Mick Sinatra: The Harder They Fall (11 page)

Roz was standing
behind her desk, just getting off the phone, when her office door flew open and
Tamron hurried inside.

“What’s
wrong with you?” Roz asked her.

Tamron ran
up to the desk, with Tee hurrying in behind her.
 
“She just barged in,” Tee said anxiously.

“It’s okay,”
Roz said, still staring at her frightened friend.

“Yes,
ma’am,” Tee said, still upset with Roz’s friend, but she knew her place.
 
She walked out and closed the door behind
her.

“What’s
wrong, Tam?” Roz asked.

“You’ve got
to stop him, Roz,” Tamron asked, clutching Roz’s arm.

Roz was now
seriously concerned.
 
“Stop who?”

“He all but
threatened to kill me!”

Roz
frowned.
 
“Who threatened to kill you?”

“Your
husband, that’s who!
 
I tell you that man
is crazy.
 
He’s a psycho!”

But Roz still
didn’t understand.
 
“You saw Mick?
 
When?”

“This
morning at his office,” Tamron said, leaning against the desk.
 
She held onto her pounding heart.
 
“And I tell you it was awful.
 
It was one of the most harrowing experiences
of my entire life.
 
I’m Benny Blake’s
wife.
 
I’m not just anybody!
 
Who does he think he is?”

“But I don’t
understand,” Roz said, still puzzled.
 
“Why were you . . . What were you doing in Mick’s office?”

“I,” Tamron
started.
 
And then realized that she
could not tell the full story.
 
“Why I
wanted to invite him to my masquerade ball,” she said.
 
“What else?”

“I told you
he said no.
 
Why would you go behind my
back like that, Tam?”

“I wanted to
see if he’d reconsider.”

“Oh, Tam,
you know better than that!
 
If he told me
no, you think he’ll tell you yes?”

Then Roz saw
that arrogant look on Tamron’s face.
 
She
shook her head.
 
“What am I saying?
 
Of course you thought he would!
 
All you heifers around here want to believe
that I’m his accidental wife.
 
That he
couldn’t possibly have meant to marry me.
 
Keep believing that.”

“Okay, I
made a mistake,” Tamron admitted.
 
“I
shouldn’t have gone to see him.
 
But I
already told people he would be there, Roz.
 
I’ll be a laughingstock if he doesn’t show up.
 
And then, on top of all of that, for him to
threaten me the way he did!”

Roz folded
her arms.
 
“Why did he threaten you?” she
asked.

Tamron took
umbrage.
 
“What do you mean why?
 
I told you why.
 
I asked him to change his mind.”

“Do I look
like a fool to you?” Roz asked.
 
“Do I
really look that foolish to you?
 
You’re
an old friend, Tamron, but I’ll kick you to the curb so fast if you don’t cut
this shit out.”

“What
shit?”
 
Tamron was floored.
 
“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking
about your bullshit,” Roz fired back.
 
“My husband does not go around threatening my friends unless my friends
do something to deserve it.”

“To deserve
it?” Tamron was livid.
 
“How dare
you!
 
No, you didn’t say that.”

“Actually I
did,” Roz responded.
 
“Why did he
threaten you, Tam?”

“You know
what?” Tamron said, standing upright.
 
“Forget this.
 
I don’t know why I
even came here.
 
That man can do no wrong
in your eyes.
 
He walks on water let you
tell it.
 
I come to my close friend, one
of my closest friends, and tell her that her man just threatened my life, and she
wants to blame me.
 
You’re just the
typical battered wife.”

Roz couldn’t
believe it.
 
“The typical battered
wife?
 
Really bitch?
 
Because I refuse to take your word for it
against my own husband, I’m a battered wife now?”

“You heard
me.
 
You behave just like a battered
wife!”

“Then kiss
my battered ass!” Roz shot back.
 
“In the
name of friendship, I’ve taken all I can stand from you!
 
You won’t tell me the full story, and yet
you’re upset that I don’t rush to your defense?
 
Girl bye!
 
You need to leave.”

“Just like
that?”

“Just like
that,” Roz said.
 
“Leave.”

Tamron was
offended, and a little sad by this turn of events, but she decided it was all
Roz’s fault.
 
If Roz would have used her
womanly wiles on Mick to begin with and forced him to say yes, they wouldn’t be
in this position.
 
“I’ll gladly leave
your little office,” she said, tossed her mink stove around her neck, and
walked out.
 
As Roz expected, she slammed
the door behind her.

Roz pinched
her temple.
 
Their relationship had
always been a work in progress, and this wasn’t going to advance it much
further. Because she knew Tam was full of shit.
 
Tam probably confronted Mick with some accusation.
 
She probably figured she had some dirt on
Mick.
 
And if Roz had to bet, it was
probably about another woman.
 
That was
what
dirt on Mick
was usually
about.
 
Roz was used to it by now.

But that
didn’t mean it didn’t bother her.
 
It
did.
 
She would be lying if she said it
didn’t.
  
Mick was the most sexual human
being she’d ever known.
 
She often
wondered if she was enough woman for a man like him.

But as she
sat behind her desk, she thought about this morning and how understanding he
was about her Chad Dawkins problem.
 
