
wanna do that for?” he asked bitterly.
 
He was angry that he had to shoot her.

But while
they were trying to come to terms with the shooting, Mark, who was only
slightly injured, reached for the gun that had fallen from her hand.
 
He was just about to fire when Sal realized
what was occurring.
 
He jumped on top of
Mark and grabbed the gun.
 
There was a
tussle for control.

“Sal, watch
out!” Reno yelled as he positioned his own gun to take Mark out, standing above
both men.
 
But he was too late.
 
Just as he was ready to fire, Mark’s gun went
off.

“Sal!” Reno
cried, as he flung Sal off of the guy.

Sal’s body
at first looked slumped to Reno, as if Sal was the one who had been shot.
 
But when Reno pulled him back, he saw the
truth.
 
It was Mark that had been shot,
and was as dead as his woman.

“Damn!” Sal
said.
 
“Damn!”
 

They had two
dead bodies, and no more information than they had when they first
arrived.
 
It was what they called a dry
run.

Sal and Reno
hated, with a passion, dry runs.
  

When he made
it back home to Gemma, she was waiting up for him.
 
She made it downstairs and into the foyer by
the time he entered their home.
 
But when
she saw him she slowed her speed.
 
She
could see that he was still unsettled.
 

“You didn’t
find him?” she asked.
 
“You couldn’t find
Shaun?”

“We found
him,” Sal said.
 
“But he was just a
puppet.
 
He was just doing what he was
told.
 
Mark Price, your so-called
partner, was the puppet master.”

Gemma was
floored.
 
She leaned against the
table.
 
“Mark?” she asked.
 
“Mark was behind that tape?”

Sal
nodded.
 
“Yup.
 
They doctored it.
 
Shaun was fucking some woman he didn’t even
know.
 
It wasn’t you, and he told us so.”

“And Mark
set it all up?”

“We believe
he even set up that murder Shaun was accused of committing.
 
Shaun had nothing to do with that.
 
I’m sure, when it all comes out, they’ll drop
the charges.”

But Gemma
was still floored.
 
“And Mark . . .”
 
She looked at Sal.
 
“You were right about him.”

“Unfortunately,
yeah I was.”

“But why did
he do it?”

“I have my
theory,” Sal said.
 
“He was in love with
you, maybe obsessed with you, and he saw me as the only person standing in the
way of his happiness.
 
I think he wanted
to break us up.
 
He thought that tape
would do the trick.”

“But you
didn’t believe that tape.
 
You believed
me.”

Sal
nodded.
 
“That was the part he failed to
realize.
 
I’m a hard-ass man, Gemma, and
that’s all everybody sees.
 
They don’t
get to see what I become when I look at you.
 
All they see is a hard-ass man.”

Gemma could
see the distress all over his face.
 
She
placed her hand on the side of his face.
 
“I’ll take you, hard and all, over all of them.
 
I’ll take you just the way you are, Salvatore
Luciano.”

Sal smiled,
but she could still see the anguish in his eyes.
 
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
 
“What happened out there?”

Sal looked
into her eyes.
 
He hated that he had to
bring this kind of news to her.
 
But he
had no choice.
 
“He came for us, Gemma,”
he said.
 
“He tried to kill us.”

Gemma’s
heart began to pound.

“I didn’t
want to do it.
 
I hated to do it.
 
But I had to take him out,” Sal said.