Tommy Gabrini 4: Dapper Tom Begin Again (27 page)

“Get
the fuck out of here!”

“She
has a major crush on Liz.
 
Their best
friends, but Chelsey always wanted to take it to another level.”

“Wow,”
Reno said.
 
“Chelsey could have set this
whole thing up because Tommy took Liz away from her.”

“She
could have.”

“Or,”
Reno started to say, but his mind going a mile a minute.
 
He looked at Sal.
 
“Or maybe it’s Liz.”

“Liz?”

“Maybe
she want us to believe it’s Chelsey.
 
Just like we pulled that bank deposit inside job subterfuge shit on
Rizzo’s people, maybe this Liz is pulling it on us.”

“I
don’t know about that, Reno.
 
She’s not
the type.”

“Nobody
is until they are.
 
And it could be for
reasons we can’t even begin to understand.
 
So I’m going to ask you this: Just how well do you really know this Liz
lady?”

Sal
didn’t have a good answer for that question because, in truth, he didn’t really
know her at all.

Liz
opened the front door and Chelsey walked in.
 
As soon as she entered, and closed the door, Liz pulled her into her
arms.
 
“Thank-you so much for coming,”
she said.
 
“When I called the office and
Rome told me you were in town looking for me, and when you offered to come
over, I knew I couldn’t turn you down. I needed to see you.”

Chelsey
held onto Liz as if she were holding on to a fragile flower.
 
“You knew I’d come,” she said.
 
She closed her eyes as she held her.

It
was Liz who had to all but force their separation.
 

Chelsey
felt a little embarrassed, but she forged ahead.
 
“What happened?” she asked her friend.

“It
was awful, Chelse,” Liz responded.
 
“Just
awful.”

“But
what happened?”

“It
was . . . These men.
 
They tried to Kill
Tommy.”

Chelsey
stepped back.
 
“They
what
?
 
When?”

“Late
last night. When he was leaving my house.”

“But
they didn’t harm you?”

“No,
no.”

Chelsey
sighed relief.
 
“Good.
 
That’s good to hear.”

Liz
looked at her.
 
“But they did harm
Tommy,” she said.
 
“They shot him
repeatedly.”

“They
killed him?”

Liz
was amazed at how little concern she was showing.
 
“No, thank God.
 
I had to take matters into my own hand.”

“What
does that mean?
 
What did you do?”

Liz
hesitated.
 
Her instincts told her to
hold off.
 
She was telling too much.
 
“I brought him here,” was all she would say
about it.

“Where’s
is he now?
 
Is he going to be okay?”

That
was better, Liz thought.
 
“Yes,” she
said.

“Where
is he?”

“Upstairs.”

“Can
I go up and see him?”

Another
part of Liz was hesitant for some reason.
 
But this was Chelse for crying out loud. This was her best friend since
childhood.
 
“Sure,” she said. “Come on.”

Chelsey
began looking around as they headed for the stairs.
 

“So
the doctor gave him a clean bill of health?”

“He’s
doing better, thank God,” Liz said as they walked.
 
“The doctor was able to leave, to take a
break, so he’s hopeful of a full recovery too.
 
But he’ll be back to check on him.”

“Anybody
else in the house?” Chelsey asked.

“Jimmy,
that’s Tommy’s nephew, is up there with him now.
 
Sal and their cousin Reno are out taking care
of some business.”

“I
still don’t understand though, Liz,” Chelsey said as they climbed the stairs. “Why
would anybody want to kill a good guy like Tommy?
 
Or do you know why?”

“We
don’t know yet,” Liz said.
 
“We have some
ideas, but we don’t really know.”

“You
may never know,” Chelsey said.

“Perish
the thought,” Liz said and they entered the room.
 
Jimmy was there, but he was asleep in the
chair.
 
Tommy, in bed, was also
asleep.
 
He looked drained in the face,
and was heavily bandaged, but no worse for wear, Liz felt.

Chelsey
looked at Tommy.
 
“He looks pretty beat
up,” she said.

“He
is.
 
It was a terrible ambush.
 
But God was with him because if you would
have seen the bullet holes in his Maserati you would be stunned he lived
through that.”

“I
can only imagine,” Chelsey said.
 
Then
she looked from Tommy, to the young man asleep in the chair.
 
“That must be Jimmy,” she whispered.

“It
is.
 
He’s tired.
 
I’m tired.
 
We all are.”

“You
do look awful, Liz, I hate to say it.”

Liz
felt self-conscious.
 
“I know.
 
I could use a really hot shower.”

“Then
go take one!” Chelsey insisted.
 
“I’ll
sit here with Tommy.”
 
Then she
smiled.
 
“And Jimmy.”

Liz
smiled too.
 
It was good having Chelsey
there. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Of
course I don’t.
 
Go!”
 
She pushed Liz toward the bathroom.
 

Liz
didn’t argue with her.
 
Reno and Sal had
been gone all day, Jimmy was exhausted, and she felt as if she hadn’t had any
sleep since Sunday night.
 
She needed the
break.
 
She hurried into the bathroom,
closing the door behind her, before Chelse changed her mind.

Chelsey
stood there.
 
