Buddy was puzzled now. “What do you mean I know it? It is a screen test.” Then Buddy realized Roz would not be there if it was as simple as that. “What is it then?”
“Didn’t you watch it before you handed it to me?”
Buddy hesitated. “No. Okay? I did not. But what is it?”
Now Roz was concerned. “You told me this actress supposedly had all of this talent and she needed good representation.”
“That’s what she wanted me to tell you. She just wanted me to pass the DVD to you. That’s all I know.”
“Who wanted you to pass it to me? The starlet?”
“No, Roz! Zina. Zina asked me to pass it to you.”
Roz was now stunned. “Zina? Zina Klein?”
“Your friend Zina, yes. That’s why I didn’t give it a second thought. She said she didn’t want you to think she was taking advantage of your friendship. She said the girl needs good representation, and you would be the perfect agent for her.”
“And you didn’t watch the tape?” Roz asked.
“No! I trust Zeen. At least, as far as that goes. I handed you the tape and told you that bull story as a favor to her. But now I’m super curious, Roz. What’s on that thing?”
“Just . . . nothing for you to worry about,” Roz said. “You’ve got enough to worry about today.”
“And have I. We open tonight and the stagehands don’t even know what they’re doing. I’ve got to get back. I’ll talk to you later. And if you see Zina again, you tell her to kiss my ass for using me like that.” He began walking away.
Roz nodded. “I will,” she said.
“You know where to find her?” he asked, as he walked away.
Roz knew. Zina Klein was the newest addition to Roz’s teaching staff.
Ryan Bogdanovich tapped Zina on the shoulder and whispered that the boss wanted her upstairs. It wasn’t unusual for Roz to contact a teacher inside her acting studio to get a recommendation on this student or that student whenever a role came up for one of them. It was unusual, however, for Zina to be called since she barely had a full week under her belt.
But she grabbed her bottled water and took the elevator to Roz’s office. But when Teegan told her to go right on in, and she went in, she could tell immediately that Roz hadn’t called her for the reason she had thought.
“Hey, Roz, what’s up?” Zina made her way toward the desk.
Roz was seated behind her desk and had that super-serious look on her face. When Roz didn’t respond, it was only then did Zina realize what this little meeting could be about. But she had to make sure. You could never tell with Roz. “You wanted to see me?”
Roz had Zina investigated by Mick’s security chief, but Carmine turned up nothing on her. She was clean as a whistle, according to Carmine. And she was. If you discounted her disloyalty. But Roz didn’t discount anything. That was why she didn’t hesitate. She reached into her middle desk drawer, pulled out the DVD, and tossed it onto her desktop. “What’s this bullshit about?” she asked.
Zina’s smile all but evaporated. And she sat down. “You saw it?”
“Did you?” Roz asked.
Zina nodded. “Yes.”
“Why would you give it to Buddy Sykes with some cockamamie bull about some starlet needing representation?”
“Because I cared about you, okay? And this was the best way we could come up with.”
Roz stared at her. “We? You and Buddy?”
“No! Buddy had nothing to do with it. He agreed to pass the tape to you because he thought he was doing me a favor. He thought it was a screen test and nothing more.”
“Then who are you talking about? And what do you mean it was the best way you could come up with?”
“I’m talking about Joey,” Zina said. “It was the best way Joey and I could come up with.”
Roz was floored. What in the world would Joey have to do with this? “What are you talking about, Zeen?”
“Joey was the one who gave me the tape. He felt you wouldn’t believe the truth if we just told you what was going on. He felt you needed to see it for yourself. He felt, if a third party you respected gave you the tape, a disinterested person, you’d at least understand that what people had been telling you for years was true.”
Roz frowned. “What have people been telling me for years?” she asked.
“That Mick ain’t shit,” Zina said. “Okay? That your husband has been cheating on you since the day you guys were married, and that he’s been having an affair with that woman on that tape even before you married. And continued the affair after the marriage. Joey said he cared about you and was tired of his father using you like that.”
