Reno Gabrini: A Family Affair (11 page)

Jimmy shook his head.
 
He hated that it had come to this.
 
He hated that he would have to reveal
something so vile to his father.
 
“I was
going to put it back,” he said again.

“Why did you take it, motherfucker?” Reno asked
between clenched teeth.
 
“Answer her
question!”

But Jimmy was too ashamed to answer it.
 
He couldn’t even voice it.
 
He reached into his suit pocket, pulled out
the phone that contained the first video, and then handed the phone to his
father.

Trina moved closer to Reno as Reno pressed
Play.
 
At first the video was too
grainy.
 
Then, as it cleared, they could
see Jimmy beating the snot out of some black guy.
 
He was beating him down.
 
What they also realized was that Jimmy and
the guy were both naked, and appeared to be in one of Reno’s hotel rooms.
 
They looked at Jimmy.
 
Reno was especially perplexed.
 
“What the fuck is this?” he asked his son.

Jimmy hated to even discuss it, but he knew he had
to.
 
“A week ago, the night you went to
Florida to check on Ma and the kids, I hooked up with a prostitute,” he
admitted.
 
“I know I shouldn’t have, but
Val and I were having issues and her Period was on and I just, and I was horny
as hell.
 
So one of my friends found a
girl that he figured I would find attractive, and me and the girl hooked up.”

Reno frowned.
 
“You cheated on your wife?
 
Are
you telling us you cheated on Val?”

“We were having problems, Pop!”

“What the fuck difference does that make?
 
Every time you have a problem with your wife
you go out and find a hooker?”

“No.”

“Then stop making lame excuses,” Reno ordered, “and
tell us what’s going on.”

It was tough enough for Jimmy.
 
And now that his fear that his father
wouldn’t understand at all was a reality, made it doubly tough.
 
But it was his mess.
 
He had to face up to it.
 
“She was waiting for me in one of the rooms.
 
I got in bed with her, and we started doing
our thing.
 
But then I realized the girl
I picked up wasn’t a girl at all.”
 
Jimmy
looked at his father.
 
“She was a dude.”

Now Reno realized what they had watched, and why
Jimmy was naked in that video with a naked man.
 
“So you kicked his ass?” Reno asked.

“I snatched off his wig, I snatched off his fake
boobs, and I kicked his ass,” Jimmy said.

Reno nodded.
 
He felt better now.
 
It wasn’t
looking good for Jimmy, in Reno’s eyes, when he first saw that video.
 
And cheating on his wife was never a good
thing.
 
But at least he manned-up.
 
“Damn straight you kicked his ass,” he said.

But Trina was not impressed.
 
“Reno,” Trina said in a warning tone.

“What?” Reno asked.
 
“He was in drag pretending to be a girl.
 
He had it coming, Tree.
 
What else
was Jimmy supposed to do?
 
Thank him for
forcing him to lay down with a guy when he thought he was in bed with a
female?
 
I would have kicked his ass
too.”

“You would have killed his ass,” Trina said.
 
But she looked at Jimmy.
 
Somehow she didn’t feel that this was the
full story.
 
“What does taking your
father’s money have to do with that prostitute?” she asked him.
 
“He’s blackmailing you?”

Jimmy shook his head.
 
“Not him, but somebody,” he said.
 
“They rigged the room.
 
Finn, the guy who set it all up for me, said
he was leaving town a few days later and quit his job.
 
So now I’m figuring somebody paid him off to
set me up.
 
I haven’t been able to track
him down.”
 
Trina seemed
sympathetic.
 
That was why he loved her
so much.
 
That was why he could always
talk to her.
 
But his father?
 
He was only coming around because he thought
Jimmy put the guy in his place.

“Where’s the money now?” Reno asked.

“In my apartment upstairs.
 
I haven’t set up the exchange yet or
anything.”

“Who’s blackmailing you?”

Jimmy shook his head.
 
“I never saw the guy before in my life.
 
And he didn’t give me any details like
that.
 
He just wants the money.”

“How much?” Trina asked.

Jimmy swallowed hard.
 
“Two hundred and fifty thousand.
 
The amount I took from the safe.”

Reno frowned.
 
“Because you beat up a female impersonator he wants a quarter of a
million dollars?
 
Get the fuck out of
here!”

“Because he was in a hotel room naked with a naked
man, Reno,” Trina said.
 
“They release
that tape, people aren’t going to make any distinctions about
circumstances.
 
All it’s going to show is
two naked men in a hotel room.”

“Yeah, and one of those naked men, my son, is
beating down the other naked man.”

But somehow it wasn’t adding up for Trina.
 
Two hundred thousand dollars for a fight
tape?
 
“This is only part of the story,”
she said to Jimmy.
 
“Isn’t it?”

Reno looked at Jimmy.
 
“Well is it?” he asked.

Jimmy nodded.
 
“Yes.
 
It’s only part of the
story.”

“Then what’s the other part?” Reno asked.
 
He was confused now.

Jimmy looked at Trina, as if he sensed she already
knew.
 
Then he looked at his father.
 
“I kept going,” he said.

Reno, at first, didn’t understand what he
meant.
 
But when he did, his frown turned
into alarm.
 
“You kept
going
?”

Jimmy’s distress hit Trina hard.
 
He was always a young man with some degree of
identity confusion.
 
She saw it when she
first met Jimmy.
 
