Mick Sinatra: The Harder They Fall (14 page)

“She didn’t,
asshole!” Joey responded for her.

“You did it
before,” the reporter said to Roz.
 
“Didn’t you, Mrs. Sinatra?
 
In the
Chad Dawkins case?”

Joey didn’t
know who Chad Dawkins was, or what they were talking about.
 
But that didn’t stop him from defending his
stepmother.
 
“Just leave her alone,” he
said.

“Are you a
nymphomaniac, Mrs. Sinatra?” yet another reporter asked and Joey, who knew
exactly what a nympho was, decked the guy on the spot, even before his father
had a chance.

The
reporters scrambled to get the picture of their downed colleague and Mick
hurried Roz and Joey into the limo driven by Deuce.
 
Deuce took off.

“I’m sorry
about that, Dad,” Joey said as they rode away.
 
“But he made me so angry!
 
I’m
sorry.”

“Sorry my
ass,” Mick responded.
 
“Good shot.”

Joey was
surprised by his father’s response.
 
“But
he could try and sue you,” he said.

“Even if he
does,” Roz said, “it’ll still be worth seeing his insulting butt on the
ground.
 
Your father’s right.
 
Good shot, Joey.”

Joey
smiled.
 
What a difference a day
made!
 
Just this morning his father
wouldn’t even let him through the gate at his estate.
 
Now he had just done something to make his
father and stepmother proud.
 
He felt
lucky for the first time in a long time.
 
He couldn’t believe his good luck.

After they made
it back to the Sinatra compound, Joey was allowed to play with the twins in
their playroom.
 
But he wasn’t alone with
them.
 
Not yet.
 
Mick made sure Deuce and the nannies were in
that room too.
 
Joey was on his way back
in Mick’s eyes.
 
But the sting of what he
tried to pull with that kidnapping ploy still haunted Mick.
 
It was going to take more than one day to
turn that around.

Mick and Roz
were in the living room, slouched down side by side on the sofa, sipping wine
and reviewing the resumes of Roz’s three accusers.

“What are we
looking for?” Roz asked as she searched the info.

“An oddity,”
Mick said.
 
“Something that stands
out.
 
A similar name on all three
resumes.
 
Anything.”

They kept
looking when the front gate intercom buzzed notifying them that someone was
heading toward the main house.
 
Mick
looked on his cell phone.
 
It was
Teddy.
 
He was one of the few people
allowed on the grounds without prior permission.

Roz looked
at Mick with concern in her eyes.
 
“You
said you were going to New York?”

Mick
nodded.
 
“That’s right.”

“When?”

“My plane,
and my men, are waiting at the airport now.”

“But why New
York?
 
You were obviously going before
this harassment story broke.
 
What’s in
New York?”

“Answers to
that crash for cash scam those so-called salt of the earth idiots tried to pull
on you.
 
And now I’m going to find out
the connection to this harassment bullshit.”

“So what
happened with Bonnie and Clyde?” Roz asked.
 
“Did they talk?”

“After I did
what I had to do,” Mick said, “the old lady talked.”

Roz knew
what doing what he had to do meant.
 
“What did she say?”

“A thug by
the name of Frog Henry Camino paid them.
 
She claimed to know who was yanking Frog’s chain.”

“Did she
tell you who?” Roz asked.

“I didn’t
give her a chance.
 
I know who.”

“Who?”

“A mobster
by the name of Lenny D’Amato.”

Roz knew
that last name.
 
She rarely forgot a
name.
 
“D’Amato?
 
Is he related to the guy Joey used to work
for?
 
The guy Joey had to end up killing
in that safe house to save your life?”

“That was
Stone Cold D’Amato.
 
His brother.
 
Lenny is in a different league than
Stone.
 
Lenny’s not about making
money.
 
He’s just a killer.”

“So you
figure he wants revenge?” Roz asked.

“I know he
does,” Mick said.
 
“What I’ve got to work
out is why now.
 
