Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) (21 page)

“What do you think I’m doing?
 
I have a gun to your father’s head.”

“But. . .what do you want?
 
I don’t know anything.
 
My father doesn’t know anything.”

“I didn’t say he did.
 
Did you hear me say he knew something?
 
This wasn’t the plan, idiot.
 
The plan was to have a gun to Jimmy’s head,
not your father’s.
 
The plan was for
Jimmy to bring his sorry ass here with you, but he sends you home alone.”

“Knowing Reno,” said the man behind Val,
“men are tailing her.
 
I’ll guarantee
it.”

“Oh, I will too,” the woman said.
 
“But we’ll take care of them.”

“Absolutely,” the man said.

“Please let my father go,” Val
pleaded.
 
“He doesn’t know anything about
the Gabrinis.”

“There you go again!
 
Who the hell said he knew something?
 
I told you holding onto him wasn’t the
plan.
 
You and Jimmy messed that up.
 
You two lovebirds didn’t come back here last
night.
 
But your father showed up.
 
Said he received a call from Jimmy looking
for you, but he was out of town and couldn’t check up on you. As soon as he got
back in town last night, he came by.
 
We
kept him here all night, just for insurance, and we waited for you and
Jimmy.
 
Jimmy wasn’t the first
choice.
 
But after my spies told me that
Trina Gabrini was still alive and well and living it up at the PaLargio, he’s
now my only choice.
 
Trina is Reno’s
heart.
 
That’s why she was my first
choice.
 
I wanted to gut his heart!
 
But his children are his soul.
 
I can’t get to the two youngest, Reno would
never go for that, so now it’s got to be Jimmy.
 
This will have all been in vain, if I can’t get Jimmy.”

It was surreal to Val, to hear this woman
talk about plans that involved killing people, and to see her father sitting
there, caught up in this craziness too.
 
“What do you want from me?”

“What happened to Reno’s wife?
 
Why didn’t Fred get to her?”

Val’s heart was already pounding fast, now it
was so terrified it was almost stopping.
 
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about what happened at the
Gabrinis’ last night.
 
We snatched you
last night and then released you to confuse the matter, to distract Reno enough
so Fred could get to Trina.
 
But it
didn’t happen.
 
Why?”

Val shook her head.
 
“I don’t know.”

“What about Fred Ridgeway?
 
Where is he?
 
And you’d better answer that one right.”

Val swallowed hard.
 
“I think he’s dead,” she said.

The woman shook her head.

“Damn,” the man behind Val said,
disappointed too.

“I should have known not to send somebody
untested like that,” the woman said.

“But he was Jimmy’s stepfather.
 
He was an ex-cop.
 
He was the only person we could find who
could get close enough to Trina.”

“Nothing according to plan,” the woman
said.
 
“Not one damn thing.
 
But that’s okay.
 
That’s all right. ”
  
Then she looked at the man standing near
Buddy.
 
“Release him,” she said.

Val was hopeful when the guy removed the
ropes from her father and he was able to stand up.
 
But her hopefulness disappeared when the
women ordered the men to take Val and bound her instead.

The woman looked at Buddy Wellstone.
 
“You go to Reno.
 
And you deal directly with Reno and Reno
alone.
 
You tell him that the only way
your daughter lives, is if a Gabrini dies.
 
You tell him I want him to deliver to me either that wife of his, or one
of his children.
 
You tell him that if I
don’t get what I’m asking for, I’ll blow her brains out.”

Buddy’s heart dropped.
 
“But he’s not going to do that.
 
He’s not going to sacrifice his child to save
mine.”

“Reno won’t.
 
Of course not.
 
But Jimmy will.
 
He supposedly loves this girl.
 
He’ll come to her rescue.
 
But you deal with Reno.
 
I want him to make the call.”

“You just go and tell him what I just told
you,” she said.
 
“And Mr. Wellstone, if
you want to see your daughter alive again, you had better not allow them to try
any tricks.
 
