Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair (20 page)

Trina glanced at Sal.
 
Sal, too, was surprised by Reno’s lack of
reaction.
 
But Trina kept going.
 
“I wiped my fingerprints off of the lamp and
the doorknob and anything else I remembered touching, and within the hour me
and Jeffrey were heading out of town.
 
When I got far enough away, I went to a payphone, called the Dale police
department, and reported a fight between Iceman and Stokey at Ice’s
apartment.
 
I figured the cops would
arrest Ice and hold him at least overnight, and Stokey wouldn’t be in any shape
to track me down.
 
I would have a chance
to get away.
 
So we got away.
 
We didn’t look back.”

Trina looked at Reno.
 
“I didn’t tell you the whole story when I
told you about Jeffrey.
 
I never told
anybody the whole story.
 
But that was
the real story behind my sudden departure from my hometown.”

“Go on,” Reno said.

“We eventually ended up in Reno, Nevada, Jeffrey
ended up trying to control me just like Ice had tried, and I ended up leaving
him too.
 
I was done with men.
 
I ended up here in Vegas, waiting tables at
Boyzie’s, but that was the main reason why I refused to strip.
 
I didn’t want to have anything to do with
that kind of life. If I could have waited tables in a different place, I would
have.
 
But I had to take what I could get
back then.
 
Then I met you.”
 
Then Trina let out a distressed exhale.
 
“I had no idea Stokey had died from that blow
over the head,” she said, “until I got that newspaper clipping.”

Reno and Sal were stunned.
 
“He died?” Reno asked.

Trina nodded, fighting back tears.
 
“He died.
 
The way I hit him caused his brain to hemorrhage, and he died in that
apartment.
 
I just wanted to knock him
out long enough to get out of town, I swear I did.
 
That’s all I wanted.
 
But I killed him.
 
I just found out, when I read that newspaper
clipping, that I actually killed that man.”

Reno’s heart rammed against his chest.
 
He put his arm around her waist, to comfort
her, but he was still uneasy himself.
 
Trina had murdered that man.
 
In
the eyes of the law, Trina had murdered that man.

“You said the feds were on to your boyfriend Ice?”
Sal asked her.

But Trina was still dealing with what she had
done.
 
“I never dreamed he would die,”
she said.
 
“I never dreamed I would have
caused him to lose his life.
 
Now it wasn’t
just Vern’s blood on my hands, but Stokey’s too.”

Reno rubbed her back, but he was still too intensely
involved with hearing the full story to show the kind of affection she
wanted.
 
When it was a matter of life and
death, and especially Trina’s life and death, affection was the last thing he
was trying to display.
 

Trina felt his chill too.
 
She knew he wouldn’t understand.
 
He always held her to this unrealistic
standard, and he was doing it right now.
 
Context meant nothing to him when it came to her.
 
“That was so long ago, Reno.
 
Many years ago,” she said, trying to get him
to understand.
 
“I was a kid.”

By Reno’s reaction, Trina might have thought he was
judging her, or was gravely disappointed in her.
 
But he wasn’t.
 
He knew where this was leading.
 
He knew what she said about calling the
police and telling them that Iceman Nelson was the person who had hit
Stokey.
 
“Go on,” he said to her.

She was crushed by his reaction, but she went
on.
 
“Ice apparently wasn’t sure what had
happened, or who did what, and he had no idea what had become of me.
 
And he tried to put the blame on me, but they
weren’t interested in me at all.
 
They
felt they had the big fish in Ice, and they arrested him for Stokey’s
murder.
 
Vern’s murder, too, according to
that newspaper clipping, until the coroner ruled her death a suicide.
 
They had no real evidence on Ice either,
except for that anonymous call I made to the cops.
 
But they were glad to lock up a menace like
Ice.
 
He was convicted of the murder I
committed.
 
He served years in prison.”

Reno frowned.
 
This shit just got real to him.
 
Somebody had a powerful reason to take Trina out.
 
And the pain she had to be enduring!
 
He wanted to comfort her, but he was too
terrified for her safety to show it.
 
He
needed the whole story.
 
“How does the
Feds figure into this?” he asked her.

Trina was a little disappointed in his
reaction.
 
But she understood it.
 
Reno was worried about her.
 
He would comfort her when she was no longer
in harm’s way.
 
