Reno and Son: Don't Mess with Jim (The Mob Boss Series) (8 page)

They made it outside, in the fresh, late
night air.
 
They began walking toward the
parking area.
 
Her heaviness was as real
as that air.
 
Reno took her by the arm
and stopped her progression.
 
“It’s going
to be all right, Val.
 
He’s going to be
all right.”

“I didn’t think,” she started, but didn’t
finish.
 
And they began walking in
silence.

When they arrived at her car, Reno turned
her toward him and held her small hand.
 
“Don’t give up on him,” he said to her.
 
She looked at Reno with weary eyes. “He comes from a tough family, yes,
he does.
 
But he’s the best one of us
all.
 
The absolute best.
 
Don’t you dare give up on him.”

Val nodded her head, but Reno could see the
doubt all over her.
 
It would take time
for Jimmy to reestablish himself in her eyes.
 
Time and love.
 
But right now, if
Reno were to be honest about it, her relationship with Jimmy was the last thing
on his mind.
 
Getting Jimmy out of there
consumed his every thought.

He hugged Val, and Val cried in Reno’s
arms, then she got into her car and drove off.
 
Reno began heading for his Porsche.
 
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that his sins were being visited upon
his son.
 
He couldn’t shake the feeling
that what happened tonight, and all of that rage of Jimmy’s that was probably
pinned up from years and years of suppression, was Reno’s own damn fault.

FIVE

Oliver Lancaster, the manager at Skillian’s,
sat behind his desk in his small, paneled office.
 
Four big men, all Reno’s men, stood around
that office.
 
They would deny it to his
face, but he was nobody’s fool.
 
These
men were essentially holding him hostage in his own establishment.
 
He’d asked to leave countless times, but they
kept saying not yet.
 
It was almost three
in the morning, the bar was already closed, and his bouncers and staff were
already gone.

It would be another ten minutes longer, but
eventually there was a knock on the bar’s back door.
 
It was a door that could only be opened from
Oliver’s office.
 
It was a door that only
he was authorized to ever use.

But this was a different night.
 
One of the men, Boz, walked over to the door
and, without so much as asking who it was, opened it.
 
And Reno walked in.
 
Oliver looked, wondering who was this new
face.
 
Although this man wore a suit and
had an air of distinction about him, he was certain he was a thug too.
 
He hid his thuggery better, but Oliver could
smell the type a mile away.

But oddly enough, instead of speaking to
the manager, Reno’s entire attention turned to Boz, his chief of security, and
his other men.
 
He always used Boz to
personally handle his most delicate jobs.
 
“Did you get it?”

Boz was a tall black man Reno knew since
the early days of his career, a man he could always rely on.
 
But Boz was shaking his head tonight.
 
“We got nothing,” Boz hated to say.
 
“He won’t give it up.”

But that response didn’t sit right with
Reno.
 
“What do you mean he won’t give it
up?”

“I mean,” Boz clarified, “that we have a
gentleman here who seems to be under the impression that he has a right to
refuse our request and, as he puts it, to preserve the so-called evidence, not
for us, but for the cops.”

Reno looked at Oliver.
 
“That’s your impression?” he asked him.
 
“Who gave you that impression?”

“Look,” Oliver started, but Reno
interrupted him.

“I said who gave you that impression?”

Oliver stared at Reno.
 
He was not backing down.
 
“I don’t know who you people are, or what
kind of goons you purport to be, but understand something about me.
 
I will not be intimidated by you, your goons,
or anyone else.
 
Those tapes are to
remain in my custody whether the cops get a warrant to see them or not.
 
But I am not about to give them up to people
like you.
 
Not tonight.
 
Not any night.”

Reno looked at the guy.
 
He respected a man who stood on
principal.
 
But he picked the wrong night
to stand.
 
“What’s your name?”

But Oliver wasn’t going along.
 
“My name is irrelevant to this
discussion.”
 

Reno looked at Boz.

Boz smiled.
 
“His name is Oliver,” he said.
 
“Oliver Lancaster.”

“Oliver Lancaster,” Reno said, smiling
too.
 
“Mind if I call you Ollie?”

“What you call me is of no consequence to
me.”

Reno looked at the guy, and just looking at
him made his blood boil.
 
His son was
rotting in a jail cell and this arrogant ass was trying to make some
statement?
 
Reno suddenly reached over,
grabbed Oliver by the catch of his shirt, causing Oliver to screech in horror,
and then Reno pulled him all the way across the desk.
 
“Now you listen to me you little prick!
 
You think I’m here for my health?
 
You think I have time to play with your
retarded ass?
 
You get that fucking tape
and you get it now or I’ll shove your fucking balls down your fucking
throat!”
 
Reno then pushed Oliver away
from him.
 
Oliver fell back against the
desk, stunned by the display.

Reno began straightening up his suit.
 
He hated to lose his cool, he hated to have
to go there, but these people keep trying him as if he was some chump they knew.
  
He looked at the manager, to see if he still
was trying him or just had a general death wish.
 

Apparently not, Reno thought, because
Oliver straightened his own suit of clothes, stood erect, and walked over to
the safe.
 
When he opened the safe, he
pulled out the tape in question, a tape he had put away in memorial of the
devastating fight.
 
Boz snatched it from
him and placed it in the office recorder.
 
He and his men began reviewing the footage to make certain the manager
wasn’t pulling a fast one.

“Is there a copy?” Reno asked Oliver.

“No,” Oliver said reluctantly.

“If a copy ever surfaces,” Reno made clear,
“you’re dead.
 
You understand that,
right?”

“There’s no copy.”
 
Then Oliver shook his head.
 
“Some nigger boy beats up a white man and
you’re all up in arms.
 
