CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Grace didn’t even ask if she could come along with Tommy.
She just got dressed just as he was getting dressed, and they went downstairs together.
When he placed his hand on her lower back escorting her downstairs, and she didn’t refuse his touch, he knew that was progress.
Mick, Reno and Sal, along with Big Daddy and Amelia, were waiting to go to the guest room with them.
“Where’s Trina and Roz?” Grace asked. They were usually the leaders of the pack when anything was going down in the family.
“Jenay talked them into helping her cook a meal for everybody tonight,” said Big Daddy. “I said good luck with that.”
“Gemma had enough sense to refuse,” said Sal. “All these different tastebuds, nobody is going to be satisfied. But you can’t Roz and Trina anything. Jenay either,” he said and glanced at Big Daddy.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Tommy said. He wasn’t looking forward to Grace meeting Vera. He never liked when his ex-lovers met his wife.
“Then let’s do it,” said Mick, and they all headed out a side entrance, around the pool area, to the first of several guest houses.
But before they went in, Robby Yale hurried up to the group. “Hammer just called. He said he should be here in a few shakes. He said nothing deep until he gets here.”
“Why’s he coming?” asked Amelia. “He has news?”
“He wouldn’t say,” said Robby. “He just said nothing deep until he arrives.”
“Okay, Robby, thanks,” said Tommy. Then he looked at Mick. “What you think that’s about?”
“Apparently he knows something,” said Mick.
“How deep should I go then?”
“Deep enough. His ass can catch up,” Mick added. “But not too deep. Pace yourself until he comes.”
Tommy exhaled. It was tough enough. But then he took Grace’s hand, looked at her to make sure she was willing to hold his hand, and then he took a deep breath and they all entered the guest house.
Grace knew she would be beautiful before she laid eyes on her.
Uniquely beautiful ladies were all Tommy fooled around with before he met her.
And this Vera Lang, with her perfect black skin and her sultry green eyes and her high cheekbones definitely fit the type.
And more beside. Grace would be lying if she said she didn’t feel some level of jealousy, because she did.
But she knew she had to face facts. It was no secret that Tommy went against type when he chose her.
What kept her going was that he could have just as easily chosen this woman, this Vera Lang, or any of those other beauty queens he favored.
But he didn’t. He not only chose Grace to be his woman: He chose her to be his wife.
And in that moment of knowing that she and she alone was Mrs. Tommy Gabrini no matter how it came to be, she knew she had nothing to be jealous about.
Vera was seated on the sofa inside the guest house.
Although she wasn’t tied up like their prisoners usually were, she knew she wasn’t free to leave.
The fact that another black woman, Nikki Sinatra, the underboss of the Sinatra Crime Family, was sitting beside her like a prison guard proved that.
The fact that Mick Sinatra’s capos were on guard at the door outside proved it too.
“It’s about time you get here, Tommy,” Vera said. “Fatty over here wouldn’t let me make a simple phone call.”
If she thought her little putdown was going to rile Nikki Sinatra, a proud full-figured woman, she was wrong. Nikki smiled at the silliness of it. But Mick the Tick, her boss, didn’t find it funny at all. “Disrespect her again,” he warned Vera, “and I’ll shove that phone call up your ass.”
“And I’ll help,” added Sal.
Vera sat erect. She’d forgotten the close relationship Mick had with Nikki, and the fact that Nikki and Teddy ran his entire syndicate.
She even heard that Mick loved Nikki like a daughter, or like a girlfriend.
She’d heard it both ways. “I was just joking,” she said with a sudden, nervous smile.
She knew Tommy was a tough guy. She knew Sal was even tougher.
But she definitely knew that Mick the Ticking Time Bomb was not the one to cross.
Once he started in on your ass, she’d heard, he wasn’t going to stop.
“Even Nikki knew I was just joking around.”
Nikki knew no such thing, but she wasn’t about to make this about her. She let it slide.
“Decided to take a vacation, Vera?” Sal asked her snidely. “We pay you a visit, then boom. You need a break. Got to get out of town. That’s how you roll?”
Vera rolled her eyes at Sal instead. Then she looked at Grace. Everybody could see the contempt in her eyes when she looked at Grace. “What’s she doing here?”
Tommy frowned. “What do you think? She’s my wife. This is her house. She owns this guest house you’re sitting in. You had to be dragged into her backyard, not the other way around. That’s why she’s here.”
