Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 (3 page)

“I hate it,
but it’s the only work I could get,” Amy responded.
 
“I have applications all over the place, but
you know Vegas.
 
It’s a small town.
 
I was with Reno a long time.
 
To suddenly be terminated like that made me
poison in the industry.
 
So I had to get
outside of the industry to help pay my bills, until something else comes
along.”

“I had hoped
to hire you on my staff,” Trina said.
 
“I
knew how good a worker you were, and I know how badly you and Quinn had
clashed.
 
But you cancelled the
interview.”

Amy knew
that wasn’t the truth either.
 
She knew
Reno had gotten wind of her scheduled meeting with Trina, and he back-channeled
and cancelled it himself.
 
He even warned
her to stay away.
 
He was so afraid the
truth would come out, and that it would ruin his precious marriage, that there
was no telling what he might try.
 
So she
stayed away.
 
But she couldn’t tell Trina
that now.
 
She needed her.
 
“It was a very traumatic time for me,” she
said.
 
“I’m just starting to get back on
my feet again.”

Trina knew
what it felt like to be powerless.
 
She
used to be a waitress herself when she first met Reno, and she had to claw and
scratch for every dime she earned.
 
She
also suspected that Quinn Chan, Amy’s former assistant who was now Reno’s
right-hand woman, had sabotaged Amy.
 
Reno denied it, and so did Quinn, but Trina still had her
suspicions.
 
But when Amy didn’t show up
for their interview, and wouldn’t return her phone calls, Trina moved on
too.
 
She had wanted to help Amy, and to
hear her side of the story, but she wasn’t going to beg her to accept the help.

There were
also rumors that Amy had had an affair with Reno, and that was why he fired
her, but Trina suspected Quinn of spreading that lie as well.
 
Reno made clear that the rumor itself,
whomever started it, was a big fat lie, and Trina believed him.
 
But Amy was too good a worker to be cast
aside as easily as Reno had tossed her, especially since Quinn was involved in
the firing.
 
Trina always did like
Amy.
 
She wanted to hear her side of the
story.
 
“Would you be interested in
getting into management, Amy?” Trina asked her.

Her eyes
brightened. “Oh, yes, ma’am.
 
Very much
so.
 
I’ve been putting in applications
everywhere.”

“What does
your schedule look like this week?”

“I’m off
tomorrow.”
 
Amy could hardly contain her
joy.

Trina
nodded.
 
“That could work.
 
Think you can come by Champagne’s and see
me?”

Amy
smiled.
 
“I would love to, Mrs.
Gabrini!”
 
But then she frowned.
 
“Do you want me to meet you at the
Champagne’s inside the PaLargio, or the one over on this side of town?”

“The one
over here,” Trina said.

Amy was
relieved.
 
“In that case,” she said, “I’d
be very pleased to meet with you.”

“No
promises,” Trina made clear.
 
“But we’ll
talk.”

Amy
nodded.
 
“Thank-you so much,” she
said.
 
“You don’t know how much this
means to me.”
 

Reno Gabrini’s
office at the PaLargio was filled with managers and aides and was its usual
chaos.
 
His oldest son, Jimmy Mack
Gabrini, was in the office with him, trying to get him to change his mind.
 
He knew it was an uphill battle.

“But it was
a mistake, Pop,” Jimmy was saying as he stood beside his father’s desk.
 
“Wally didn’t mean it.
 
It was a mistake.”

“Where?”
Reno asked one of the three assistants that had contracts for him to sign.
 
He had already read the first one.

“Sign right
there,” the assistant said.
 
“One week
only, with option to extend.”

“Good,” Reno
said as he signed.
 
“Now get out of
here.”

The
assistant smiled and headed out, making room for another assistant with another
contract for him to review and sign.
 

“Pop!” Jimmy
said when it appeared as if Reno was going to read the contract instead of deal
with his issue.

But Reno was
already upset.
 
“Don’t you
Pop
me,” he said.
 
“I told you that shit wouldn’t work, but you
kept doing it.”

“He’s a
friend.”

“And you
don’t mix friends with business.
 
Not
ever! How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“But, Pop,
you can’t just fire him.”

“Wanna
bet?”
 
Reno was reading the contract in
front of him.

“He knows
better now,” Jimmy said.
 
“I told him you
don’t play that.
 
But he didn’t mean any
harm.
 
He thought he was being cool with
the girls by giving them free stuff.”

“By giving
them
my
stuff, you mean,” Reno
corrected him.
 
“Free my ass.”

