Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) (15 page)

“Why?” Jimmy asked.

“Just do it,” Reno said and hurried out of
the home’s backdoor.

Jimmy hated being kept in the dark, but he
knew he had to trust his father in matters like these.
 
So he waited a few minutes as he had been
instructed, and then he went outside.
 
He
left the front door open, and began talking as if Reno was standing at that
door.

“But Dad, you don’t understand,” he was
saying as loudly as he could.

Across the street, two houses down, a blue
Ford Taurus was parked at the curb.
 
The
man behind the steering wheel was staring at Val’s house and watching Jimmy
intently.
 
His car was so tinted that he
knew he couldn’t be clearly seen at all.
 

The backdoor of the car suddenly opened,
Reno jumped inside, and before the man could reach for his gun, Reno had his
own gun at the back of his head.
 
“Move
and you’re one dead motherfucker,” Reno said.
 
“So give it your best shot.
 
Please.”

The man lifted his hands.
 
“What do you want?”

“Give me your gun.”

The man did as he was told.

“And your other one.”

The man reached into his sock and handed
Reno his backup gun.

“Now put your hands where I can see
them.”
 

The man placed his hands on the steering
wheel.

Reno pulled out his cell phone.
 
Called his security chief, told him to get a
team over to Val’s.
 
Then he called
Jimmy.
 
He could see Jimmy still standing
at the front door, talking believably to nobody.

Jimmy answered his phone quickly.
 
“Where are you?”

“Across the street.
 
In the blue Ford.
 
Close Val’s door and get over here.”

Jimmy, amazed, looked across the
street.
 
He hadn’t even noticed any
Ford.
 
Then he quickly closed the door, although
Reno’s pop-a-lock device wouldn’t allow it to lock anymore, and made his way to
the car.
 
When he got into the backseat,
he saw that his father had a gun to the man’s head.

“Who is he?” Jimmy asked.

“Who are you?” Reno asked the man.

 
“I’m
minding my own business, what are you doing?”

“Where’s the girl?”

“What girl?”

Reno slammed the man’s head against the
steering wheel.
 
A cut ensued and blood
immediately began to trickle out.
 
“Where’s the girl?”

“What girl?”

Reno slammed the man again, this time
drawing more blood.
 

The man was anguished now.
 
“What’s your problem?
 
I told you I don’t know nothing about no
girl!”

“If you don’t want to die today, you’d
better.”
 
Before Reno could finish his
sentence, the sound of a car slamming on brakes and then a flurry of gunfire
erupted.
 
Reno reacted by slamming
Jimmy’s body down into the floor of the car, and then he got on top of his son,
shielding him.
 

The driver tried to escape the car, but
Reno fired back at the shooters and then grabbed the driver and slung him into
the backseat, where all of the shots were being directed.
 
The guy immediately became the human shield,
taking a series of bullets, as Reno protected Jimmy.
  
When the shooters realized their error, that
they were actually shooting their own man, the wheels squealed again, and the
car took off.

Reno didn’t breathe during the entire
ambush, because his son was in that car, but now he not only breathe, he took
charge again.
 
“Drive,” he ordered a
shaken Jimmy.
 
“Get us out of here before
the cops come!”

Jimmy jumped over the seat, cranked up the
car, and they took off.

Reno grabbed the wounded driver and placed
him onto the backseat, pointed the gun at him again, and wanted answers.
 
He knew the guy only had a matter of minutes
to be on this earth, and he had to act quickly.

“Where is Valerie?” Reno asked him.

“I’m shot,” the driver was moaning.

Reno pressed the gun against one of his
wounds, causing him to scream in pain.
 
“Where’s the girl, I’m not fucking with you anymore!
 
Where’s the girl?”

“I don’t know,” the man yelled out, wincing
as he did.
 
“I’m shot!”

“We’ll drop you at the hospital if you tell
me where they took the girl.”

“Take me to the hospital!”

“Talk then motherfucker!
 
Where’s the girl?”

“I told you I don’t know.
 
