Pauly was still bitching to Deuce about the fact that he had to be a driver today, and Deuce was reminding him of the real fact: he had no choice. If Mick the Tick said he was going to drive all day, he was going to drive all day. End of discussion. But Pauly kept bitching.
But as he continued to stand around and shoot the breeze with Deuce, it began to feel as if he was going to stand around all day. Until the door to the estate finally opened, and Mick’s wife emerged.
Pauly, a field man, didn’t get to see her much. Not since the wedding, as he recalled. But man was she still beautiful, he thought, as she made her way down the steps. She was decked down in a gorgeously form-fitting dress and heels, a dress that not only highlighted her perfectly smooth dark skin, but highlighted that shapely body he knew Mick was working the shit out of. A body he knew he’d be working the shit out of if it belonged to him. Physically, she was an attractive sight to behold for sure, and was dressed only as he would envision the wife of a man like Mick Sinatra would be dressed.
But she had something else going on too, Pauly thought, as he watched her. There was nothing soft about her. Nothing cuddly. She was a great-looking dame, no doubt about that, but she was a tough-looking dame too. She had the look of a woman who could smile in your face like an innocent flower, at the same time she would have a knife behind her back ready to chop off your balls. Pauly was a tough guy himself, but even he backed up slightly when she approached. Even he wouldn’t want to mix it up with her.
“Good morning, Mrs. Sinatra,” Deuce said as she approached, although she urged him constantly to call her Roz. But he knew Mick wouldn’t like it, so he didn’t do it.
“Good morning, Deuce,” Roz responded.
“How are you this morning? How are the twins?”
“I’m great and the twins are sleeping,” Roz responded with that innocent smile Pauly had just been thinking about. She made her way to the front passenger side door. She didn’t know who Pauly was, but she smiled and spoke just the same. “Hi.”
“Ma’am,” Pauly said with a bow of his head, looking so differential that Deuce couldn’t help but smile.
“So what is this, Deuce?” Roz asked, her face revealing her puzzlement. “I’m in the front today?”
Whenever Mick insisted that she have a driver for the day, it was common practice for her to always sit in the backseat, not the front. But Deuce was holding the front passenger side door open. “You’re in the front, yes ma’am,” Deuce responded. “I assumed that’s where you would want to sit since he’ll be driving you today.”
Roz looked back at him. “Who’ll be driving me today?” she asked, assuming he meant the guy standing beside him. But then she quickly realized that Mick wouldn’t allow some guy who wasn’t in his inner circle to be her personal driver. And especially not at a time like this.
She, therefore, didn’t wait for an answer to her own question, and got onto the front seat of the Escalade. She never allowed anybody to think for a second that Mick had her in the dark about anything. Because darkness, in their world, meant daylight. It meant that people would assume there were cracks in the armor of a twosome that had to stand more united now than ever before, and they would try to exploit those cracks.
By the time Mick made his way out of the house, down the steps, and behind the wheel of the Escalade, Roz had been waiting for several minutes. And she was staring at him.
He didn’t expect any less, since he purposely failed to tell her, and smiled instead. “Ready?” he asked.
“Really, Mick? You’re my driver today?”
“That’s right.”
“But this is your first day back to work too.” They had planned to return to work yesterday, but the twins were crying uncontrollably, crying unlike they ever had ever cried before, and it spooked both of them. They ended up spending the entire day with their babies and didn’t go into their respective offices at all. Today, instead, would be their first day back.
“You know how hectic it’s going to be,” Roz continued. “You can’t be driving me all around town today.”
“I won’t be driving you all around town today because you won’t be going all around town today,” Mick said. “Stay in your office. Get out only if necessary. If you have to get out, if it becomes necessary, you phone me and I’ll pick you up.”
Roz stared at Mick. All of this heightened security, and the fact that he had gone out early this morning on what was more than likely a kill call, and the fact that he was her personal bodyguard now? It was all a little frightening. “You think all of this is required?” she asked. “You as my driver? The twins on virtual lockdown in their own home?”
