Until You Come Back To Me, Book 5 (18 page)

“Every
man I know.
 
And Reno’s army too.”

“But
nothing?”

“Nothing,”
Sal said with distress.
 
“It’s nightfall
now, and I don’t know where she is.”
 
A
frown appeared on his face.
 
“Why don’t
they call me, Tommy?
 
Why don’t they ask
for my life in place of hers?
 
I’d kill
myself right in front of them if it’ll free Gemma.
 
They need to tell me something!
 
But there’s no word, no chatter, nothing.”

Tommy
squeezed Sal’s arm harder, and Sal appreciated his closeness.
 
All their lives Tommy had been the favored
son.
 
From his movie star great looks, to
his intellect, to his great body, he was always thought of as the golden
child.
 
Sal had the strength, people
would declare, but Tommy had everything else.
 
But they were wrong.
 
In times
like these, Tommy was a rock to Sal.

“Why
don’t you get some rest, Sal.
 
Go lay
down. You won’t be any good to her exhausted like this.”

But
Sal was already shaking his head.
 
“I
can’t sleep,” he said, heading for a chair beside the sofa.
 
“There’s no way Gemma could be out there
somewhere, needing me . . .” He couldn’t continue his thought.
 
The thought itself was too painful to utter.

Tommy
sat on the arm of the chair beside Sal.
 
“So what do we do?” Sal asked Reno and Tommy, the two older men he
viewed as wiser than himself.

“We
figure out what’s next,” Tommy said.
 
“Where did you and Reno go tonight?
 
Jimmy said something about Gemma’s mentor?”

“Yeah,”
Sal said.
 
“We checked him out first.”

“Blanks?”

“Big
time.
 
He was more interested in calling
the FBI to offer assistance than anything we had to say.”

“Well
do you think he’ll do that?” Tommy asked, concerned.
 
“Do you think he’ll call in the Feds?”

“He
cares about Gemma,” Sal said, “that’s for sure.
 
But I think Reno made it clear enough to him that we can do a better job
of finding her.
 
The cops will only be in
the way.
 
I think he got the message.”

“That’s
the only person you guys could come up with?”

“On
her side?” Sal asked.
 
“Yeah.
 
I don’t know why we even started there.
 
Reno thought it would be a grand idea.”

“I
thought we should begin with the person kidnapped,” Reno explained.
 
“It’s not always all about you, Sal.
 
Gemma is a defense attorney.
 
It could have been all about some case she
tried, anything, and since this Rory Calhoun hadn’t been in town long, I
thought he was worth exploring.”

Tommy
looked at Sal.
 
“What about that case you
were telling me about?
 
The tape and
Taiwan and all of that?”

“That
got resolved in Taiwan,” Sal said.
 
“It
was bloody, but it got resolved.”

“You
got the tape?”

“We
got it.”

“Could
there be somebody out there seeking revenge for what happened in Taiwan?” Tommy
asked.
 
“For the way you went about
getting that tape?”

Sal
was shaking his head.
 
“I had men
listening for chatter for nearly a month after it happened.
 
They couldn’t turn up any noise
anywhere.
 
This isn’t about that.”

“I
didn’t even know about that,” Reno said, feeling left out.

“We
aren’t exactly best buds, Reno,” Sal pointed out.
 
“Come on.”

“Yeah,
but when one member of the family is in trouble, we all answer the call.
 
You could have asked for my help.
 
My reach goes further than yours.”

“That’s
a
got
damn lie!” Sal shot back.
 
“Your reach is extensive in Vegas, but you
can’t touch my operation nationwide.”

Both
Tommy and Reno looked at Sal.
 
They had
suspected him of being some kind of mob boss for years, but he always denied
it.
 
They wondered if they’d just boxed
him into a confession.
 
“What operation
is that?” Reno asked Sal.

Sal
was in agony, but he wasn’t that far gone.
 
“None of your fucking business,” he responded.

Reno
and Tommy smiled, they almost had him, but it was a very ephemeral moment.
Because they thought about Gemma, and the jeopardy she was undoubtedly in, and
all smiles were gone.