“But if
you’ll give him a second chance, I’ll make sure it never happens again.”

Reno’s big,
tired blue eyes looked warily at his son.
 
“I told you not to hire your friends in the first place, James.
 
I told you that repeatedly.
 
But you kept hiring them.
 
Over and over.
 
You’re the floor manager now, so I let you
take care of it.
 
But you didn’t do your
job.
 
You hired wrong and you didn’t cut
your losses when it was obvious you hired wrong.
 
He’s fired and he stays fired.”

Jimmy wanted
to fight harder for his friend’s job, but arguing with his father was like
arguing with the Statue of Liberty.
 
It
was over for Wally.
 
That was all there
was to it.
 
“Yes, sir,” he finally said.

The door to
Reno’s office opened, and Quinn Chan, his senior executive assistant, who
supervised the other assistants, peered inside.
 
“He’s here, boss,” she said.

Reno looked
up.
 
Quinn was a beautiful African-Asian
woman, very perceptive, very smart.
 
“Where did you put him?” he asked her.

“Presidential
Suite.
 
With all the trappings.”

Jimmy was
floored.
 
“The P suite?
 
But that’s for dignitaries only.
 
The President of the United States.
 
The Queen of England!”

Reno stood
up and grabbed his suit coat from off of the back of his chair.

“Who’s in
the P suite, Dad?” Jimmy was dying to know.
 
“I didn’t see any dignitary on the manifest for today.”

“Change it
to one week only,” Reno said to his assistant as he put on his suit coat.

“But, sir,”
his assistant said, “they’re expecting the final terms today.
 
They thought it was a done deal.”

“They
thought wrong,” Reno responded, pulling his shirtsleeves beyond his coat
sleeve.
 
“It’s not done until I sign it,
and I’m not signing that until it’s changed.
 
Change it to one week only.”

“Dad,” Jimmy
asked, “who’s in the P suite?”

Reno began
to walk from behind his desk.
 
His
assistant looked at another assistant and they both began to panic.
 
“But, sir,” one of them said to Reno, who
ignored her.
 
She looked at Quinn for
help.

Quinn looked
at her boss as he approached her.
 
“I
don’t think the kid will agree to sign a one-week-only, Reno,” she said.
 
“He sold lots of records.
 
He fully expects a term-of-show contract.”

“I don’t
give a fuck what he expects,” Reno responded with a frown on his face.
 
“He’s not running this, I’m running
this.
 
And I don’t care how many records
he sold.
 
I never heard of him before and
neither did anybody I asked.
 
He gets one
week to prove himself.
 
If he’s good and
the tickets are selling like hotcakes, we’ll extend the terms.
 
If he’s as good as he claims to be, he
shouldn’t worry about it.
 
But I’m not
putting the PaLargio on the hook for a term-of-show until I see what kind of
fan base the kid really has.
 
One week
only.”

Quinn, too,
knew when arguing with Reno Gabrini was futile.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said, as Reno walked past her out of the office and she
and Jimmy followed behind him.
 
She
looked back, at the assistants, and shrugged her shoulder.
 
Nothing she could do about it.
 
But that didn’t ease the anguish on their
faces.
 
They were the ones who had to
break the news to the obnoxious pop star.

Outside of
the office, Jimmy hurried up beside his father.
 
“So who is it?” he asked.
 
“Who’s
so big that you would put him up in the best suite in the entire hotel?”

“Mick
Sinatra.”

“But who’s
that?
 
I never heard of any Mick
Sinatra!”

“He’s Sal
and Tommy’s uncle on their mother’s side.”

Jimmy
frowned.
 
“But their mother’s dead.
 
And when she was alive she hated them.
 
They wouldn’t even let Uncle Sal attend her
funeral.
 
Why would you want to cater to
her brother?”

“Because I
attended the funeral,” Reno said as they made their way to his private
elevator.
 
“I couldn’t stand Sprig
either, but Sal wanted somebody from the family to go.
 
Your Uncle Tommy wasn’t about to do it, you
know how stubborn Tommy can be.
 
So it
fell on me.
 
For Sal, I went to their
mother’s funeral.
 
That’s where I met
Sinatra.”
 
He swiped his keycard at the
elevator, the doors opened, and he, Quinn, and Jimmy walked on.

“But that
still doesn’t answer my question,” Jimmy said as the elevator doors closed them
in.
 
“What entitles him to the P
suite?”
 
It was obvious to Jimmy that his
father was holding something back.

“Well,
Pop?
 