Mick smiled that charming, private smile she loved. “They’re babies,” he said. “What do they care?”
Roz couldn’t help but smile that dimpled smile he loved. “Okay, you’ve got a point there.” But then her look turned serious again. “But you think somebody’s still out there trying to do us harm?”
“All I know is what I know. Somebody already made an attempt on your life, the life of the twins, and my life twice. Thankfully, you and our babies got out of it unharmed. But those fuckers tried to take me out. Until I erase everybody involved from the face of this earth, we take precautions. You don’t do shit until you check in with me. And I mean that Roz. I’ll beat your ass if you disobey me. I’ll beat it as hard as I fuck it, and you know how hard I fuck it.”
Again, Roz found herself smiling. Mick the Tick was feared the world over. And there were times, especially when she went against his orders, that she feared him too. But nobody warmed her heart like Mick. Nobody made her laugh, even when it shouldn’t have been funny at all, the way he did.
“Got it?” he asked her.
Roz nodded. When it came to their safety, to their very lives, Mick was in charge. “Got it,” she said.
And then Mick pointed, and the Suburban in front drove off, followed by Mick and Roz in the Escalade, followed by Pauly, Deuce, and a group of armed men in the Explorer.
Roz leaned back and exhaled. Mick, leaned against the armrest, could feel her distress. “Awkward going back to work?” he asked her.
She looked at him. How did he know that was how she was feeling? “Yes,” she said. “I worked from home. I did a lot of work from home. But I still feel as if I’ve been neglectful.”
Mick felt burdened by that response. Because he knew why she was neglectful. When the first attempt was made on his life, and he was riddled with bullets, Roz was the one who saved him from certain death. She was also the one who refused to leave his side during the entire month of his recovery. He’d never met a human being like her. He’d never met a human being ever in his entire life who put him first the way she had. He sometimes wondered if he would have recovered at all if it had not been for Roz.
He reached over and took her hand. Mick had never been a sentimental man, and he wasn’t ever going to be. In his line of work sentimentality was another name for letting your guard down. For letting emotions rule your good sense. But privately, when he was alone with Roz, the emotions he felt for her, for all she did for him, overwhelmed him. “Did I thank you for saving my life?” he asked her.
She looked at him and squeezed his hand. He had, countless times. “Yes,” she said.
He nodded, staring straight ahead. “Good,” he said.
But Roz looked sidelong at him. “Good?” she asked. “Is that all I get?”
Mick, floored, looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“By your own admission, I saved your life.”
“That’s right.”
“Yet you get all the rewards.”
Mick was sincerely perplexed. “What are you talking about, Rosalind?”
“My Bentley was wrecked, remember?” Roz reminded him. “Instead of repairing it, which you could have easily done, you got rid of it and told me you would get me a new car. You refused to let me get my own car. That was your job, you said, pounding your chest.”
“Pounding my chest? I did no such thing.”
But Roz would not be deterred. “Your previous Escalade was caught up in that ambush and became riddled with more bullets than your body was riddled with,” she said as if that day wasn’t the darkest day of her life, “but guess what you did? You got yourself another one. You got yourself this brand new Escalade delivered to our home straight from the showroom floor. While I’m still waiting for my Bentley. I’m the one who supposedly was the life saver. I’m the one who was the so-called heroine. Yet you get all the goodies. Where’s my goody?”
Mick at first smiled, and then he laughed. “I’m your goody,” he said.
“Like hell!” Roz said, and Mick laughed even more.
“I’m not laughing,” Roz said, although she was smiling. “I’m serious! This is some serious shit I’m telling you about. I want my car back!”
Mick shook his head and pulled her small hand to his luscious lips, kissing it. “What am I going to do with you, Rosalind Sinatra?”
“You’re going to buy me a Bentley,” Roz said, and Mick, filled with the kind of unbridled joy his men would declare was not possible for him to possess, laughed yet again.