But she always thought
it was because of how badly women treated him, breaking his heart constantly,
rather than any attraction to the male gender.

Reno saw his confusion too, but Trina knew he would
never admit it.
 
Mainly because Reno gave
Jimmy the impression that if he was ever even bi-curious, let alone a
practicing gay, he would hate him forever.

“What do you mean you kept going?” Reno asked his
son.
 
His face was a mask of anger,
disgust, and what Jimmy could only describe as fear.
 
“Answer me,” Reno added.

Jimmy was defeated.
 
He went up to his parents, took the phone, and found the second
video.
 
He pressed Play and handed it
back to them.
 
This video showed Jimmy
and the prostitute, not fighting this time, but having a full blown sexual
encounter.

“When I realized I was dealing with a guy and not a
girl,” Jimmy said as his parents looked away from the video and at him.
 
“I didn’t stop and beat his ass, Pop.
 
I kept going.
 
I wanted to see what it felt like.
 
I kept going!”

Reno frowned with nothing but contempt on his face.
“You wanted to see what it was like? Why the fuck do you need to see what it’s
like?
 
That’s a man on this fucking
tape!
 
He has the same pipes you
have.
 
What the fuck else do you need to
know?”

“I was curious, Pop, that’s all!”

“Curious?” Reno asked in a high-pitched voice of
anger.
 
And then he threw that phone at
Jimmy.
 
Jimmy barely caught it.
 
“Get the fuck out of my face!” Reno added, as
he began moving around his office.
 
“I’ve
got your curious right here!
 
Fucking
perv!
 
You’re curious so you let that
motherfucker run a train on you?”

“He didn’t run any train on me!
 
It takes more than one person to run a
train,” Jimmy added.

Reno and Trina both looked at him.
 
Reno was livid.
 
“So you think this shit funny?”

“No,” Jimmy said, horrified that his father was
misunderstanding him.

“You steal from me, you fuck some dude, and this is
all a big fucking joke to you?”

“No!” Jimmy pleaded.
 
“I didn’t mean it like that, Pop!”

But Reno wasn’t hearing him anymore.
 
“Get the fuck out of my office!” he
yelled.
 
“Take that sick shit video and
get out of my office!”
 
When Jimmy, in
tears again, didn’t move, Reno grabbed him by the arm and flung him toward the
door.
 
“Get out!” he yelled.

And Jimmy kept going.
 
He’d never felt more broken in his life.
 
Not since his mother died did he feel this
alone.
 
But he hurried out of his
father’s office.
 
Reno slammed the door
behind him so hard that it bounced back open.
 
Reno slammed it shut again, opened his suit coat, placed his hands on
his hips, and began pacing the room.
 

Trina was near tears too, but she was also
upset.
 
“You’re as wrong as you can be,
Reno,” she said to her husband.

Reno stopped pacing and looked at her.
 
Her words shocked him.
  
“
I’m
wrong?”

“You’re wrong, Reno.”

“How is this my fault?
 
He’s a fucking pervert!”

But Trina wasn’t buying it.
 
“He’s a young man with a big penis who fucks
anything of age that moves!”
 
Then she
settled back down.
 
“And he’s your son,”
she added.

Reno let out a harsh exhale, raked his hand through
his already ruffled hair, and leaned his head back.
 
Then he looked at Trina.
 
He looked at the woman he relied on to be his
moral compass.
 
And he knew she was only
directing him in the right direction.
 
He
hurried out of his office.

By the time he ordered Dommi to sit back down, made
his way out of his suite of offices and up to his private elevator, the door
was closing with Jimmy inside.
 
Reno put
a hand through, forced the doors back open, and then got onto the elevator with
Jimmy.
 
He pressed the Stop button, and
the elevator remained where it stood.

Jimmy was stunned to see his father running him
down.
 
That was not like him on any given
day.
 
His word was always final and he
never backed down.
 
But Jimmy knew Trina was
in that office too.
 
And if Reno didn’t
listen to anybody else, he listened to Trina.

Reno looked at his son.
 
His heart felt compassion for him, but his
face was still hard and disgusted.
 
That
was why, when Reno moved closer to his son, Jimmy winced and leaned slightly
back.
 
But Reno didn’t strike his son
again.
 
He pulled him into his arms.

Jimmy sobbed in his father’s arms.
 
He didn’t want to.
 
He knew men like his father detested tears in
other men.
 
But he couldn’t help it.

When they stopped embracing, he decided he needed to
tell his father exactly how he felt.
 
Reno still had his arms around his handsome son, as if he wanted to tell
him he was sorry, but it was Jimmy who spoke first.
 
“Ever since I met you,” he said, “I was a
teenager who felt as if I could never live up to your image.
 
What boy could, Pop?
 
You’re the strongest, toughest man I
know.
 
But sometimes I don’t feel so tough
and strong. Sometimes I feel vulnerable and sensitive and not at all tough and
rugged like you and Uncle Sal and Uncle Tommy always seem to be.
 
And I’m not gay.
 
I know that sounds crazy after what I did,
but it’s the truth.
 
If I was gay, I’d
admit it.
 
But I’d been curious and, when
that opportunity came with that hooker, I took it.
 
I hate myself for taking it, but I did.
 
And to prove what kind of coward I was, I
beat the guy down afterwards.
 
I got what
I wanted from him, then I beat his ass like I was some tough guy.”