And
how he came home to her every night.
 
And
the way he made love to her, and seemed to want her with every fiber of his
being.
 
She thought about how he chose
her above all those other women in the first place.

She knew she
wasn’t made of stone.
 
It bothered her
whenever some rumor of him with other women reared its ugly head time and time
again.
 
But she also knew she had to keep
her head about her, and her marriage together.
 
She couldn’t do what those females wanted her to do and go running to
Mick with accusations based on somebody else’s gossip.
 
Whenever the allegations came, she, instead,
watched him, studied him, and saw for herself.
 
When she didn’t see any signs of him cheating on her, despite what folks
like Tamron would tell her, she left it alone.
 
She was going with what she knew.
 
Not with what others wanted her to know.

She pressed
her intercom button.
 
Time for her to
forget Tamron, and get back to work.
 
“Get Rog Gordon on the line,” she said to her secretary.
 
“I just got the call.
 
A new producer wants him in the lead.”

Joey walked
behind their father as they entered the house on McCormick.
 
Angelo Jovanni was still there.
 
And so was Danny Padrone.
 
They were exhausted because the couple
wouldn’t admit shit, and they knew they couldn’t go all out to get them to
talk.

Mick stood
in the middle of the room.
 
The couple sat
in chairs facing him.
 
They had a few
bruises, but nothing life threatening.
 
Danny stood on one side.
 
Angelo
stood on the other side.

“Who are
they?” Mick asked.

“Joe and
Betty Alanbeck,” Danny said.
 
“They’re
from Buffalo, New York.”

“Ted says
their story checked out.”

“And how,”
Angelo said.
 
“They’ve been running this
scam for years, boss.
 
Up and down the
coast just like they said.
 
We figure
it’s the truth.
 
It was just a thing that
happened.
 
A coincidence.”

Mick’s jaw
tightened when Angelo said those words.
 
Even Joey knew his father wasn’t going for that.

“Is that
what you think too, Drone?” Mick asked Danny.

Danny
Padrone used to be Mick’s right-hand man before Teddy took over.
 
Now he felt as if he was walking on egg
shells.
 
He said the wrong thing, he made
the wrong move, and Angelo would overtake him as number two.
 
But he had to be honest.
 
“Yeah,” he said.
 
“There’s no other answer for it, boss.
 
These fools just picked the wrong mark last
night.
 
They had no idea it was your
wife.
 
They just thought they had a woman
in an expensive car who would be willing to pay to make it go away, or at least
get her insurance to pay.
 
It’s a classic
scam.”

Mick was
disappointed in Danny.
 
He used to expect
big things from that young man.
 
But then
Teddy came along, threatened his position in Mick’s organization, and Danny
folded like an accordion rather than fought like hell to stay on top.
 
Now this.

When Mick
wasn’t with Rosalind, he always felt like a man alone.
 
He always felt like a man fighting wars that
nobody else seemed to realized were raging.
 
He was getting tired of the fight.
 
But unlike these younger cats who stopped climbing whenever the hill got
too steep, he would never stop fighting until there wasn’t a breath left in his
body.

Mick stared
at the man, and made his calculation.
 
He
knew that look.
 
He had that look
whenever he looked at Rosalind.
 
That man
loved his wife deeply and hated that she was in this situation.
 
Mick looked at the woman.
 
It was a different story with her.
 
If the man was threatened, the man would be
too grieved to talk.
 
He’d protect his
wife at all costs.
 
But if the woman saw
that man endangered and knew that she could be next, it was Mick’s calculation
that the woman would not only talk to preserve herself, she’d sing.
 
She might love her husband, but Mick figured
she loved herself more.

Mick went
for the man.
 
He walked up to Joe
Alanbeck, pulled a switchblade from beneath his coat sleeve that Joey didn’t
even realize he had put there, slung open the blade, and without a nary word
sliced the man’s throat.

The blood
gushed out as the man immediately grabbed his throat with both hands, gasping
for air as he tried to stanch the massive blood flow.
 
His wife screamed in horror and tried to run
away.
 
Even Danny Padrone and Angelo
Jovanni winced.
 
How could boss do such a
horrific thing to salt of the earth people like this?

But Joey was
smiling.
 
The old man got what he
deserved.
 
He, like Mick, wasn’t falling
for their Ma and Pa act either.
 
A couple
this old running scams was a couple of scammers to Joey.
 
A couple of crooks.
 
He wouldn’t trust them if trust was their
middle name.

While the
room was reacting to what was sure to be the death of Joe Alanbeck, and while
Joe himself was falling out of his chair, still holding his neck, still
struggling to live, Mick was grabbing the hair of Betty Alanbeck, slinging her
head backwards, and putting the blade against her neck too.
 
“You lie to me, motherfucker,” he said with
eyes as cold as ice, “and you’ll join your husband in hell.
 
Who paid you to target my wife?
 
When did they pay you?
 
And why did they pay you?”

Betty was
crying.
 
She was horrified.
 
Mick could see in her stricken blue eyes that
she had no idea who she was dealing with.
 
“Are you going to kill me too even if I tell?” she asked with fear
scratching her throat.