“What
about you, Sal?” Tommy asked.
 
“Who are
your enemies?”

“You
got a couple hundred phone books?” Sal responded.

“Who
are your enemies over the past few months?” Tommy rephrased his question.

Sal
exhaled.
 
He’d already thought about
that.
 
“Marty Dim’s people,” he
said.
 
“But my men are already checking
every one of them out.”

“What
about Alfie’s widow?” Tommy asked. “I heard she was talking trash about you.”

“We
saw her already.”

“Nothing
there either?” Tommy asked.

“She’s
still talking trash,” Sal said, “but nothing.
 
She don’t know anything either.”
 

“And
Gemma’s parents will be here soon,” Tommy said.
 
“I was hoping we would have better news by now.”

“How
do you know about her parents coming?” Sal asked.
 
“You called them?”

“They
called me.
 
Just after you did.”

“They
called you?
 
What did they want with
you?”

“They
were just informing me---”

“What
did they want, Tommy?” Sal asked again.

Tommy
didn’t want to go there, but Sal wanted the truth.
 
“They asked me to find their daughter.”

“They
asked you to find her?” Reno was disgusted.
 
“Why those assholes!”

“They
aren’t assholes, Reno,” Tommy said.
 
“They’re concerned about their daughter.”

“And
Sal isn’t?
 
What are they talking?
 
There’s nothing Sal wouldn’t do to get Gemma
back, and they have to know that!”

“They
blame me for her turning up missing in the first place,” Sal said, rising.
 
“They don’t want me to get her back.
 
They don’t want me to have anything to do
with her.
 
Excuse me.” He headed
upstairs.

“Where
are you going?” Reno asked.
 
“Where is he
going?” Reno asked Tommy.

“He
needs a break from the pressure,” Tommy said.
 
“Give him a minute.
 
He’ll be
okay.”

But
when a minute turned into more than several minutes, Tommy excused himself from
Reno and his family, and made his way upstairs too.

Tommy
stood outside Sal’s closed bedroom door and could hear his brother
sobbing.
 
He leaned his forehead against
the door and waited.
 
When Sal continued
to wail, he knocked, and then walked on in.

Sal
turned his back to Tommy, wiping his tears, and walked over to the window.
 

“You okay?”
Tommy asked as he closed the door behind him.

“I’ll
be okay when Gemma’s okay,” Sal said.

Tommy
walked up to the window beside his brother.
 
But instead of looking at him, he looked out of the window at the
beautiful well-lit waterfall garden in the back of Sal and Gemma’s
property.
 
And they stood there,
speechless, for a couple minutes.

“Where’s
Liz?” Sal asked Tommy.

“Dubai,”
Tommy responded.

“Dubai?”
Sal looked at him. “Don’t you think you ought to pull her in from the field
until we know what we have on our hands here?
 
If they went after my woman, they might go after yours too.”

But
Tommy shook his head.
 
“Liz can take care
of herself,” he said.

“And
Gemma can’t?”

“It’s
not an either-or proposition, Sal.
 
Of
course Gemma can.
 
Liz is a war correspondent
by trade.
 
She has a lot of
experience.
 
She can take care of
herself.”

Sal
shook his head.
 
He wouldn’t risk it if
he had Gemma by his side right now. He’d do everything in his power to protect
her.

Tommy
sensed his concern.
 
“I already requested
that she come stateside until this is over.”

“What
did she say?”

Tommy
smiled.
 
“She turned down my request.”

Sal
shook his head.
 
“She’s a hothead, I told
you.”

“Don’t
worry,” Tommy said confidently.
 
“If this
situation takes on a more international feel, I’ll bring her in, whether she
wants to come or not.”

Sal
knew he would do it too.
 
Liz was tough,
but she wasn’t tougher than Tommy.
 
Tommy
ran that relationship, war correspondent be damned, Sal thought.
 
But then he thought about Gemma, and the
danger she was in, and keeping Liz in or out of the field didn’t matter a twit
to him.

