Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life (32 page)

Then Mick
stood still.
 
“I handle pain differently,
Roz,” he said to her.
 
“But please don’t
think I’m not grieving for Shane.
 
I am.
 
I truly am.
 
But I have to protect you.
 
And
the rest of my children.
 
I have got to
track this cancer down and excise it before it excise the people I love.
 
Then I’ll grieve the proper way.
 
Then I’ll grieve.”

Roz had a
terrible thought.
 
“What about Teddy and
the others?” she asked. “What about the rest of your children, Mick?
 
If they killed Shane---”

“They’re
secure,” Mick said quickly.
 
“They’re in
safe houses too.
 
They’re alright.”

“Oh thank
God!” Roz was beyond relieved.
 

“And you’re
secure,” Mick said, looking at her.
 
He
would have killed the world if she would have been harmed.
 
But she wasn’t.
 
And she was handling it.
 
The stress was on her face, but she was
handling it.

“What about
Shane’s mother?
 
Has she been notified?”

Mick began
pacing again.
 
“They got her too,” he
said.

Roz shook
her head.
 
“Lord have mercy.”

“Carp got
her too.
 
And everybody in her
house.
 
He knows what he’s doing.”

Roz looked
at Mick.
  
“Who is he anyway?
 
This Carp Bianchi.
 
He works for you, right?”

“He’s one of
the three Dons I am in business with.
 
He
works for himself, but he answers to me.
 
He was one of the men I relied on.”

“So it’s a
severe betrayal?”

“Of the
highest order,” Mick said.
 
“He was the
one I was consulting with about all of the security breaches we were
having.
 
When he was the one either
causing them, or decided to take advantage of them.”

Roz shook
her head.
 
“It’s always the one you least
expect,” she said.
 
“They love to take
the spotlight off of them by putting it on somebody else.
 
So you’re right.
 
He might have caused those breaches.
 
And while you’re concerned about plugging
holes, he’s plotting and scheming right before your very eyes.
 
You probably thought he was above doing
something this crazy.”

“No man is
above shit,” Mick said.
 
Then he looked
at Roz.
 
“You’ll do well to remember
that.”

“You’re
above it,” Roz said confidently.

Mick looked
at her.
 
He was pleased that she believed
it.
 
Then he stopped pacing, ran his
hands through his hair, and exhaled.
 
“Shane was a good kid,” he said.
 
“But he was an unhappy child.
 
He
probably wanted his daddy and didn’t have him.”

Roz stared
at Mick.
 
She could feel his pain.

“I can’t
change that.
 
What’s done is done.” Mick
said it with such resignation that it worried Roz.
 
But then he rallied.
 
“But I can change things with the rest of my
children.
 
And I have every intention of
doing so.”

“Of being
there for them emotionally rather than just financially?”

Mick
nodded.
 
“That’s the beginning, yes.
 
A beginning I wouldn’t even be starting if it
wasn’t for you.”

“And at
least Shane got to see his daddy before . . . it happened.”

“Yeah,” Mick
said.
 
“At least that.”

Then a knock
on the door and Leo opened it.
 
“The Dons
are here,” he said.

Mick left
the room, and Roz followed behind him, as they made their way into the living
area.
 
Teddy Stefani and Vito DeLuca were
just sitting down.
 
They rose when they
saw Mick.

“Thanks for
coming,” he said to them.

“Sorry about
your boy,” Teddy said, as he and Mick hugged.
 
Of all of the Dons, Mick was closest to Teddy.

“Yeah, it’s
a shame,” DeLuca said, and he and Mick hugged too.
 
“They found that cocksucker yet?”

“Not yet,”
Mick said.
 
“But they will.”

Roz came up
alongside Mick. He placed his hand around her waist.
 
“You gentlemen remember my lady?”

“Rosalind,
of course,” Teddy said.
 
“Give me a
hug.
 
I’m a hugger.”

Roz and
Teddy hugged.

“Have a
seat, gentlemen,” Roz said.
 
“Would you
care for something to drink?”

“No, no,”
Teddy said as the two Dons sat down.
 
“But thanks.
 
Any word on your
other children?”

“They’re all
safe, thank God,” Mick said.

“Thank God,”
Teddy said, making the sign of the cross across his chest.

Mick,
heading out of the room, looked at Teddy and motioned with his head.

Teddy stood
up again.
 