No cops, no tricks.
 
And you know why I know they won’t try
anything?
 
Because you’re going to tell
them about the bomb.
 
You’re going to
tell them that if they even think about breaking in or attempting any kind of
rescue effort, this whole thing will blow, with your daughter right in the
heart of the devastation.
 
Understood?”

He was stunned.
 
“Yes,” he said, as he looked at his
daughter.
 
“I understand.”

 
“So
what are you waiting for?
 
Go.
 
Time is running out!”

“But,” Buddy said, thinking about this,
“they’ll want to know who sent me.”

The woman smiled.
 
“Tell him Miss New York sent you.”

Buddy frowned, but he hurried to do her
bidding.

Nicky Minnelli sat in the empty bleachers
on the soccer field and studied the game plan in the binder.
 
The evening game was hours away, but he was
already tweaking his plan.
 
He had a lot
on his plate, but volunteer coach to his daughter’s soccer team was the
crowning achievement for him.

Just as he was but to drain down more of
his bottled water, he saw the Bentley drive up.
 
Reno’s Bentley.
 
As soon as he saw
it, his chest squeezed in a crippling fear.
 
He couldn’t know, he thought.
 
How
in the world could he know?

But the car door opened, and Reno, the
driver, stepped out.
  
Then Tommy, Sal,
and Jimmy stepped out too.
 
And all four
men, with Reno leading the way, began to head toward the bleachers.
 
But just as they began to climb those
bleachers, Nicky attempted to smile.
 
He
knew he had to make this moment the performance of his life.

“Reno,” he said jovially.
 
“What in the world are you doing here?”

“Wanna talk to you,” Reno said.

“What’s this?
 
You brought the whole family?”

 
Reno
didn’t respond to that.
 
It was obvious
that he had.

“What’s up, Tommy?” Nicky said.
 
“Long time no see.
 
What’s up, Sal?”

“What’s up with you?” Sal asked.
 
“Since when have you been into soccer?”

“Since I had a little girl.
 
I coach her team, didn’t Reno tell you?”

Sal frowned.
 
“What the fuck Reno gonna tell me something
like that for?
  
Why would I care what
you’re coaching?
 
It’s not that serious.”

Nicky laughed. “Pardon me, sir.
 
I forgot who I was dealing with.”
 
Then he looked at Jimmy.
 
“You even brought your son with you.
 
Jimmy Mack, right?”

“Right,” Jimmy said, although he didn’t
remember ever seeing this guy before in his life.

“Fred Ridgeway,” Reno said, getting down to
business.
 
“You know him?”

Nicky thought about it.
 
Then shook his head.
 
“No.
 
Not that I can recall anyway.
 
Why?
 
What about him?”

“You claim you don’t know him,” Sal said,
“so what difference does it make?”

“I don’t know him,” Nicky said
emphatically.

“He claims he knows you,” Reno said.
 
“He claims you were the money man behind his
drug activity.”

Nicky frowned.
 
“Drugs?
 
Are you serious?”

“No, we’re playing,” Sal said.
 
“Does it look like we’re serious?”

“Reno,” Nicky said, “we’re partners.
 
We have vested interest in different ventures
here.
 
What are you accusing me of?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything.
 
I want to know what you know.”

“I told you I don’t know nothing.
 
Not about any drugs anyway.
 
You know how I feel about that shit.”

“Then why did your name come up?” Tommy
asked.
 
“Why would Fred Ridgeway name you
specifically?”

“I never even heard of Fred Ridgeway.
 
Come on now.
 
Me and drugs?
 
Every one of you
know me better than that.”

And on many levels it did sound
improbable.
 
Nicky Minnelli involved with
drugs?
 
Reno, Tommy, and Sal were
beginning to see how far-fetched it was.
 

“Another misdirection by Fred?” Tommy asked
Reno.

“Maybe,” Reno said.

“But you had him dead to rights, Reno,” Sal
said.
 
