CHAPTER NINE
In the early morning hours the next day, a small, one-engine private plane touched down in an inconspicuous Mississippi airfield and Reno stood up on the now-stopped plane and looked at his family. Trina was there along with all four of their children: Jimmy, Dominic, Sophia and Carmine. Reno’s heart broke just seeing their beautiful faces looking up at him as if he had all the answers. And all the blame . As if he, at the end of the day, was the real reason they were there.
And in Reno’s mind they were right. He was born into the mob. His old man ran one of the most vicious outfits on the east coast and made certain he had no choice about his profession when he was a young man. And once mob, always mob. There was no retiring. There was no getting completely out of it because enemies were always far and near. He even moved all the way to Vegas to get away from his sadistic old man and that sadistic life. He declared he would never have children so that they would not have the taint of him on them.
But his hormones said differently.
He got a girl pregnant when he was still a teenager while he and his old man were in deep hiding after a mob hit his old man orchestrated, and although he didn’t find out about the pregnancy until years later when he discovered a teenage son named Jimmy. But before that, he met Trina, fell hard for her, and they eventually had Dom, Soph, and Carmine together. In between the woman he impregnated as a teen and Trina, Reno had a fifth child he knew nothing about until just before the child was killed because of his mob affiliations too. Something that filled him with so much guilt that it caused him to leave Trina for nearly a year. It was something he would never get over.
Now he had four children still alive and well. And although three of the four were grown (and the fourth one thought he was), all four of his children and his two grands, too, would always remain his responsibility. They were one big ball in his battle-scarred hands he was holding onto tightly. And unlike before, he wasn’t dropping this ball. He would drop dead himself before he dropped this ball.
“This is not going to be a picnic,” he said to his family. “Going deep underground is never a picnic so get that out of your pretty little heads. You’re spoiled, rich kids. Every one of you. And you, too, Trina. And that’s just the truth so don’t even start,” he added when Trina gave him the side eye with that I wasn’t born rich expression on her face.
But it wasn’t out of defiance. She was just as scared at Reno. Their children’s lives were at stake. B.B. Bernardi was coming after Reno and their entire family if Mick and Carmine were to be believed. She didn’t need anybody telling her anything about what life was about to be about and how rough it was going to be. Jimmy and Dommi being threatened, and their home being attacked, was already a living hell as far as she was concerned.
But Reno kept talking. “This ain’t gonna be no Malibu Inn or Beverly Hills Hilton we’re about to stay in. It’s gonna be tough and rough. But we’ll be together. And we’ll stay alive. Understand me?”
It was early Monday morning. They were still shellshocked by that explosion at the penthouse and what happened between Jimmy and Paulie Bernardi. The best they could do was mumble their understanding.
Even Trina could only manage a mumble. She didn’t like the idea of running and hiding no more than the kids did. But if Reno said their family was going underground, she knew none of her bitching and moaning was going to change a thing: They were going underground. Period. She was a tough broad. Everybody in the Gabrini family knew she was the matriarch with the most clout. But when Reno, Tommy and Sal, the big three of the Gabrini clan, were in agreement about what was going to happen, there was no female in that family that was going to stop that train. Not even Trina.
Once they acknowledged their understanding of what was at stake, Reno clapped his hands like the coach giving the team a pep talk, although inside he was shaking by the enormity of his responsibility, but he kept up the strong face. “Okay, family, let’s get this show on the road. Let’s stay together and let’s stay alive!” And then they got up and got off of the plane.
But Carmine, managing to find humor in what his father had said and who had come prepared for jungle life, tuned his makeshift transistor radio to a preloaded Bee Gees singing Staying Alive . He played that theme song from Saturday Night Fever as the family walked across the tarmac. His father in his Armani suit. His mother in her chinchilla coat. His brothers in their Versace suits and Gucci shoes. His sister in her Dior and Prada and Hermes bags. It seemed fitting to him.
But everybody, at first, looked at him like he was out of his mind. This time of morning, really? But then they all realized the song was mimicking what Reno had said about them staying alive and how clever it was of Carmine to even think of it, and they all laughed. He actually accomplished his goal and made them laugh. And then they began strutting across that tarmac in that way John Travolta walked in that movie, as the song played loudly and proudly:
“You can tell by the way I use my walk,
I’m a woman’s man,
No time for talk.
Music loud and women warm,
I been kicked around since I was born.
Now it’s alright.
It’s okay.
And you may look the other way.
We can try, to understand,
the New York Times’ effect on man.
Whether you’re a brother,
or whether you’re a mother,
you’re stayin’ alive.
Stayin’ alive.
Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’,
And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah ah ah ah
Stayin’ alive.
Stayin’ alive.
Ah, ah, ah, ah,
stayin’ alive!”
Then the singing stopped and just the music started playing and they were all strutting and laughing and actually enjoying their first moments underground. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t going to be as bad as all that!
Until they strutted up to their ride.
To keep the circle tiny with the big three Gabrinis and Mick Sinatra the only ones knowing their whereabouts, it was predetermined that no one would be waiting to greet them. No entourage, no bodyguards. Reno was the bodyguard. It was also predetermined that their means of transportation while they were in deep hiding would be the SUV waiting on the backend of the runway. But what wasn’t told to Reno was that the SUV would be an old, dusty and rusty, twenty-year-old Ford Expedition.
