Sal Gabrini: Just The Way You Are (3 page)

Curtis was
the first to see Sal when his Porsche drove up, and he exhaled because he never
quite knew what to make of Sal Gabrini.
 
He admired his good looks and muscular physique, and the wealth and
power that cloaked him.
 
But the man had
such a rough and tough exterior, and such an unrelentingly hard-charging style
that often came across as rude in the main or even a bit racist, that it was
tough for Curtis to say outright that he liked Sal Gabrini.
 
He respected him.
 
He admired his success.
 
And although he would never think of Sal
Gabrini as a nice guy at all, he did seem to treat Gemma right.
 
But there was nothing more Curtis could say
about him.

Gemma had no
such ambivalence.
 
As soon as she saw
Sal, she hurried to him.
 
He got out of
the car and hurried to her.
 
When they
met, he held her by her upper arms, staring into her face.
 
“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,”
she said.
 
“Just a little off balance, I
guess.”

Sal pulled
her into his arms, and closed his eyes tightly.
 
The idea that his wife, his
pregnant
wife, had to deal with this bullshit angered him.
 
But he knew he had to keep his cool.
 
He didn’t want her any more upset than she
already was.

“Look at how
tight his eyes are shut,” Barbara whispered to Curtis.
 
“He really loves her.”

“That car he
bought her already proved that,” Curtis said.

“A car?”
Barbara asked.
 
“Please!
 
That’s just money.
 
Love is on an entirely different level.”

“Only to
lapsed-romantics like you, Barb,” Curtis said, and Barbara laughed.

When Sal and
Gemma stopped hugging, Sal could still see the concern in Gemma’s large, brown
eyes.
 
“Sorry this had to happen,” he
said.

“I don’t
understand why it happened,” Gemma said.

“You said
they vandalized the place?”

“The
downstairs for sure,” Gemma said.
 
“They
even took the cameras.”

Sal took her
hand and began walking with her toward the entrance, and toward Barb and
Curtis.

“He’s always
fly,” Curtis whispered to Barb as he watched Sal approach in his Italian silk,
double-breasted suit.
 
“He might be mean
as nails, but he can dress.
 
I want to
have a wardrobe just like his when I grow up.”

“There you
go again with that
when I grow up
talk.
 
I’m afraid it’s as good as it’s
going to get for you, buddy.”
 
Curtis
laughed.
 
“Hey, Sal,” Barb said when Sal
and Gemma were in earshot.

“How are
you, Barbara?” Sal responded.

“I’m blessed
and highly favored, thank you very much.”

“Hello, Mr.
Gabrini,” Curtis said.

“How are
you?” Sal responded.

“Upset,”
Curtis said honestly.
 
“Scared as
hell.
 
Who would do something like this?”

“We’ll get
to the bottom of it,” Sal said.
 
“Bet
that.”

An SUV drove
up just as Sal finished his statement, causing all of them to turn.
 
Several men, Sal’s men, got out.

“Who are
those guys?” Curtis asked smilingly, admiring all of their physiques.

“Gemma’s
911,” Barbara responded.

Sal squeezed
Gemma’s arm.
 
“Wait here,” he said.
 
Then he looked at his men.
 
“You two,” he motioned, “blanket my wife.”

“Yes, sir,”
one of the two men said as both hurried over and stood on either side of
Gemma.
 
Sal and the rest of his men began
heading inside.

Barbara and
Curtis, feeling left out, looked at each other.
 
“So what are we?” Barbara could be heard asking as Sal and his men
headed inside.
 
“Chopped liver?”

“No, girl,”
Curtis said.
 
“Beets.”

Sal would
have smiled, but couldn’t when he entered that office and saw the destruction,
and then the writing on the wall.
 
The Law Office of Bitch Jones-Gabrini
,
it read.
 
His jaw tightened.

“Damn,
boss,” one of his men said.
 
“This looks
like kids gone wild for real.”

“They’re
gonna grow up real fast like,” another one of his men said, “when boss gets
through with them.”

Sal looked
around, disgusted by the sheer trashing of the place, and then made his way
upstairs.
 
His men followed him.

If they
thought the worse had been downstairs, they were mistaken.
 
Upstairs was tornado-like too.
 
Every office door was unhinged, and every
file cabinet overturned.
 
In Gemma’s
office, the largest one, those words reappeared.
 
The Law
Office of Bitch Jones-Gabrini
was written on the wall just above her
overturned desk.
 
Sal continued to look
around, to study the scene.
 
He knew rage
when he saw it.
 
A scene like this was
meant to convey rage.
 
But it felt forced
and fake.
 
Like it was staged rage.
 
Like it was something entirely different.

After
several more minutes of looking around, Sal ordered his men to gather any
evidence they could, and then hire a cleanup crew.
 