“So
who’s up next?” Tommy asked his brother.
 
“Your men are handling the gangster side of the equation.
 
What about everybody else?
 
Regular, law-abiding citizens. Any of them
have a beef with you or Gemma?”

Sal
shook his head.
 
“I can’t think of
anybody.”

“So
you’re Mr. Wonderful to everybody except gangsters.
 
Is that what you’re telling me?
 
Is finding a non-criminal enemy for you as
elusive as finding any video anywhere around that courthouse with Gemma’s
kidnapping on it?”

And
that was when it hit Sal.
 
He couldn’t
believe he hadn’t thought of it before. He looked at Tommy.

“You
thought of somebody?
 
Who?”

“Santino,”
Sal said.

“Santino
Druce?
 
Didn’t you hire him as your new
security chief in the office building you just had built?”

“I
fired him a couple months ago.
 
Well,
first I beat his ass, and then I fired him.”

This
was news to Tommy. “Why would you fire Santino? He’s been one of your go-to
guys for years.
 
Why would you fire him?”

“I
fucked Gemma in my private elevator one day, and instead of his ass turning off
the video feed, he fed on it.
 
He watched
the entire episode.
 
I fired his ass.”

“Damn
right.
 
You couldn’t trust him.”

Sal
was nodding.
 
“Right,” he said.
 
“I can’t trust him.
 
No telling what he’s capable of.”

Sal
and Tommy looked at each other.
 
And then
began hurrying out of his bedroom.

Santino
Druce jumped into his Ford Mustang and burned rubber getting away from his
house.
 
Sal, Reno, and Tommy jumped into
Sal’s Porsche, and with Sal driving they took off after the former security
chief.
 

The
race was on.
 
Santino drove as if he was
an experienced stock car driver, but Sal drove equally as deadly.
 
All he saw was a guilty man, a man who very
well might hold the key to freeing Gemma, and he wasn’t about to lose this
opportunity.
 
Why else would he run?
 
Why else would he only have to see Sal’s face,
and take off like some bat out of hell?

“That
beat down could be one reason,” Reno suggested.
 
He was on the passenger seat, with Tommy in back, as they swerved around
yet another corner and continued to follow Santino.
 

Sal
knew that could be the reason too, but Santino was a tough guy.
 
He would have wanted to beat Sal’s ass seeing
him again, especially since he was no longer depending on a paycheck from Sal,
not run from him.
 
But whatever the
reasoning, Sal wasn’t stopping until he caught him.

And
they drove, straight out of Vegas.
 
It
was only a miracle that no cop was around to slow their asses down.
 
Santino’s Mustang was fast, but Sal’s Porsche
was faster, and Sal ended up moving beside Santino, with both Reno and Tommy
pulling out their guns and pointing them squarely at his head.

“Pull
over you cocksucker,” Reno said, “or your ass is dead!”

Santino
pulled over.

Reno
and Tommy quickly stepped out, their guns still on their target.
 
Sal remained behind the wheel of the Porsche,
in case Santino decided to make another run for it.
 
But he knew even his Mustang wasn’t going to
outrun those bullets.
 
He got out of the
car.

“Let’s
go,” Tommy ordered, and Santino got into the backseat of Sal’s car.
 
Reno got in beside him, and Tommy got up
front, this time, in the passenger seat.
 
And Sal took off.

“Where’s
the nearest one?” Tommy asked him.

“Couple
miles ahead,” Sal replied.

“Think
we need some backup?”

“Hell
no,” Sal responded, and drove even faster.

Tommy
looked at his brother as he drove.
 
He
was so focused, so singularly minded, that even Tommy could feel his
chill.
 
Santino was in trouble.

When
they drove down a dirt road that led to one of the numerous safe houses they
owned around the Vegas region, Sal got out of the car, grabbed Santino out of the
backseat, and informed Tommy and Reno to wait outside.
 
He pulled Santino along, used the master key
that unlocked every one of their safe house doors, and entered the house with
Santino still in his clutches.