She stared at Tommy, then at
Jimmy, and back at Tommy again.
 
So this
was the man who was going to take Liz from her, she thought.
 
This was the one, of all the men Liz had
before, who just might pull it off.
 

It
was an inconvenient truth for her to face.

The
car drove fast through the Chicago streets.
 
Reno sat up front, while Sal sat in the back as the driver hurried them
back to Sal’s estate.
 

“What
if all of this wasn’t about getting Tommy?” Reno asked.

“What
do you mean?” Sal asked.

“What
if it it’s more about getting Tommy out of the way?”

“So
Chelse can have Liz?”

“Or,
I don’t know.
 
But yeah.
 
Something like that.”
 
Then Reno looked ahead.
 
“What the fuck?” he asked.

When
Sal looked too, and saw that the gate to his estate was opened, his heart
dropped.
 
“Where’s the fucking
gatekeeper?” he asked.

But
when they saw the gatekeeper knocked unconscious at the guard booth, they
panicked.

“Floor
it!” Sal screamed to the driver.
 
“Floor
this motherfucker! My brother’s in there!
 
My brother’s in there!”

And
the driver floored it all the way up to the front entrance.
 
Reno and Sal jumped out, their weapons drawn,
and hurried toward the door.

Upstairs,
Tommy was now wide awake and was staring at the woman with the knife to his
throat.
 

And
she was telling him the plan.
 
“First I’m
going to butcher you,” she said, “and then I’ll take care of the bitch in the
bathroom.”

Tommy
glanced at Jimmy.
 
He was on the floor by
the bed, knocked unconscious, and Tommy was concerned for his nephew.
 
But he had an immediate problem of his own.
 
Namely this crazy lady with a knife.
 
Tommy looked at her hand as it unsteadily
held that knife to his throat.
 
He was
stiff
 
as steel, as he thought about,
tried to figure out, plotted how in the world he was going to get that knife
out of her hand without slitting his own throat.

“We
worked so hard to build it up,” she was saying, “and that bitch in the
bathroom
 
came along and knocked it
down.
 
But that’s Lovely Liz.
 
She’s pretty.
 
She’s smart.
 
She’s everything I’m
not.
 
And she exploited that.
 
She used that.
 
Now she’ll know what it feels like!
 
I want her to see your bowels coming out
through your neck.
 
I want her heart to
be broken when she leaves this life. I want her to know what that feels
like.
 
And she will know!”

The
knife pressed into Tommy’s neck and was ready to slice it.
 
Tommy, knowing that time was out, moved
swiftly to grab her arm.
 
But he was too
late.
 

Her
arm slung out just as the bullet crashed into her forehead, and she fell
backwards, taking the now airborne knife with her.

“Jesus!”
Liz yelled when she heard the gunshot from the shower.
 
“Oh my God!” she cried and jumped out,
grabbed a towel, and hurried to the door.
 
She opened it cautiously, not certain if it was another attack on
Tommy.
 
But what she saw floored
her.
 

Sal
was standing at the bedroom entrance with a smoking gun in his hand.
 
Reno was running to Jimmy, and Jimmy was
unconscious on the floor.
 
At first she
thought Sal had shot Jimmy, but then she realized Sal’s gun was still pointing
toward Tommy.
 

Horrified,
she looked toward Tommy’s bed.
 
To her
relief, Tommy appeared fine.
 
Exhausted,
but fine.
 
But a woman she knew to be
Karen Johansson was lying on the floor beside the bed.
 
And she appeared dead, which floored her even
more.
 
What in the world was Karen doing
here?
 
And that was when she saw Chelsey,
tied to a chair, duct tape over her mouth.
 
She was trying to talk.
 
She was
bouncing up and down begging to be set free.
 

Sal
removed the duct tape from her mouth and she immediately cried, “Karen no!
 
Don’t do it!
 
Karen no!”

She
cried and she cried, as if there was still time. Liz couldn’t believe it.
 
Reno and Sal either.
 
But she kept crying for Karen to stop.
 
She kept crying as if Karen had not already
done what she was begging her not to do.

When
Sal cut the cords that tied her down, she got out of the chair and ran to
Karen’s lifeless body.
 
She was still
crying no.
 
She was still begging her
longtime lover not to do what she’d already done.
 
And just as it seemed as if she had no more
voice to cry, Chelsey grabbed the knife from the floor, stood up over Tommy’s
bed, and stabbed him straight through his stomach.
 

Reno
pulled out his gun and shot Chelsey in the back before anybody else could
react.
 
But it didn’t matter.
 
Nobody else had to react.
 
She was just as dead as her lover.
 

Sal
ran to his brother’s side, and Reno ran to Tommy’s side.
 
And Liz stood there, trembling, unable to
move.
 

Tommy
looked at her.
 
He reached his hand out
to her, as if he could see her fear, and he could feel her pain.
  
She went to him.
 
She took his hand, and with tears in her own
eyes, looked into his big, bright, expressive eyes.

It
took all Tommy had to look at her.
 
His
eyes were growing faint, but he willed himself to stay conscious and look at
her.
 
Until he could not see anything
else but her.
 
Until he could not see
anything but her magnificent face, fade to black.