Why?
 
I don’t get it.”

Reno looked at Boz.
 
Boz gave him the thumbs up: the tape was
legit.
 
Then he began removing the tape
from the recorder.

Reno looked at the manager.
 
“Cops come asking for it,” he said, “you tell
them somebody forgot to set the recorder.
 
The camera was broken.
 
The camera
never existed.
 
Whatever the hell you
want to tell them.
 
But you make certain,
at the end of that explanation, that you tell them you got nothing.
 
Get cute and mention this meeting, and every
human being near and dear to you will pay for your cuteness.
 
And you’ll pay with your life.
 
We understand each other, Ollie?”

Oliver stared at Reno with pure hate on his
face.

“We understand each---”

“Yes,” Oliver interrupted.
 
“You don’t have to ask it again. Yes, I
understand.
 
I understand that we don’t
have a rule of law in this country any more, just a bunch of gangsters.”

Boz laughed.
 
Reno wasn’t in the mood.
 
He began to leave out of the same door he
entered in.
 
But just as he was passing
Oliver, he grabbed him by the hand, bent that hand back so far, and with such
brute force, that he could hear the bones break.
 
Oliver yelped and screamed in pain, as his
legs suddenly started jumping up and down, doing the River Dance, because of
the agony.
 
But Reno continued to bend
the hand, oblivious to the man’s anguish.
 
He, instead, looked him dead in the eye.
 
“Asshole calls my son the n-word and thinks he can get away with
that.
 
Why?
 
I don’t get it.”
 

Then Reno stared at the crying man a moment
longer, and then released his crushed, decrepit hand, and left.

Reno sat in his Porsche, under a
streetlight, on a little used, side street in the hood.
 
His head was leaned back against the leather
headrest, and his eyes were half-lidded as he watched the darkness and quiet
around him.
 
It was nearly four in the
morning.
 
He was so tired he could barely
see straight.
 
The only reason he was
still able to so much as bat an eye was because of his devotion to his son, and
his determination to get him out of that jail cell.

His cell phone rang just as a car turned
onto the side street, but kept on going.
 
He looked at the Caller ID. It was Trina.

“Didn’t I tell you to get some sleep,” he
said to her as soon as he pressed the button.

“Where are you?”

Reno wasn’t about to tell her his
whereabouts.
 
“Here and there,” he said.

Trina was used to it.
 
“What are you doing here and there?”

“Handling the situation.”

“Legally I hope.”

“You hope for too much.”

“But you’re taking care of it.”

“I’m taking care of it.”

“Good.
 
You do what you have to do.
 
For
Jimmy.”

“Right.”

“Did you see him?”

“I saw him.”

“How was he?
 

“He’s not great, that’s for sure.
 
He’s scared.”

“Poor kid.”

“Yeah, right.
 
That poor kid got his own ass in this
sling.
 
That’s what I always fear about
him.
 
He doesn’t know how to finesse
it.
 
Now he nearly kills a man.”

“Don’t say that, Reno.
 
Let’s pray the guy pulls through.
 
And who is he, anyway?
 
I know you had your people look into his
background.”

“They looked.
 
His name is Herman Fromme or something like
that.
 
They call him Costco on account of
he’s always trying to get something for nothing, to get a great deal, but
there’s a million guys out there like that.
 
His drinking caused his wife and kids to leave him, he works for his
brother-in-law at some used car lot.
 
That’s it.
 
That’s all we know.”

Another car, a shiny Town car, turned onto
the side street also, but this one stopped across the street, at the curb.

“Listen, babe, I’ve got to go.
 
Talk to you later.”

“Be safe.”

“I will.”
 
Then Reno killed the call.

He waited for the signal: the lights
flashing twice.
 
Once that happened, he
got out of his Porsche, buttoned his suit coat, and made his way across the
street.
 
The backdoor of the Town car
opened, and Reno got inside.

John Bruni, the district attorney for Clark
County, sat in the backseat.

“Nice suit, Reno,” he said as Reno stepped
in.
 
“Too bad you don’t know how to keep
a nice suit nice.”

“It’s too damn late for your jokes,
Brune.”
 
Reno sat down.

“Alright already.
 
No jokes.
 
All serious now.
 
I reviewed the
case.”

“Yeah and?”

“It’s messy with a capital M.
 
Best I can do is a reduced charge.”

“No.”

“It’s the best I can do, Reno.”

“You’ve got to do better than that.
 
I don’t want a reduced charge, I want no
charge.
 
I want all charges against my
son dropped.”

“Oh, Reno, come on!
 
He nearly killed a man.”

“He ain’t dead yet.
 
That’s why you drop charges now, just in
case.
 
You make it clear that just
because Jimmy won the fight doesn’t make it an unfair fight.
 
It was just a bar fight.”

But Bruni shook his head.
 
“You’re asking for the impossible.”

“I’m not asking for shit,” Reno said.
 
“I’m paying for the impossible.
 
And I expect a full return on my hard-earned
money.”

Bruni looked at him.
 
“Why do I let you do this?”

“Because you’re a greedy, slimy, corrupt
motherfucker,” Reno said.
 
“For
starters.”

Bruni laughed.
 
For some strange reason, he thought Reno was
kidding.
 
“Okay, you got me there.”
 
Then he sobered up.
 
“What about the cameras?”

“They weren’t on.
 
And just in case they were, I have the tape.”

“Witnesses?”

Reno reached into his back pocket and
pulled out a list.
 
He handed it to
Bruni.
 
“Three names, three signed
statements.”

“Let me guess: all three will declare that the
other guy punched Jimmy first and Jimmy had no choice but to defend himself?”

“There ya’ go.”

“And he made no statements to the cops?”