He made his way back downstairs.

Mark Price,
an African-American attorney working at Gemma’s firm, had just gotten out of his
car.
 
Sal was just passing by the office
window indoors when he saw Mark make his way up to Gemma and her
assistants.
 
“What are you guys doing out
here?” he asked as he approached them, his briefcase in hand.
 
Sal stopped at the window and watched him.

“Some fool
vandalized the office,” Curtis said.
 
“You should see it, Mark.
 
They
went crazy up in there.”

Mark placed
his hand on the small of Gemma’s back.
 
When Sal saw him touch her, he hurried out of the office.
 
“You look a little rattled,” Mark said to
Gemma, showing concern in his eyes.
 
“Please tell me you weren’t injured.”

Before Gemma
could respond, Sal came out and headed their way.

Mark removed
his hand from the small of Gemma’s back as soon as he saw Sal, which only heightened
Sal’s discomfort with the man.
 
A guilty
man would remove his hand.
 
An innocent
man would have remained as he were.

Gemma,
unaware of Sal’s concern about Mark, turned to Sal too.
 
“Did they make it upstairs?” she asked.

“It’s a
wreck up there,” Sal said.

“What about
our offices?” Mark asked.

Sal wasn’t
going to repeat himself.
 
Especially not
for Mark Price.

Mark
exhaled.
 
“We have client files in our
offices.
 
Very confidential stuff.
 
Have the police arrived?
 
Where are the cops?”

“My men are inside
making certain no one’s hiding out in there and the locks are shored-up.
 
Then they’re going to call in a clean-up crew
to get the office back up and running before the day is over.”

But Mark
frowned.
 
“No police?
 
Not even a police report?”

“We don’t
need that kind of negative publicity, Mark,” Gemma said.

“Amen to
that,” Barbara agreed.
 
“We don’t want to
scare any clients away with negative publicity.”

“Let’s get
the office back in working condition,” Gemma said, “to see if any files or any
crucial info is missing.
 
Then we’ll see
if the police need to get involved.”

Mark
exhaled.
 
“Okay, boss.
 
You’re the boss.
 
I guess I’d better get in there and see the
damage for myself.” Then he thought about something that he found odd to begin
with.
 
“Wait a minute,” he said.
 
“I thought you were supposed to be giving
your closing this morning?”

“I was.
 
Judge Rileo had an emergency hearing.
 
We were pushed back until tomorrow.”

“The life of
a lawyer,” Mark said.

“Right,”
Gemma agreed.

After Mark,
Barbara, and Curtis grabbed their gear and headed inside for their own damage
assessments, Sal and Gemma looked at each other.
 
“I guess I’d better check things out too,”
Gemma said.

“Like hell,”
Sal responded.
 
“You’re going home.”

“Sal!”

“Don’t
Sal
me!
 
I want you to go home and lay down and get some rest.
 
This kind of stress isn’t good for you or our
baby.”

Gemma knew
that was true.
 
But she also knew she
could handle it.
 
“But Sal, I’m okay.”

“But Sal my
foot.
 
You’re going home.
 
This kind of stress isn’t good for you or our
baby.”

“But I need
to check my files too.”

“Check’em
tomorrow.
 
You’re going home with me
today.”

Gemma looked
at Sal.
 
“You’re going home too?”

Sal had a
zillion things to do.
 
But Gemma came
first.
 
“I’m going home too,” he said.

“But you were
in some crisis at your own office when I phoned you,” Gemma said.
 
“Weren’t you?”

“We lost a
couple of acquisitions over some bullshit I’m straightening out,” Sal
admitted.
 
“But they can handle it
without me.
 
Just as your staff can
handle it without you. I’m willing to sacrifice for you and the baby.
 
I need you to be willing to sacrifice for
yourself.
 
This pregnancy business is new
to you and me both.
 
We’ve got to play it
safe, Gem.”

Gemma knew
he spoked the truth.
 
And as soon as she
realized it, a rush of emotion came over her.
 
Tears didn’t come, but Sal could tell they were threatening.
 
He pulled her into his arms.

After Gemma
drove through the tall security gate in her car and Sal followed in his, and as
soon as they walked through the double doors of their well-fortified Vegas
home, Sal headed straight for his office.

Gemma sat
her briefcase, keys, and purse on the table in the foyer, and was surprised
when he headed in that direction.
 
“Where
are you going?” she asked him.

“To check
the video,” he responded.

“What
video?”

“From your
law office.”

Gemma
frowned, and began following him.
 
“But
they took my cameras, Sal.
 
And the hard
drive.
 
They took my cameras.”

“But they
didn’t take mine,” Sal responded as he entered his office, walked behind his
desk, and sat down.
 
By the time Gemma
arrived at his side, he had already pulled up live action shots, of her entire
office, on his computer screen.

