CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Two days later and the limousine drove up to the gate, they waved at the capos who stood on guard duty with their long guns and their holstered pistols, and drove on through.
Reno, Sal, and Tommy, the Gabrinis, sat in the back of the limo anxious to get this over with. It had been over a month since Mick went down. His strategy of easing out whoever was behind that ambush failed. Now they were hoping, by coming back in, they were going to smoke them out instead.
But Reno didn’t get it. “Why we all of a sudden got to go to Teddy’s instead of Mick’s? This don’t make no sense. Why can’t we meet at Mick’s house?”
Tommy didn’t want to discuss it, but he knew his brother Sal and cousin Reno wouldn’t let it go. “Roz kicked him out of the house,” he said.
Reno and Sal looked at Dapper Tom as if they were looking at a stranger. “What you say?” Reno said. He loved gossip. Was a big gossip himself. “What she kicked him out for?”
Tommy was still reluctant. But he told it. “According to Teddy, and I didn’t hear this from Uncle Mick, but according to Teddy . . .”
“According to Teddy what, Tommy, damn?” Reno asked. “Just spit it out.”
“There’s another baby mama.”
Reno was shocked. Sal was livid. “You have got to be kidding me. That man got another woman pregnant?”
“Not recently, Sal. But yeah. He got another woman pregnant.”
“But he didn’t cheat on Roz, right?” Sal asked.
Tommy exhaled. “It was early days in their relationship. He was talking to her. So in a way, no. But technically, yeah. He cheated on her.”
“I’ll be damn,” said Sal.
“But that’s not the worst part.”
“I’ll bet it is to Roz,” said Sal.
“What’s the worst part?” Reno asked.
“That baby, Uncle Mick’s baby boy, wants him dead.”
Reno was floored. He couldn’t imagine any of his children feeling that way about him.
“But what are you really telling us, Tommy?” Sal asked his brother. “Are you telling us that Mick’s kid might be behind that ambush?”
Reno looked at Tommy too. And Tommy nodded. “That’s what Teddy’s saying.”
“Damn,” said Reno. “This shit is deep.”
“Who’s the baby mama?” Sal asked.
Tommy knew Sal really wasn’t going to like it. “Cleo Burgess.”
Sal was stunned. “Get the fuck out of here! Mick gave that bitch a baby?”
“You act like it was wrapped under a Christmas tree,” Reno said. “He didn’t give her one. She had one. Get your head out of your ass, Sal.”
“Ah fuck you, Reno!”
“Now that’s enough,” Tommy said. “Uncle Mick’s got enough drama going on. We don’t need to bring ours too.”
Both men settled back down as their limo stopped near the entrance and Robby Yale, who sat up front, hopped out and opened the back door. They all stepped out buttoning their suit coats. Robby remained outside with Teddy’s capos as they headed for the front door.
When they went inside, since Reno never bothered to knock, Mick was seated in a chair in the living room with a drink in his hand.
Monk Paletti was seated in the other chair with his legs crossed.
Teddy and Nikki were on one of the two sofas.
Their baby girl was still on lockdown at Mick’s house.
The only reason they were allowed to stay at their own home, which was under heavy guard too, was because they still had to run Mick’s syndicate.
After the Gabrinis spoke to everybody, they sat on the opposite sofa. With Tommy, as usual, in the middle.
And Reno, as usual, was the first to talk. “Uncle Mick, you look like shit.”
Teddy was offended. “How would you look if you got shot six times, Reno?”
“The way he’s been running around everywhere says to me that he’s over all that.”
“Still show some respect though,” Teddy said.
“I’m just telling the truth over here,” Reno said in that Italian twang that always came out whenever he got upset. “You worry about yourself. You worry about that hand you almost lost to some punk in the woods.”
“That’s enough, Reno,” Tommy said.
But Reno was still hot. “His ass came for me! He’d better be the one to show some respect!”
This was getting out of hand already, Tommy thought, but Mick seemed unfazed. “Are your wives and children on lockdown?”
“First of all, Tommy brought his entire family,” Reno said. “They’re staying at your house. As for the rest of us, yes. Our families are on highest security and heavy guard, yes sir. But you don’t think that little fucker’s gonna reach back at us. Or do you, Uncle Mick?”
