Sal Gabrini: His House of Cards (9 page)

“Get the
fuck outta here!
 
I told you what kind of
woman she is.
 
She’s a lawyer and she’s
black.
 
She’s not going to take all that
shit Sal’s been slinging and still be with him.
 
She knows nothing about what he really does when he’s out of her
sight.
 
Sal won’t come at you.
 
He’ll be too busy trying to hold onto her.”

“You talk
like he loves the bitch.”
 
Blanche looked
at her.
 
“Sal doesn’t love anybody but
his brother Tommy.
 
And you know it.”

“He loves
his wife,” Victor said.
 
“I know that.”

Blanche
didn’t like to hear that kind of talk.
 
She
still had a soft spot for Sal.
 
But
Victor was her man now.
 
She had to keep
the peace.
 
“I don’t get it,” she decided
to say.
 
“Why would her knowing what kind
of sleaze ball Sal is help anything?
 
Who
cares?”

“Rudy
cares,” Victor said, and then looked at her as if he had just revealed a
secret.
 
“That’s who.”

Blanche’s
heartbeat quickened.
 
A puzzled look
appeared on her face.
 
“Rudy?
 
Rudy Red?
 
Rudy is behind this?”

Victor
wasn’t supposed to reveal so much.
 
But
she had a right to know.
 
He hesitated,
then nodded.
 
“Yeah.
 
He’s pulling the strings.”

“But
why?
 
Why would he care about something
like this?”

“He found
out, Blanche.”

Blanche
couldn’t believe it.
 
“He found out?
 
When?”

“He found
out!
 
Fuck when.
 
The gig is up.
 
I had to beg his ass to spare you.
 
So you’d better be glad he’s letting you work
your way back into his good graces.”

“He found
out everything?”

Victor
nodded and looked back toward the law firm building.
 
“Everything,” he said.

Blanche
still couldn’t believe it.
 
Her eyes were
darting back and forth, searching for answers.
 
“But I don’t get it.
 
Who told
him?
 
How could he know?”

“He knows.”

Again,
Blanche was searching for answers in her mind.
 
And what good would this do?
 
She
looked at Victor.
 
“But I still don’t get
it.
 
How would telling Sal’s wife about
my relationship with Sal help Rudy?”

“He’s a man
with a plan.
 
I told you that.
 
You just do your job.
 
Sal is a tough guy.
 
But he ain’t shit compared to Rudy.”

 
Then Victor’s eyes grew large.
 
“I’ll be
got
damn!”
he yelled as he grabbed his binoculars to make sure he was seeing what he
thought he was seeing.

“What is
it?” Blanche asked excitedly, and then looked toward the law firm too.
  
When she saw that a tall black woman had
walked out of the door and was now heading toward a car parked at the curb, she
frowned.
 
“Who is that?”

“That’s
her,” Victor said with anguish.
 
“That’s
the wife.
 
Got
dammit!”

Blanche was
shocked.
 
“I thought you said she hadn’t
arrived yet.
 
But she’s been inside all
this time?
 
I could have gone in hours
ago?”

“They told
me she drives a BMW,” Victor said.
 
“Those fuckers said to look out for a BMW.
 
There’s no BMW here.
 
I’ll be
got
damn!”

Blanche
looked at Gemma Jones-Gabrini.
 
She was
tall and statuesque.
 
Dark and lovely.
Very attractive.

“So that’s
Mrs. Sal Gabrini,” she said.
 
“That’s the
one he picked over all of us.”
 
Jealousy
took root in Blanche’s heart.
 
Sal was
always her favorite, although the feeling, she knew, was never mutual.
 
“She doesn’t look so special to me,” she
added.

“She’s hot,”
Victor said.

Blanche
looked angrily at him.

Victor
looked at her.
 
“What are you looking at
me like that for?
 
Sal Luca think she’s
hot.”

“What do you
think?” Blanche asked.

Victor
looked again at Gemma’s long black legs, and her beautiful black face, and her
bouncy, natural hair.
 
She was hot, Sal
got that much right.
 
But he didn’t give
a damn either way.
 
“She’s driving a
Porsche,” he said as Gemma opened the door to her husband’s Porsche parked at
the curb, and got inside.
 
