CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A van pulled up to a shuddered train depot on the southside of Jericho and stopped beside an SUV already there. A man got out of the passenger seat of the van as two men got out of the SUV. The two men opened the backdoor, grabbed a third man, a short black guy, and walked him to the back of the van where the van passenger opened the van’s back double doors. The black man was thrown inside the van.

Inside the van, Brent, MaKayla, and Reno and Sal were seated and waiting.

“Darren McGuire I presume,” Sal said.

“That’s that bastard,” said Brent.

Sal nodded and one of the men that had tossed Darren inside of the van grabbed him and sat him on a seat that faced the seat across from it. Then the man stepped out and closed the van door.

But Darren was looking at his boss. “I just got out of the hospital and I’m being treated this way? MaKayla, what is the meaning of this? It’s a kidnapping, I know you realize that.”

“I thought you didn’t know the meaning of it,” said Reno. “But you were mighty quick to give it a bad name.”

“I know who you are,” Darren said to Reno forcefully.

Reno smiled. “Oh do you now?”

“Both of you,” Darren added, looking at Sal too. “I know who you are.”

“And who am I?” Sal asked.

“You’re Salvatore Luciano Gabrini. The second most powerful mobster in the world.” Then he looked at Reno. “And you’re Dominic Gabrini, Senior, better known as Reno Gabrini, the owner of the largest and most successful hotel and casino on the Vegas Strip. Mister Vegas, they call you. But I knew about you when you were your father’s enforcer, and then the head of your old man’s entire syndicate. That’s who you two are.”

“Wrong,” said Reno. “We’re your worst nightmare if you lie to us.”

“That’s who we are,” added Sal.

Darren knew these men were not frivolous people. They were killers in his eyes, the worst of the worst. The press always made them out to be the kind of men that never started the fight, but only finished it, but he wasn’t buying what they were selling. They were vicious in their own right, no matter who started what. “What do you want from me?”

“Why did you lie about that phone call you made to me?” MaKayla asked him.

“I didn’t make any phone call to you, and you know it. If your husband had bothered to check the records, you’d see that the call you received didn’t come from me or even the hospital where I was located at the time. I never called you and you know it.”

Reno and Sal looked at Brent. “Did you check it out?” Reno asked him.

“My office got the records, yes.”

“Were you able to trace the call?”

“We traced it back to a burner phone,” said Brent. Then he looked at Darren. “Of which his ass could have easily been the owner.”

“Right,” said Sal.

“I don’t own burner phones,” Darren said. “I have no reason to.”

“Why did you tell the judge that I asked you to find somebody to get me out of the country, and why did you lie about Alvin Clayton and me?”

“They aren’t lies. It’s all true. And you know it,” Darren said again.

“So you don’t know Jake Dalenti?” asked Sal. “That’s what you’re telling us?”

“I know him quite well. He’s an informant for the DA’s office. Specifically for my office. I never said I didn’t know him. But I will say all day long that I never received a call from him asking MaKayla to meet him at The Hayton Hotel, and I never phoned MaKayla and told her to meet him there. And she knows it.”

“Say that one more time and I’ll put my shoe up your ass,” warned Brent.

Darren stiffened his back. “I’m not gonna lie for nobody,” he said. “She promoted me to her deputy. Two black people running the entire district attorney’s office in this vastly white city was a wonderful thing to see.” Then he looked MaKayla in the eyes. “But I’m not lying for anybody.”

“Did I ever ask you to lie for me, Darren?” asked a now angry MaKayla. “Did I ever once ask you to lie for me about anything?”

Darren didn’t respond to that. Brent noticed he stopped looking at her.

“What about that dead judge and MaKayla?” asked Reno. “Why did you claim they had a sexual relationship?”

“I didn’t claim anything. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

“Quick lying, Darren!” MaKayla was livid. “You know that’s not true.”

“Were you or were you not at The Hayton hotel hugged up with Alvin Clayton and allowing that man to kiss all over you? And didn’t you, after that, go up to his hotel room with him where you stayed up there for hours? Answer that, MaKayla. You’re so full of answers. Answer that!”

Brent angrily grabbed Darren and slammed his face against the side of the van wall. “You’re a liar! You know it’s all lies!” Brent screamed at him.