The mere reminder that Grace had beat her, and beat all those far-more worthy women Tommy could have had, that Grace of all people did that, was too much for Vera to even wrap her brain around. “Can I smoke?” she asked Tommy. “Nikki wouldn’t let me do that either.”
“Why no jokes about Grace?” Sal asked Vera with a smile on his face. “Or I should say why no jokes about Mrs. Tommy Gabrini? Can’t joke about that, can you Vee?”
“Boy bye,” Vera said dismissively to Sal as he and Reno laughed. “I’m not thinking about your trifling butt.” Then she looked at Tommy again. “May I smoke, Tommy? It’s a bad habit, I know it is, but I can’t help that now.”
“I told you to stick around because I might need you again,” said Tommy. “Why did you all of a sudden feel the urge to hop a plane and head to Mexico?”
“It wasn’t an urge.”
“What was it then?”
“It was an order,” Vera said. “I was ordered to get out of town and stay out until it’s finished.”
Like every Sinatra and Gabrini, Tommy was taught to ask the less-relevant question first because their person of interest might clam-up on everything else if they asked the main question first. “Until what was finished?” he asked her.
“How should I know what that meant?”
“Bullshit,” said Sal.
“Tommy, I’d tell you if I knew. You know I would.” Then she looked her big eyes at him. “You believe me, don’t you?”
Nobody standing there believed her little Miss Innocent act, but Tommy knew her best. Grace could tell that he believed her.
And when Tommy acknowledged that he did believe her, Grace wasn’t surprised. But Reno and Sal were shocked. “Ah Tommy get real!” said Reno. “How you gonna believe any word that comes out of this chick’s mouth? You ain’t thinking right. That’s that bottom head doing the thinking right now.”
Reno didn’t mean to blurt out such vulgarity in front of Grace, whom he loved and respected. “Sorry, Grace,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”
“You meant it,” Grace replied. “But if Tommy believes her,” she added, “then so do I.”
Tommy looked at Grace and then squeezed her hand. He could always count on her to be in his corner no matter how rocky their relationship might be faring, and he appreciated her confidence in him. But Reno and Sal looked at each other as if they couldn’t believe she would fall for that.
Grace knew Reno and Sal thought of her as this weak woman from way back who believed anything Tommy told her, and that she let him get away with murder.
But that wasn’t true. She believed in not just the reality of who Tommy was, which wasn’t a perfect person by any means, but in the promise of who he could become.
She had faith in his judgment. That was the difference.
But Reno and Sal looked to Mick for help when they saw Mick staring at Grace as if he was sizing her up. “Can you please tell this woman that Tommy’s full of shit right about now, Uncle Mick?” asked Reno.
“There’s no way rational, Backdoor Tommy would believe this dame was ordered to do anything,” said Sal. “But Dapper Tom would believe that shit. Because like Reno said: It’s the wrong head doing the thinking.”
Hammer Reese quietly entered the guest house as Mick decided to give his two cents. Because Mick got Grace. And because he knew she was gravely misunderstood in the family.
But what he said wasn’t what Reno and Sal were expecting.
“Grace is unlike any woman I’ve ever known, that’s for damn sure,” said Mick.
“She has a quiet strength about her, a kind of gracefulness you just don’t see around much.
She’s that rare kind of woman that don’t feel the need to battle her husband about everything.
And I think that’s a much harder way to go than to fight it out every time.
Because that way, the way of Grace, will always make her seem smaller and her husband larger.
It will always be misinterpreted for weakness.
” Mick exhaled. “But she’s not weak. And she’s nobody’s fool. She’s an admirable woman.”
Sal felt sufficiently put in his place. But Reno knew Mick a little better. “So she’s the kind of woman you would want, Uncle Mick?”
“Shit no,” said Mick. “She can’t handle me.”
Sal and Reno laughed. “Roz can handle you though,” said Reno.
“She’s no Roz,” Mick quickly pointed out.
“She’s Grace.” Then he looked at Reno and Sal.
“And you two fuckers need to stop trying to turn her into who she isn’t and accept who she is.
You two don’t believe Tommy’s bullshit that he has faith in this black Barbie sitting up here,” he said, motioning toward Vera Lang, “and neither do I. But did you ever think that maybe Grace has a deeper point of reference than we do?”
Reno and Sal didn’t know what to say to that, and Grace and Tommy were pleased that at least Mick got it.
But Mick’s acceptance of Grace inwardly enraged Vera.
She looked at the woman, whom she still viewed as her rival, with bile in her eyes.