They told me to watch out, let them know if
Jimmy showed up.
 
They said they just
wanted to scare his old man.”

Reno frowned.
 
Jimmy, who was driving furiously, looked
through the rearview.
 
“Scare
 
me?” Reno asked.

“That’s what they said,” the man said.
 
“They wanted to scare his old man.”

“Who wanted to?”

“I don’t know.”

Reno pressed into the man’s wound
again.
  
The man screamed out in pain
again. “I don’t know,” he yelled.
 
“It
was a blind call.
 
I keep an eye out on the
place and then the money would be in my account.
 
That’s all I know.
 
That’s it!”

“Who do you work for?”

“I work alone.
 
I’ve never worked for anybody.”

“Give me a name, I’m not fucking with you
now!”

“I don’t have a name!
 
I only run in the blind.
 
Please get me some help!
 
I’m dying here!”

Reno leaned back.
 
Pain had a way of eclipsing all else.
 
He was now convinced the guy knew nothing
more.
  
He looked around, waited until Jim
turned a corner on a side street, then he opened the car door and pushed the
man out of the door.
 
The car kept going
as Reno closed the door back.
 

Jimmy, stunned, looked at his father.
 
“I thought we were going to drop him at the
hospital.”

“A man who tried to kill us?
 
Yeah, right.
 
His ass better be glad I dropped him at all.
 
No mercy, Jimmy, remember that.
 
In that bar brawl, that drunk was hitting on
your woman.
 
You beat his ass, and that’s
enough of a payment for that crime.
 
But
in a case like this, when you’re dealing with fuckers who would just as soon
take your life, you’d better take theirs.”

Jimmy nodded.
 
“Yes, sir,” he said, as he looked through the
car’s mirror at the man lying in the street.
 
Soon to be dead, if not dead already.
 
Those bullets might have been positioned enough to give the guy a few
more minutes to live, but that push from this car took those minutes away.
 
But then Jimmy thought about Val, and where
in the world was she, and he had no mercy.
 
He glanced at his father through the rearview.
 
“What do we do now?”

“Go home,” Reno said, flustered and even
more concerned.
 
“We go home and we
regroup.”

TEN

Trina was sitting the casserole in the oven
when she heard the front door open and close.
 
“That you Reno?”

“Where are you?” Reno yelled back.

“Kitchen.”

When Reno entered the kitchen, looking as
if he’d been in a battle, and Jimmy was with him, looking the same, her heart
dropped.
 
She began to remove her cooking
gloves.
 
“What’s wrong?”

Reno sat at the kitchen’s center
island.
 
Jimmy stood beside his father,
pressed his hands face down on the countertop, and dropped his head.
 
He was exhausted too.

Trina looked at her husband.
 
“Reno, what happened?”

“Val’s gone.”

“Gone?
 
What do you mean she’s gone?”

“She’s been snatched.
 
Kidnapped.
 
Somebody took her.”

Trina placed her hand to her heart,
shocked.
  
She looked at Jimmy.

“We went to her house and it was
ransacked.
 
There had been some struggle,
that’s for sure.
 
And then we were
ambushed.”

Trina frowned.
 
“Ambushed?
 
You mean the kidnappers were still there?”

“Let’s just say they came back.”
 
Reno’s cell phone rang.
 
He looked at the Caller ID, and then answered
quickly.
 
“Yeah?”

Trina looked at Jimmy.
 
“She’s going to be okay, Jimmy.”
 
Jimmy looked up at her.
 
Tears were in his eyes.
 
Trina reached out and squeezed his hand.
 
“You know your father.
 
He’ll take care of it.”

Reno finished his conversation and killed
the call.

Jimmy looked at him.
 
“Who was it?”

“My guys.
 
They were able to get my car away from Val’s house.”

“No cops were there?”

“Not at her house, no.
 
Why would they?
 
A few neighbors called only after they
started hearing shooting, not at Val’s house, but on the street.
 
Nobody looked out to see what was going on
until the shooting completely stopped, and by then we were gone.
 
But they did identify the car that had been
parked there.
 