Roz felt her heart grow faint. She knew there were rumors about Mick, and sometimes she wondered if she was out of her mind not to believe them. But she never believed them. She always believed Mick.
“Joey hated for you to see that tape,” Zina continued, “and so did I, Roz. But we didn’t see any other way. We figured you would confront Mick when you saw that tape, not Buddy. We didn’t see how Mick could talk his way out of this. But I guess we should have known better. You take every word your husband says as gospel. All he has to do is lay some line on you this time and you’ll probably believe him again. But we had to let you know. We may have gone about it the wrong way. But our hearts were in the right place.”
Roz wanted to lash out. She wanted to cuss Zina out and then find Joey and cuss him out too. Where did he get that tape, would be her first question? But what difference would that have made? Because firing Zina, or lashing out at Joey, wouldn’t change a thing. It wouldn’t, not even a little bit, change the fact that her husband was on a tape making love to a woman, the same woman he had told her he didn’t know. The same woman his own son was being accused of murdering.
She told Zina to get back to work, and she didn’t phone Joey at all. She, instead, went home, to be with her twins, and to wait as patiently as she could until her husband, the real source of her wrath, brought his ass, and his son, safely back home.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What’s this?” Gloria Sinatra asked when Will Flannigan dumped a thick file on her desk. She was at work, at SI, and he was gleeful. “What is it?” she asked again, opening the file.
“Opposition research,” he said. “All the dirt you could ever hope to have on every member of your father’s senior staff.”
“Including you?” Gloria asked, glancing up at him.
“Except me,” said Will.
Gloria thumbed through the thick file. “What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked as she began reading through the salacious materials.
“Review it. Learn it. And then take it to your father. He’ll have no choice, after you show him what you know, but to fire every one of them, and put you in one of their positions. And any one will do. You just need to be in place when we make our move. Middle management is too far away. You need to be right there beside him. You need to be too close for him to ever suspect a thing.”
Gloria looked at Will.
“Learn it,” he said. “And then take it to your father. And you’ll be on your way.”
“And what about you?” she asked.
Will smiled that gorgeous smile of his. “And I’ll be on my way too. Don’t worry. I am not above riding a woman’s coattails.”
Gloria smiled at the man she thought couldn’t look any more attractive. And then she glanced down at his sizeable crotch. “Lock the door,” she said. “And come fuck me.”
Will grinned gladly. Gloria, to his ever-loving joy, was a button-down conservative in the board room, and a freak of freaks in the bedroom. He loved it, because so was he. He did as he was told.
Gloria slipped out of her panties, and flapped both legs across the arms of her chair.
Will hurried over, knelt down, and began to give her what she craved. She gripped the arms of the chair when his tongue slid in.
Mick and Teddy, along with their top lieutenants, arrived
back in the States later that day, but they didn’t immediately go into the main house. They, instead, assembled in the meeting room, a guest house onto itself near the pool, to assess the damage Teddy’s European vacation would cost them. And to find out what became of their primary target.
Roz was upstairs, in her bedroom, when the convoy of SUVs arrived. Teddy had already phoned to tell her that he and Mick were okay, and that they would be coming in today. Despite her anger, Roz was deeply concerned when Mick himself didn’t phone her, and she demanded that Teddy put him on the phone.
“He’s asleep, Roz,” Teddy said to her. “He was so exhausted he could barely stand up. We forced him go to his bedroom on the plane, and get some sleep.”
Roz knew no man forced Mick do anything, but she was relieved to hear that he was at least okay.
“But I can wake him up if you insist,” Teddy had said.
But Roz said no. Let him sleep. Besides, she inwardly thought, he would need all the energy he had anyway, when she confronted him.
Inside the meeting room, Mick was well rested, but highly concerned. “My European apparatus fell apart,” he said. He was leaned against the front of his desk. His men were seated in front of him. Teddy stood beside him. “There was a breach on top of a breach. We took out the bastards, that was for damn sure, but that’s not the point.”
