CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tommy and Robby Yale were already outside by the time Reno and Sal came running out of the door. But Sal’s armed capos were running alongside the limo, on both sides, as it made its way up the expansive driveway.
They had already checked that limo inside, outside, and underneath, and they had checked Moose Vatelli and his driver too. They were treating him with the disrespect he deserved. They were confident there would be no surprises.
When Reno, Tommy, and Sal hurried up to the limo, Walter “Moose” Vatelli pressed down the back passenger side window. “Get in, Reno,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Reno stared at him with nothing short of disgust on his face. What balls he’s got, Reno was thinking.
But he knew Moose. The man was crazy as fuck, but he was never a fool. And trying anything in the driveway of his arch-enemy would be fool activity. Reno knew it. That was why he got into the back of the vehicle.
What he didn’t realize was that Trina had come up behind him, and got in the limo too.
Which angered Sal. “What you doing, Tree? Get the fuck out of there!”
Sal was about to grab her out, but Reno stopped him. “She’s alright. He didn’t just come for my babies, he came for hers too. She’s alright.”
Trina was on the back side of Reno, away from Moose himself, and Reno aimed to keep it that way.
Sal looked at Tommy. Was he for real letting his old lady be anywhere near a dangerous thug like Moose?
But Tommy hunched his shoulders. No way would he let Grace do it, nor would Sal let Gemma.
But they both knew there was no getting between Reno and Trina when they were stuck like chuck, and were on the same page even if it was in the wrong playbook.
But Sal didn’t hesitate to hurry around to the front driver side and open the door. “Get lost,” he said to Moose’s driver.
The driver got out, and Sal got in behind the wheel as Tommy was getting in on the front passenger seat. Both brothers turned around to get a good look at Moose too. With their weapons drawn, they were aiming for that motherfucker’s brains if he even thought about getting slick.
Reno and Trina were looking at Moose, but Moose was staring at Sal and Tommy. “Really Dapper Tom? Really Sal Luca? You gonna disrespect me like this? What I look like coming to Reno’s territory starting shit?”
But nobody responded to him. He came to them. They didn’t owe him any explanations.
Moose knew it too. A big, husky Sicilian with a bulldog face and a receding hairline, he was nobody’s picture of beauty. But he had reach. Which meant he had power. What happened at the PaLargio proved that.
Or did it?
“It ain’t me,” Moose said.
Reno and Trina stared at him as if he’d just told them the sky was purple. Tommy and Sal stared at him too. “What ain’t you?” Reno asked him.
“All the shit that’s been happening. It wasn’t me.”
Tommy and Sal glanced at each other. But Reno frowned. “What you mean it wasn’t you?”
“What are you talking what do I mean? I mean it wasn’t me.
Word been getting around that you putting all this shit at my feet.
But that ain’t true, Reno. Why would it be true?
What I’m coming for you for? I haven’t had a beef with you in decades.
Why all of a sudden I’m coming for you? Especially after you kicked my ass the last time.
You know how long it took me to build back up after that war? What I look like starting another war?”
He was making sense to Tommy and Sal. But Reno had the Lydia factor that Moose wasn’t mentioning. “If it ain’t you,” he asked him, “then who the fuck is it?”
It was Moose’s time to frown. He was a hand-talker like Reno.
“How should I know?” The palms of his small, stubby hands were outstretched.
“I’m over here dying because I’m hearing the Gabrinis gunning for me.
I’m hearing they blaming me for shit I had nothing to do with.
Trying to burn down the PaLargio? Are you fucking kidding me?
What I look like trying to pull off that kind of shit?
Like I don’t know you got Sal Luca and Tommy’s muscle behind you.
You got Mick the Tick’s muscle behind you.
You got Monk Paletti’s muscle behind you.
And my old ass gonna pick a fight with all that?
What the fuck, Reno! What you take me for? ”
It was the first time that Reno was beginning to have his doubts. But he still hadn’t mentioned her. “What about Lydia?” he asked him.
But saying her name didn’t seem to register so much as a blink from Moose. “What about her?”
“She said you knew.”
Moose stared at Reno. “I knew what?”
Tommy and Sal glanced at each other again. Trina glanced at them too. Then they all looked at Reno.
But Reno was beginning to go numb. Had he been had? Did Lydia lie to him? “She said you knew about what went down with your sons and their families that night.”
Now Moose was perplexed. “What you mean what went down? Billy Stallini took out my family, and I took out his. What are you talking, Reno?”
Reno was flabbergasted. “You don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?!” Now Moose was the one who was anxious.
“Lydia said you knew. She said you knew I was the one behind that hit.”
By the sheer look on Moose’s face, everybody in that limo knew what Reno had just said was news to him. “You?” He looked as if he still couldn’t believe it. “You’re telling me you was behind . . . That you took out my family like that? My grandbabies? You, Reno?”
They all could tell that Reno was fighting back every ounce of emotion he had within him. And when it came to the shame of what he’d done, he had plenty. “Yes,” he admitted.
Moose looked as if he still couldn’t believe it. “But you wouldn’t . . . You never went around hurting families like that. Me and my men hit you, you hit us back. You never went for anybody’s wives and kids. That ain’t you, Reno.”
Now Reno was frowning. “What the fuck you mean it’s not me?
You don’t know me like that, and you didn’t know me then like that.
You came for my life back then when you came for the PaLargio with that fake-ass will.
And I heard about that scheme you was cooking up to take it by force next time.
To go through me and mine and take it. You think I was gonna let that stand? ”
“But I was at war with Billy Stallini at the time. I just knew he was behind it. I never once even considered you!”