“Excuse me, please,” he said,
and followed Mick into the kitchen.

Mick was
leaning against the drain board, his arms folded, when Teddy walked in.

“What a
mess,” Teddy said, shaking his head.
 
“Carp has got to be out of his damn mind.”

“I’m going
to have to get out there,” Mick said.

“I know,” Teddy
said with a nod.
 
“We’re all
shorthanded.
 
They hit Silvio and Pauly
too.”

“I heard.”

“What you
think Carp’s up to?
 
He hate your guts
this much?”

“Hell if I
know.”

“He didn’t
want you out of the game. I thought that was the big deal for him.
 
He felt with you out of the game it was going
to hurt our bottom line, even with Provensano’s territory in our pocket.
 
Why would he want to take you out now?”

“I don’t
know,” Mick said, and ran the back of his hand across his bloodshot eyes.

“You look
like shit,” Teddy said.
 
“Sure you have
the capacity to get out there?”

“I don’t
have a choice.
 
Carp Bianchi killed Flo’s
son.
 
And Flo and her entire
household.
 
And an army of my men.
 
And tried to take out my lady.
 
I have no choice.”

“But for
Carp to turn on us like that!”

“Yeah,” Mick
said. “But I don’t know.
 
I keep thinking
something is off.
  
Something’s not
right.”

Teddy’s
heart began to pound.
 
“Like what?” Teddy
asked.

“I don’t
know.
 
I don’t know!”
 
Then Mick exhaled.
 
Nothing he could do about it right now
anyway.
 
“But what I want from you,
Teddy, is your word that you’ll look out for Rosalind.
 
If anything happens to me, you’ll protect
her.”

Teddy placed
his hand on Mick’s arm.
 
“You know I
will,” he said.

Mick was
pleased to hear it.
 
Then he headed for
the front.

He called
Roz to the bedroom, to privately explain to her what was going to happen.
 
She wasn’t pleased, but she understood.
 
Mick reloaded his guns, and headed out with a
handful of his men.

But as soon
as they closed the door on the living quarters upstairs in the building and
made their way downstairs, and were about to exit the building, Carp Bianchi
entered the building.
 
Mick and his
security team all drew their weapons.
 
Carp raised his hands, frozen in place.
 
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked them.

Mick was
stunned that he would ask such a question.
 
“You ask me something like that when you just killed my people?
 
Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Killed your
people?” Carp was stunned.
 
“How you
gonna think I killed your people?
 
Your
people are my people!
 
What the fuck are
you talking about, Mick?”

Was this
another misdirection?
 
Mick stared at
Carp.

“I heard
about the hit.
 
I heard you were in New
York so I knew where to come.
 
I knew
radio silence was activated to avoid tracking, and I came where I knew to
come.
 
Now you’re trying to accuse me of
orchestrating this shit?
 
Me?
 
Of turning on you, on our people?
 
Are you fucking kidding me?”

Mick already
had an inkling.
 
He already had that
feeling in the pit of his gut that told him something was off.
 
Then, as he stood there, as his men kept
their guns drawn on Carp Bianchi and Carp kept insisting they had the wrong
guy, Mick remembered something Roz had just said.

It’s always the one you least expect
, she said.
 
They take
the spotlight off of them by putting it on somebody else
.
 
It’s
always the one you least expect
.
 
The one you least expect.
 
The one
you least . . .

And Mick
took off and ran back up those stairs.

“What is
going on here?” Carp asked bewilderedly, watching Mick run.
 

The men were
floored too.
 
They didn’t know what to
do.
 
That was why half of them followed
Mick back up, and the other half kept their weapons trained on Carp.
 
He wasn’t going anywhere until they found out
what was really going on.

A double
cross was really going on.
 
It happened a
mere minutes after Mick and his men walked out of the upstairs part of the
house.
 
Everybody were in the living room
when it happened.
 
First a gun was
drawn.
 
It had a silencer on it, so it
was a planned hit.
 
Roz was stunned.
 
She saw Vito DeLuca get shot.
 
She saw Teddy Stefani get shot.
 
Then Leo Barone, Mick’s right hand man,
Mick’s security chief, the double-crosser, turned his gun on Roz.

But Roz was
ready for him.
 
Because Mick, when he was
reloading his guns before he left, had handed one of those guns to Roz.
 
“Trust Teddy,” he had said to her.
 
“But nobody else.
 
If anything happens, be prepared to shoot.”

