Page 52 of Tommy Gabrini: All Fall Down
“Then what was it?”
“A cash drop.”
“Where?”
“Inside Pacific Place Mall.”
“Where inside idiot?”
“The Celtic restaurant.”
Tommy looked at him. “The Celtic?”
Barbell nodded. “They have a locked box on the door. I used the key they left in my own mailbox to unlock it. And I pulled out the envelope inside. That’s how I got paid.”
But Mick noticed more than that. “You know something about that restaurant?” he asked Tommy.
Tommy looked concerned. “I once knew the owner,” he said.
They all looked at Tommy. What he just said felt like something more tangible for them to work with. “Who’s the owner?” Hammer asked him.
“A lady I used to know.”
“You mean a lady you used to fuck?” asked Mick.
Tommy tried for years to rid himself of his past lifestyle, but there was no getting away from it. “Yes.”
“Who is she?” asked Sal. “What’s her name?”
But before Sal could finish that question, they heard the sound of gunshots ricocheting off metal outside. As soon as they all turned to the sound, their weapons drawn, they saw a massive, fast-moving armored tank-like truck drive through andtake out the entire front wall of the safe house. But then they also saw a high-capacity machine gun drawn from that truck, and aimed at them.
“Get down!” Sal yelled as they all dived for cover. But Barbell Barry, who was tied up, couldn’t move. He screamed out as he was shot up like mincemeat.
Then the machine gun began firing at everybody else. Since they knew firing that back at a fortified tank like the one in front of them was fruitless, they all ran down the hall and out of the backdoor.
“Keep running!” Mick yelled once they got outside.
Hammer, Tommy, and Sal, and those two capos too, knew what that meant. They kept running toward the woods behind the house.
Mick pulled an IED with an explosively-formed penetrator out of his tricked-out long white coat, and tossed it through the open door. Then he tried to run for it, but was blown off his feet as he dived. The entire house, and that tank of a truck, exploded.
Tommy and Sal ran back and grabbed Mick. Then they dragged him to safety in the woods. To their shock, he was woozy but okay. He even slapped their hands away when they tried to assist him to his feet. Though the pain from that hard fall was searing him, he got up on his own.
The capos that had been stationed out front at the safe house, and whose bullets couldn’t penetrate that truck, ran around back too when they saw the explosion.
Robby Yale, who had driven Mick’s Escalade to the backroad behind the woods after dropping them off at the safe house, waited to pick them up. They hurried through the woods, with a limping Mick still easily keeping up, and got into that SUV relieved to still be alive. They could hear the cops arriving as they were leaving.
“Where to?” Robby asked once they were out of danger.
“Drop Uncle Mick off at the house,” said Tommy, “and then take us to the mall.”
Mick, who was up front on the passenger seat, turned around and looked at Tommy as if he’d lost his mind. Then he looked at Robby. “Take your ass to the mall,” he said.
And everybody, although still shook up from what happened at the safe house, couldn’t help but laugh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
But for Tommy it was no laughing matter when they arrived at the Celtic restaurant inside the Pacific Place Mall. Hammer, who had business to handle, stayed in the SUV with Robby. But Tommy, Sal, and Mick made their way inside the mall. Tommy was concerned because he knew seeing her again would be like seeing a ghost from his past. And not just any ghost either. But the one he tried to keep around.
