Mick Sinatra: The Harder They Fall (3 page)

“But how
could we see something like that coming, boss?” Criggs said.
 
“Please put yourself in our shoes.
 
We didn’t see it coming!”

“So let me
get this straight,” Mick said, his still-smoking gun waving in front of
him.
 
“I’m supposed to understand because
you didn’t know an attack was going to be launched?
 
I’m supposed to forget about the fifty
million I paid for those guns, and the hundred million I stand to make on the
resale of those guns because you didn’t see it coming?”

“Give us a
chance to make it right,” Criggs begged.
 
“That’s all I’m asking!
 
We fucked
up, okay?
 
We admit we fucked up!
 
But it won’t happen again.”

“That’s for
damn sure,” Mick said.

“Boss,
please!” Criggs pleaded.

Mick shook
his head.
 
“Get a load of this guy,” he
said to Teddy.
 
“He sounds real sincere.
‘It’ll never happen again,’ he says.
 
‘Trust me.
 
It’ll never happen
again.’”
 
Then Mick’s smile was
gone.
 
“Enemies we can’t even name yet
just drove off with my biggest shipment of the year.
 
A shipment I entrusted in you four
assholes.
 
And I’m supposed to accept
that and move on?
 
I’m supposed to
understand?”

Mick sat
even more erect.
 
“The problem is,” he
said, “I do understand.
 
I understand the
streets better than all four of you fuckers combined.
 
Because I put myself in my enemies’ shoes,
not in the shoes of my friends.
 
I think
like my enemy thinks.
 
Because if I was
out there, and I heard that some ragtag motherfuckers were able to drive off
with Mick Sinatra’s shit, I’d be planning an attack too.
 
And by the time the next shipment comes into
any harbor anywhere in this world, there won’t be one gang waiting.
 
They’ll be hundreds of gangs waiting!
 
They’ll have to battle for control of my
shit!
 
My
shit!
 
Because I’ll be a
non-factor.
 
A non-entity.
 
The fucking fool who purchases what they can
just drive up and take!”

Criggs knew
they were in for it.
 
He knew nothing he
was going to say was going to change Mick the Tick’s mind.
 
So he appealed to the man’s decency.
 
To the man’s worldwide reputation.
 
He flipped the script.
 
“You’re a businessman, boss,” he said.
 
“You own one of the most reputable
corporations in this country.
 
You don’t
need to be gunrunning.
 
You don’t need
this shit!
 
But you figure you can’t get
out of it.
 
You have too many underbosses
you have to supply.
 
You have too many
men depending on this illegal trade for their livelihoods.
 
To feed their families and to live a good
life.
 
They’re too stupid and illiterate
to make it in the legit world.
 
They rely
on you.”

Criggs moved
closer to the edge of his seat.
 
Teddy
saw his error right away.
 
Because Mick
was listening to him, he figured he was getting through.

“Think about
this, boss,” Criggs said.
 
“We need your
money, your expertise, and your reach, yes, we do.
 
And if you walk away, nothing will be the
same for us.
 
We’ll be local hoods just
trying to make it, and that’s about it.
 
But you can get out.
 
You’ll have
an excuse now.
 
You can say you turned it
over to your underbosses, to see what they could do, and they blew it.
 
You knew you would never get out waiting for
them to step up, so you got out now.
 
The
word will spread like wildfire.
 
Mick the
Tick retired.
 
Everybody will believe
that.
 
You’ll get all of the credit for
running a tight ship while you were in charge, and none of the blame for this
fiasco and anything that goes down after this.
 
You’ll be out of the Sinatra crime family for good.
 
The only connection that you’ll have to the
syndicate is the name.
 
It’ll still bear
your name.”

Mick was so
astounded by Criggs analysis that he wondered how he ever hired him in the
first place.
 
“It’ll still bear my name?”
Mick asked him.

“Like most
major crime families.
 
The guy who it was
originally named for is either dead, in prison for life, or has nothing to do
with it anymore.
 
But they keep the name
because the name is the brand.”

Even Teddy
was floored.
 
“And you think my father
wants his brand associated with losers and punks who lay down and let the
underworld walk over them?
 
You think he
can live with that?”

“But he’ll
be out of the game,” Criggs said.
 
He
knew, ever since Mick brought Teddy into the business, Teddy could sometimes be
as big an asshole as his old man.
 
“His
enemies will leave him alone.
 
This is
his opportunity to leave it up to us, and get the hell out.”

Teddy shook
his head.
 
“If you think his enemies are
going to just let him walk away into the sunset as if he never did shit to
anybody, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were, Criggs.”

Any other
man would have been dead after speaking to Criggs that way.
 
But Teddy wasn’t just any other man.
 
He was Mick the Tick’s son.
 
Criggs held his fire.

“I’m just
trying to make this right, boss,” Criggs said, appealing to Mick again.

“I know what
you’re trying to do.
 
