CHAPTER SIX
“What you know about it? Man, you’re green as grass. You’re a green-ass rookie compared to us.”
“I’m not as green as you think.”
Ellis wasn’t convinced. Ralph either. But Dawson kept talking. “Because I don’t do the things you like to do doesn’t make me green. It makes me smart.”
They laughed. “Yeah right,” Ralph said.
But Ellis was distracted. “Isn’t that his old man?”
“Whose old man?” Ralph asked as he and Dawson looked where Ellis was looking.
“Jimmy’s old man. That’s him over there.”
“Where?” Ralph looked and that was when he saw him too: Reno Gabrini seated in a booth with a busty blonde.
“That’s him alright,” Ralph said. “That’s Reno Gabrini.”
But Dawson was still confused. “Who are you talking about? Where are you looking?”
“Over there.” Ellis took his small head and pointed it in the right direction.
“I still don’t see who you mean. All I see is what’s his name? I see him at the PaLargio all the time. Gabrini, that’s it. Reno Gabrini.”
Ellis and Ralph looked at each other in disbelief. Then they looked at Dawson. “What’s Jimmy’s last name?”
Dawson didn’t have to think about it. “Gabrini.”
They looked to see if he got it this time. But Dawson didn’t get the connection at all. He still looked confused. Then, when he realized what they meant, he frowned. “But Jimmy’s black. Reno Gabrini’s a white man.”
“But his baby mama wasn’t a white woman,” Ellis said.
“His baby mama? You mean Jimmy’s mama?”
“No, I mean your mama. Yes idiot. Reno Gabrini is Jimmy’s daddy. But that blonde ain’t his mama.”
Ralph laughed.
“I thought somebody said his mama was dead,” said Dawson.
“She is. But his step-mama is very much alive.”
“And that ain’t his step-mama either,” Ellis said as they looked at the woman Reno had his arm around.
“So you’re saying Jimmy Gabrini and Reno Gabrini are related?”
Ellis shook his head. “Yes, child. That’s what we’re saying.”
“Wow. Who would have thought that!”
“Everybody except for you,” Ralph said. “How many Gabrinis could there possibly be in the same town and they not be related? Come on now, Dawse. You’re green, but you can do better than that!”
“Change the conversation,” said Ellis. “Jimmy’s here.”
They looked as Jimmy glanced at a girl that gave him an assessing look, but he kept on walking until he was plopping down at their table. “Don’t ask,” he said.
“Or don’t tell?” asked Dawson.
Jimmy looked at him. “What?”
“ignore him, Boss,” Ellis said. “What took you so long?”
“Tommy called me as soon as I was trying to get out of the building.”
“What did he want?”
“He told me to turn my ass around right then and there and send him the Riverside report.”
“Riverside?” asked Ralph. “But I thought you gave that merger the green light days ago.”
“I did. But Tommy hasn’t. And nothing’s in stone until he signs his John Hancock. He gives final approval.”
Ralph shook his head. “And Tommy Gabrini don’t play.”
But just as Ralph was about to say more, Dawson interrupted them. “Your dad’s here too, Boss,” he said. “Ellis pointed him out to us. I didn’t see him at first.”
Ellis and Ralph were shocked that he went there. They knew how sensitive a subject that was with Jimmy.
“My Dad?”
“Yes sir. He’s right over there.”
Jimmy looked where Dawson was pointing. And that was when Jimmy saw Reno as he pulled the woman into his arms. Ellis and Ralph could tell Jimmy’s blood was boiling as he watched his father hold the busty blonde for a long time.
And then they stopped embracing, he whispered something in her ear, and then they both got up as if they couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Reno pulled out a thick wad of cash, dropped a bill on the table, and they began heading for the exit.
As if they were getting hot and needed to get a room. Everybody at that table thought so too.
But Jimmy was so tired of his father’s antics and his need to have so many female “friends” that it was exhausting trying to tell him how bad that looked. And the embarrassment of it all. Jimmy was done.
That was why he moved on. “Like I was saying,” he said, “we may have to completely rework the Riverside merger when my Uncle Tommy gets through with it.”
“Sure thing, Jimmy,” Ellis said. He knew Jimmy the longest. They weren’t close, but they respected each other. “You’re the boss,” he added.
“Actually, Tommy’s the boss,” Jimmy said.
“And Tommy Gabrini don’t play,” Ralph said again. “My girl had the nerve to ask me one day who he was when he was at his Vegas office. I told him that’s Tommy Gabrini. Jimmy’s uncle. The big boss. They call him Dapper Tom. And do you know that heifer asked me to give him her phone number?”
They were shocked. “And you gave it to him?”
“Hell no! But I got her in bed myself and then told her he only dates black girls. You should have seen her face. Then I dumped her ass,” Ralph said, and they all laughed.
Jimmy was laughing too, but all he could think about was Trina and how she was going to feel when word got back, as it always did, about this new chick she had to worry about. What was wrong with his old man, he wondered again for the billionth time. Why was he always up to shit?
Jimmy was still smiling as he sat back in his seat. But nothing about that day was funny to him.