CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They all sat at a long table in Otis’s backyard where seemingly a hundred crabs were laid out on newspaper.
The Gabrinis sat together, although cute young ladies had managed to squeeze themselves beside Jimmy and Dom, and young men propped themselves on both sides of Sophia. Older men kept trying to get next to Trina, too, but Reno solved that issue by forcing Trina to get up and sit beside Jimmy on one side, and Reno himself on her other side. It was ridiculous to Trina, but Reno would have it no other way. After that dream he had, he wasn’t taking any chances.
He was also amazed at how easily his family was chomping down on those messy crabs when he was still trying to make it through just one crab.
“Don’t eat that, Reno,” Trina said to him when he put a handful of what looked like cheese to him at his mouth.
Reno looked at her as she continued to eat those crabs like there was no tomorrow and she had to shove them down her throat. “Why can’t I eat this?” he asked her. “It’s just some cheese.”
“Cheese in the form of shit,” Trina said as she continued to eat her crabs.
Reno frowned. It had been ages since he last touched a crab. “What do you mean cheese in the form of shit? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It looks like crab cheese,” said Trina, “but it’s really crab shit. Don’t eat that.”
Reno looked at her. “But you have no problem eating all that meat around the shit.”
Trina had to laugh herself. “Don’t put it like that,” she said.
“How am I supposed to put it? This shit was in the same shell that meat was in. And if that’s the case, and it is, then I guarantee you some of this shit got off on that shit. If I can’t eat this cheese shit, then you shouldn’t be eating that meat shit. Cause it’s all shit in the end.”
“But I’m not eating the cheese,” Trina replied, ignoring Reno’s logic. “I’m eating the meat. And I don’t care what you say: This meat tastes good.”
Reno shook his head. “What a hypocrite you are,” he said as he dropped the shit and, instead, picked up what appeared to be brown, thin, finger-like gills inside the crab shell.
Trina glanced at him just as he was about to eat that. “Don’t eat that, Reno,” she said.
Reno, now irritated, looked at her again. “And why not, Tree?”
“You can’t eat that. Those are dead man’s fingers.”
Reno frowned. “ Dead man’s fingers ? How a man get up in this crab? What the fuck are you talking about?”
Trina to shushed him. “Watch your language, boy,” she reminded him. They weren’t in Vegas anymore.
But knowing that fact only made Reno even more upset. He gave up and dropped the crab onto the newspaper. “I’m not eating this disgusting mess,” he said. “This shit nasty no matter how you turn it.”
The man seated across from Reno, the only other white guy at the crab boil, was amused. “I agree with you,” he said to Reno, “but what can I say? I’m originally from Louisiana. I love my crawfish, but I love me some crabs too.”
Reno noticed the Cajun accent on the man. “Who are you?”
“Arthur Koshay,” he said as he continued to eat his crabs. “Visiting family here. The black side of my family. Who are you?”
“Re . . . I’m Tyrone Black,” Reno corrected himself and said.
“Tyrone?”
“That’s right.”
“I would have never guessed that would be your name. You don’t look like no Tyrone.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I heard your wife call you Renell or Ree somebody?”
“She have a lot of pet names for me. Every week it’s something different. She’s not crazy about my real name.”
“I see why,” Koshay said, and he and Reno laughed.
But Dom, who was seated next to his father, saw something that caught his attention when he saw two men walking on the side of the house. It wasn’t that they were muscular men and there didn’t seem to be any gyms around there. But he knew they could have picked up those kind of muscles from prison yards. But the fact that both of them wore black caught his attention. And when they began reaching behind their backs in what looked to Dom like somebody reaching for his hardware, he immediately hit his father’s leg and began pulling out his own piece. “We got company, Pop,” he said when Reno looked his way.
And when Reno saw the two men and how they were reaching behind their backs, he knew it too.
“Get down,” he said to Trina as he began standing up, and then he yelled for everybody to get down as he was pulling out his Glock too.
Reno’s family did what their father said without hesitation and got beneath the table, but the townspeople seemed to be confused and kept eating.