Gemma was
amazed.
 
She crotched down beside Sal’s
chair and looked at the video.
 
“When did
you set all of this up?” she asked him.

But he
didn’t respond.
 
When Sal was about
business, especially business involving his wife, he was singular in his
focus.
 
And right now his singular aim
was to re-rack video until he saw exactly what happened in Gemma’s office
overnight.

Gemma
remained crotched down beside him watching the tape, and watching him.
 
Sal was handsome in the way strong men were
handsome: more in his aura than strictly in his look.
 
He had a jawline so sculptured that some
women would view him as runway model beautiful, as Gemma did when she first saw
him.
 
But his forceful chin with its
constant five o’clock shadow, and his shockingly blue eyes with their absurdly
hard intensity, kept his look too edgy to be beautiful.
 
And his physique was so muscular that he came
across more as a bodybuilder than some runway model.
 
Which was fine by her.
 
Because Gemma knew, given how supersized
Sal’s penis was, and how ripped his abs were, and how deliciously thick his
chest and biceps were, that any woman would love to see him rock a bedroom
rather than a runway any day of the week.

But first
they had to overcome his rough and gruff exterior, which Gemma also knew wasn’t
easy. He, in fact, was demonstrating that very point as she crotched beside his
chair.
 
He was ignoring her in his quest
to help her.
 
He was singularly focused
on the computer screen.
 
So Gemma, knowing
Sal was not going to let up to explain a thing, looked at the screen and became
singularly focused too.

And then,
after several minutes into their search, they saw it.
 
“There he is!” Gemma said excitedly after
coming upon a scene that showed a man outside of her law firm.

Sal pressed
a freeze on the frame, boxed the man’s face, and zoomed in.
 
“You know him?”

Gemma looked
closer.
 
He was a young white male in his
early twenties, with a goatee, with an ass so flat his jeans just sagged in the
back.
 
She remembered him.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“That’s Jesse Crowler.”

Sal
continued the tape as Jesse began unlocking the office door.
 
“I knew it was an inside job,” Sal said.
 
“I’ll bet that law partner of yours set this
whole shit up.”

Gemma was
surprised.
 
She looked at Sal.
 
“Mark?
 
Why would you suspect him?”

Sal had a
gut feeling about the guy, but Gemma would never understand that.

“And Jesse’s
no vandal,” Gemma said.
 
“I got him a job
working for the janitorial company that cleans our offices at night.”

Sal looked
at the time on screen.
 
“He’s coming to
clean at three in the morning?
 
I don’t
think so.
 
Where’s the rest of the
crew?
 
And since when did he start
carrying his cleaning supplies in a garbage bag?”

Gemma knew
Sal’s observations were right, so she remained silent.
 
And when Jesse entered the office, and began,
not cleaning it, but trashing it, she realized just how right Sal was.
 
He disabled the cameras first, at least the
ones Gemma had installed, and her heart sank when Jesse shook the spray paint
can and then smilingly wrote that offensive phrase on her office wall.

Sal’s heart
didn’t sink, but roared with rage.
 
“You
got a job for this fucker, and this is how he repays you?”

“This
doesn’t make sense,” Gemma said, staring at Jesse’s antics.

“He’s an
ungrateful prick.
 
What doesn’t make
sense?”

“He came to
me when he was facing ten years in prison on a drug charge.
 
I got him off.
 
I won that case.
 
Then I got him a job.
 
Why would he do this?
 
I got him off.”

“Bet his ass
won’t get off again,” Sal said firmly.

Gemma looked
anxiously at her husband.
 
“What are you
going to do, Sal?”

Sal looked
at her.
 
“What do you think I’m going to
do?
 
Look at that motherfucker.
 
He’s vandalizing your office.
 
He’s writing bitch on your walls.
 
Calling you a bitch.
 
Calling
my
wife
a bitch.
 
What do you think I’m going to do, Gemma?”

Sal stared
intensely at her until she responded.
 
Gemma looked at him too.
 
Then she
looked at the tape of Jesse as he eagerly destroyed her office.
 
She nodded.
 
“What you have to do,” she said.

Jesse
Crowler came out of McDonald’s carrying a large soda cup.
 
He worked there in addition to his office
cleaning job, but once that payment hit his bank he was going to leave Vegas
for good and live his life.
 
He was
continuing his routine so no suspicion would fall on him.
 
He was going through the motions so nobody
would suspect a thing.
 
And then, after
pay day, he was out.

He received
more than he bargained for when he began walking toward his car, a badly
beat-up Toyota Tercel.
 
As he walked past
an older model white van parked behind his car, and as he arrived behind his
own car, the back doors of the van swung open, two men got out, and Jesse’s
razor thin body was lifted up and tossed into the floor of the van all in one
motion.
 