“I do not. It’s precautionary only.”
“Do I know him?” Tommy asked.
“I doubt if you do,” said Teddy. “But Sal does.”
“Who?” Sal asked. He was genuinely confused. “What’s his name?”
“Ricardo DeSouza.”
Sal knew he heard that wrong. “What are you talking, Teddy? Ricky DeSouza is Cleo’s old man.”
“That’s what she lied and said. But he’s her son. She was protecting him.”
Sal and Reno looked at each other. What kind of bullshit was this? And nobody was going to address the elephant in the room? Not even Tommy, who was Mick’s favorite nephew?
But Tommy kept it all business. “How do we find him?” he asked their uncle.
“We find everybody he loves.”
“Beginning with Cleo?” Sal asked and stared at Mick. He wasn’t surprised at all when Mick didn’t respond.
But it was his lack of response that fuel Sal’s rising anger. “How could you do that to Roz, Uncle Mick?” he boldly asked him.
Mick looked at him with that chilling look they all feared. “How could I do what to Rosalind?”
“How could you cheat on her like that? And with a bitch like Cleo. Man if you love that broad your ass will sleep with anything.”
They all knew Sal hated Cleo for leading his capos to their slaughter, but he knew not to come at Mick with that kind of juice.
Mick knew it too. That was why, as soon as Sal made his wisecrack, Mick sat his drink on the side table, stood up, and walked over to Sal.
Sal stood up on his feet, too. He knew a challenge when he saw one.
But Mick was already clocking him with a roundhouse right before his feet were firmly planted.
And Mick’s licks always packed a punch. He knocked Sal completely over the back of that sofa.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to like that?
” Mick angrily asked him as he hurried around that sofa to give Sal more.
Tommy and Reno were grabbing for Mick as they were trying to get up too, but Mick was too elusive. And Teddy was running to stop his father too. They all knew Mick had no limits when he was enraged.
But Monk Paletti stayed completely out of it. It was a family scuffle as far as he was concerned. And he wasn’t family per se. He was family-adjacent. He married into it. He wanted no parts of their squabbles.
But by the time Mick got to the back of that sofa, Sal Luca was on his feet and didn’t need their help anyway.
He grabbed onto Mick as Mick grabbed onto him and both men fell backwards into an expensive curio stand as they wrestled for dominance.
All of the expensive Baccarat and Swarovski glassware began cracking from the impact of their two, muscular bodies.
Reno, Tommy, and Sal tried to break the men up, but they only succeeded in breaking Sal free.
And as soon as Sal broke free, he punched Mick so hard that Mick fell against the back of that sofa. His licks packed a punch too.
Reno, Tommy, and Ted tried to stop Mick from hitting back, knowing that Sal was playing with fire, but they were no match for Mick.
As soon as Mick fell against that sofa, he pushed Reno and Tommy aside and hurried back to Sal.
In a maniac’s rage, Mick punched Sal so hard with a running punch that Sal’s knees buckled, his head felt like it was spinning, and the floor seemed to rise up toward him in very slow motion until the side of his face slammed against that floor and then it all raced back up and he landed with a crash. Mick had knocked Sal out cold.
“Talking to me like I’m your gotdamn equal!” Mick yelled out, still enraged. “Who the fuck do you think you are?!”
But Reno and Tommy hurried over to Sal. Teddy looked at Nikki, whom he ordered to stay out of it, with anger against his father on his own face. But Nikki just thought it was all so sad.
Reno, on his knees, began frantically slapping Sal’s face, trying to wake him up, praying that there would be no permanent damage.
“He can’t take no more brain damage, Lord,” Reno said, prompting Tommy to give him the side eye.
But within seconds, Sal did wake up. But Reno, not realizing it, continued to slap him.
“Well damn, Reno,” Sal said with irritation in his voice, “you trying to beat my ass too?”
Reno finally stopped, and he and Tommy exhaled. They were relieved. They helped Sal to his feet.
But Sal wasn’t relieved at all. He was still angry as hell.
He jerked away from his brother and cousin and looked Mick squarely in the eyes.
“I’m done with your ass!” he yelled at him.