“Power is the point,” Teddy said to the men, echoing his father. “Only somebody with pure power backing them would have been able to penetrated Dad’s security that deeply.”
“Who are you thinking, Boss?” Carmine asked Mick. “Angelo?”
“That’s the logical answer,” Mick responded.
“But you don’t think he has the juice,” Carmine responded.
“He has the juice,” Mick responded. “But he’s not a stupid man. Only a fool or a very desperate person would pull that shit on me.”
And every man in that room knew Mick wasn’t bragging, but was stating a fact.
“Uncle Angelo’s no fool,” Teddy said, “but he might be desperate.”
Mick looked at his son. “How do you figure that?”
Teddy hated to admit it, but he knew the cat was long since out of the bag now. “He couldn’t supply me last time I tried to hook up with him. And that was months ago. He said some new blood was infringing on his territory and had bled him dry. I had to go elsewhere.”
Mick still cringed when he thought about Teddy and his drug trade. He still wanted to kick his ass for defying him that way. But it was no use. Even Mick, back in the day, used to sling drugs himself. He didn’t care back then. He did care now.
“But what I don’t understand,” Fob Hunter, one of Mick’s enforcers, asked, “is how did Ang’s men know his old lady was in your chateau, Teddy? If they followed her there, why would they wait until she slept with you and ended up murdered before they made a move? And wouldn’t they have seen the murderer come into the chateau?”
“The same pure power behind my security breach,” Mick responded, “might have been behind Ang’s. And those same fuckers who tried to take Teddy out, were the very men who killed that woman. That’s the working theory I want us to go on until I’m otherwise persuaded.”
“So you’re pretty sure Ang isn’t that pure power?” Teddy asked.
“I’m not sure of shit until I’m sure of shit,” Mick said. “You just make sure the manhunt is massive. I want that bastard Angelo DeCoppola and I want him now. He holds the key. He knows where the energy’s coming from. But tell all our people that I do not want him dead. Bring him in alive.”
“Yes, sir,” Carmine said, and Mick stood to leave.
Everybody stood up too. “Where are you going, Boss?” one of his lieutenants had the nerve to ask.
“To see his wife,” Carmine responded before he thought about his response.
And sure enough, Mick looked at him as if he had just spilled a secret. Carmine realized it too and was a little frightful. Mick loving his wife, or anybody else that publicly, wasn’t common knowledge.
Roz was sitting on the daybed by the window when Mick made it upstairs and into their bedroom. She wasn’t decked down the way she usually was, but wore jeans and an oversized jersey. Her hair? In a ponytail.
Mick smiled when he saw his usually glamourous wife looking so un-glammed. She looked like a fresh-faced college kid to him in that moment. Until he walked up closer, and saw the achingly sincere concern in her eyes. And he instinctively knew it wasn’t about what happened in Paris.
He sat on the edge of the bed beside her. “What’s wrong?” he asked her.
“Did we take any casualties?”
“From my Philly people? No,” he said. “But we took casualties.”
Roz hated to hear that. “And you’re okay?”
Even in her anguish, he thought, she was concerned about him. “I’m okay,” he said.
She was truly relieved. “Good.”
“Now you tell me what’s going on with you. What’s on your mind?”
She handed him her cellphone. She converted the DVD into a video on her phone. It was ready to be viewed.
“What is this?” Mick asked her.
“Watch it,” Roz said.
Mick hesitated. He was the kind of man who never cared to do anything without being told why. But Roz was his woman. She had certain rights with him no other human being had. He pressed the arrow to watch it.
Roz watched his face intensely as he watched. She could tell he was viewing every aspect of that video, from the lighting to the surroundings to whatever he could discern. Not just the sex. “Where did you get this?” he asked as he continued to watch.
“You told me you didn’t know her,” Roz said, staring at him. Her heart was squeezing, as if she was bracing herself.
