MOB BOSS 6: THE HEART OF RENO GABRINI (Mob Boss Series) (10 page)

Cooper
looked at the body again.
 
“We’ve got to
move it,” he said.

Jimmy
looked at him.
 
“Move it?
 
Move what?
 
This body?”

Cooper
and Ashley both looked at Jimmy, as if they both had reached that conclusion
before he even arrived there.
 
“Yes,”
Ashley said.

“Are
you out of your mind?” Jimmy replied.
 
“We can’t move a body!”

“We
have to, Jimmy!” Ashley said, running to him and throwing her arms around
him.
 
She looked up into his face with
those same puppy dog eyes he fell in love with.
 
“Or they’ll put me and my brother in
prison.
 
You’ve got to believe me.
 
I couldn’t survive something like that.
 
I’d kill myself before I could handle
something like that!”

“But
moving a dead body!”
 
Jimmy was still
unable to work his brain around such a crazy thought.

“After
we move it we’ll call the police.
 
We’ll
call anonymously and tell them where they can find the body.
 
But they won’t be able to trace him to this
house.”

“But
how do you know?” Jimmy asked.
 
“What if
he told his friends he was coming here?
 
What
if a neighbor saw him come here?”

“They
we’ll say he came over, but then he left,” Cooper said.
 
Then he exhaled.
 
“There’s no other way, Mack,” he said.

But
Jimmy wasn’t ready to believe that.
 
He
pulled out his cell phone.
 
Ashley
immediately grabbed it from him.
 
“What
are you doing?” she asked him.

“I
think I should call my father.”

“What?”
Ashley and Cooper both said simultaneously, as if Jimmy calling his father was
no different than him calling the cops.
 

“You know
you can’t call your father, are you nuts?” Cooper asked him.

“But
you don’t understand.
 
He can help us.”

“No!”
Ashley said forcefully.
 
“He doesn’t even
like me.
 
I saw how he was looking at me
at the Shell.
 
There’s no way he’ll help
me.”

“But
he will!”

“No,
Mack, no!” Cooper said.
 
“Now either you
help us, or you leave.
 
Those are your
options.”

Jimmy
looked at his best friend and his girlfriend.
 
And then he looked at that poor guy on the floor.
 
It was an overdose, how could they be blamed
for that?
 
But Jimmy realized how.
 
Because they were young, and Ash had a record
already, and because he died doing drugs in their home.
 
They probably didn’t stand a chance.

Trina
stood in the middle of the empty storefront with Gemma Jones and Liz Mertan
flanking her.
 
The realtor, a tall, thin
woman with long red hair, was singing the praises of the place.
 
But Trina remained, as she had with all those
other “wonderful” places, unconvinced.

“What’s
the matter this time, Tree?” Gemma asked her.
 
“It’ll be beautiful once we get it painted and get the floors redone,
and get furniture in here.”

“I’m
sure it will be.
 
But I’m just not
convinced that this is where I want to stake my claim.
 
I’m not sure if this is the best location in
the entire city that we can get.
 
Location is everything when we make this kind of deal.”

“It’s
not our first choice, no,” Liz admitted.
 
“The
Pa-Lar-gi-o
would be our
first choice,” she added.
 
She purposely
pronounced the name of Reno’s hotel and casino with an overplay on the word that
many upscale wannabes assumed sounded chic.
 
To Trina, however, that overplay made the hotel’s name, and the wannabe
pronouncing it, sound more cheeky than chic.

“This
is a good location,” Gemma said.
 
“Is it
choice?
 
No.
 
Is it on the Strip?
 
No.
 
But it’ll be a good start.”

“I
still don’t understand why you won’t at least ask your husband if he could make
room for us at the
Pa-Lar-gi-o
,” Liz
chimed in.
 
She was unabashedly
disappointed that Trina was being so stubborn.
 
She thought Trina’s only claim to fame was the fact that she married
well, and now she didn’t want to use those connections to get further
ahead?
 
It made no sense at all to Liz.

But
Trina wasn’t trying to hear her.
 
She
moved away from the girls and walked over to the large picture window in the
front of the store.
 
She could see
it.
 
She could see the mannequins in the
window and the glam clothes all over the store.
 
But was this the best spot, she kept asking herself as she looked out
into a fairly busy area.
   
The Strip, no
doubt, would be the best spot, and the PaLargio even better, but she wasn’t
dragging Reno into this.
 
He didn’t have
a foot of space to spare at the PaLargio and she wasn’t going to abuse her
privileges as his wife to cause somebody else to lose their prime location.
 
Reno respected her integrity above all else,
and she intended to keep it that way.

Her
cell phone began to ring just as she was about to turn around and agree to the
location for their new boutique.
 
She
assumed it was Reno checking up on her, but when she looked at the Caller ID
and saw that it was Jimmy, she quickly answered.
 
Although he was Reno’s son from another woman,
Trina loved that sweet young man as if he were her own.

“Hey,
Bud,” she said.
 
“What’s up?”

“Where
are you?”

“I’m
looking at some real estate.
 
Where are
you?”

“I’m
over on Clydesdale, at this bar called the Pointe.
 
You know where that is?”

