Sal Gabrini: His House of Cards (2 page)

Six Weeks Earlier

Reno Gabrini
might have been the most powerful man in Vegas, but that didn’t stop Gemma
Jones-Gabrini, his cousin’s wife, from giving him a piece of her mind.
 
She’d had it up to here with his
insinuations.
 
She’d had it up to here
with his feud with Sal that she thought had gotten better but was strained once
again.
 
She knew this meeting was
important.
 
She knew Sal should have been
here.
 
But that still didn’t give Reno
the right to accuse her husband of not caring about her.
 
Reno, Gemma felt, had gone too far.

Reno looked
at her with shock in his eyes.
 
Gemma
looked right back at him.
 
He was a man
who always dressed in tailored clothing, but he always looked as if he’d slept
in those clothes.
 
He always looked on
the verge of pure exhaustion.
 
He looked
that way to Gemma right now.
 
“What do
you mean I’ve gone too far?” Reno asked her.
 
“I’m telling you what I know.”

“Then you
don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gemma responded just as firmly.
 
They were at her law firm, sitting at her
conference table, and tension was building.
 
“He had to leave town this morning, Reno.
 
It wasn’t planned.
 
It couldn’t be helped.
 
If he could have been here, he would have
been here.
 
But to suggest he doesn’t
care about me because he’s not here is ridiculous!”

It wasn’t
ridiculous to Reno.
 
“You’re his wife,”
he said firmly.

Even Reno’s
wife, Trina, looked at him when he said that.
 
She was sitting at the table too, and found herself in the familiar role
of mediator between the two heavyweights.
 
“No shit, Reno,” Trina said to him.
 
“Gemma is Sal’s wife?
 
Really?”

Gemma
couldn’t help but smile.
 
She and Trina
were both African-American women married to hotheaded Italian men.
 
They had a bond that could not be broken.
 

“Okay, now I
get it,” Reno said defensively.
 
“So
that’s how it goes?
 
The two of you
ganging up on me?”

“Nobody’s
ganging up on anybody,” Trina said.
 
Her
husband was the toughest man she knew, but he hated it when she didn’t agree
with him one hundred percent.
 
“But you
were out of line,” she continued.
 
“To
question Sal’s commitment to Gem just because he couldn’t make some meeting is
absurd.
 
You’re wrong for that.”

“He should
be here,” Reno said firmly.
 
“That’s all
I’m saying.
  
A man has to protect his
wife.
 
That means keeping his ass in town
and taking care of this situation his wife finds herself involved in.
 
I’m here for you,” he said to Trina.
 
“Sal should be here for Gem.”

“Nobody’s
saying he shouldn’t,” Gemma said to him.
 
“But you’re missing the crucial fact, Reno.
 
He would be here if he could.
 
But some very important business came up that
he had to take care of.
 
It couldn’t
wait.”

“What about
this business?” Reno asked.
 
“This can’t
wait either.
 
You and my wife have a
situation at Champagne’s that has to be addressed and he knew we were planning
to deal with this today.
 
So I take time
out of my busy schedule to come to your office.
 
Trina takes time out of her busy schedule to come to your office.
 
And he leaves town?
 
That’s some bullshit, Gemma.
 
Sal is wrong.
 
His ass should be here.”

“I know he should,”
Gemma fired back.
 
“How many times do I
have to tell you that?
 
But that doesn’t
give you a license to sit up here and besmirch his character just because he
couldn’t make it.
 
You will not tell me
that my husband doesn’t care about me because he isn’t here.”

Reno stared
at Gemma.
 
She was a tall, beautiful,
elegant lady with a good head on her shoulders, but she seemed to be so blind
when it came to Sal and his shady ways.
 
But Reno wasn’t blind.
 
“If he
cared,” he said boldly, “he would be here.
 
Point blank period.
 
I’m not
taking that back.
 
He would be here!
 
We’re business people.
 
We know how to move things around so we can
be where we need to be.
 
Hell, I own the
PaLargio Hotel and Casino on the Vegas Strip, and more properties around this
world than his ass can count, and I’m here.
 
But every time you turn around he’s off on some
can’t wait
business trip he can’t even tell you about, and you’re
flying solo.
 
You have to handle it
yourself.
 
That’s not right, Gem.
 
You’re going to have to convince me that
something that wrong is right.”

Gemma knew
Reno spoke some serious truth.
 
She hated
that Sal had to suddenly fly off to parts unknown when he knew they were
planning to meet.
 
But Reno, as usual
when it came to Sal, was taking it too far.
 
She wasn’t going along with that.
 
“I don’t have to convince you of anything,” she responded with bite in
her voice too.
 
“It’s not my concern if
you’re convinced or not.
 
But I’m telling
you to back off Sal.”

Reno was a
man unaccustomed to being challenged so boldly.
 
He angrily stood to his feet.
 
“Who’s going to make me?” he asked, looking Gemma up and down.
 
“
You
?”

Gemma stood
to her feet too, stunned that Reno would go there.
 
But she wasn’t backing down.
 
“I might,” she responded.
 

But Trina
quickly stood up between them.
 
“That’s
enough you two,” she said.
 