She knew it
was going to be a tall order, since she’d never shot a gun before in her life,
but as soon as Leo Barone shot Vito DeLuca, she was pulling out her own
gun.
 
By the time Leo shot Teddy Stefani,
she was aiming her gun at Leo.
 
By the
time Leo turned to her, she fired her weapon.
 
But her lack of experience showed.
 
She missed badly.
 
Leo smiled at
her lack of skill, aimed his own weapon at her, and prepared to take her
out.
 
She had her chance and missed.
 
Now it was his turn.

But Mick
never missed.
 
And this time was no
exception.
 
The door flew open, and he
took Leo out as soon as Roz’s gun misfired.
 
He shot him repeatedly. He wanted to overkill him.
 
He wanted to keep shooting that dead
man.
 
But Mick was so angry, and felt so
betrayed, that he decided the man who had been his chief of security, wasn’t
worth the bullets.

Mick tossed
the gun aside, tired of this shit.
 
Then
he looked at Rosalind.
 
And opened his
arms.
 
She didn’t hesitate.
 
She ran to him.

The
Lamborghini drove up to the huge office complex and stopped at the curb.
 
Mick was behind the wheel.
 
He removed his shades from the top of his
head and placed them over his eyes, and then looked up over the steering
wheel.
 
He had been out of the country
for a few days, but he hadn’t expected this much progress.

He grabbed
his hardhat, put it on, and got out of his car.
 
It didn’t look like it from out front, but it was a construction
zone.
 
Mick, in his jeans and a tucked-in
pullover shirt, fit right in.

THE GRAHAM
AGENCY, Roz’s new company, was written over the building’s entrance in bold
black letterings, as if it was ready to go.
 
But when Mick walked through that door and made his way inside, all of
the promise of the completed, ready to go outside, gave way to reality: it was
a long way from finished.

The front
side of the building, which was a big, open space, was completed, but the back
side, where there were numerous walls going up, was still a work in
progress.
 
Mick placed his hands on his
pockets and looked around.
 
Construction
workers were everywhere.
 
But he only
came to see one worker: Rosalind.
 
The
owner of the joint.
 
And when he saw her,
across the room, going over blueprints with her project manager, he
smiled.
 

She was in
hardhat too, but everything else, from her power skirt suit to her power heels,
was all Roz.
 
And the way she was explaining
her position to her manager, telling him exactly the way she wanted it, not the
way he wanted her to have it, made Mick proud.
 
If he was a woman, he would want to be just like Rosalind.
 
Then he caught himself.
 
If he
was a woman
? What the fuck?

He shook his
head of that nonsensical thought and made his way to
his
woman.
 
To Rosalind.
 
When she saw him, and she smiled that grand,
dimpled smile he loved so much, his heart melted.
 
He was so far gone with this lady that he
knew there was no going back.

Roz knew it
too, as she excused herself from her manager, and made her way to Mick.
 
“You’re back early,” she said as she hurried
to him.
 
“I didn’t expect you for another
four hours.”

Mick swept
her into his arms.
 
“I couldn’t bear it,”
he said.
 
“I had to get back to you.”

Roz grinned
as he embraced her.
 
Even though he was
casually dressed, he still looked debonair to Roz.

Especially
when he kissed her.
 
And he kissed her
long and lovingly.
 
He kissed her for all
of those finger-pointing and grinning construction workers to see.
 
But Mick and Roz didn’t care.

When they
finally stopped smooching, Mick looked around.
 
“How’s it been going?” he asked.
 
He kept an arm around her waist.

“It’s
going,” she said. “Javier’s giving me fits, but I can handle it.”

“Good.”
 
There was a time when Mick would try to
handle it himself.
 
But no more.
 
He was her protector, no man was touching a
hair on her head, but he didn’t sweat the small stuff.

“I still
can’t believe you’re doing this for me,” Roz said.
 
“I’ll have my own talent agency right here In
Philly.
 
It’s right up my alley,
Mick.
 
This is going to be perfect for
me.
 
And every dime of your investment
will be returned to you a hundredfold, I promise you.”

“I told you
not to worry about that.”

“Mark my
words,” Roz said.
 
“The Graham Agency is
going to be the toast of this town, of Broadway, of Hollywood, and of Paris and
London too.
 
International baby, when I
get through.”

Mick
smiled.
 
“That’s what I love about
you.
 
