“Where’s Auntie?” Jimmy asked Sal when they stopped embracing.
“She was in court and the courthouse doorkeepers wouldn’t let my guys interrupt the proceedings. So they have to wait until it’s over for them to give her the word. Which pissed me off. Like I got a bunch of wussies working for me. They’dbetter be glad I wasn’t at that courthouse. Oh she would have gotten the word,” Sal assured Jimmy. “Bet that!”
Then he calmed back down. “But she’ll be over as soon as she can get here. Trina’s not just her business partner, but her friend. She’ll be here,” Sal was saying when the door opened again, and Mick walked in.
Which surprised all of them. Except for Sophia.
“Uncle Mick? How did you get here so fast?” Sal asked. He had only just phoned him half an hour ago.
“He was already in town,” Sophia said. “He came to see Mommy earlier today.”
Reno was surprised to hear it. Sal was too. “You saw Trina?” Reno asked him.
“How is she?” Mick asked as he made his way further into the waiting room.
“She’s still in surgery is all we know,” said Sal. “But I thought Roz said you guys were going on vacation in Italy. What are you doing in Vegas and nobody knew about it except for Tree?”
Mick was still horrified about what happened, and felt guilty that he didn’t get to Javon Douglas fast enough before Trina would have met up with him. It was a sinking feeling in his gut. And he knew all this shit had to come out. “She asked me to come,” he said.
Which was an answer that made no sense either. “Why would Tree ask you to come to Vegas?” Reno asked him.
He looked at the children. Jimmy and Sophia were grown, and although Carmine was young in years, he was not young at all in intellect. He decided they could handle the truth. “She was being blackmailed,” he said.
If shocked was a face, it would be everybody in that room’s face except for Mick’s. They were all dumbstruck. “Blackmailed?” asked Reno. “By who?”
“By whom,” said Carmine, correcting his father.
“Shut up, Carmine,” said Sophia. “Who was blackmailing Ma, Uncle Mick?” she asked.
“That’s what I was looking into. I flew to Reno, Nevada, where Javon Douglas lives, but he wasn’t there. I talked with people that knew him, but they knew nothing about his whereabouts or what he was up to involving anybody nearly seven hours away in Vegas. They didn’t fuck with Vegas, was what they all were telling me. So I got nothing from them. I even called Trina to see if she’d heard from him, but she didn’t answer.”
A strained look appeared on Mick’s face. They all could see that Trina’s shooting had even affected his normally stoic self too. And it suddenly reminded Reno and Sal how Mick once had a thing for Trina. They could see him doing a special favor for her.
“I was flying back to Vegas when Sal called me and told me what happened. I landed and came right over.” Then he looked at Reno specifically. “I take it she didn’t tell you?”
Reno was confused. “That she was being blackmailed? Hell no, she didn’t tell me anything about that.”
Mick looked at Sal.
“You know if she didn’t tell Reno, she wasn’t about to tell me.”
“But what I don’t understand is why did she tell you?” Reno asked Mick. “And what does Javon Douglas have to do with Trina being blackmailed?”
Then it dawned on Reno. “Was he the one blackmailing her? Was that why they were in that motel?”
Mick quickly shook his head. “He was supposedly the middleman. They knew he knew Trina’s secrets and therefore they used him to get the word to her. Trina insists he’s not involved. But I don’t know that yet.”
But Reno was still confused. “What secrets?” he asked Mick.
“She was supposed to tell you. I take it she didn’t.”
“No. But tell me what?” Reno asked, and everybody looked at Mick.
But Mick placed his hands in his pockets and exhaled. “She was going to tell me, but I knew she was going to put her own spin on it, so I didn’t wanna hear that shit coming from her. I told her to tell you. She should have told you a long time ago. But as for me, I wanted to hear it straight from the middleman. I wanted to hear it straight from Javon Douglas first because I knew I could torture his ass and get the truth out of him.”
Jimmy quickly jumped up. No way were his siblings hearing that mob shit he hated with a passion. “Sophia and Carmine, let’s go downstairs and get something to eat.”
“But I’m not hungry, Jimmy,” Sophia said.