And why so butt-ass
backwards as a car accident scam.
 
A test
run at that.
 
And now this harassment
bullshit.
 
It doesn’t sound like Lenny’s
M.O,” Mick added, as Teddy entered their home.

“But you
think D’Amato is behind these allegations too?” Roz asked.

“And the fact
that Chad Dawkins suddenly hit the scene, yes, I do,” Mick said.

“Hey, Roz,”
Teddy said as he entered the living room.
 
“Hey, Pop.”

“Where the
hell were you?” Mick asked.

“I told you
I had a meeting,” Teddy said.
 
“What’s
this about sexual harassment?” he asked.
 
“Joey said there’s an allegation of sex harassment.
 
What’s it about?”

“Craziness,
that’s what,” Roz said as she took the three resumes from Mick and began going
through them again.

Teddy sat in
the flanking chair.
 
“It’s crazy
alright.
 
But that ain’t all that’s
crazy.”

Mick and Roz
looked at him.
 
“What?”

“A few days
ago I did what you said,” Teddy said.

Mick was at
a lost.
 
“About what?”

“About
putting some feelers out on your three baby mamas living here in Philly, while
you handled Gloria’s mom in New York.”

Roz looked
at Mick.
 
She knew how Mick once loved
Bella Caine more than any of his other exes.
 

“You found
out something?” Mick asked Teddy.

“Nothing on
my mom, of course,” Teddy said.
 
His
mother was Ursula Mastriano, a woman Mick still respected to this day.
 
“And Hillary is Hillary.
 
She hates your guts, but she needs your money
more.
 
So there was nothing I could find on
her.”

“And
Cathleen?” Mick asked.

“Oh, she’s
up for whatever,” Teddy said.
 
“All I had
to do was tell her I was going to try and take over your organization, and she
was all in.”

Mick shook
his head.
 
“Fool,” he said.

“She also
wants to destroy your relationship with Roz however she can.
 
She even dredged up this Chad Dawkins when
she was looking for dirt.
 
But I suspect
he was already a part of a scheme and found her.
 
She just doesn’t realize it.”

“I agree,”
Mick said.
  
“Cathleen is a bitch, but
she’s a harmless bitch.
 
She’s all
mouth.
 
She’s all about pushing others up
to do her dirty work.
 
She’s a
non-factor.
 
Don’t waste time on her.”

“Yeah, I
figured that out today,” Teddy said.

“But why
were you searching for something on your baby mamas?” Roz asked Mick.
 
“I don’t understand.”

“I ran into
Bella Caine while I was handling some business in New York last weekend,” Mick
said.
 
“We had dinner and talked.”

A pang of
envy shot through Roz, but she let it past.
 
Mick might still harbor feelings for Bella despite their issues through
the years, but he came home to Roz every night.
 
Instead of being upset, she watched and listened.

“She told
me,” Mick said, “that she heard Cathleen had been in New York trying to dig up
dirt on you.”

Roz was
surprised.
 
“On me?
 
Why would Cat want dirt on me?”

“After I
beat Joey’s ass over that kidnapping fiasco,” Mick said, “Cathleen panicked.
 
I already cut her off financially.
 
She was afraid I was going to cut Joey off
too.”

“And she
figures it’s all your fault,” Teddy said to Roz.
 
“She figures everything were peaches and
cream between her and Dad before you came along.
 
It wasn’t by a long shot, but that’s how
she’s decided to see it.
 
She figures if
she can get you out of the picture, things will go back to those imaginary days
of wine and roses.”

“Bella
didn’t know what she had found out,” Mick said, “but she knew she had been asking
around.
 
After our discussion this
morning about Chad Dawkins, and after Tamron came to me with word that she
wouldn’t tell you about seeing me and Belle together if I agreed to attend her
charity ball, I gave Bella a call.”

Roz should
have known Tam saw Mick with a woman, with his ex-lover, and figured she had
the goods on him.
 
A true friend would
have told Roz what she saw, not use it as leverage to get what she wanted.
 