Your modesty.”

Roz had to
laugh at that one.

Then they
just stood there like soldiers who overcame a lot of battles to get where they
were.
 
But they were still
battle-scarred.
 
Mick exhaled.
  
“We’ve had some turbulence early on,” he
said.
 
“Some very dark days.
 
I’m glad it’s getting brighter.”

Roz
smiled.
 
“So am I.
 
Our best is yet to come.
 
But what about you, Mick?
 
How are you holding up?
 
Everything that happened was done to hurt
you.
 
Leo betrayed you.
 
How are you holding up?”

Mick
nodded.
 
He wasn’t going to lie.
 
“It’s tough.
 
Leo knew we were already having security breaches and he decided I was
showing signs of weakness.
 
He decided he
was going to take advantage of that slither of an opening and take over my
organization.
 
He had to get everybody
out of the way first.”

“But what
would Shane and his mother have to do with that?” Roz asked.

“It was the
misdirection.
 
It was a way to get me
emotionally caught up in what wasn’t even the point. I realized that when I
first walked into Flo’s home.
 
It wasn’t
what it seemed.
 
And it wasn’t.
 
Leo’s henchmen were supposed to take me out
at Flo’s, at Shane’s mother’s house.
 
But
they couldn’t pull it off.”

“Thank God,”
Roz said.
 
“But why didn’t Leo just take
you out himself right then?”

“Because he
couldn’t take over my territory if it went down like that.
 
Because the truth always got out.
 
There was always a witness somewhere.
 
He had to be the last man standing.
 
He had to be the legitimate heir to the
throne.
 
Nobody was going to promote a
double-crosser. Somebody else had to do his dirty work.”

“He probably
took out the two Dons, and would have killed me, because he had no choice.”

Mick nodded
his head.
 
“Yeah.
 
That’s what I figure too.
 
He was a dead motherfucker just thinking he
could get away with harming you.”

Roz smiled.

“But
anyway,” Mick said, “I have some good news.”

Roz looked
at him.
 
“What?”

“Joey
called.”

“About our
dinner invitation?”

“Yup. He was
the last one.
 
He said he can make it
too.
 
That means all of them have
accepted.”

Roz was
thrilled to hear it.

“I can’t
change what happened with Shane,” Mick said, “but I’m determined to get it
right with the others.”

Roz rubbed
Mick’s muscular arm.
 
This man, she
thought, was really trying to change.
 
“And you will,” she said.
 
“This
is a good first step.
 
But it’s a work in
progress.
 
It’s going to take time.
 
Only no more fake smiles and surface
conversations.
 
Hear them out.
 
If they’re ready to be heard.”

Mick
nodded.
  
Then he looked at Roz.
 
She could tell more was on his mind.
 
“I was thinking,” he said.

“Again?”

Mick
smiled.
 
“Alright now.
 
But I was thinking that maybe, when this
project is finished, you and I can take a trip to Jericho.”

Roz was
floored.
 
“To Jericho, Maine?
 
To your hometown?”
 
To the town he said he hated?

Mick
nodded.
 
“Yeah.
 
To my hometown.”

Roz studied
him. “May I ask why?”

“I have
men.
 
Operatives.
 
You know what I call them?”

“What?”

“I call them
my ghostbusters.”

Roz
laughed.
 
“Your ghostbusters? Now I know
they call your underworld network Poltergeist, because you see it, but don’t
see it.
 
But you have ghostbusters too?”

“I have
ghostbusters.
 
They go in and take care
of enemies from my past.
 
But this part
of my past, the Jericho part, can’t be contracted out.
 
I’ve got to bust those ghosts myself.”
 
He looked at Roz. “But I’m going to need you by
my side.”

Roz looked
up at him.
 
And wrapped her arms around
him too.
 
“You know I’ll be there,” she
said.
 
“Our relationship is still young,
but don’t worry.
 
I’m not going
anywhere.”

Those words
were music to Mick’s ears.
 
He pulled her
closer, and looked into her eyes.
 
“I
love you, Rosalind Graham,” he said.
 
And
then a seriousness came over him that Roz had never seen before.
 
“I truly love you.”

Roz
smiled.
 
It was the first time had had
verbalized it.
 
“I love you too,” she
said.

And Mick
pulled her closer still.
 
And despite the
eyes of the construction workers, and their pointing, and elbowing, he kissed
his beloved, passionately, once again.