What gives?”

“Nothing
gives,” Reno responded.
 
“He’s family.”

Jimmy
frowned.
 
“How is he family?”

“He’s Sal’s
uncle on his mother’s die.
 
That makes
him your uncle.”

“Pop, Sal
isn’t even my uncle.
 
He would have to be
your brother or Ma’s brother to be my uncle.”

“But you
call him uncle.”

“Because
y’all act like brothers.
 
That’s
different.
 
And besides, if this Mick
Sinatra is on Sal’s mother’s side of the family, he’s no blood relative of
ours.”

“But he’s
family, all right?
 
He’s your uncle, four
times removed, or your cousin five times removed, or however it goes.
 
He’s Sal’s mother’s brother.
 
Sal’s uncle.
 
So whatever that makes him to you, that’s what he is.”

Jimmy looked
at a smiling Quinn and shook his head.
 
“You have street smarts and that savvy business sense in spades, Pop,”
he said to his father.
 
“But book
smarts?”

“That ain’t
me,” Reno said.

“That ain’t
you,” Jimmy agreed.
 
But then his look
turned serious again.
 
“So because you
met this Mick Sinatra at a funeral,” Jimmy said, “you’re suddenly tight with
him?”

“I don’t
know about tight,” Reno said.
 
“He’s not
that kind of guy.
 
But I heard of him
back in the day.
 
He was known as Mick
the Tick back then because of his explosive temper.
 
He’s a legend where I come from.
 
Back then if you crossed him, you were
dead.
 
Period.
 
He was crazy like that.
 
I had no idea he was a Sinatra until I saw
him at the funeral and Sal’s cousin Brent introduced us.
 
He was just Mick the Tick to me before then.”

“Let me
guess.
 
And you two hit it off,” Jimmy
said.

“I don’t
know about all of that either,” Reno said.
 
“We had a drink together, we talked.
 
I told him to drop by whenever he’s passing through Vegas again.
 
He gave me a call last night.
 
He said he’d be in town for a couple of
days.”

That still
didn’t make sense to Jimmy.
 
“And you set
him up in the Presidential?” he asked.

Reno
frowned.
 
Too many questions.
 
“What are you worrying about it for?
 
Stop worrying about it.
 
He’s in the Presidential, that’s all you need
to know.
 
Your ass need to worry about
your own responsibilities and stop meddling in mine.”

“I was just
asking a question!”

“Stop asking
questions.
 
You don’t need to know
everything.
 
It’s not healthy.”

Jimmy
laughed.
 
“You sound like a straight-up gangster,
Pop,” he said.
 
“As if, because I ask too
many questions, you’re going to break my leg like some mob thug.”

Reno looked
at his son with a smile on his face.
 
“Stranger things have happened.”

“Yeah.
 
Like sons killing daddies.”

Quinn
laughed.

Reno’s smile
left.
 
“You’re trying to be funny?” he
asked.
 
“You’re a funny guy now?
 
A fucking comedian?”

“Stop asking
so many questions,” Jimmy said, trying hard not to laugh.
 
He loved it when his father was stumped.

But then the
elevator doors opened, and Reno stepped out first.
 
Jimmy and Quinn followed, but then Jimmy
pulled Quinn slightly back, leaving Reno ahead of them.

Quinn was an
attractive woman of African and Asian descent, with long black hair, and small,
but pretty eyes.
 
Although she was in her
thirties and was close to his father’s age, which made her years older than
Jimmy, he used to have a monster crush on her.
 
And she was more than willing too.
 
She even propositioned him.
 
But
that was before he met Val.
 
He shut that
door down, after his marriage.
 
“Why is
Pop putting some man I never heard of in the P suite?” he asked her.
 
“And please don’t tell me it’s because he’s
kin to Uncle Sal.
 
Pop don’t even put
Uncle Tommy up in the Presidential, and he loves and respects Uncle Tommy above
any man alive.”

Quinn
smiled.
 
Jimmy was very perceptive, just
like his old man.
 
“Know how the Feds are
always insinuating that your father is Mafia?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Mick
Sinatra isn’t Mafia, no doubt about it, but he’s gangster inside out, even to a
greater extent than your Dad was letting on.
 
He runs what they call the Pennsylvania Poltergeist, and he runs it from
Pittsburg to Philly and half of the rest of the East Coast too.”

“Why in the
world do they call it the Poltergeist?”

“Because his
network is like a ghost.
 
Nobody sees it,
nobody knows a thing about it, but it’s there.”