“At the time of the
murder, what I didn’t know was that Stokey was working for the Feds.
 
He was an FBI informant.”

Reno and Sal both were shocked.
 
“He was a snitch?” Sal asked.

“According to the article, he was.
 
And the Feds had Ice’s apartment wired at the
time of the killing.
 
The only reason the
cops didn’t get a copy of that videotape was because the agents tracking him
killed the feed before the cops arrived.
 
But their videotape, the one they sent to me, clearly showed me hitting
Stokey with the base of that lamp.”

Reno removed his hand from around her and ran both
hands across his face.
 
He looked at
Sal.
 
Sal was in a state of devastation
too.

“And that’s the videotape that surfaced that day at
Champagne’s?” Reno asked.

Trina nodded.
 
“That videotape and the newspaper clipping told about the crime and the
fact that Ice was about to be released from prison.
 
Although the article only said that Stokey
was believed to be an informant for the FBI, those two guys who contacted me
said he was definitely an informant back then.”

Reno’s heart dropped.
  
He looked at his wife.
 
“So they let Ice go down for the murder.
 
They let a man they knew wasn’t guilty serve
years in prison for Stokey’s death.
 
They
buried that tape so that they could catch the big fish.
 
Now they want you to go down for it too?”

“If I don’t pay up, I will,” Trina said.

“How much do they want?” Reno asked.

“Twenty-five million,” Trina responded.

“Fuck,” Sal said, and looked at Reno.
 
“Fuck!”

Tears were in Trina’s eyes.
 
“They said I would get even more years than
Ice received,” she said, “because I let another man be tried and convicted for
a crime I committed.”

“That’s bull,” Sal said.
 
“You didn’t know that snitch had died.”

“But how can she prove it?” Reno asked with anguish
in his voice.
 
“How can she prove it?”

Reno stood up quickly, and began to pace the
room.
 
He also continued to rake his
hands through his hair.
 
He was beside
himself with anguish.
 
Trina could see it
all over his face.

Reno knew this was bad.
 
Crooked agents were the worse scum of the
earth to deal with.
 
And he knew why they
were being so greedy.
 
Back then, Trina
was just a young black girl barely getting by.
 
Now, after revisiting the case, they apparently discovered that she was
a rich’s man’s wife.
 
They wanted big
money because they knew they had Trina dead to rights.
 
They wanted big money because they knew Reno
would pay up easily if it meant protecting his wife.
 
Because they had to know he loved Trina like
that.
 
But how would they know that?
 
Then he suddenly stopped, thought about it,
and then turned to Trina in even more anguish.

“
Good Lord
,”
he said.

Reno had a shocked look on his face, as if he’d just
discovered the answer to the riddle.
 
“What is it?” Trina asked him anxiously.

“What is it?” Sal asked him, anxious too.

“The two guys you met with were the agents who had
wired Stokey?” Reno asked her.

Trina shook her head.
 
“No.
 
Those agents no longer work for the agency, at least that’s what they
told me.
 
They said they were operatives
with the FBI, whatever that means.”

Reno pulled out his cell phone, pulled up the number
of the guy who ran background checks for him, the guy he called his
tracker.
 
It took several rings, but the
guy answered.
 
“It’s Reno.” Reno began
pacing the room again.
 
“I have a
question.”

“Shoot,” the tracker responded on the other end of
the phone.

“The two FBI agents you ran that check on for me?”

“What about them, boss?
 
I’m glad you called about them.”

“What unit did those two guys work out of?
 
Were they just field agents?”

“No, sir.
 
That’s the thing.
 
We just
confirmed it.
 
They aren’t agents at
all.
 
We got that wrong.
 
They’re contract employees for the FBI,
they’re operatives, but they don’t work for the FBI.”

Reno stopped pacing.
 
He knew it.
 
“Which contract?” he
asked.
 
“Notifications?”

The tracker was impressed.
 
“Yes, sir, that’s it exactly.
 
How did you know?
 
We just found out ourselves.
 
They work out of the Notifications unit.
 
But the thing is, boss, they weren’t
headquartered here in Vegas.
 
They were
out of the Mississippi Notifications Unit.
 
But for some reason, they found out something or whatever the reason,
they came here.
 
We tracked their
movements from Mississippi here to Vegas.
 
To the Notifications Unit here in Vegas.”

Reno’s heart pounded.
 