“Who the fuck
confuses a Porsche for a BMW?”

They watched
as Gemma drove away.

“What do we
do now?” Blanche asked.
 
“We can’t follow
her all over town.”

Victor
exhaled.
 
“Go inside her law firm,” he
said.
 
“Schedule an appointment to see
her.
 
This ain’t the way he planned it,
he wanted a surprise visit, but fuck it.
 
We just need you to be able to meet with her.”

Blanche
still felt as if she was groping in the dark.
 
Why would Rudy Balotti care about Sal’s wife knowing anything?
 
What was he up to?
 
But Victor was right.
 
Rudy was giving her a chance to redeem
herself.
 
She didn’t understand why.
 
The Rudy she used to know would have killed
her ass and asked questions later.
 
But
she wasn’t about to look that gift horse in the mouth.
 
She got out, and headed for the law firm’s
entrance.

The meeting
was held in the conference room of the law firm representing Sal’s
accusers.
 
All five accusers were there,
all five in a jovial mood, as they were all expecting to hear a settlement
proposal.
 
Sal was supposed to show up
with his own team of lawyers, but he arrived alone.
 
With a stack of packets in his hand.

Marty
Guggenheim, the accusers’ attorney, stood to his feet.
 
“Where’s your counsel?” he asked.

“They
couldn’t make it,” Sal said.

Marty was
disappointed, and so were his clients.
 
But they had to follow protocol.
 
“Then we’ll need to reschedule,” he said.

“No, we
won’t,” Sal said and began tossing packets in front of each accuser.
 
Their names were on the outside of the
letter-sized vanilla envelopes.

“What’s this
about?” Marty asked as Sal tossed him one too.

“Take a look
and see,” Sal said.

“If this is
money, Mr. Gabrini,” Marty made clear, “we are not at liberty to accept it like
this.
 
We have to draw up a contract and
agree to all terms before we accept any of your money.”

“Open the
envelopes,” was all Sal would say.

Although
Marty was still protesting, Sal’s accusers quickly opened their respective
envelopes.
 
But instead of being thrilled
by the money amount, they were horrified.
 
Not by the fact that no pile of money was found in the envelopes, but
that a long dossier was inside.
 
A
dossier that chronicled each and every negative incident that they were ever a
part of.
 
Chapter and verse.

Marty, their
attorney, opened his dossier hesitantly.
 
And every bad act he ever committed was right before his eyes too.
 
From nude pics to sordid affairs to real
crimes such as money laundering and embezzlement allegations, everything was
spelled out.
 
It horrified even Marty,
who had the worse dossier of them all.
 
But they all had one consistent theme in their lives: enormous
debt.
 
They came together, not because of
any discrimination, Sal had decided, but because of their common interest in
eradicating their overwhelming debt.
 
They looked at Sal.

Sal looked
at Marty.
 
“As you can see,” he said,
“it’s clearly documented that you’re the one who got in touch with them
first.
 
You researched their background,
followed the debt, and pulled an ambulance chase on them.
 
You’re also the one who found that videotape
and decided to release it just after they made their allegations.
 
It was all planned out.
 
We tried to find out who might have put you
up to it, but we couldn’t find any footprints.
 
But I suspect there are some.”

“Nobody put me
up to anything,” Marty was quick to point out.

Too quick
for Sal.
 
He stared at the attorney.
   
“Don’t worry,” he said.
 
“If there’s some fool out there pulling your
string, his ass will cross my path too.
 
Then I’ll double back and cross yours.”

A chill ran
through Marty’s spine when Sal spoke those words.
 
“There’s nobody else,” he repeated.

“For your
sake,” Sal said, “I hope you’re right.”

Marty became
defensive.
 
“Are you threatening me,
sir?” he asked.

“Hell no,”
Sal responded.
 
“Who?
 
Me?
 
I
don’t threaten people.
 
I do, or I don’t
do, but I don’t threaten.”

Then he
looked at his accusers.
 
They were all
terrified now.
 
“My suggestion is that
you drop this sham of a lawsuit and resign your positions in my company.
 
You admit to lying, and move on.
 
But if not, if you prefer to see this joke to
the bitter end, then fine.
 
But here me
clearly.
 