“He was a guy with nothing to
lose.
 
Why would he lie?”

“Cover for somebody else?” Tommy asked.

“Somebody near and dear to him?” Reno
suggested.

“But who?” Sal asked.

But as they spoke, there was a slight
movement.
 
So slight that only Jimmy, who
was not involved in the conversation, caught it.
 
His father and his uncles knew Nicky
Minnelli, and they were biased in his favor, but Jimmy didn’t have such
allegiance.
 
All he saw was a worm trying
to squirm out of the net.
 
And then he
realized what was happening.
 
He realized
what that almost negligible movement was about.
 
The guy knew he was done for, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

Jimmy realized it just as Nicky reached
under his bookbinder.
 
But Jimmy was
faster.
 
He pulled out his gun and put a
bullet in Nicky’s brain before Nicky knew what hit him.
 
Reno, Tommy, and Sal all were stunned and
quickly pulled out their weapons too.
 
Nicky fell back, the binder dropped from his lap, and a gun, on his lap,
was exposed.
 

Reno, Sal, and Tommy all looked at
Jimmy.
 
Nicky might not have taken all of
them out, but he would have certainly taken out one or two.
 

Their hearts pounded against their grateful
chests.

FIFTEEN

The drive back to the PaLargio was a slow
one.
 
Sal drove, Tommy sat on the front
passenger seat, and Reno and Jimmy sat in the back.
 
Reno had already phoned his people and told
them to handle the scene at the soccer field, but that still didn’t erase his
uneasiness.
 
He kept thinking about his
son, and how he was no kid anymore.
 
He
looked at him.

“What are you thinking about?”

A stormy look came over Jimmy.
 
“Val,” he said.

“What about Nicky Minnelli?
 
No thoughts about him?”

“He would have killed one of us if I didn’t
do what I did.
 
So hell no.
 
I’m not thinking about him.”

Sal glanced through the rearview mirror at
Jimmy.
 
“The kid’s right,” he said.

Reno nodded.
 
“Yeah, I know.
 
And the kid’s no kid anymore,” he added.

“Yeah, I know,” said Sal.

“Val will come around, Jimmy,” Tommy
said.
 

This interested Jimmy.
 
He knew his Uncle Tommy knew all there was to
know about females.
 
“She’s very
delicate,” Jimmy said.
 
“I don’t know if
she can come around.”

“She will.”

“And he should know,” Sal said. “His old
lady was
 
just as delicate as Val, and
she came around.
 
Somewhat,” Sal added
and he and Tommy exchanged glances.

Reno’s cell phone rang.
 
He pulled it out and looked at his Caller
ID.
 
“My security chief,” he said.

“Put him on Speaker, Reno,” Tommy said.

Reno placed the call on Speaker when he
answered it.
 
“Yeah, Boz, what’s up?”

“We still can’t find any connection to
Nicky Minnelli and drugs.”

This surprised Reno.
 
“None?”

“Nothing, boss.
 
We checked up and down the line.
 
Nothing.
 
He’s clean.
 
He’s got shares in a
lot of small businesses, including a few with you.”

“Right.”

“And it all looks legit.
 
There may be some behind the curtain shit we
can’t decipher, but I doubt it.
 
We
checked up and down the line.”

“So you’re telling us,” Jimmy said, “that a
guy who tries to pull a gun after Pop accuses him of being hooked up with
drugs, isn’t hooked up with drugs?
 
That’s what you’re telling us, Boz?”

“Who the fuck I’m talking to?”

“Jimmy Mack, who the fuck you think?”

Sal laughed.
 
Reno and Tommy were still getting used to it.

“Go on, Boz,” Reno said.

“The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling
y’all.
 
Nicky Minnelli is clean.”

“How far back did you go?” Jimmy
asked.
 
“Maybe it’s not so recent.”

“We covered it, Jimmy, all right?
 
We went all the way back.
 
