Mick Sinatra 4: If You Don't Know Me by Now (3 page)

“Come on,
man!” he said, pulling him away.

But Teddy
snatched away from him and continued to beat on Troy.
 
“I want this motherfucker to eat his
words.
 
He haven’t eaten them yet.
 
He hasn’t proven to me that he understands
what line he crossed.
  
That’s right,
asshole, beg.
 
Beg, motherfucker, beg!”

But Troy
wasn’t begging.
 
He was in too much pain
and distress to utter a word.
 
And then
the sirens had arrived, and the police were upon them.
 
Joey and Gloria both shook their heads.
 
Crazy-ass Teddy just got all of them in
serious trouble!
 
The kind of trouble
their father was going to kick their asses over because they didn’t outsmart
their opponent.
 
They just beat them
down.
 
And got caught doing so.

“Who does he
think he is?”
 
Granville Wallace and his
campaign manager stood outside the boardroom of Sinatra Industries and waited
to be seen.
 
“I’m mayor of this fucking
city!
 
And I have to wait?”

“Do you want
to win reelection, or don’t you?” Joe Strasberg, his campaign manager,
asked.
 
“Because if you do, we’ve got to
get this done.
  
Lubinski has the goods
on us.
 
We lose if that crap comes out,
there are no two ways about it.
 
This is
do or die for us.
 
If you want to win.”

But
Granville’s pride, more than anything else, was wounded.
 
“But to be treated like this,” he said.

“Like what?”
Strasberg wanted to know.
 
“The man is in
a meeting, Gran.
 
We didn’t have an
appointment.
 
We can’t just barge in
because you’re the mayor.
 
This man is a
corporate giant, a titan in the industry, and you and I both know what else he
is too.”

Granville
knew all too well.
 
He used Mick’s
“services” in the past.

“Mayors come
and go, as far as he’s concerned,” Strasberg continued.
 
“We’d better be glad he agreed to see us at
all.
 
He could have told us to take a
hike.
 
Then where would we be?”

Granville
let out a long exhale and ran his hands down his fat face.
 
He just found out what Lubinski had on
him.
 
He just found out that Lubinski had
called a news conference for tomorrow afternoon.
 
“You’re right,” he admitted.
 
“I need help.”

“
His
kind of help,” Strasberg reminded
him.

Granville
nodded.
 
“
His
kind of help,” he agreed.

It would be
several more minutes of impatient waiting, but then the doors to the boardroom
opened.
 
The mayor moved over to the
window and turned his back as senior executives walked out.
 
None of them appeared to realize that the
mayor of their great city was waiting in the wings, and he wanted to keep it
that way.
 
They talked amongst
themselves, got on the elevator, and left.
 
Then Blair Conyers, Mick’s executive assistant, walked over to the mayor.

“Mr. Sinatra
will see you now, sir,” she said.

The mayor
smoothed down his wrinkled suitcoat, exhaled, and began to head toward the
boardroom.
 
Strasberg began to follow
him.
 
But Blair stopped the manager.
 
“Just him, sir,” she said.

Granville
looked back at his campaign manager with fear in his eyes.
 
He was unaccustomed to handling a mess like
this alone.
 
But he also knew who he was
dealing with.
 
It was either Sinatra’s
way or the highway.
 
The highway, at this
late hour, was no longer an option.
 
He
went into the boardroom.

Mick Sinatra
sat at the head of the massive table, leaned back, his legs crossed.
 
He was looking over a document.
 
Another one of his assistants was at his
side.

Granville
walked in quietly.
 
He would have
preferred for the assistant to not be there, but it couldn’t be helped.
 
This wasn’t his show to run.
 
He had to take what he could get.
 
But he was still the mayor.
 
Sinatra wasn’t going to just ignore him as if
he was one of his flunkies too.
 
He
walked over to Mick and extended his hand.

“Mick,
hello,” he said jovially.

“Run the
totals again,” Mick said to his assistant.
 
He handed her back the document.
 
“I want a full study.”

“With how
many controls, sir?” the assistant asked.

“Line it up
with three more,” Mick said, rising to his feet.
 
“If there are any discrepancies, pull the
plug.”

“They won’t
like it.”

“Tell them
to come see me.”

The
assistant smiled.
 
It was the green light
she was hoping for.
 
“Yes, sir,” she
said, nodded a greeting toward the mayor, and left.
 
Mick shook the mayor’s hand.

Granville
didn’t like the fact that his extended hand had been left him dangling for more
than a few seconds, but he had bigger fish to fry right now.
 
“You’re like me,” he said with a smile.
 
“All about business first.
 
We’re just alike on that front.”

“No, we
aren’t,” Mick said with a smile of his own.
 
“We’re nothing alike on any fronts.”

Granville
swallowed hard.
 
He knew not to let that
smile fool him.
 
He knew Sinatra wasn’t
joking.

“Have a
seat,” Mick offered, and they both sat down.

Mick crossed
his legs again and waited.
 
His cell phone
sat on the table in front of him, but nothing else.
 
Granville knew what that meant.
 
It was late, and Sinatra was ready to go home
to his wife.
 
Or somewhere else to his
mistress.
 
Or wherever the hell a guy
like that went.
 
Granville had to come fast
and come hard, or not come at all.
 
“Lubinski has a series of tapes depicting my indiscretions with a
certain lady of the evening,” he said.