You’re trying to
turn lemons into lemonade.
 
And sometimes
you can.
 
But most times, with me, their
just lemons.
 
Bitter, sour lemons that
leaves a bitter, sour taste in your mouth.”

“Boss,
please!” Criggs begged, the same way many men had begged him when they knew
their lives were on the line.

But begging
only made it worst.
 
Mick shot him
through the forehead.
 
And then he shot
the third man, who was just recoiling from Criggs.
 
That left only one.
 
The proverbial messenger.

“I know,”
the spared man said.
 
“I’m to go back and
bear witness.
 
I’m to go back and tell
everybody on these mean streets that Mick the Tick don’t play.”

“Unfortunately
for you,” Teddy said, “they already know that.”
 
And Teddy, with a gun the man didn’t even see he held, shot him through
the forehead too.

Mick looked
at Teddy.
 
Who the fuck told you to do that
, his look seemed to say.

But Teddy,
as usual, had a ready answer.
 
“Keeping
messengers alive to spread the word is old school, Pop.
 
That shit don’t work.
 
I say kill’em all.
 
That’ll spread the word faster than any
scared also-ran could ever do.”

Mick’s heart
sank a little every time Teddy had to go down that road, but he knew he
couldn’t flinch.
 
Teddy had already
started down that road on his own, getting into all kinds of illegal trade on a
smaller scale, making enemies left and right but without the force and backing
of his old man.
 
He would have gotten his
small time ass killed out there if Mick hadn’t pulled him in.
 
That made it easier on Teddy, but harder on
Mick.
 
He didn’t want any of his children
to walk his walk.
 
But at least the
underworld knew he was now Mick the Tick’s right hand man.
 
At least now he had protection.

Mick
continued to stare at his son.
 
Everybody
said he had Mick’s hard handsome looks and unflinching killer instinct.
 
But when Mick looked at him, he thought he
saw a flicker of regret in those big eyes of Teddy’s.
 
But it was only a flicker, and it flicked
away.
 
“Get them to a cleanup crew,” Mick
ordered.
 
“No shortcuts.”

Teddy
smiled.
 
“I didn’t leave a witness,” he
said in that charming way the ladies loved.
 
“You think I’m going to leave a body?”

Mick knew
why his son was going for levity.
 
It was
like cops telling jokes at horrific crime scenes.
 
They had to minimize the horror to be able to
live with their shitty jobs.
 
But Mick
wasn’t built that way.
 
He did what he
had to do, but he never wallowed in it or pretended it wasn’t hellish.
 
It was.
 
He couldn’t smile at a time like this.

He got out
of the limo as the driver in the SUV opened the passenger side door.
 
Mick got inside the SUV.
 
As soon as he sat down, the pain of what he
had to do settled around him.
 
And the
fact that his son had taken it upon himself to kill the messenger didn’t sit
well with him either.
 
He didn’t have
permission to go that far, but he went that far.
 
Mick wasn’t sure if he liked his initiative,
or was repulsed by it.
 
Then he decided
it didn’t matter because Teddy Sinatra was a mean bastard just like his
daddy.
 
And nobody could tell his daddy a
got
damn thing either.

As his
driver made his way back around the SUV to get back behind the wheel, Mick’s
cell phone rang.
 
He pulled it out, and
looked at the Caller ID.
 
It was his son
Joey’s mother.
 
He didn’t want to talk to
her, but it could be about his son.
 
He
answered the call.

“What is it,
Cat?” he asked.

He knew that
Cathleen Thomas, the person on the other end, never liked when he answered her
calls that way.
 
He didn’t give a fuck,
especially since their recent conversations had all devolved into anger and
recriminations over a chain-wielding beating Mick had to put on Joey’s ass, but
he had to hear her out.

But he also
knew Cathleen was a tough ass if she was anything.
 
His tough ass didn’t scare her.
 
“What’s wrong with your wife?” she
asked.
   

Mick hadn’t
expected her to mention Rosalind.
 
“What
are you talking about?”

“She ran out
of Akon’s early today like a crazy woman.
  
She looked at some guy and just took off like she saw a ghost.
 
What was that about?”

Mick was
concerned, but that wasn’t Cat’s business.
 
“I’m sure I don’t know,” he said as nonchalantly as he knew how.

“Well you
need to find out because it was a bizarre sight to behold.
 
One minute she’s fine, then the next minute
she’s running out of the restaurant like somebody had a gun to her head.
 
And I don’t have to tell you how dramatic and
over-the-top black women can be to begin with.
 
You know how emotional they are.
 
You know how,” she continued to say, but suddenly realized that Mick had
already ended the call.

“Bastard!”
she yelled into her phone, and then hung up too.

Roz was
still reeling.
 
Sitting behind her desk
at the Graham Agency, with tons of work still left undone, she couldn’t even think
straight.
 
She couldn’t believe it.
 
What was he doing in Philly?
 