“Were you planning to take over the PaLargio by force?” Tommy asked him.
Moose hesitated, but he manned up. “Yes,” he said. “But it was only in the planning phase when that hit went down.”
“That was the point,” said Trina. “Reno had to make sure it stayed in the planning phase.”
Tommy and Sal were both shocked that Trina would try to justify what Reno had done. But that was exactly what she was doing. But there was always one thing about that twosome: If they were going to be dysfunctional, they were going to be dysfunctional together.
“Lydia told me you knew,” Reno said. “She told me one of the made men from my father’s organization got out of prison recently and was selling that secret for a hefty price. She said you paid him.”
“But how could she tell you that I knew anything when she’s the one who told me that you was blaming me for that PaLargio explosion and for a lot of other accidents that tried to take out your children?”
Everybody was shocked. Especially Reno. “What you mean she told you about the PaLargio explosion? How could she tell you that when she’s dead?”
The look on Moose’s face said it all. “Dead?” Then he frowned.
“What are you talking? When did this happen? I’ve been in L.A.
for the past few weeks handling mob business and she’s been staying with me at my villa.
I just saw her a couple hours ago when she told me what happened at the PaLargio and how you was blaming me for that explosion and some other shit. And then I came straight to you.”
Everybody in the car was dumbstruck.
“Reno, are you certain Lydia was the one you shot in that SUV?” Trina asked. Then she looked at her in-laws. “Tommy? Sal? Were y’all certain?”
But none of them could say yes. “We saw a woman running from that junkyard shed,” Reno said. “I knew Lydia was holed up in there. I’m the one who put a tracking device on her.”
“Could she have taken it off of her and put it on somebody else?”
“Yes,” said Tommy, answering for Reno since his corporation was the one that manufactured those tracking mechanisms and he had given it to Reno months ago. “If it’s done quickly and when Reno wasn’t looking directly at the movement, it could be done.”
Trina was floored. “Are you saying that this Lydia person put the device on another woman and that woman was the one Reno had been tracking all along? And that woman was the one y’all killed? Is that even possible?”
“It had to be possible,” said Moose. “Unless it happened less than two hours ago when she left my villa.”
“Where did she go?” Sal asked him. Reno was still too floored to ask.
“I have no idea,” Moose responded. “But as soon as I said I was gonna confront Reno, she tried to talk me out of it.”
“Why would she talk you out of it?” Tommy asked.
“Because she wanted me to just go to war with him. She wanted me to fight back. When I wouldn’t do that and told her no way was I going down that road again with any Gabrinis or Sinatras, she cussed me out, called me weak and pathetic, and left.
But I was used to her outbursts, so I didn’t pay it any attention. ”
“But why would she want you to go to war with Reno?” Trina asked, and that was the question of the hour to Reno. He looked at Moose too.
But Moose had no idea. “I don’t know. But what I do know is that my daughter was not capable of pulling off that explosion at the PaLargio. How did she get through all of what I’m certain was layers and layers of security?”
That was the question to Reno too, and he knew the answer was in who was behind the security breach.
But Moose was still focused on what Reno had done. “How could you let me take out a whole other family for something you did, Reno? How could you do that?”
It was the same question Tommy and Sal asked when Reno told them decades ago.
But they knew Reno better than Moose ever did.
And they answered their own question. It was his old man in him, was their response.
What Reno did to Moose’s sons and what he allowed Moose to do to Moose’s rival mobster, was exactly what Paulo Gabrini would have done.
Reno, back then, was still his father’s son.
Reno got out of the limo. Trina, Tommy, and Sal did too.
Reno looked at Robby Yale. “Put Moose and his driver in one of the guest houses out back. I want ten men on his ass until I can confirm what he’s telling me.”
“Yes sir,” Robby said, and got right on it.
Then Reno exhaled as Trina, Tommy, and Sal gathered around him. “We gotta find Lydia,” Trina said.
“But what Moose said makes sense, Reno,” said Sal. “How her ass gonna be able to reach that high? She’s less powerful than he is.”
“She might be,” said Tommy. “But apparently somebody she knows is.”
“And that somebody,” Reno added, “wants my head, and the heads of my whole family, on a platter.”
“But who?” asked Trina.
But Reno had no answer for it. “Find out what’s going on with the security breach investigation,” Reno said to Sal.
“When they find out who’s behind it, bring that person to me.
That’s where we start,” he said and then he frowned.
“You saw that look on Moose’s face when he realized I was the one who took out his sons? ”
They all had seen it. He was devastated.
Reno shook his head. “What’s crazy,” he said, “is that I still can’t believe I did it either.”
He stood there a moment longer, glanced at Trina, and then he went back into the house. With Trina right on his tail.
Sal looked at Tommy. “You know this is batshit crazy, right? That bitch not dead? Moose knew nothing about that hit on his family? Reno said he saw her running out of that junkyard shed. What the fuck, Tommy?”
Tommy let out a long exhale himself. He didn’t know what to do either. “We’ve got to find Lydia,” he said just as the gates parted again.
“Who’s coming now?” Sal asked. Until he saw the big, black Cadillac Escalade drive through.
It was Mick “The Tick” Sinatra.
And Tommy was pleased.
Sal was too. “Uncle Mick will get to the bottom of this bullshit,” he said with relief in his voice.
“And if he doesn’t?” Tommy asked.
Sal shook his head as the Escalade stopped right in front of them. “If he doesn’t, he said, “we’re screwed.”