Page 68 of Sal Gabrini: Man on Fire

“You didn’t give us a chance to tell you anything! You carted us off to this safe house with goons who didn’t wanna hear it. They wouldn’t even let us speak. Like we’re the criminals. Like we aren’t in a coalition with you.”

This was getting crazier by the minute. Sal looked at Mick. Mick looked at Palo. “When did you remove your wires?” asked Mick.

“When they tried to ambush us right alongside you and Sal’s family,” said Palo. “We snatched that shit off when you ran back to check on your brother. We were done.”

“Or your asses knew you were going to be found out,” said Mick.

Sal was by now leaned against the side wall staring at the three men. He had no clue they had been lying to him. But was all of it a lie? “So there never was a kidnapping?” Sal asked them.

“Never,” said Milo.

Sal leaned his head back, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was too much! Then he shook his head. “Can’t get out of this alive,” he said.

The bosses all looked at each other. Then they looked at Sal. Mick, Robby, and Jovie were already looking at Sal. “What do you mean by that, Sal Luca?” asked Palo.

“All I did for you, and this is how you repay me?”

“But if you kill us,” said Boomer anxiously, “the Feds will know it’s you.”

“Not if you disappear,” said Sal. “You’ll be gone. What the fuck that got to do with me?”

Jovie smiled. “And I’m an expert at disappearing acts,” he said.

But Sal frowned. “What expert? Our men found your ass.”

“That’s because I wanted them to find my ass. I heard all this shit in the wind too. I wanted to clear my name.”

“What clear?” Sal asked. “You busted up my coalition. You stole my shipments. You burned my warehouses. You ain’t in no fucking clear!”

“I did those things, yes, I did. Because that’s what we do. But I didn’t kill anybody or order for anybody to be killed. You can battle me back to regain your coalition or your shipments. But all’s fair in war. What I committed is not a killing offense.”

Sal wasn’t certain if he even believed Jovie. Or if that Fed guy even existed. He wasn’t about to do anything until he got more intel.

But just as Sal turned to give Robby the order to take them back upstairs, he could hear the upstairs door open and the sound of feet running downstairs. But as Sal turned to see what was wrong, he could see in Palo’s eyes that those men running down those stairs weren’t Mick and Sal’s guys. They weren’t there to aid Mick and Sal. They were there to aidthem.

And Sal didn’t hesitate. As soon as the men showed their faces, Sal yelled,Mick, Bosses! and then he began firing on the men running downstairs, which prompted Robby and the two capos downstairs to start firing at them, too, as they began wiping them out one by one.

And Mick didn’t hesitate either. As soon as Sal gave the word, he didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t check for clarification. He began firing on all three mob bosses and shot them dead too. If he had misunderstood Sal, then tough. They were in cahoots with the Feds. They wore a wire. They lied. He could stand on those justifications.

But he didn’t have to. As Sal and the capos hurried over to the gunmen that had fallen down the stairs, and as Robby ran up the stairs to check on the two capos that had been guarding Pauley and the bosses, Sal quickly realized none of the fallen men were his or Mick’s guys. He had read it right.

And when Robby ran back to the top of the stairs and confirmed that the two guards upstairs were dead, Mick frowned. “How?”

“A laser shot through the window. Silencers were used. They didn’t know what hit’em.”

Mick and Sal both exhaled. Then Mick, unsure if Pauley was still alive or dead, shot him just in case.

Sal winced when Mick shot Pauley. But Pauley had betrayed him. He knew it had to be done.

“Damn!” said Mick angrily. He was frustrated too. “What the fuck is going on?”

But just as Mick said those words, he and Sal both realized something profound. They realized that Jovie was no longer in that basement. That in the midst of all of the chaos, Jovie had disappeared!

“Motherfuck!” yelled Sal and immediately ran toward the door in the basement that led outside. It was wide open.

And Sal and Mick took off running through that door. Robby yelled for the two capos to call for backup as he ran behind the two powerful bosses.

They had to run through thick woods so high they had to chop through with their hands just to see in front of them. But Sal didn’t let up. If Jovie got away, their chance of getting the full story might go with him. If Jovie got away, that threat he posed to his syndicate, even if he had nothing to do with the bombings and ambushes, would still be with them.

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