Mick looked at her. His beautiful big, green eyes devastated her. “When we were on our way to the airstrip,” she said, “I showed you her picture. You told me you didn’t know her.”
Mick stared into Roz’s beautiful big, brown eyes and felt her pain. He was sorry to put her through this, and his eyes showed his sorrow.
But that wasn’t a comforting look for Roz. Because he also had the look of a guilty man. The last look she wanted to see. Her heart was, once again, hammering.
Mick looked at the video again. “Where did you get this?” he asked her again.
“That’s the woman they were claiming Teddy murdered,” Roz said. “But I’m beginning to wonder if you were the one.”
Mick looked at her with a frown on his face. “If I were the one what?” he asked.
“I’m beginning to wonder if you were the one who ordered her murder. I can’t say why exactly. Maybe it was to keep her silent. Maybe it was to prevent the truth about your affair with her from coming out. But maybe not. Maybe you didn’t give a shit if I found out.”
Mick let out a concerned exhale. She could tell she was hitting a nerve. But she wasn’t sure if it was a nerve of concern for her, or concern for himself. “I couldn’t find Joey to confirm this,” Roz said.
Mick frowned. “Joey? What does he have to do with this?”
“He wouldn’t return my calls.”
But Mick was getting upset himself. “What does he have to do with this?”
“He was the one who gave the tape to a friend of mine. He was the one supposedly concerned about your whoring around and using me.”
It took all Roz had not to break down when she said those words. Mick stared at her.
Roz continued. “I was told that Joey seems to think that you wanted to keep this affair a secret at all costs.” She looked at Mick. “And then that woman ends up dead.”
Tears were now in Roz’s eyes. “I hear that shit all the time. You must be blind, they love to say to me. How can you not see that Mick is cheating on you? How can you not see that, Roz? I hear it all the time. But I don’t run to you with all those rumors. I don’t confront you every time some female put that shit in my head. Because I know the game. I know h
ow thirsty these bitches are out here. But this tape?” She shook her head. “That shit looks recent, Mick. That shit looks as if you could have been banging on her ass last week. That tape I could not ignore. Now you tell me if it’s true.”
Mick just sat there, looking guilty as sin.
Roz could hardly bear it. “Is it true, Mick? Did you have an affair with that woman?”
Teddy appeared at the still-opened bedroom door, ready to give a quick knock and walk on in. But he heard Roz’s voice, and saw the stress in her eyes. And he was shocked by the words that came out of her mouth.
“Is it true, Mick?” she asked him again.
Roz wasn’t certain if Mick was about to respond, or about to dismiss her out of hand. Either way, she was terrified. And her terror turned into anger and she slapped him, hard across the face. “Is it true?” she yelled.
Teddy was astonished when Roz slapped his father. And he was worried for her. Nobody, not anybody, laid a hand on his father and lived.
But if Teddy was astonished by Roz’s action, Mick was downright stunned. He stood up, and grabbed her angrily by the arm. When he did, Roz, worried too, pushed her butt further back onto the daybed. Teddy began to wonder if he would have to run in there and save her from his own father. But instead of jumping on her, Mick just stood there, still holding her arm. Even Roz was thrown.
Mick saw the fear in Roz’s eyes. And he crotched down to her, and looked her squarely in the eyes. “No,” he said to her. “I did not sleep with her after I met you.”
Roz stared at him. Was he telling her the truth, or more lies? He’d already lied about knowing the woman.
“That tape may seem recent,” he continued, “but it is not.”
She continued to stare at him. Mick seemed to be in distress just being forced to defend himself, something he was not accustomed to have to do.
Roz realized it too. “Then why did you lie when I asked if you knew her?” she asked.
Mick hated to admit this about himself, but it was the truth. “I didn’t remember her,” he said. “I slept with so many women before I met you, that I had no clue I had ever laid eyes on that woman before.”
Mick Sinatra: Breaking My Heart Page 11