“You believe Tommy,” she said, “because you don’t know our history.
He might have told you that he dumped me after he met you.
But did he tell you he rekindled our relationship after that dumping? ”
Everybody looked at Grace as Grace’s heart dropped. Tommy had said he attempted to reach out to Vera after the fact, but that it didn’t go anywhere.
Tommy spoke up. “That’s not true,” he said in his defense. “There was no rekindling of anything and she knows it.”
But Vera did not back down. “Did you or did you not try to call me more than once after you so-called dumped me?”
“Yes, I did. Three times to be precise. And nothing became of it.”
“Not because of your ass,” said Vera. “It’s because I didn’t answer you. So don’t try to play Mister Righteous with me. Because righteous you are not, and will never be.”
Grace had already shed her tears over that fumble by Tommy.
And she wasn’t going to pretend Vera was wrong about it either.
“He told me you ghosted him,” Grace said, which surprised Reno and Sal.
But it didn’t surprise Mick. Tommy was doing everything in his power to hold onto his woman.
And he knew lying to her wasn’t going to cut it.
“Had you responded to his attempts to contact you,” Grace continued, “then yes, something very well might have happened between the two of you. Those were early days in our relationship and those were some rocky days too. But you didn’t respond to his advances and he didn’t pursue it any further.
” Then Grace looked Vera in the eye. “So let’s move the fuck on,” she said in her calm, but determined style.
Reno and Sal smiled. “That’s what I’m talking about,” said Reno.
And that was when Tommy realized Hammer had entered the room.
He then got down to it and asked Vera the main question.
“You said you were ordered to skip town until it was finished. You may not have known what finished meant, but you know who ordered you to leave town or you wouldn’t have tried to hop that plane. Who ordered you to leave?”
Vera knew obfuscating now would only hurt her cause in the end. They weren’t letting her out until they got the truth. She knew that too. “Luddie ordered me out.”
Every man in that room, except for Hammer, frowned. “Luddie?” Sal had shock in his voice. “Luddie Jelinski?”
“Who else running around calling themselves Luddie, Sal?”
“Just answer the question, asshole!” Sal shot back.
“Yes, Luddie Jelinski, alright? That Luddie. Yes!”
“If Luddie was the one to order you to skip town,” said Tommy, “why did you claim you didn’t know Barry Sedaka? He works for Luddie and everybody knows that.”
“I didn’t have any dealings with Barry.”
“That wasn’t the question,” said Tommy.
Vera gave up. “Okay I lied about that one thing. Hell yeah I know Barbell. Luddie said they killed Barbell. I said who killed him? He just kept saying they killed him but he wouldn’t say who they were.
But he said they have unlimited resources and that they can do anything.
That’s why he wanted me out of town. After hearing that, and then you showed up, I didn’t want any heat on me.
So I lied okay? I didn’t want any mob activity around my restaurant, so I lied.
I’m respectable now, and I was trying to keep it that way.
” Then tears appeared in her eyes. “But Luddie won’t let me. ”
“Why won’t he?”
Vera hesitated. But then she answered. “He gave me the money to open the place.”
“Ah shit, lady, get real!” said Reno. “You didn’t want mob around your restaurant when Luddie’s nothing but mob? And not the nice kind either.”
Sal looked at Reno. “Nice? What mobster on this planet is nice, you fucking moron?”
“So you’re indebted to the mob?” asked Mick before Reno could zing Sal back.
Vera didn’t like it, but she nodded her head. “Yes. I’m indebted to Luddie anyway. And when he said I had to skip town for a while, I can’t argue with him. I had to do it.”
“If you aren’t involved,” asked Grace, “why would you have to leave town?”
“Good question,” said Sal. “Why your ass had to leave if you have nothing to do with what happened to their children? What you know that you aren’t telling us, Vera?”
They all waited for her to answer. “Luddie ain’t the man with the plan, that’s all I know.
I don’t know no names, but I know that much.
And because I know that much, he wanted me in hiding so they wouldn’t come for me thinking I know more than I do.
Luddie’s not in charge. He answers to somebody way higher than he ever will be. ”
“How high?” asked Tommy.
It took a moment for her to gather up her nerves, but then she looked all the way across the room at Hammer Reese. “That high,” she said.
When she motioned toward Hammer, everybody stared at him. It took several moments, but eventually Hammer pushed away from the wall he was perched against. And the words he said next were shocking.
“Get rid of her,” he said.