As
soon as the door closed, Sal pulled out his gun and began to pistol whip his
former chief with the certainty of a man who was going to get his own brand of
justice tonight.
 
Santino tried valiantly
to fight back, even to the point of him and Sal falling onto and breaking the
coffee table inside the small home.
 
But
Sal overpowered him.
 
And continued to
beat him senseless.
 
Santino was
screaming woman-like screams, as if Tommy and Reno would hear him and
intervene.
 
But no such intervention
occurred.

They
heard him, but they weren’t about to intervene.
 
Reno, however, was concerned.

“Why
is he beating on him already for?” he asked.
 
“He’ll kill him before he gets the information we need.”

“No,
he won’t,” Tommy assured him.

“But
he’s beating his ass already, Tommy.”

“If
Trina was missing, and he might know something about it, you’d be beating his
ass too.
 
And after you beat him down,
you’d get your information.”

That
was exactly how Sal played it.
  
After he
beat Santino so decisively that Santino wrongly concluded that Sal could not
possibly inflict any more pain on him, Sal grabbed him by the hair and sat him
on the sofa.
 
Then he took his gun and
sat the barrel of that gun directly on Santino’s swollen eye.
 
Santino flinched with pain, but Sal was
undeterred.

“When
we arrived at your house, why did you run?” Sal asked him.
 
“And if you lie to me, I will shoot your
fucking eye out.
 
You know me.
 
You know I’ll do it.
 
Why did you run?” Sal cocked his gun.
 
Santino leaned back, as if he could escape
the blast, but Sal kept the pressure on.
 
“Why did you run?” Sal asked again.

“I
knew,” Santino started.
 
“I knew why you
came.
 
I heard about Taiwan.
 
I knew it was a matter of time.”

Sal
didn’t expect to hear that response.
 
“A
matter of time before what?”

“Before
you found out.
 
But he came to me, Sal.
 
What you expected me to do?”

Sal
had no clue who he was talking about.
 
But he wasn’t going to let Santino know it.
 
“He came to you?” Sal asked.

“He
came.
 
And you know how demanding he can
be.
 
He had shit on me that went back
twenty years, Sal.
 
But it was legit shit
that even you couldn’t get me out of.”

“Like
what?”

“Stuff,
all right?
 
I’m not telling that shit to
nobody!
 
It would have gotten me on Death
Row if he exposed me.
 
I had to videotape
that hit.
 
He didn’t give me a choice,
Sal.
 
He made me do it.
 
I was a freaking nobody compared to the great
Ted Coggan!
 
I didn’t stand a chance!”

Sal
was floored.
 
Ted Coggan
?
 
The lawyer
?
 
“You videotaped that hit?” Sal asked
Santino.
 
“You were the one who did that
to me?”

“I
did it because he made me do it, Sal!
 
It
was either I do it or I get locked up for good.”

“Why
would Ted Coggan need some video of me icing some loser?
 
What’s in it for him?”

“He
said he needed dirt on you just like he had on me.
 
He called it insurance.”

Sal
was still processing what he had just heard.
 
Santino seized on his hesitancy to beg for his life.
  
“I’m not your enemy, Sal.
 
We go way back.
 
What I look like picking a fight with
you?
 
Coggan is the enemy.
 
That motherfucker crazy.
 
He’s out to get you.
 
You’ve got bigger problems to worry about
than me.”

Sal
looked at Santino.
 
Being disloyal to Sal
was the worst thing any man could do to him.
 
Santino didn’t seem to understand that.
 
“Where’s my wife?” Sal asked him.
  

Santino
looked puzzled, as if Sal had just asked him to explain molecular
biophysics.
 
“Your wife?
 
What does she have to do with this?
 
I don’t know nothing about your wife.
 
Are you trying to say she had an affair with
Coggan, and that she’s with Coggan?
 
What
would I know about his love life?”

“Who
has the tape now?”

“I
thought you had it.
 
I heard about what
went down in Taiwan.
 
