When all three landed, they quickly got up and looked at the house and how close they came to annihilation too. It took a moment for them to regroup and regain their composure.
But Mick was already looking around. And that was when he saw a small SUV at the top of the street come to a stop. The guy behind the wheel was staring at the house. It could have been an innocent rubbernecker who heard the explosion and stopped to see what was going on, or it could have been Javon Douglas. Mick’s instincts told him it was Douglas.
“Got his ass!” Mick said as if he was saying it to himself and began running for his SUV parked on the street. Reno and Sal didn’t need further explanation. They ran and hopped in too.
And Mick, the most reckless driver on the face of the earth who rarely wrecked anything, took off. And as evidence that his instincts were right, that car at the top of the street took off too.
And they raced through the streets of Henderson, Nevada like it was Talladega. The traffic was thin from street to street, but that only meant their speeds remained at a dangerously high rate.
Reno and Sal both were on the middle row because Mick drove too crazy even when he wasn’t in a race for them to stomach the front seat. But they were terrified on the middle row, too, as Mick slung that big tank of a truck around curve after curve and corner after corner like it was a sportscar. They leaned from the left to the right and the right to the left so often that they got used to the dizziness. But it was worth it to both of them if that was Javon in that Subaru.
But Mick knew he would never catch Douglas if he remained where he was. That was why, when he realized the pattern Douglas was taking, a pattern that would take him out of town, Mick made the abrupt decision to turn down a different side street. He nearly had a rollover on his hands he turned so fast and sudden, but he was able to keep it on the pavement long enough to negotiate the turn. Then he sped like a madman through that residential neighborhood until he was back on themain drag again. And he turned onto that main drag just as the Subaru sped past him.
Now Mick was directly behind that Subaru and Mick didn’t hesitate. He sped to the side of that SUV so fast that the driver had no time to react. All he could do was attempt to swerve into Mick’s much-larger Escalade, to force him away from what he undoubtedly knew was a PITT maneuver coming, but he miscalculated Mick’s nerves. He thought that Mick, like any reasonable man, would swerve out of his way when he swerved into the Escalade. But Mick, instead, swerved into him so hard and with such force that it caused the Subaru to leave the road, fly across a ditch, and land upside down on the other side of the ditch.
Mick slammed on brakes and got out before Reno and Sal could unbuckle their seatbelts.
“That crazy fuck didn’t even have on a seatbelt!” Reno said of their uncle, his voice dripping with anger and amazement that a man so smart could be so reckless, as they both hopped out too.
They had to run around the ditch to get to the Subaru, and by the time they got there, Javon was attempting to drag his injured body out of the upside-down vehicle.
But Reno got there even ahead of Mick and dragged him out all by himself. Then he put his gun inside of Javon’s pants. “Those jewels will be jam if you don’t tell me the truth and tell it to me in one second flat!”
“What do you want to know?” a distressed Javon asked him excitedly. “Don’t pull that trigger!”
“Who blackmailed my wife?”
“Lolo did.”
Reno frowned. Mick and Sal did too. “Lolo?” Reno asked.
“Lolo Arvanatti.”
Reno was puzzled. “Why would Lolo blackmail my wife?”
“I approached him a year ago,” Javon admitted. “I told him I had the goods on Reno Gabrini’s wife, was he interested? And he was.”
“How did you have video of that night to blackmail her in the first place?” asked Reno. “And photos? Who gave’em to you?”
“I took’em myself. But it wasn’t to harm anybody. She was a nobody back then. I was keeping them to keep Trina.”
“What you mean to keep her?”
“I was in love with her. Scotty was too, but he didn’t know how to treat her. I knew if I had proof that she was no better than me then she’d stay with me and leave him. I needed to dirty her up.”
Reno was floored. “And the only way you could do it was to have her kill an entire family? What kind of perverted piece of shit are you?”
“He owed Scotty for some girls he bought from him. Scotty would get these girls from overseas, promising them the American dream, and sell them to the highest bidder. He was coming to pay up. I thought it was going to be just him. But it was him and his whole family. Who brings their family to a pay up?”
But Reno was shaking his head. “Your motherfucking ass lying now. You told Latoya to tell Trina to not shoot because a family was in that van. You knew it was gonna be kids in that van all along.”
But Javon was shaking his head. “I told her to say that, but I had no idea a whole family was in that van. He was a creep who kept his creep part away from his family. Those girls he bought he kept holed up in a separate whorehouse. I didn’t think his wife and kids knew anything about his other side.”
“So you and Lolo collected the cash?”
“Right. And then, when my share ran out, I decided to go back to the well.” Then he shook his head. “Bad choice.
“You don’t know how bad a choice that was. You almost got my wife killed!”