When Reno, a man who traveled in the rarified air of Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Porsches as his mode of transportation, saw that big, old and ugly tank of an SUV, he stopped in his tracks and removed his shades. “What the what ,” he said in shock. “These our wheels?”
The children grinned when he started looking around as if he just knew there had to be a mistake. But when he saw no other SUV waiting there, and when Dom went over and got the key from the undercarriage where Sal instructed them the key would be, all Reno could do was shake his head. “I should have known. I’m gonna kick Sal’s fat ass,” he said as he snatched the key from Dom and they all piled into their transportation.
“Ain’t this some shit?” Reno said when he got behind the wheel.
“But Daddy,” said Carmine, “you said we’re supposed to be roughing it and toughing it and staying alive. Didn’t you say that?”
Reno gave Carmine the side eye through the rearview mirror and they all laughed, except for Reno. But then, as he was looking around the steering wheel area, Reno frowned. “Where’s the button?” he asked.
Trina looked at him like he was nuts. “Boy if you don’t put that key in that ignition and get us away from here, you better, Reno. This Mississippi and you’re the only all-white somebody in this tank. We black. Nobody wanna be hanging around no Mississippi like we don’t know what we’re doing. Get us out of here.”
“But the button, Tree!”
“This old thang ain’t gonna have no button, what’s wrong with you? This ain’t no luxury sportscar. Let’s go!”
The children were cracking up as their parents got into it and as Reno finally realized his roughing it speech was already coming true. He turned the key into the ignition and took off. Sal had made certain that under the hood of the truck was all new, he just (purposely) forgot to tell Reno that. But it drove smooth as silk. Reno was pleasantly surprised.
“Ah,” he said as he began the long three hour journey to their destination. “Not a bad ride at all. Not bad at all.”
Trina was relieved. She knew how Reno could get angry and bogged down when things didn’t go his way.
They settled in, with everybody but Reno fast asleep for the long ride, until they all had awakened just as Reno was about to enter their destination: Washwater, Mississippi. Population 251. And it was the young people in that SUV that were complaining now.
“What wait?” asked Dom. “Population 251? That can’t be right. Where’s the zeros? Who has a whole town with just two-hundred-and-fifty people in it?”
“Forget the people,” said Sophia. “Look at the name. Washwater, Mississippi. Wash water. Meaning dirty water.”
“We’re going to be living in Mississippi?” asked Trina, equally concerned. “I thought you said we would deplane in Mississippi and then drive to our destination.”
“That’s what we’re doing,” said Reno. “Washwater, Mississippi is our destination.”
Trina was floored. “But I thought we were just landing in Mississippi and then driving to another state.”
“That’s what you get for thinking,” Reno said to his wife, and it was his time to smile.
“But Mississippi, Reno?” asked Trina. “I was born in Mississippi and couldn’t get my ass out of this state fast enough. And now you bring me back here?”
“What you mean I brought you here? Sal sat this shit up. This is where he had his safe house for when somebody in the family had to go into deep hiding. This Sal’s doing.”
“Ain’t this some shit?” said Trina. “I’m right back where I started from. I’m gonna beat Sal’s ass!”
Reno laughed out loud as he looked at his distressed wife and his stunned children. But when he began looking around at their new town as he drove further into it, he was as stunned as they were. “Damn,” he said when he saw the level of poverty.
“It looks like a third-world country, Daddy,” said Sophia.
“More like a fourth-world country,” said Dom.
And they all sat in silence as they drove through what appeared to be the downtown. All the buildings were boarded-up buildings in general disrepair, and with an air of despair on top of it. And not a person in sight.
“It’s like the land that time forgot,” said Jimmy. “It looks deserted. All it needs is tumbleweed.”
“Daddy, can’t we go somewhere else?” Sophia asked.
Reno looked at her gorgeous face through the rearview. “What did I tell your ass on the plane, Sophie? We are in deep underground. I explained that to you idiots. This is no Malibu Barbie bullshit, okay? This is real life for us right now.”
“Just for right now, baby,” assured Trina.
But none of them felt assured. Not even Trina as Reno drove through the downtown and into the area where the homes were located. And if the downtown looked bad, the neighborhoods looked worse.
“Dang,” said Dom. “Every house is a shack. What’s wrong with these people?”
Trina, on the front passenger seat, turned around offended. “Nothing’s wrong with them,” she said. “Y’all hear me? Poverty is what’s wrong, not the people. They’re poor. All the businesses left or shut down and all the people with money left and the ones that couldn’t get out stayed. So don’t you dare come into this town blaming these poor folks, and I mean that. Don’t you dare.”
Reno glanced over at his wife. Her humanity and decency was what he loved most about her. She got on his last damn nerve more than she ever soothed him, but she remained the love of his life. He won the lottery, he felt, when he won Trina. And when she turned back around, he nodded his head in approval. “Very good, Tree,” he said.
“Ah shut up,” she said to him. “I still wanna kick your ass for bringing us here.”
“Ah fuck you,” Reno fired back.
“Fuck you!” Trina fired back at him, and the children shook their heads. That was their parents. Always fusing and arguing over the littlest things. But that was all they knew. They were raised on cereal, milk, plenty of love, and fuck-yous for days.
Their parents continued arguing until they drove up to the address of their temporary new home.
And when the SUV came to a stop in the driveway, and they all got out to confirm it was actually going to be their new home while they were in this town, even Reno and Trina, who could talk a parrot into submission, were speechless.