He had a feeling.
 
Now it was confirmed. “Thanks,” he said, and
ended the call.

“What is it, Reno?” Sal asked.
 
Trina was staring at him too.

“What I couldn’t understand,” Reno said, “was why
would that video suddenly surface?
 
Years
ago the FBI decided to bury it.
 
Why
would they bring it up now?”

“Because somebody found out Tree was married to
you.”

“I figured that too.
 
But I figured it was more than that.
 
Then it hit me.”

“What?” Trina asked him.

“Iceman Nelson was getting out of prison,” Reno
said.
 
“Whenever an FBI operative is
killed, and an FBI informant like Stokey could be in that category, all the
family members and especially the witnesses in the case has to be notified
whenever the perpetrator is soon to be released.”

“Because, once he gets out of prison, he might want
revenge on those witnesses?” Trina asked.

“Right,” Reno said with a nod.
 
“Iceman Nelson was being released and the FBI
needed to let the witnesses know.
 
But
the thing is, the FBI often contracts-out that work to various notification
units around the country.
 
We have one
here in Vegas.”

As soon as Reno made that statement, Sal got it
too.
 
He rose to his feet.
 
“Motherfucker!” he said.

Trina, however, didn’t have the history to be
floored yet.
 
But she stood up too.
  
“What is it?” she asked, looking at Sal’s
reaction.
 
Then she looked at her
husband.
 
“What is it, Reno?”

“Anytime somebody associated with the FBI is killed,
and their killer is about to be released from prison, the Notification Units
have a couple of their agents pull the evidence file on that particular case
and notify any witnesses or people who might be at risk before the guy is
released.”

“You told me that part,” Trina said.

“They pulled the file,” Sal said, “and that’s when
they found that tape.
 
It was probably
buried deep down in what was undoubtedly tons of evidence to ensure Ice wasn’t
released any time soon.
 
The two guys blackmailing
you are the two guys who discovered that tape.”

Reno nodded.
 
“According to my tracker, they worked out of the Mississippi
Notifications unit.
 
But then suddenly
they hopped a plane for Vegas.”

“But why,” Trina asked, “if the crime occurred in
Mississippi?”
 
Then she answered her own
question.
 
“Because they realized who was
on the tape.”

“Right,” Sal said, nodding his head.
 
“They ran a background and discovered that
the person who hit Stokey wasn’t Iceman Nelson after all, but was a young lady
who later became Reno Gabrini’s wife.”

But Trina sensed more was at play here, just as Reno
had.
 
“What are you not telling me?” she
asked.

“Those two blackmailing scum-agents weren’t going to
discover that kind of evidence and go rogue,” Sal said.
 
“They weren’t going to attempt to blackmail a
man like Reno on their own.
 
They took that
evidence to a person they already knew was going rogue, and would have no
problem whatsoever blackmailing Ree.”

“Who?” Trina asked.

“Kim Galecki,” Sal said.
 
And then he looked at Reno.
 
“Am I right?”

Reno nodded.
 
“That’s what it’s smelling like to me.”

But Trina still didn’t understand. “Who’s Kim
Galecki?”

“The head of the Notifications unit,” Reno
said.
 
“She’s the head of the Vegas
division.”

“And she’s a woman scorned,” Sal added.

When Sal made that pronouncement, Trina looked at
her husband.
 
“What’s going on, Reno? You
know this woman personally?”

Reno nodded.
 
“I know her.”

“But if you know her like that, why would she want
to blackmail you?”

“Because I left her.”
 
Then he added: “After I met you.”

Trina stared at him.
 
“She was your girlfriend when you met me?
 
When you
slept
with me?”

“She wasn’t my girlfriend.
 
She was a married lady, and still is a
married lady.
 
She was somebody I
screwed, Tree.”

“She, however, had a different take on it,” Sal
said.

Trina stared at Reno for an explanation.

“She was somebody I screwed,” he said, “who called
herself falling in love with me.”

“And who called herself stalking him for many months
after he broke it off,” Sal added.
 
“He
had to literally threaten to kill her ass before she finally let it go.
 
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that
the two notification agents knew about that connection Kim had with Reno.
 
Word spreads in bureaucracies.
 
They also probably figured she would be more
than willing to exploit that connection.
 
If the price was right.”

“And twenty-five million dollars,” Reno said, “is
the right price.”