But the car wasn’t my
Porsche, but that blue Taurus.
 
The cops
are swarming the area looking for that blue Taurus.”

“You think they’ll find it here?”

“Here?” Trina asked.

“We brought it here,” Jimmy told her.
 
“It’s here.”

“Not anymore,” Reno said.
 
“My guys took it and disposed of it as soon
as we drove up.”

But Trina was still concerned.
 
“But why would you bring a car that was
involved in a crime to the PaLargio?
 
We
don’t need that kind of heat, Reno.”

“What heat?
 
A blue Taurus was here.
 
So
what?
 
It was here, just like thousands
of cars are here every day.
 
Now it’s
gone, just like thousands of cars come and go every day.
 
I know what I’m doing.”

Trina would never dispute that.

But Val was on Jimmy’s mind.
 
“What about Val, Pop?
 
Where could she be?
 
They said they took her to scare you.”

Trina frowned.
 
“To scare you?
 
Why would they think they could scare you?”

Reno shook his head and ran his hands
through his messy hair.
 
“Who knows.
 
It could be anybody, everybody.”

“But why would they think kidnapping Val
would scare you?”

“Yeah, Pop,” Jimmy said.
 
“Kidnapping Ma, yeah, I can see them doing
that to scare you.
 
But Val?
 
Val’s my woman, not yours.”
 
Then Jimmy stared at his father.
 
“Maybe they saw you at that bowling alley the
other night, when you were grinding on Val.”

Reno looked at his son.
 
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.
 
Yup.
 
Gotta be.”
 
Then Reno became
angry. “Get the fuck out of my face with that nonsense!
 
If anybody’s trying to send me a message,
that means they know me.
 
And no serious
fucker alive will think kidnapping my son’s girlfriend is going to scare
me.
 
It’ll anger me, but it for damn sure
won’t scare me.”

Jimmy knew it was true too.
 
Which made it all the more baffling.
 
“Maybe the guy was lying,” Jimmy said.
 
“Maybe it wasn’t like he said.”

“What did he say exactly?” Trina asked.

Jimmy couldn’t remember exactly what the
guy had said.
 
He looked at his
father.
 

Reno exhaled.
 
“He said whoever took Val did so to scare me.”

“So who are they?
 
Did the guy say?”

Reno shook his head.
 
“He doesn’t know.
 
They paid him on the blind.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when they pay without letting the
person they’re hiring know who hired them,” Jimmy responded.
 
“Mobsters do it all the time.”

Reno glanced at Jimmy.
 
How would he know what mobsters did all the
time?

“Uncle Sal told me,” Jimmy said, in answer
to his father’s unasked question.

“But it still doesn’t make sense,” Trina
said.
 
“Everybody knows you’re married,
and they know Val isn’t your wife.”
 
Then
Trina had a thought, a very clear thought.
 
“Oh, my goodness,” she said.

Reno and Jimmy both looked at her.
 
“What is it?” Reno asked her.

She looked at Reno.
 
“Tell me exactly what that guy said.”

“I told you already.”

“Tell it to me the way he told it to you,
Reno.”

Reno looked at Tree.
 
Anybody else and he would be annoyed.
 
But not with Tree.
 
She was too serious a woman, in too serious a
situation.
 
“He said the people who paid
him said they wanted to scare Jimmy’s old man.
 
That’s the way he put it.”

“So he never used your name?”

“Why would he need to use my name?
 
How many old mans does Jimmy have?
 
I’m his. . .” And then, as quickly as it
occurred to Trina, it was now occurring to Reno.
 
“I’ll be damn.”

“What?” Jimmy asked.
 
“What is it?”

Reno looked at him.
 
“Fred Ridgeway,” he said.

Jimmy frowned.
 
“Fred Ridgeway?
 
But he used to be my . . .” And now Jimmy got
it too.
  
And he started talking, as if
he had to convince himself.
 
“He used to
be married to my mother.
 
He was my stepfather.”
 

Then he looked at Reno.
 