He was born to middle class parents in
Schenectady, New York.
 
His mother was a
schoolteacher and his father drove trucks.
 
He has one sister named Marcy and a brother named Ryan.
 
He graduated high school but never attended
college.
 
He never married, he has no
children.
 
He has his hands in a lot of
businesses, all of which are clean.
 
We
did our homework.”

“Good,” Reno said.
 
“Now what about that mess at the soccer field?”

“It’s being cleaned up as we speak,” Boz
said.
 
“Nothing to see over there.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” Reno said.
  
“We’re on our way in,” he added, and killed
the call.

“That’s some strange shit,” Sal said.
 
“Nicky Minnelli is clean as a whistle, but he
tries to put a cap in one of us?
 
No
way.
 
That shit ain’t flying with me.”

“Me either,” Jimmy said.
 
“They missed something.”

“Had to,” Sal agreed.

Reno didn’t respond.
 
Because they weren’t saying anything he
didn’t already know.
 
He, instead, was thinking.
 
If it wasn’t drugs, what was it?

Buddy Wellstone stood at the information
desk inside the PaLargio trying to explain to the security chief that he needed
to see Reno.
 
He had just arrived, and
wanted to go up to the PaLargio, but was detained.
 
But he walked away from Reno’s security chief
as soon as he saw the Gabrini men enter the lobby.
 
Boz followed him, to make certain he was who
he said he was, but the Gabrinis, it seemed to Boz, were already eyeing him
suspiciously.
 
Jimmy, in fact, moved in
front of his father as if he were his protector when he saw the older man
approaching.

“What’s he doing here?” Reno asked, as
Jimmy moved in front of him.

“Val probably told him what went down,”
Jimmy replied, “and now he wants to confront me about it.”
 

“Mr. Wellstone,” Jimmy said when Buddy
arrived in front of them.
 
“Val’s not
here.
 
She went home earlier.”

“I have a message,” Buddy said, looking
beyond Jimmy, at Reno.
 
“For you.”

Reno stepped back in front.
 
Boz, too, moved closer.
 
“Who is this message from?”

“She said to tell you it’s from Miss New
York.”

Sal frowned.
 
“Miss New York?
 
Who the fuck is Miss New York?”

Then Reno and Tommy looked at each
other.
 
“Wasn’t Marcy Davenport Miss New
York?”

“Runner up,” Reno said.
 
“Describe her?” Reno asked Buddy.

“Tall white woman, blonde hair, thin.”

Reno and Tommy nodded at each other.
 
But then Reno remembered something else.
 
He looked at Boz.
 
“Didn’t you say Nicky had a sister?”

“Yeah,” Boz said.
 
“Marcy Minnelli.”

Tommy looked at Reno.
 
“Wasn’t she married once?”

“Don’t remember.
 
But I know she changed her name at some
point.”

“Last I heard she was on drugs,” Tommy
said.

“Yeah.
 
I heard that too.”

“And Fred declared Nicky was a dealer.”

Reno nodded.
 
“Boz and his men didn’t crack the code, but
that doesn’t mean it wasn’t one to crack.
 
Maybe he kept it intimate.
 
Maybe
he only supplied certain people.
 
People
like an ex-cop.
 
People like his sister.”

“Who is she anyway?” Buddy asked.
 

“Somebody I used to know,” Reno said.
 
“Where is she now?
 
Did she follow you here?”

“No.
 
She’s at my daughter’s house.”

Jimmy looked at him.
 
“At Val’s house?
 
Where’s Val?”

“She’s there too,” Buddy said.
 
“I was gonna go to the police.
 
I was gonna leave my house and go straight to
the police.
 
But the explosives.
 
She said she has a bomb.”

“A bomb?” Jimmy asked this too loud and
Tommy immediately suggested they take it upstairs.
 
And they did.
 
Reno told Buddy to follow him, and they all began to head for the private
elevators.

“High alert, boss?” Boz asked as Reno
walked by him.