It took Reno and Sal, with MaKayla giving a verbal assist, to pull Brent away from Darren. “Cool it, Brent,” said Sal. “We need answers.”

Brent snatched away from them, but he sat back down. Everybody else sat back down too.

But Sal sat next to Darren. Then he pulled out a gun and pointed it at Darren’s balls. “You said you know who I am,” Sal said.

Darren was staring at that pistol.

“Now we get down to business,” said Sal. “Why are you telling these lies on your boss? What’s your motivation?”

“I’m not lying,” Darren insisted, still staring at that gun. “You can shoot off my balls, yes, you have that power, but I’m not lying.”

The nerve of the man caught them all off guard. Reno and Sal glanced at each other. Men didn’t usually stick to the lie under that kind of pressure. Unless it wasn’t a lie.

“Corroborate it,” Reno said to Darren. “You got all this intel on Kayla, who else knows about her affair with the judge? Can’t just be you. Who else knows?”

They all looked at Darren. And he didn’t skip a beat. “Her brother-in-law knows.”

Brent frowned. “Her brother-in-law? One of my brothers?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?” asked Sal.

“His baby brother. Donald Sinatra knows,” said Darren.

They were all shocked.

“That’s some bullshit,” said Brent. “Donnie don’t know squat about what he’s saying.”

“I have an undoubtedly loaded gun pointed at my balls,” said Darren. “Why would I lie?”

It was a good question to Reno and Sal. But Brent wasn’t buying it. “I don’t know why you’re lying yet,” he said, “but I know you’re lying. And I’m going to find out why.”

“Begin with your brother. He knows.”

Brent seemed a little shaken by Darren’s insistence. Reno and Sal might not have seen it, but MaKayla did.

Sal knocked on the van door with the butt of his gun. The back double doors opened. The two men that had escorted Darren in the SUV were standing at the door.

“Get him to the safe house,” Sal ordered. “When he’s ready to change his tune, contact us. If he’s still singing the same song, you help him change that tune.”

“Yes sir,” the taller man said as they grabbed Darren and took him out of the van.

But just as he was stepping out, gunfire rang out. Brent dived on MaKayla, protecting her, while Reno and Sal pulled out their weapons to fire back. Darren was shot several times in the chest before the men could react, and they began firing back at what was now the fleeing getaway car.

They hopped into the SUV and sped off after the car while Reno and Sal grabbed Darren’s lifeless body, pulled it into the van, and Brent, taking over the driving from their man behind the wheel, sped off behind the SUV.

All three vehicles raced down the back roads of Jericho as the getaway car seemed to destined to get away. They turned corner after corner, driving down winding roads that dipped and rose, and that car still held the advantage. They turned even more corners in their mad dash up and down those back roads.

“Those bastards are getting away!” Sal decried. “This big-ass boat too slow!”

But Brent was driving that van as fast as he could safely drive it. The SUV was doing the best it could to keep up too. But the muscle car they were chasing was just too fast.

Until the driver of the getaway car made one major miscalculation. Turning yet another corner, this one far steeper than any of the other ones, he gassed it instead of slowing down and ended up losing control and then traction, and then the getaway car was flipping multiple times, with each drop down crashing it into the pavement so violently that on its final crash it burst into flames.

Brent had to swerve the van to avoid the fire.The SUV nearly overturned swerving too.

They all came to a standstill on that deserted stretch of backroad while MaKayla was finally able to check Darren’s pulse. But it was obvious to everyone that he was already deceased.

MaKayla sat back. They all sat back. Until Sal ordered his men to put Darren McGuire in the SUV and lose him. And then Brent, going against everything he knew to be right and in order, drove them and that van away from there. But he kept taking peeps, through the rearview, at his devastated wife. Reno and Sal might have been well-accustomed to this kind of deadly action, but she wasn’t. And Brent never wanted her to become accustomed to this. But there were so many unanswered questions that he was devastated too. So many questions. And now Darren McGuire, perhaps the only man that could have answered some of the more pressing ones, was dead.

Brent moved his head from side to side. Why would McGuire even mention his kid brother's name? Donnie wasn’t involved in this. How could he be? What was McGuire up to?

They were going fast, but it was beginning to feel as if they were going backwards fast.