“Sure
I know the Pointe.
 
But the
point
is, why are you in a bar, young
man?”

“It’s
a long story, Ma.
 
Can you come?”

“Can I
come?
 
When?”

“Now,”
Jimmy said.
 
“I need your help.”

Something
in the way he spoke made Trina certain that he was in trouble.
 
Maybe it was all those years dealing with bad
news boyfriends who had that same hesitation in their voices whenever they
phoned her with bad news.
  
“But you’re
okay, though, right?” she asked him.

“Yeah,
sure, I’m . . .,” Jimmy started.
 
Then that
hesitation again.
 
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he
continued.
 
“But can you come?”

“Yes.
 
Yes, of course I’ll come.
 
I’m on my way.”

“Thanks,
Ma.
 
I’ll be in a booth near the back,
just pass the bar.”

“I’ll
be there,” Trina said, and ended the call.

“You
have to go?” Gemma asked her.

“Yes,”
she said as she placed her phone back into her purse and began to head for the
exit.

“But
what about this location?” Liz asked her.

“I’m
in,” Trina said.
 
“Draw up the
paperwork,” she said to Gemma.
 
“And I’ll
sign.”

Gemma
and Liz smiled and high-fived in a hand-clasp.
 
But Trina didn’t look back.
 
Jimmy
was on her mind.

But
as soon as she got into her Mercedes and began driving away, she called
Reno.
 
Jimmy undoubtedly phoned her
because he was into something he didn’t want Reno to know about, but Reno was
his father.
 
He, Trina felt, had a right
to know.

It
would take several rings before he answered.
 
Which undoubtedly meant, she knew, that he was overwhelmed with work
once again.

“Tree,
I’m busy,” he said when he did bother to answer.

“Too
busy to talk to me?”

“Never,”
he quickly recovered in a voice so distracted that Trina knew he was
lying.
 
“What is it?”

“It’s
your son,” she said.

“Tell
Crawley I’m not signing that clown show again, I don’t care how much it’s supposed
to benefit charity.
 
Write a check to charity
and cancel the show.
 
What about our
son?”

“I
thought I told you to take it easy, Reno.”

“I am
taking it easy.
  
This is easy for
me.
 
Now what’s this about our son?”
 

“He
phoned and asked me to meet him at the Pointe.”

“The
Pointe?
 
That shithole over on
Clydesdale?”

“That’s
the place.”

“What
the fuck he’s doing over there?”

“He
didn’t say over the phone.
 
He asked me
to come.
 
He said he needed my help.
 
I thought you could meet us over there too.”

“Where
are you now?”

“I’m
heading to the Pointe as we speak.”

“Like
hell you are,” Reno said firmly.
 
“You
turn that Mercedes around right this minute and come straight home.”

Trina
couldn’t believe it.
 
“But he called me!”

“I
don’t give a fuck who he called!
 
You
bring your ass home, Tree.
 
Now.”

“But
what about Jimmy?”

“I’ll
handle Jimmy.
 
I’ll go and see what he
wants.”

“But
Reno!”

“Don’t
you
but, Reno
me, Tree.
 
I mean it now.
 
I don’t want you anywhere near that
drug-infested hellhole over there.
 
Nowhere near it!
  
So bring your
ass home.”

Trina
knew Jimmy was going to feel betrayed when Reno showed up instead of her, but
what could she do?
 
Show up anyway?
 
She could, but only if she wanted Reno’s foot
up her ass.

She
turned her Mercedes around, and headed back home.

CHAPTER FIVE

“She’s
taking her pretty time getting here,” Cooper said as he upturned another glass
of beer.
 
They were in a back booth at
the Pointe, with Cooper seated on one side and Jimmy Mack and Ashley on the
seat on the opposite side.
 
Cooper had
his feet up on the table.

“She
said she’ll be here,” Jimmy Mack said.
 
“She’ll be here.”

“This
is turning into a nightmare!” Cooper said anxiously.
 
“What if they find us?
 
What if they rush in here with guns blazing?”

“They
won’t find us,” Jimmy Mack reassured.
  
He knew they were in trouble, but he didn’t see how getting all unhinged
the way Cooper was would help anything.
  
“I lost them.
 
They have no idea
where we are.”

Which
Ashley knew was the problem.
 
Jimmy had
managed to lose them.
 
Now what were they
supposed to do?
 
Eddie never told her
what she was supposed to do if Jimmy lost his tail. In their nervousness as
they got the body out of the house, she left her cell phone at home.
 
She went to the bathroom, to try and use a
phone of any of the females that were hurrying in and out, but nobody had a
phone.
 
Or at least that was what they
told her.

“What
I don’t understand,” Jimmy said, “is who was following us, and what did they
want?”
 
He said this and stared at
Cooper.

“What
are you looking at me for?” Cooper asked nervously.
 
“I’m as in the dark about all of this
craziness as you are!
 
I was hanging out
at the house.
 
Now I’m sitting in a bar
with my friend’s dead body in the trunk of my best friend’s car.
 
A dead person who died at my house.
 
I can’t begin to think about who was
following us.
 
That’s like another load
of crap I have to deal with when I can’t deal with the crap I’m already in
right now.”