CHAPTER THREE
It was a cold, dark warehouse Mick owned, and all seven men sat in that dingy place as if they were about to dead man walk to the gas chamber. Even Teddy Sinatra was amazed it had come to this. He, along with his kid brother Joey, were ordered by their father to make the calls. To round them up. But these weren’t ordinary men they were rounding up. These were some of the most powerful underbosses in their father’s organization. Including Danny Padrone, arguably Mick’s most powerful underboss, and Angelo Jovanni, his second most powerful. They felt slighted when Teddy phoned them. They felt disrespected. They wanted Mick to talk to them directly. They wanted Mick to tell them personally that they had to attend this meeting, not some upstart like Teddy. But Mick wasn’t taking any calls.
Teddy sat in front of them, dressed head to toe in Armani the way his father dressed, while his kid brother Joey, dressed like some rapper in oversized jeans, an oversized jersey, and gold chains around his neck, stood beside his chair. Teddy, they knew, had brains with his brawn, and would go far in the organization. Joey, they felt, just had brawn. He was just a young little thug his father was trying to teach how to be a man. He already knew how to be a tough guy, they felt. He had the mouth and the courage down to a science. But he still had childish tendencies. He still flew off the handle without thinking about the consequences. He wasn’t a man yet.
But Teddy was even tougher than Joey and was already a man. He was the one they all had their eyes on. Because they knew, if anybody could change things, he could. They knew his father just might listen to him. It was a million to one odds that Mick would listen to anybody, but they were playing the odds in that warehouse. They needed Teddy to understand how they felt. He would have felt slighted, too, if he had been treated this way.
But Mick ran this show. He gave Teddy an order, and Teddy obeyed the order. Period. He respected his father that way. He felt, by working so closely at his side, by earning his complete trust, he was learning from the absolute best. It was Teddy’s belief that Mick would past the baton to him someday. That Teddy would someday become the head of the Sinatra crime family and his father could finally take a break and take it easy. But Teddy knew he wasn’t ready yet. His father and his Uncle Sal, another crime boss, already told him he still had a ways to go. But one day, Teddy was going to be ready. One day, Teddy was going to take that baton and run the shit out of it.
Teddy was thinking one way. Danny and Angelo and the rest of the underbosses were thinking another way. Everybody in the room remained silent, and remained in their own private, deep thoughts.
But all of their thoughts and fears and concerns all heightened when that door was opened and Mick walked in. There were bodyguards all over the place. Security was as tight as a presidential visit. But Mick walked in alone. In many respects that was how his underbosses always saw him: a man alone. They still saw him as that same merciless thug who ruled the gritty streets of Philly like the Madman from Maine he used to be called. He would act first and think later. That was Mick.
But it was just the opposite now. He thought it through first before he made a move. He thought the hell out of it first. But his men knew that didn’t make it better. Because he was now a man who couldn’t be persuaded one way or another way. He couldn’t be talked down from a position if that position was unfavorable to them. Because in the end Mick the Tick was going to listen to his own mind, his own gut, take his own counsel.
Teddy and all of the men in the room stood up when Mick walked in. Mick wasn’t the kind of man who needed that. In truth, he didn’t give a shit if they stood or sat whenever he entered a room. But what he didn’t tolerate was incompetence. What he didn’t tolerate was his seasoned vets failing to run his organization like the well-oiled machine it was before he went down. They dropped the ball. They made moves that could have harmed his family. Mick gave a shit about that.
He sat down where Teddy had been sitting, and his men sat back down too. Joey immediately stood beside the chair even closer, with his own body leaned against his father’s massive bicep as if he could gain his father’s swag by contact alone. Teddy stood beside his father’s chair too, but with his hand on the back of the chair. Danny and Angelo knew it was a power play by Teddy. They knew Teddy wanted to remind them that he was the heir apparent now, and they were no longer under consideration. The bastard.