“For the first seventeen years of my life,
before you even knew I existed, I thought he was my father.
 
I thought he was my old man,” Jimmy added,
now convinced too.
 
“They weren’t trying
to scare you, Dad.
 
They were trying to
scare my stepfather.”

Trina was nodding.
 
“Right,” she said.
 
“Whoever snatched Val knew you back in the
day, or they know you only through Fred Ridgeway, not Reno.”

“But why?” Jimmy asked, confused.
 
“I haven’t heard from him in months.”

“You still have his number?” Reno asked.

“Yeah.
 
I think so.”

“Call him,” Reno ordered.

Jimmy quickly pulled out his cell phone,
searched for and ultimately found the number, and then gave his stepfather a
call.

“Put it on Speaker,” Trina ordered.

Jimmy did that too.
 
And within seconds of the ringing, Fred
Ridgeway’s voice was on the line.

“Hello?”

“Dad, hey.”
 
Jimmy felt guilty calling him that, especially in front of Reno, but it
was what it was.
 
Fred raised him and, he
felt, raised him right.
 

“Jim, hey, how you doing, son?”

“Not so great.”

There was a pause on the line.
 
“What happened?”

Jimmy looked at Reno.
 
Reno nodded that it was okay to go
there.
 
“They took my girlfriend,” Jimmy
said.
 
“They said they took her to scare you.”

There was another hesitation.
 
“Damn,” Fred finally said.

Jimmy’s heart sank.
 
“Then it’s true?”

“Where are you now, Jimmy?”

“Why?
 
You know where my girl is?
 
You
know who took her?”

“We need to talk.”

But Jimmy was in near-panic mode.
 
“Talk?
 
What do we need to talk about?
 
Who took Val?
 
Do you know who
took her?”

“I know, yes.
 
And don’t worry, they won’t hurt her.
 
Not yet anyway.
 
If I comply.”

“Comply with what?
 
What are you talking about?”

Reno could see Jimmy was about to jump out
of his skin with anxiousness.
 
He took
over the call.
 
“Comply with what, Fred?”
Reno asked.

“Who is this?” Fred responded.

“This is Dominic Gabrini.
 
Jimmy’s father.”

There was another pause.
 
“I’d rather deal directly with Jimmy,
thank-you.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you’d rather
do!
 
You’re dealing with me.
 
Now tell me what’s going on.”

There was a sigh on the other end.
 
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

“What wasn’t?”

“It’s messed up.
 
They messed up.”

“Where are you?” Reno asked.
 
“Still in Nebraska?”

“Nebraska?
 
No. I mean, I still live there, but that’s not where I am.
 
I’m here.
 
In Vegas.”

Reno and Jimmy looked at each other.

“I want Jimmy to come to me,” Fred
said.
 
“So we can talk.”

“Yeah, so they can take my son too?
 
As insurance?
 
You’re out of your
got
damn
mind.
 
You come to him.
 
At the PaLargio.
 
And come now.
 
Because if something happens to that girl, to Jimmy’s woman, it’s going
to be hell to pay.
 
Your hell.
 
My pay.”

And in less than half an hour, Fred
Ridgeway was being escorted upstairs to the penthouse, by Reno’s men.
 

Although Jimmy and his stepfather hugged,
there were otherwise no formalities or small talk whatsoever.
 
This was a matter of business.
 
And not just for Reno and Trina, but for Jimmy
as well.
 
Especially for Jimmy.
 
He still cared about his stepfather, but he
had to know what happened to Val.
 
They
were in the living area of the penthouse, in the great room, standing.
 
Fred wasn’t offered a seat.

“Okay, talk,” Reno said.
 
“What’s going on?”

Fred, a lanky black man in his forties,
smiled.
 
“Can I at least have a drink
first?”

But Reno didn’t even dignify that
request.
 
“Where’s Valerie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who has her and what do they want in
return?”

“These guys I owe debts to.
 
They took her.”

“Why would they take her?
 
To rope Jimmy in?”

“Not Jimmy,” Fred said to Reno.
 
“You.”