His drink went sailing one way,
his body went flying the other way, and by the time he realized what had just happened
to him he was in the van, the two men got back in with him, the doors were
closed, and the van took off.

He also
didn’t realize anybody else was in the back of that van until he sat up, and
looked at the man in the double-breasted suit sitting on one of the benches.

“What’s this
about?” he asked.

Sal stared
at Jesse.
 
It took all he had not to tear
him apart limb by limb.
 
“You paid a
visit to my wife’s office,” he said.

Jesse
frowned.
 
“Your wife?
 
What are you talking about?
 
Who’s your wife?”

Sal didn’t
respond to that lame question.
 
“Why did
you do it?”

“Do what?”
Jesse asked.

One of Sal’s
men, an African-American they called Big Joe, spoke up.
 
“Really fool?” he asked.
 
“You think we’re going through all of this
trouble to round up your ass by accident?”
 
He slapped Jesse upside his head.
 
“Now answer the man.
 
Ain’t nobody
playing with you!
 
Why did you fuck up
his wife’s office?”

Jesse
swallowed hard.
 
He destroyed the
cameras.
 
Every one of them.
 
And took the hard drive!
 
How could they know?

Big Joe
slapped Jesse upside his head again.
 
“Answer him!”

“I don’t
know who hired me!
 
I got a phone
call.
 
They said they placed fifteen
hundred dollars in my bank account.
 
After I trash Miss Gemma’s office, and do it exactly like they tell me to
do it, then they’d put fifty thousand dollars in my bank account.
 
That’s more money than I’ve ever seen in my
life.
 
I couldn’t turn that down.
 
They told me not to try and trace the
call.
 
They were using a throwaway
phone.
 
Since they put the fifteen
hundred in my bank, I trusted them for the rest.
 
And did what they said.”

“Have they
paid you the rest?” Sal asked.

“Not
yet.
 
They said they had to make sure I
did the job right first.
 
Then they’d
pay.”

“How would
they know?”

Jesse
thought about it.
 
“I don’t know.”

Sal
exhaled.
 
He really didn’t want to hear
that.
 
“Do you know Mark Price?” he
asked.
 

“Yeah, I
know him.
 
He works for Miss Gemma.
 
Sometimes when we come in the evenings to
clean, he’s still at the office.”

“Is he the
guy you spoke with?”

“Him?
 
No.
 
Course not.
 
He and Miss G are
real close from what I could see.
 
Why
would he want to vandalize his own office?”

Sal had his
own ideas.
 
Then he hit the roof of the
van.
 
The van slowed as if it was pulling
over, and then stopped.
 
Sal then looked
at Big Joe and his other strongman.
 
They
got out of the van and closed the doors behind them.

Sal slowly
rose to his feet.
 
Jesse, seeing him
stand, stood up too.
 
“Did they tell you
to write Bitch Gabrini on those walls?” he asked him.

“Yeah.
 
That’s what they told me to do.”

“So you
think she’s a bitch?
 
The woman who got
your ass off when you were facing a decade in prison, the woman who got you
that cleaning job, is a bitch?”

“I was doing
it for the money!
 
It wasn’t
personal.
 
I was just doing what I was
told for the money.”

“What I’m
about to do to you is personal,” Sal said.
 
“And I don’t give a fuck about the money.”

Sal pulled
out a revolver.

“Oh, no,
please no,” Jesse said, backing up with his hands out in front, as if they
could stop a bullet.
 
“Please, Mister,
don’t kill me.
 
I just trashed an
office.
 
What I did isn’t worth anybody
dying over!

Sal wasn’t
going to shoot him, because he agreed it wasn’t worth a death sentence.
 
But it was worth a beat down.
 
And Sal took the butt of that revolver and
gave Jesse an old fashioned one.
 
He beat
Jesse down.
 
With every lick he spewed
out his anger.
 
“This is from Bitch
Gabrini, bitch!” He slammed the butt of that gun repeatedly into Jesse’s
face.
 
“This is from my wife,
you
cocksucker!”
 
Blood spewed out as he beat him and wouldn’t stop beating him.
 
“This is for disturbing my wife’s peace and
security,
you
cockroach motherfucker!”

Sal beat him
in his head, in his face, until his eyes were swollen shut.
 
By the time he finished beating him down, Jesse
dropped to his knees and leaned against Sal’s legs for support.

“You mention
this get together to anybody,” Sal warned, “and I’ll finish the job, and
that’ll finish you.
 
You got that,
asshole?”

Jesse nodded
his head.
 
He was too far gone to talk.

“And get
your ass away from me!” Sal kicked Jesse away from him.
 
He was angry as hell that some blood had
gotten on his pants legs.
 
Sal was
usually a very meticulous fighter and knew how to avoid it.