Mick Sinatra 4: If You Don't Know Me by Now (17 page)

As she moved
to drink more coffee, she heard the front door open.
 
Her distressed heart relaxed when she saw
Mick and Teddy walk through that door.
 
But her relaxation quickly eroded when she saw Mick’s face.
 
“Did he know anything?” Roz asked as he made
his way to the sofa.

“Nothing,”
Teddy answered for his father.
 
“The
cheating dog.”

“He was
cheating on her?” Joey asked.

“Had a bitch
in bed with him when we arrived,” Teddy said.

“What?” Joey
asked.
 
But as Teddy took a seat next to
Joey and began to fill him in, Roz couldn’t care less about Fonz’s
infidelity.
 
She was staring at
Mick.
 
She went to him.

Mick removed
his coat and tossed it across the room, and then slouched down in the middle of
the sofa.
 
Roz went to him and sat beside
him.

“The twins
okay?” Mick asked her.

“They’re
fine, Mick,” Roz said.
 
She took his hand
and began to rub it.
 
“I’m concerned
about you.”

Mick placed
an arm around her waist.
 
She leaned
against him.
 
“I’m concerned about you.”

“You know
I’m fine.
 
But what did you find
out?
 
Anything?”

“Not a
thing.”

She
paused.
 
“Joey saw the video.”

Mick looked
at her.
 
“How did that happen?
 
You let him see it?”

“I didn’t
let him do any such thing.
 
You know me
better than that.
 
He said he went into
your study and saw it himself.”
 
Then a
different look came over her face.

Mick pulled
her closer.
 
“What is it?”

“Joey acts
as if he . . . I don’t know.”
 
She looked
at Mick.
 
“He’s still very upset with
you.”

Mick
nodded.
 
“He is,” he said, as he looked
over at his son.
 
Teddy and Joey were
still in conversation.
 
“And the evidence
is leading---

“To an
inside job?” Roz asked.

She never
ceased to amaze Mick.
 
“How did you
know?”

“The way
Joey’s acting.
 
The things he says.
 
But it can’t be true, Mick.
 
Your children wouldn’t do something like
this.
 
Gloria’s too levelheaded, and Joey
wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“In a way I
wish it was a set up,” Mick said.
 
“I
wish Gloria is somewhere laughing right now.”
 
A pain shot through Mick’s heart.
 
“But I feel pain every time I say her name.
 
It’s no setup.”

Roz
agreed.
 
“No,” she said.

“But where
is she, Rosalind?” Mick had anguish in his voice.
 
“I have searched everywhere.
 
My men have searched everywhere.
 
We have questioned everybody with any
knowledge of Gloria whatsoever.
 
Even the
guy they fought in the parking lot of that nightclub.
 
We retraced her every step.”

“And
nothing?”

“Nothing.
 
Absolutely nothing.”
 
But Mick looked at his sons as they continued
their conversation.
 
He didn’t want to go
there.
 
But he was also not the kind of
man to leave stones unturned.
 
“Joe,
Ted,” he said to his two sons.

Roz looked
as both of them, like the children they sometimes became around Mick, hurried
to his side.
 
She had a feeling what Mick
was about to ask them, and it concerned her.
 
She sometimes wondered if Mick realized just how precarious his
relationship with his children still was.

“Yes, sir?”
Joey asked eagerly.

“Do either
of you know anything about your sister’s disappearance?”

Joey frowned.
 
“Do we know about it?”

“Did either
of you have anything to do with it?”

Teddy didn’t
take offense at all.
 
He knew everybody
had to be cleared.
 
“No, sir,” he
said.
 
“I didn’t.”

But Joey was
completely offended.
 
He started moving
around, with the thick gold chain around his neck bobbing, the way he usually
behaved when he felt agitated, or threatened.
 
“Why you asking us something like that?
 
She’s our sister, though.
 
She’s
our flesh and blood!
 
Why would you think
we would have something to do with her disappearance?
 
We weren’t the ones she said on her computer
had something to do with it. Why aren’t you accusing her?” He said this and
nodded toward Roz.
 
“Why are you checking
us?
 
She’s the one you need to check.”

Mick was
seething and about to lash out at his young son, and Roz knew it.
 
She squeezed his hand, and answered for
him.
 
“Just because she said I’m involved
doesn’t make me involved, Joey.”

“But it
makes you more involved than I am,” Joey fired back.
 
“I mean, think about it, Dad.
 
Think with your head up here, though, not
with the one down there.”

Mick stood
up so fast it caused Joey to step back.
 
Mick was ready to kick the shit out of his son.
 
Even Teddy was shocked by Joey’s boldness,
and would have encouraged the ass kicking.
 
But Roz stood up just as fast as her husband had, and held him
back.
 
“Mick, wait!” she decried.
 
“Hear him out.
 
Please.
 
Let him have his say!”

Teddy stared
at his stepmother.
 
She was still a young
woman.
 
She wasn’t all that much older
than he was.
 
And to be Mick the Tick’s
wife carried the kind of burden even being Mick the Tick’s son didn’t
carry.
 