I gave it to
Coggan. I guess he gave it to those Asians.
 
I don’t know what he did with it.
 
But I know this ain’t about me.”

“It’s
not about you?” Sal asked, amazed at the disloyalty of some men.
 
“You gave Coggan that videotape of me
handling my business.
 
You, one of my
most trusted men, stabbed me in the back and twisted the knife.
 
But this ain’t about you?”

“It’s
not about me, Sal!
 
It’s not!
 
Ted Coggan is the man you want.
 
He’s the enemy, not me.
 
What are you wasting your time on me
for?
 
You have bigger fish to fry than
me!”

Sal
nodded his head.
 
“You’re right,” he
said.
 
And then he took that little fish
called Santino Druce, and shot him dead.

Outside,
when Tommy and Reno heard the gunshot, they drew their own weapons and hurried
into the house.
 
They saw Santino,
slumped over on the sofa.
 
Sal, his
smoking gun still in his hand, was standing there watching him.

“What
did he say?” Reno asked him.

“Ted
Coggan was behind the video.”

Reno
frowned.
 
“What video?”

“Sal
on a kill run,” Tommy said.
 
“But I
thought
Rabina
Chen and those Asians were behind
that,” Tommy said to Sal.

Sal
agreed.
 
“I thought so too,” he said.

“But
what does that tape have to do with Gemma?” Reno asked.

Sal
shook his head.
 
“I don’t know.”
 
He rubbed the back of his hand over his weary
eyes.
 
He was becoming unhinged right
before their very eyes, and Tommy and Reno felt powerless to do anything about
it.
 
Because Sal was just like them.
 
Nobody was telling him how to run the show,
when it was his woman on the line.

“None
of this shit is making any sense,” Reno said.
 
“It’s like we’re spinning wheels.”

Sal
began leaving.
 
Nobody had to tell him
that they were running into brick wall after brick wall.
 
He was the one feeling the impact of the
blows.

“Where
are you headed now?” Reno asked him.

Sal
was so filled with rage he didn’t hear Reno.
 
All he could think about was Coggan, and if he was behind Gem’s
abduction all along.
 
Did he rope her
into the Chen trial as a diversion, when he really wanted her for other reasons
that were even bigger than a murder trial?
 
Was that tape a diversion too?
 
Santino said it was all about insurance.
 
Insurance for what?
 
What other
sleight of hand was Coggan pulling before Sal’s very eyes?
 
What sick game was that bastard playing?

“Where
are we headed next, Sal?” Reno asked him again.

“Ted
Coggan,” Sal said.

“Where
is he?”

“Phoenix.”
 
Sal walked out of the safe house.

“Phoenix?”
Reno asked, looking at Tommy.
 
“None of
this shit is making sense, Tommy.
 
He’s
groping in the dark.
 
He’s got us chasing
ghosts.
 
You need to get out there and
get your boy before I have to.
 
He’s not
thinking straight!”

Tommy
headed out of the door behind Sal.
 
Of
the three Gabrini men, Sal was the least affectionate of all three, but the
most emotional when it came to Gemma.
 
And Tommy understood that passion.
 
But Reno was right.
 
He wasn’t
thinking clearly.
 
“Sal?” Tommy called
after his brother.
 
But Sal continued to
head toward his Porsche.

Tommy
hurried up behind him, grabbed him by the arm, and turned him around.
 
“Sal?”

“What?”

When
Tommy saw the anguish in his kid brother’s eyes, his heart went out to
him.
 
“You can’t keep going like this,
bud.
 
It’s after midnight.
 
We need to regroup.
 
We’re chasing people that have only an
outside chance of knowing anything at all about Gemma’s whereabouts.
 
We aren’t getting any closer to figuring
anything out.”

“But
I’ve got to make sure,” Sal said.
 
“I’ve
got to check out every lead I can check out and make sure it’s not the piece of
that puzzle we need to figure it out.”

“But
you’re practically dead on your feet.
 
You need some rest, Sal.
 
You need
to regroup.”