If you go into that courtroom
and lie on me, you’d better understand that I will go into that courtroom and
tell the truth on you.
 
I’ll tell all of
that sordid truth in those cute little packets you have in front of you.
 
And what the courts won’t allow me to tell,
I’ll take it to the media.
 
They’re print
anything, as you already know.”

Sal was
doing all he could to control his anger.
 
He had to make himself clear.
 
He
didn’t have room for any further misunderstandings.
 
“Racial discrimination goes on all over this
country,” he continued.
 
“It happens in
more corporations than any of us in this room could ever imagine.
 
But it wasn’t happening in mine.
 
And I’ll be damned if I allow anybody to make
that claim and get away with it.
 
So go
right ahead with your lawsuit.
 
Hit me
with your best shot.
 
And then I’ll hit
you lying motherfuckers with mine.”

Sal stared
at them a moment longer, and then he left.

The room
fell eerily silent as the reality of who they had the gall to try and swindle
crashed upon them.
 
A whisper would have
been too loud.

Early that
next morning, Gemma, in one of Sal’s big shirts, was studying case law in bed
with her back against the headboard, when her cell phone buzzed.
 
After finishing a paragraph, she picked up
her phone and swiped it.
 
It was breaking
news.
 
Since news had been breaking all
last evening thanks to a hostage situation at a house in Spring Valley, she
almost didn’t bother to read it.
 
But
when she read the headline, and then the ensuing story, her heart soared with
joy.
 
She dropped her phone on the bed,
and hurried to the bathroom.
 
Sal was in
the shower.

“Sal!” she
yelled as she threw open the shower stall door.

Sal had soap
on his hands and was just about to lather his face.
 
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“They
dropped their lawsuit,” Gemma said.
 
“All
five accusers have dropped their lawsuit, Sal!”

Sal
confidently nodded his head.
 
“About damn
time,” he said.

Gemma was still
happy, but somehow his response was too muted.
 
She looked at him askance.
 
“You
knew this was coming,” she said.
  
“Didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t
sure,” Sal said.

“What did
you do, Sal?”

“I didn’t
do
anything!
 
Did I show them the error of their ways?
 
Hell yeah I showed them.
 
And I guess they agreed.”

Gemma
nodded. “Oh, did they.
 
They even
resigned.
 
All five of them.
 
They resigned, Sal.
 
We could not have hoped for a better
outcome.”

“Yeah, but
they still smeared our name.
 
Their asses
still tried to fuck me up.
 
But you’re
right,” he said with a smile.
 
“It’s over
now.”

Gemma smiled
too. “Yes, it is,” she said.
 
“I’m just
amazed at how quickly it happened.”

“Yeah,
well,” Sal said as he looked down at the open front of the shirt she wore,
“truth has a way of rising to the top.”
 
He thought about what was beneath that shirt, namely nothing, and his
penis suddenly came to life.
 
“Truth
always wins out.”

“Now that’s
the truth,” Gemma said, grinning, and was about to turn away.
 
But Sal grabbed her arm.

“What are
you doing?” she asked as Sal pulled her into the shower with him.

“Sal!” she
cried.
 
“What about my shirt?”

“It’s my
shirt,” Sal said with a grin, “and you won’t need it.”
 
He pulled it over her head and tossed it onto
the bathroom floor.
 
Then he began
kissing her, and then her breasts.
 
And
then he began pulling her naked form against his rock hard penis as his fingers
massaged her pussy.

Gemma moved
down, forcing his fingers out of her and her breast to slide from his tongue,
until she was knelt down in front of him.
 
She placed his penis into her mouth and began to give him the kind of
head he craved.
 
He let out an
invigorating sigh, and leaned his head back in ecstasy.
 
And she sucked and licked and took him all
the way in.
 
He was trembling as she did
him.

She was so
expert that he had to stop her before he came in her mouth.
 

He pulled
her back up, guided his fully aroused cock to the tip of her vagina, and then
pushed it in.
 
And his rod began
pleasuring both of them.

He fucked her
long and hard.
 
He couldn’t stop fucking
her.
 
He was so into her body, and so
into the way she made him feel, that it was only as they both began to climax
did he realized he had not even closed the shower door.