“Both of you
are acting like a couple of spoiled kids!
 
Sal isn’t here and all of this back and forth isn’t going to change that
fact.”
 
She looked at Gemma.
 
“Reno is right, though.
 
Sal’s ass should be here.”
 
She looked at her husband.
 
“But just because he isn’t here has nothing
to do with how he feels about Gem, and you know it, Ree.
 
Ever since I’ve known Sal he’s always hopping
that private jet of his and flying off to handle these business emergencies he
doesn’t discuss with anybody.
 
This isn’t
new to you.
 
So both of you need to knock
it off!”

Reno and
Gemma seemed to heed Trina’s advice.
 
They backed down.
 
They were pals,
the two of them, but lately their relationship was getting as strained as
Reno’s relationship was with Sal.
 
And
neither understood why.

“When do you
expect him back?” Trina asked Gemma.

“He said
he’s going to try to make it home in a few days,” she responded.
 
“I can’t be any more specific than that.”

Reno snorted,
as if that only proved his point.

Gemma was
ready to fire back, but Trina interrupted her.
 
“We’ll get together when he returns,” she said.
 
“We’ve already discussed our strategy.
 
We already know what we need to do to keep
that witch out of any partnership with us.
 
All we have to do now is settle on the best approach.
 
We’ll discuss that when Sal gets back.
 
Unless,” Trina said, looking at Gemma, “you
want to make that decision without him?”

Reno looked
at Gemma too, as if to see if she had the intestinal fortitude.
 
But it wasn’t about being tough and brave for
Gemma.
 
It was about Reno respecting
Sal’s authority when it came to Sal’s domain.
 
Namely, her.
 
“He’ll be back in a
few days,” Gemma responded.
 
“We’ll make
a decision then.”

Trina smiled.
 
If Reno had been the absent party, she would
have responded the same way.
 
“Suit
yourself,” she said to her business partner, and gave her a hug.
 
“I’ll call you later, hon,” she added.

Reno moved
over to Gemma and they hugged too, in what appeared to be a reluctant
truce.
 
He usually kissed her also, he
always kissed her goodbye.
 
But not this
time.
 
Then he and Trina left.

After they
did, after she heard the door close behind them, Gemma sat back down at her
conference table and exhaled.
 
“
Sal, where are you
?” she asked out loud,
to an empty room, with anguish in her voice.
 
And then she threw her pen onto the table and slouched down in her
chair.
 
If truth be told, she was as
frustrated as Reno about Sal’s absences.

Only more
so.

The New
Jersey strip joint was jumping when Sal Gabrini walked inside.
 
Many of the strippers became even more
excited because Sal always made it rain.
 
And he rained down big bills, with not a George Washington in
sight.
 
But he headed for the bar
instead.

“Say, boss,”
the bartender said to Nunzio, the club’s owner.
 
“Look.”
 
He nudged his head toward
the entrance.

Nunzio was
sitting at the bar reading over a stack of papers.
 
He looked in the direction his bartender was
motioning.
 
When he saw Sal walking his
way, looking splendid in his ten-thousand-dollar suit, he smiled.
 
“Well if it ain’t the invisible man!”

“How are
you, Nunz?” Both men shook hands.

“Where the
hell have you been, Sal Luca?”

“Vegas,
where the hell else?” Sal threw his legs across the barstool and sat beside the
owner.

But Nunzio
was still smiling and staring at him.
 
“Sal Luca’s in the house.
 
I’ll be
got
damn.
 
It’s been too long, man.
 
What the hell have you been up to?”

“Living,
fucking, staying away from you.”

Nunzio
laughed.
 
“Yeah, I got your staying
away.
 
What do you want to drink?”

“Beer,” Sal
said.

“Beer,”
Nunzio said to his bartender, and the bartender went to prepare the drink.

“I haven’t
seen your ass since forever, Sal,” Nunzio said.
 
“You used to come around all the time.
 
The girls miss you.
 
I miss
you.
 
Why haven’t you been hanging around
like the old days?”

“What do I
look like hanging around a tittie bar?
 
I’m a married man now.
 
I don’t
play that shit on my wife.”

“Sure you
don’t,” Nunzio responded.
 
“I know your
ass, Sal Luca.”
 
Sal smiled.
 
“We miss you.
 
You used to come around.”

Sal
continued to smile as he looked over at the stage.
 
One of the topless strippers looked over at
him and started massaging her breasts and shaking her ass.
 
Gemma had bigger breasts, he thought, and a
tighter ass.

“You’re in
town on business?” Nunzio asked him.

“Something
like that.”

“On other
matters, not just Freddy?”

Sal
hesitated.
 
That wasn’t Nunzio’s
business.
 
“I hear he’s been talking.”

“More like
threatening,” Nunzio said.
 
“He called
you, right?”

“He called,”
Sal acknowledged.
 
“He had a right to
call.
 
Don’t mean I’m pulling him back
in, but he had a right to call.”
 
Sal
looked away from the stripper and back at Nunzio.
 
“He’s here?”

Nunzio
nodded.
 
“He’s here.
 
He’s in back.”

The
bartender returned with a glass of beer and placed it in front of Sal.
 
Sal took a long gulp.