“The highest,” Reno ordered, and Boz
hurried for his office to add more men.

As a precaution, Buddy was carefully
frisked by Tommy before they got onto the elevator, but not a question was
asked until they were inside the penthouse great room and had sat the obviously
rattled older man down.
 

Trina was in the kitchen when she heard
them enter.
 
She was hanging out with her
parents, who Reno had flown in, and her two youngest children.
 
She immediately stood up and handed baby
Sophia to her mother, Earnestine Hathaway.

Cecil Hathaway, Trina’s father, was
disappointed.
 
“Why is it that you always
get to hold her?
  
Why is it that I never
get to hold her?”

“Because this is a baby, not a golf club,”
Earnestine said, and Trina laughed as she made her way out of the kitchen and
into the living area.
 
When she saw that
Buddy Wellstone was with Reno and the guys, she stopped in her tracks.
 
Tommy saw her standing near the back side of
the room, but no-one else did.

“And she didn’t tell you anything?” Reno
was asking.
 
He sat on the coffee table
in front of Buddy.
 
Tommy sat in the
flanking chair, Sal sat on the arm of that chair, but Jimmy was standing up.

“She didn’t tell me anything.”

“How did you end up there?” Sal asked.

“I went by my daughter’s house late last
night after I got back in town, because Jimmy had called me earlier saying he
hadn’t heard from her, and she wasn’t answering my phone calls either.
 
So I went by to check on her.
 
As soon as I walked up to her front door, I
saw where somebody had jimmied the lock.
 
I opened the door, but as soon as I did I was pulled inside.”

“Who by?”

“These two men.
 
And then there’s this woman standing in my
daughter’s living room.
 
The woman is the
ringleader.
 
And she started talking about
how she hadn’t heard from somebody named Fred, and that how he was supposed to
call in but he didn’t.
 
Everything
changes after that.
 
She has to come up
with a different plan.
 
Then Val showed
up this morning, and they untied me, tied up Val, and told me to come here.”

“What did she tell you to say?”

“That my daughter will live only if you
sacrifice your wife or one of your children.
 
You can’t be the sacrifice.
 
Only
your wife can, or one of your children.”

“That’s fucking insane!” Sal said. “Why
would you sacrifice your kids for somebody else’s kid?
 
That makes no sense.”

But it made perfect sense to Reno.
 
“Payback,” Reno said.

“For what?” Sal asked.

“Nicky,” Reno said.

And all of the Gabrinis immediately
understood.

“Who’s Nicky?” Buddy asked.

“Reno’s son,” Tommy said.
 
“He was killed.
 
Marcy Davenport, who we believe is the woman
at your daughter’s house, was Nicky’s mother.”

“And the kid was undoubtedly named after
his uncle, after Nicky Minnelli,” Sal suggested.
 
“Dammit!
 
That damn Marcy’s back again.”
 
Then Sal frowned, as something suddenly occurred to him.
 
“Oh, no,” he said.

Reno and Tommy looked at him. “What?”

Sal looked at Reno. “Remember how Nicky
died?
 
You think she’s . . .”

Reno nodded, realizing it too.
 
“Yeah,” he said.
 
“I think that’s her plan.”

“What?” Buddy asked, concerned.
 
“How did Nicky die?”
 
But no-one answered him.
 
Everybody was in deep contemplation.
 
He looked at Jimmy.
 
“How did he die, Jimmy?”

Jimmy exhaled.
 
He hated to admit it.
 
“Explosion,” he said.
 
“He died in an explosion.”

Buddy’s heart dropped through his
shoe.
 
If he thought Val was in trouble
before, it couldn’t be more starker now.

Jimmy looked at Reno.
 
“She’s going to be my wife,” he said.
  
“So she’s my responsibility.
 
I’ve got to go and get her.”

But all three of the Gabrini men were
shaking their heads.

“No,” Tommy said.

“No,” Sal said.
 
“No way.”