But when the two gunmen pulled out their weapons and began running toward the backyard shooting as they ran, the townspeople got the message and began screaming and diving down beneath the table too. Reno and Dom began firing back.
Beneath the table, Jimmy was on top of his baby brother Carmine, covering his entire body, and was grabbing for Trina and Sophia with his arms, trying to cover them too.
The gunmen took shelter behind a side shed when Reno and Dom began to return their gunfire. Their move forced Reno and Dom to duck beneath to the table, jump up and fire, and then duck again when the gunmen returned fire. This went on for several seconds.
Until Reno stopped Dom from going up for another round of shots. He could see the gunmen’s footwork from beneath the table. He waited until they came out, fired another round, and then went back behind the shed.
“Now!” he yelled at Dom as they both jumped up and were ready to fire as soon as the men came back from behind that shed. When they didn’t fire, the men came from behind the shed to fire again. And that was when Reno and Dom let them have it before they could get off a single shot. They took both of them out.
When they realized the gunmen were down, Reno and Dom ran to make sure the threat was neutralized. When they determined both men were dead, father and son exhaled.
“It’s over!” Reno yelled out and first his family, and then everybody else, began to get back up again.
But then one of the townspeople yelled he’s dead , and Reno and Dom ran back over to the table.
That was when they realized Arthur Koshay had been hit. And was indeed dead.
“Damn,” said Dom.
“It was like they was targeting Mr. Koshay,” Otis said. “I saw them shooting at him instead of shooting at anybody else. Until y’all started shooting back.”
“Does anybody know those two gunmen?” Reno asked the crowd.
“I do,” a now anguished Otis said.
“Who are they?” Dom asked.
“They work for Mr. Koshay. They’re his collectors.”
“They’re the collectors?” Reno asked.
“That’s what they do. The biggest one, he collects the factory fees from the workers at the factory. The smaller one collects the diner fees. They collect for him. They were his collectors.”
Reno and Dom looked at each other. They weren’t the targets, thank God.
“Why would they come here to kill their boss?” Reno asked.
“Because they wanted to collect that money and keep it for themselves. I heard them joking about it a long time ago, but I didn’t think nothing of it.”
Reno stared at Otis. “You seem to know an awful lot about this guy,” he said. “What’s your deal? Who are you to him?”
“His spy,” somebody in the backyard said. “Everything that goes on ‘round here he run and tell it to Mr. Koshay.”
“I make money however way I can,” said Otis. “If that don’t please everybody, then that’s too bad.”
“Does Koshay own that factory?”
“All I know is the owner put Samuel in charge of that factory and left town. We ain’t never seen that owner again. Then here comes Mr. Koshay firing Samuel and talking about he was the manager and we had to pay a factory fee or he’d shut the place down. Then he hired two other people as the managers and we never see him much.”
Then Otis shook his head. “There ain’t never been no shooting in this town.”
“So you don’t believe in guns, hun?” asked Jimmy.
“Believe in’em?” asked Otis. “Every household in Washwater got a hunting rifle. We believe in that. But we don’t go around killing no human beings with our rifles. That ain’t natural.”
“Amen to that brother,” Jimmy agreed.
“I guess we’d better call 911,” Trina suggested.
“Do we have to?” asked the woman standing across from Trina.
Trina looked at her confusingly. “Excuse me?”
“We ain’t got no good sheriff,” another woman replied.
“No good mayor either,” said another one.
“Oh,” Trina said. “Then why did y’all vote them in office?”
The women looked at each other, but didn’t respond. But Otis knew they had no choice. A shooting in the county was nonexistent. “I’ll go in the house and make the call right now,” he said, as he ran into his house to call on his landline phone.
Reno went over to his family. Trina, Sophia, and Carmine all leaned against him as soon as he walked to them. He squeezed Jimmy’s shoulder. “Good job protecting them, James,” he said.
But as his family stayed around him, he wasn’t exactly comforted. Because his gut was working overtime. Because his gut was telling him that although it didn’t appear to be about them, it was always about them. And although the main players were dead, this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.