Pointing at him. “All you do is destroy everything you touch. Including all of us. But we still come running every time you call. I’m done.
I’m done with your ass!” he yelled out again. Then he began heading for the exit.
“Come on now, Sal,” Reno said, although he’d gladly sign off on everything Sal said.
But Sal wasn’t listening anymore. He went out of that door, slamming it behind him.
Outside, Robby Yale was running his mouth with a couple of Teddy’s capos. When he saw Sal hurrying out the house, looking as if he was fuming, he hurried to his side. “What happened, Boss?” He could see the bruising on his face.
“Get me out of here,” Sal ordered as he got in the limousine.
Robby hopped in, too, and he motioned for the driver to leave.
But back inside the house, Mick was no longer enraged, but he was extremely restless. He was pacing the floor like a wounded animal. Nikki was trying to clean up the mess from the curio stand, and Teddy was helping her, but Reno and Tommy and even Monk, who stayed out of it, were just tired.
Mick finally stopped moving around and stood still, his hands in his pockets. “I had just met Rosalind when I slept with Cleo. Rosalind and I weren’t exclusive yet.”
But even Reno knew better than that. “Now that’s bullshit, Uncle Mick,” he said, and Mick and Tommy looked at him. “Just like Trina, Roz would never play that open relationship shit and you know it.”
“You cheated on Roz,” Tommy said. “It was at the beginning of your relationship, sure. But it was an exclusive relationship. Or so Roz thought.”
Mick felt as if the world was against him when even Tommy was tired of his ass. But Reno still had questions. “Did you know she was pregnant?” he asked him.
“Later she told me that she had put holes in my condoms and that I might have leaked out. That was when she told me she was pregnant.”
“Did you believe her?”
Mick thought about that question. Then he shook his head. “I have no idea if I did or didn’t. I only remember that a few weeks later, she said she had an abortion.”
“That you paid for?” Teddy asked.
Mick didn’t want to admit it. “Yes,” he said.
Which was a bridge too far for Monk. Although he got his nickname because he didn’t chase wine, women, or song like other mobsters did, it was no crock. He truly had morals. And boundaries. And Mick was crossing every one of them.
He looked at him. “I hate to say it,” he said, “but you’re a motherfucker, Uncle Mick.”
Everybody looked at Monk. But Monk kept speaking.
“The shit you’ve done to so many lives for so many years?
All the pain you caused. Everybody’s scared of you.
Even my wife. And Ashley’s is fun-loving young lady who isn’t afraid of anything.
I have to rein her in because of that. But she’s afraid of you.
” Then he shook his head again. “You’re a motherfucker.
” And he said it as if it was a fact. As if it could not be challenged.
Mick’s heart swelled with sadness. Every one of the faces that were now staring at him were disgusted by him.
Especially Teddy. He was always disappointing Teddy.
The only person in that room that showed him even a modicum of sympathy seemed to be Nikki.
But even she was muted. Even she knew he didn’t deserve her sympathy.
And he didn’t want it. That was why he never allowed emotion to rule his decisions. It was coldblooded. But so be it. “I’ve got to get DeSouza off the streets to protect my family.”
“But what do you mean by get him, Uncle Mick?” Reno asked. “Do you mean we get him dead or alive? Or just alive?”
They all looked at Mick to see if there was still some compassion there. The boy he spoke of, if Cleo was to be believed, was his blood son.
But Mick was still Mick. “Not dead or alive,” he said. “I want answers first, and then I want him dead.”
They were all shocked. Especially Monk. “He’s your son, Mick!”
“He said he was the money man. That means he wanted my wife dead, my son dead, Nikki dead, and he wanted to snuff my ass out too. What I look like letting that fucker live?”
To Teddy, it was a logical argument. But totally void of reality.
If Cleo Burgess was telling the truth, and apparently she was or Mick would not have paid for her abortion, that “fucker” he spoke of so dispassionately was his son.
Which confounded Teddy. If he lived to be a hundred and three, he’d never understand his old man.
But before any of them could voice their opinions either way, the front door flew open and one of Teddy’s capos rushed in. “There’s heat at the cabin, Boss. There’s been a hit!”
And without fail, every single of one of them, led by Mick, took off.