He waited a
beat, as if Mick was going to react, but Mick remained as he was.
 
The mayor continued.
 
“I was set up by the lady and Lubinski, but
the voting public isn’t going to give a damn.
 
And it’s too close to Election Day for me to defend my actions.”

Mick knew it
was going to be critical.
 
Politicians
didn’t come to his office, late at night, for the hell of it.
 
But he also knew they understood the stakes
when they came to him.
 
His services
didn’t come without a cost to them that never involved money, but always
involved influence-peddling and corruption.
 
Far more
riskier
than any cash payment could
ever be.

“I will lose
by a landslide, Granville continued, “
if
those tapes
ever become public.
 
That’s how serious
this is.”

“It is
serious,” Mick said, “but what is it my problem?” he asked.

Granville
hadn’t expected that response.
 
“It’s not
that it’s your problem,” he said.
 
“It’s
my problem.
 
But I need you to
eliminate
my problem.”

Mick
couldn’t believe the sliminess of these politicians.
 
Straight up gangsters had more morals.
 
“Which problem do you want eliminated?
 
The tape problem, the lady problem, or your
opponent?”

Granville
let out a harsh exhale.
 
“All three,” he
said.

But Mick
wasn’t about to make it easy for the mayor.
 
If he wanted that kind of shit done, he was going to have to own
it.
 
He was going to have to verbalize
it.
 
“And how do you suggest I eliminate
all three?” Mick asked.

“Torture,”
Granville said without batting an eyes.
 
If his campaign manager had been allowed in the meeting, he could have
spoken it for him.
 
But Sinatra was too
smart for that, and Granville knew it.
 
He wanted Granville to have skin in the game too.
 
“I want you to torture both of them until
they give up all evidence.”

Mick stared
at the guy.
 
A sleaze ball just like he
said.
 
“And then?” he asked.

“And then I
want you to kill their asses.
 
Both of
them.
 
And destroy the evidence.
 
But none of it can ever be tied to me.
 
It has got to look like they were in a
relationship, and they died accidentally while having kinky sex.
  
Something powerful like that.
 
When it’s all said and done, I don’t want a
single citizen, not even their spouses, to have sympathy for them.”

“Just so
we’re clear,” Mick said.
 
“You want me to
torture and then kill two people just so you can win an election?”

Granville
exhaled.
 
The things holding onto power
made him do.
 
“I know it sounds harsh,” he
said.

But Mick
corrected him.
 
“No, it does not sound
harsh.
 
Calling your opponent a liar is
harsh.
 
Calling your opponent a crook and
a wife beater is harsh.
 
Killing your
opponent and an innocent woman just to win an election is not harsh.
 
It is evil.
 
You need to understand the difference.”

 
Granville wasn’t going to go there.
 
“What are you trying to say?” he asked
Mick.
 
“You won’t do it?”

Mick never
tried
to say anything.
 
He said it.
 
“You need to understand the difference,” Mick said again, and then
looked at his cell phone as it began to vibrate.
 
He only checked his phone, not to answer any
business calls this time of night, but to make sure it wasn’t his wife or one
of his children calling.
 
It wasn’t any
of them.
 
But it was one of the men he
employed to keep an eye on his kids.

“I
understand the difference,” Granville said.
 
“Alright?
 
I get the
difference!”
 
He didn’t need some
thuggish gangster like Mick Sinatra moralizing to him.
 
“So does that mean you’ll help me?”

Mick looked
at Granville as he pressed the Talk button and put the phone to his ear.
 
“What is it?” he asked into the phone.

“They’ve
been arrested, boss.”

Mick’s
expression didn’t change outwardly, but inwardly his heart squeezed.
 
“My children?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which
ones?”

There was a
hesitation.
 
“All three, sir,” his man
said.

Mick leaned
back.
 
What the hell?
 
And then he stood up quickly.
 
Granville stood up quickly too, as if Mick
was about to attack him.
 
“I’ve got to
leave,” Mick said, heading for the exit.

Granville
was stunned.
 
“But what about my
problem?” he asked.

“Will be in
touch,” Mick said.

“But he has
a presser tomorrow afternoon!
 
You don’t
understand.
 
It’s all over if he has that
press conference!”

But Mick was
already gone.
 
He didn’t give Mayor Wallace
a second thought.
 
There was a time, not
that long ago, when his business affairs would always trump his personal
affairs without exception.
 
But that was
before he married Rosalind.
 
That was
before she encouraged him to establish a true bond with his grown
children.
 
That was before he became a
father to two perfect twins six weeks ago, and discovered for the first time in
his life what fatherhood in its infancy was truly like, and how tragically he
had missed out before.
 
His wife, and his
children, trumped all else now.

But that
didn’t mean he wasn’t angry with each and every one of those grown children of
his.
 
He was enraged.
 
He made this clear to them after the
prosecutor, a brownnoser who had hopes of being District Attorney someday and
wasn’t interested in drawing the ire of the powerful and well-connected,
declined to bring charges.
 
She concluded
that they all jumped on each other and the Sinatras should not be charged
simply because they won the fight.
 
They
were released to their father.
 
And
although Mick didn’t say a word to them as they walked through the parking lot,
every one of them, from Teddy on down, knew he was mad as hell.

So they all
decided to tell their side of the story.
 
Mick walked, and listened, and they talked.