But Trina still had so many questions.
 
“But why would you sleep with a female
associated with the FBI?” she asked.
 
“I
don’t get that.
 
I thought the Feds were
always the enemy.”

“They are,” Reno said.
 
“But I was keeping my enemy close.
 
She gave up intel when I needed it.
 
I knew what I was doing.”

Just as Reno was surprised by Trina’s lack of
innocence in her youth, she was always surprised by the calculating way he
handled women of his past.
 
He didn’t
seem like that kind of person.
 
But he
was.
 
When he felt he had to be, Reno was
the most ruthless man she’d ever met.
 
“So because I was your wife, they didn’t jump at the chance to arrest
me, but to blackmail me?”

Reno nodded.
 
The idea that she was that close to jeopardy was still unsettling to
him.
 
“If you had been Sally Sue from
around the block, they would have hauled you in and became heroes for
uncovering what those other crooked agents tried to suppress.”

“But when they discovered that you were the wife of
Reno Gabrini,” Sal said, “the game changed.
 
Fuck being heroes.
 
They saw pay
dirt.
 
They saw early retirement.”

“But they needed somebody with the heft, with the
balls, to pull it off,” Reno said.
 
“I’m
not bragging, but I have a reputation.
 
They knew they couldn’t just fuck with me.
 
They went to Kim.
 
Like Sal said, they probably heard that she
not only would fuck with me, but had fucked me.
 
It was all about the money for them, and the fact that they figured
Kim’s connection to me could garner ten times more money than they could.
 
It was all about the money for them.”

“Money was probably a big part of it for Kim too,”
Sal said.
 
“But knowing her ass, she saw
sweet revenge even more than that.”

Reno and Sal stared at each other.
 
They knew what had to be done.
 
“Call Debrosiac,” he said to Sal. “Tell him
to track down those two notification agents and bring them in.”

“Same safe house?”

“Same one,” Reno responded.
 
“But tell Debrosiac to get himself and
another crew over to Jimmy’s.”

Trina’s heart began to hammer.
 
“You don’t think they would target the
children?”

“No,” Reno said.
 
“Hell no.
 
They’re greedy.
 
They’re gangster wannabes.
 
But they aren’t stupid.”

“I take it I’m staying here with Tree,” Sal said.

Reno nodded.
 
“She’s
the one they want.
 
I won’t worry if
she’s here with you.”
 
Then Reno ran the
back of his hand across his tired eyes.
 
He kept feeling as if he was missing something.
 
“I can only pray I’m covering all the bases.”

Sal could see his distress.
 
Sal was no touchy feely man, but he patted
him on the back.
 
“Stop worrying,” he
said, pulling out his cell phone to call Debrosiac.
 
“We’ll get those bastards.”

As Sal moved off to make his phone call, Reno went
over to Trina.
 
He placed his arms on
either side of her face.

“None of this is your fault,” he said to her.
 
“They’re a bunch of opportunists.
 
That’s all.
 
They weren’t interested in warning you, or even arresting you
considering the tape.
 
They’re interested
in a shake down.
 
They told you Jimmy was
their test case, to see how I would react to a small sum.
 
Then they sent you that newspaper clipping
and that video, figuring you would run straight to me.
 
They figured wrong.”

“They told me I would do Life for that murder, plus
the years Ice served that should have been my time.”
 
Tears dropped from Trina’s eyes.
 
“They said I wouldn’t see our children grow
up, Reno.
 
They said I wouldn’t hold
Maddie again, or Jimmy or Val.
 
Or you,”
Trina said and broke down in tears.
 
Reno
pulled her into his big arms.

As he held her, he and Sal looked at each
other.
 
Sal was across the room, still on
the telephone, but he knew the deal.
 
It
was real to them now.
 
They understood
the implications.
 
And Reno was
especially thrown.

Trina pulled back and looked at him.
 
He wiped her tears away.
 
“They want twenty-five million dollars,
Reno,” she said.

Reno nodded.
 
“You told me.
 
They’re being
ridiculous.”

“That’s why I met with the first guy twice, and then
his partner,” Trina said.
 
“To get them
to lower that price.
 
I wanted to pay
them off without involving you.
 
But they
wouldn’t budge.
 
Your husband can raise
it, they said.
 
They just knew you’d find
a way.
 
But I didn’t want you to know
anything about this.”