Roz, thankfully, had many true friends.
 
Tam, she was coming to realize, was no longer
one of them.
 
“What did Bella say?” she
asked Mick.

“She said
she heard that Cathleen had found some guy named Chad Dawkins, who had a messy
past with you.
 
She heard that Cat was
going to try to exploit it to her advantage.
 
I already knew about Dawkins, so it was no big deal.
 
But Cat didn’t know that.
 
I assumed she was going to run and tell me
the big news, thinking I didn’t know already.”

“Cat tried
to play it off in front of Hillary when Chad first came into Akon’s,” Teddy
said.
 
“She tried to pretend to me that
she only met him after he hit town too.”

“So you
think it was Cathleen who had Chad show up,” Roz asked Mick, “and then had
those three snakes called agents accuse me of harassment?”

“I think she
got Chad to show up,” Mick said, “but I think somebody else got to your
employees.”

Roz hated to
hear that.
 
She could deal with Cathleen
and her nonsense.
 
But somebody else
too?
 
“But who?” she asked.

Teddy didn’t
want to bring it up, but he knew he had to.
 
His old man didn’t have him see what Cathleen was up to for
nothing.
 
He leaned forward.
 
“It may be Al Zanetti,” he said.

Both Mick
and Roz looked at him.
 
“Al?” Mick asked.

“Alphonse
Zanetti?” Roz asked.
 
“But he used to be
my attorney.”

Mick looked
at her stunned.
 
“
Your
attorney?
 
What are you
talking about, Rosalind?”

“Alphonse
represented me in the Chad Dawkins case.”

Mick
frowned.
 
“He wasn’t the lawyer of
record,” Mick said.
 
“It was some stiff
named Colter.
 
I remembered that.”

“He didn’t
do the courtroom things,” Roz admitted, “and he wasn’t the lawyer of
record.
 
But he was the one who hired the
lawyer and told the lawyer every move to make.
 
He said the judges in New York felt he was a little shady because he won
all his cases.
 
They were out to get him,
he said.
 
He said he didn’t want to taint
me with his reputation, so he remained in the background.
 
But he decided every motion and every move in
that case.
 
We won because of Alphonse,
not Colter.”

Then Roz
looked at Mick.
 
“You knew him too?” she
asked.

“He was my lawyer
before I met you.
 
I fired his ass when I
discovered he was banging a woman I was banging too.
 
The only reason I didn’t kill him was because
he was a friend of mine, and the woman wasn’t worth it.
 
But I fired his ass.”

Roz
exhaled.
 
“Wow,” she said. “I had no
idea.”

Mick felt
confused.
 
He hated confusion.
 
Some shit was out of order here and he needed
to find out why.
 
He looked at Teddy.
 
“So you weren’t at a business meeting?”

“I was on my
way, just like I told you.
 
But I get
this call from Cathleen.
 
She says if I
bring a boatload of cash for herself and for some informant she was bringing
with her, they would feed me some intel.
 
I already told her to let me know anything she hears, and that I would
make it worth her time.
 
Since you felt
something was up, I decided I’d better go check it out.
 
I was in Wayne, out of eyesight of any of
your men.”

 
“And Cathleen told you that Zanetti was
behind these sexual harassment allegations?” Mick asked.

“No, she
didn’t mention anything like that,” Teddy said.
 
“She was just giving me dirt on Roz.
 
Or at least she thought.
 
But get
this, Pop: Chad Dawkins was with her.”

Mick and Roz
both were surprised by that.

“He was
going along with everything she was saying,” Teddy continued, “as if it was his
job to scandalize Roz too.
 
He was the
one who told her about Al Zanetti.
 
They
both claimed,” he added, but couldn’t continue.

Mick was
surprised by that.
 
“They both claimed
what?” he asked him.

“They both
claimed that Al and Roz set you up,” Teddy responded.

Roz was
shocked.
 
“That
I
set Mick up?
 
What do you
mean?”