But she carried it with
grace.
 
She carried it with class.
 
He had nothing but respect for Rosalind
Sinatra.

Joey was
surprised by Roz’s support, but it didn’t erase his bitterness.
 
His father placed her above him.
 
She had the place in his father’s life that
his father’s children should possess, and it bothered him no end.
 
He liked Roz.
 
He even cared for her in his own way.
 
But after those twins were born everything changed.
 
His father changed.
 
His father moved him and Gloria and Teddy
even further away from the center of his life.
 
Joey would never be so heartless as to blame the twins.
 
They were innocents too.
 
But he blamed Roz.
 
She, he felt, could do more to make his
father see the error of his ways and give them more of his time.
 
As far as he was concerned, Roz was his
stiffest competition.
 
His only
competition.

Mick let out
a sharp exhale.
 
He didn’t take shit from
anybody, not least of which his own children.
 
But for Roz’s sake, he was willing to hear him out.
 
“Speak,” he said to Joey.

Joey wasn’t
accustomed to having the floor.
 
But that
bitterness was eating him alive, and he knew it.
 
He took the floor.
 
He took it gladly.
 
“Glo recorded that message about Ma on her
computer,” he said.
 
“Most girls her age
would do something like that on their cell phones.
 
Wouldn’t they?
 
Who sits at a big-ass computer to record a
message when their cell phone will do?
 
I
mean, who does that?
 
Teddy just told me
she took the DVD she had recorded and placed it in her safe.
 
Like she wanted something left behind.
 
I didn’t know she even had a safe in that
condo.”
 
He looked at his big
brother.
 
“Did you?”

Teddy shook
his head.
 
“No,” he said.

“But, Dad,
you knew about that safe,” Joey said to his father.
 
“So she left that tape for you to find.
 
Because she knew, like we know, how you
are.
 
She knew you would never suspect
Ma.
 
She knew you would suspect your own
sons, your own flesh and blood, before you ever suspected her.
 
And even though she told you with her own
mouth who would be responsible if something ever happened to her, you still
want to point a finger at me and Ted.
 
It’s
wrong,
Pop
.
 
It’s as wrong as it can be.
 
Why
would I harm my own sister?
 
They said
blood was all over that condo.
 
Why would
I do something like that?
 
Why would you
even think that I could?”

Mick was
staring at Joey.
 
“Why would you think
that my wife would have something to do with her disappearance?” he asked.

His question
only angered Joey more.
 
“Because Gloria
said she did!” he fired at his father.

“I don’t
give a fuck what Gloria said!” Mick fired back.
 
“On this point I do not give a fuck!
 
You hear me?
 
My wife did not harm
Gloria.
 
She did not have anything to do
with her disappearance.
 
I will never
believe that, and all of your suppositions will not make me believe it.
 
I will never entertain such a thought!”

Joey’s hurt
emboldened him.
 
“Then you’re a bigger
fool than I thought you was,” he said.

Mick could
not be restrained this time.
 
He hit his
son with such a forceful blow that Joey lifted up in the air and flipped before
landing on his face.
 
Teddy went to him,
to help him, but he jerked away from him.

Roz covered
her mouth in anguish.
 
The last thing she
ever wanted was something like this.
 
She
wanted to go to Joey too.
 
But she
didn’t.
 
He wasn’t going to speak to his
father so disrespectfully and get away with it.
 
That level of behavior could not go unpunished.

She looked
at Mick.
 
She knew how much he loved his
children, and she expected to see regret in his eyes.
 
But regret wasn’t there.
 
Mick was the kind of man that relied on
respect.
 
It was his life creed.
 
If anybody disrespected him, he didn’t care
who, he was setting them straight.

When Joey
stood back up, Mick didn’t offer any apologies.
 
He simply left the room and went into his study. He wasn’t
regretful.
 
Roz was right about
that.
 
But he was hurt.
 
Hurt to his core.
 
His children still hated him.
 
He knew it now.

Roz and Joey
exchanged a look.
 
They were getting
closer until this episode with Gloria.
 
They were becoming really tight.
 
But she couldn’t abide his behavior either.
 
“Your father loves you,” she said.
 
“He can’t erase the past, but he loves you
now.
 
Maybe it’s high time you start returning
the gesture.”
 
And Roz left, and went
into Mick’s study.

Mick was
pacing the room.
 
It was his home office,
it was massive, but it felt closed in and cluttered when Roz walked in.
 
Because Mick looked like a caged animal.
 
He looked like a man on the verge of
rage.
 
But he was containing his fury.

Roz knew her
job wasn’t to incite his fury, or even acknowledge it.
 
Her job was to keep him focused.
 
“What’s next?” she asked him.
 
“What can we do?
 
Wait?”

Mick, at
first, didn’t respond.
 
Then he stood still
and looked at her.
 
“None of this is your
fault,” he said to her.
 
“You know that?”

“I don’t
know shit,” she said bluntly.
 
“Not at
this point.
 
I know I’m not involved
physically.
 
But maybe I have some
emotional responsibility.
 
Maybe I could
have done more to prevent this breakdown.”