Somebody had to get this meeting started, and they knew from experience that it wasn’t going to be Mick. He just sat there, with his legs crossed, with his hands resting in his lap like the super-successful, respectable businessman the city took him for.
“So how have you been feeling, Boss?” Danny asked with a smile. “Roz was keeping us posted, but it’s not the same as seeing you in person.”
After that second attempt was made on Mick’s life at his estate, Roz shut down all visitation. Nobody but family, close family, was allowed anywhere near Mick. That included his most trusted underbosses.
“You’re looking good considering,” Danny continued. “So how are you feeling?”
“Who gives a shit?” Joey asked with a frown on his face. “What you keep asking him that for? That’s not why y’all are here.”
Every one of the underbosses looked at the younger Sinatra. Every one of them had the look of rage in their eyes. No snot-nosed kid ever talked to them like that, and lived.
But they had bigger problems than some loudmouth kid to deal with. Mick the Tick was sitting right in front of them. And Mick didn’t appear to be pleased to be there. Danny and Angelo both knew they had to get to the meat of the matter, before he did.
Danny moved around in his chair, and decided it was his job to begin. “What happened over the past month,” he said, “was a horrible thing. It shocked all of us. Boss down? Somebody hit our boss? Our boss? And then another attempted hit? It was a crazy time. But what you might not know is that the Gabrinis came to town. Reno, Sal, and Mick. They met with us too. And all three of them, to a man, concluded that we weren’t at fault, Boss. We did nothing wrong. That’s why we don’t understand why we were summoned to this meeting. We didn’t know anything about that hit. About neither one of those hits.”
“Did I say you knew something about them?” Mick asked.
Danny was surprised by the question. It was pretty obvious, at least to him. “Well, no, sir, you didn’t say we knew something.”
“Then what the fuck are you talking about?”
Danny swallowed hard. It was this Mick that made him want to piss in his pants.
Angelo saw Danny’s terror. He took over. “What is this about then, Boss?” he asked. “If it’s not about the ambush?”
“It’s about the aftermath,” Mick said. “It’s about how my organization responded to the ambush. It’s about how my organization left my family vuln
erable after the ambush. It’s about how you fuckers are going to pay in the wake of the ambush.”
With every sentence, Mick’s anger was rising. The tension in the room rose too. Teddy could see the terror in each and every one of those strong men’s eyes.
Danny, their leader, tried to push back. “But we didn’t do anything wrong,” he responded with a plea in his voice. “Even Sal Sinatra said we didn’t do anything wrong, and he should know. We hit the streets like crazy people, Boss. We were determined to find every one of those motherfuckers. We left no stone unturned, just like you taught us. We did everything we were supposed to do.”
“Everything?” Mick asked.
“Yes, sir,” a few of the other underbosses responded. “Everything,” Danny said.
“Which one of you went to the hospital, where my wife and my two babies were?”
Teddy couldn’t hide his anguish. Because he knew it was his fuck up as much as theirs. Tommy Gabrini even pulled him aside and told him so. But his father, for some reason, didn’t see it that way.
“How many men,” Mick continued, “did you have stationed at the hospital, Danny? Which one of you rounded up the rest of my children, and made certain they were on lockdown? This is basic shit I’m asking you about. First day on the job shit.”
Angelo, as Mick already suspected, jumped on that last question. “As I recalled,” Angelo said, “Teddy called his siblings and told them to get to the hospital.”
“Under escort?” Mick asked.
Angelo didn’t respond.
“Were they under escort?” Mick asked his scared-ass underboss again. “Why aren’t you answering, Ang? Because you know the truth. Because your ass knows Teddy doesn’t command any armies. You fuckers do!” Mick was completely fired up now. “Now you tell me what the fuck were you people thinking. You tell me how many of my men did you order to escort my children to that hospital? How many of my men did you station at that hospital? My wife was there! My babies were there! You answer my fucking questions and stop playing fucking games with me!”
Mick Sinatra: Now Will You Weep Page 2