She knew it was a big town and not that
unusual to eyeball ghosts of the past, but why him?
 
And why was her reaction to him so
strong?
 
Why did his presence feel so
devastating?
 
Then she exhaled.
 
She knew why.
 
She just didn’t want to admit it.

“Jerry
Copeland on line 6,” her secretary said.

Roz, halfway
relieved to be forced not to think about it, grabbed her desk telephone,
pressed button 6, and answered quickly.
 
“Jerry, hey,” she said into the phone.

“Don’t bite
my head off, Roz.”

“So it’s
true?”

Jerry
sighed.
 
“It’s true.”

“But how
could you go back on your word like that?
 
We had a verbal contract.”

“Which is as
good as the paper it’s printed on,” Jerry responded, “and you know that.”
 
Then he sighed again, a tribute to the ulcers
he already had.
 
“I had no choice, Roz.”

Roz shook
her head.
 
“Let me guess?
 
The producers?”

“I thought I
covered my bases,” Jerry said.
 
“I cast
one of their nieces in a secondary, yes, but a meaty role.
 
But even that wasn’t good enough for
them.
 
They threatened to pull funding if
I didn’t give her ass the lead.”

“That’s
fucking illegal,” Roz said.
 
“The unions
cracked down on that!”

“Not if it’s
in the contract,” Jerry said.
 
“They can
pull their money any time before we go to production.
 
That’s in the contract.
 
And they don’t have to give a reason to
walk.”

Roz
frowned.
 
“Why would you sign a contract
like that, Jerl?
 
You’re no novice.
 
You’ll a major director!”

“A major
director without a certified hit in over ten years.
 
You know how this game is played.
 
It’s not about what you did yesterday.
 
I couldn’t get any of my old money people to
put up a single dime.
 
I had to rely on
Texas oil men with plenty of money and zero taste.
 
They think the Great White Way was named, not
because of the lights of Broadway, but as a tribute to white people.”

Roz managed
to laugh.
 
“In a way it is,” she said,
“given the racial makeup of most Broadway shows.”

“But you see
what I’m dealing with here?”

Roz understood.
 
But that didn’t help her client.
 
“Okay, you gave the niece the lead.
 
But why not give Kinna something?
 
Why leave her off altogether?
 
She needs to eat too!”

“I would
have given her second star.
 
You know I
would have.
 
She’s a phenomenal
talent.
 
But that was another condition
of their backing,” Jerry said.
 
“The
niece felt Kinna Franks would be lurking in the wings attempting to steal her
part back, and she, this no-talent niece, couldn’t work under such supposedly
harsh conditions.”

“Yeah,
right,” Roz said.
 
“More like her ass
knows Kinna can act rings around her and she doesn’t want the competition.”

“You know
it,” Jerry agreed.
 
“But what am I
supposed to do?
 
Let them pull their
financing on the principle of the thing?
 
That’ll not only put me out of work, but the crew and actors too.
 
I can’t let that happen, Roz.
 
I gave my word to them too.”

Roz closed
her eyes.
 
Show business was the worst
cut-throat business there was.
 
Sometimes
she hated that she bore its taint.
 
“Okay, Jerl,” she said.

“You
understand, don’t you, Roz?
 
It’s always
the lesser of two evils.”

“And it’ll
always be that way until somebody stands up.”

“Agreed,”
Jerry said.
 
“But it won’t be me.
 
Not this time.”

Or any other
time, Roz thought.

“But I’m glad
you understand,” Jerry said.

“Kinna
won’t,” Roz said, “and I don’t blame her.
 
We’re failing the young people coming up after us.
 
If we don’t stand up, they’re going to have
to take this shit lying down too.”

“But what am
I supposed to do?” Jerry asked again.
 
“I
can either produce a play and employ a full cast and crew.
 
Or I can stand up and cost an entire cast and
crew their livelihoods.
 
Which road would
you take?”

Roz hated to
admit it, but there was no way around it.
 
“The one you’re taking,” she said.
 
But she wasn’t going to wallow in it.
 
“Bye, Jerl.”
 
And she hung up the
phone quickly.

Then a knock
was heard on her office door.
 
Usually it
was her secretary giving a warning knock before barging on in, or her husband,
the only person who could enter unannounced.

But when she
saw Mick walk through her office door, an odd sensation washed over her.
 
It was as if seeing his face again reminded
her that the past wasn’t king, but her new life was.
 
And she needed to embrace it again.

That was
why, surprising even herself, she jumped up from her desk, ran across the room,
and threw herself into Mick’s arms.

Mick grabbed
her and held her.
 
He even lifted her
into his arms and she wrapped her legs around him.
 
But what should have elated him, worried him.
 
Was Cathleen right?
 
Had something, or somebody spooked Roz and
she needed him to protect her?
 
He was
late for a meeting already, but he was glad he came.
 
He had to make sure she was okay first.

He leaned
back.
 
He needed to see her eyes.
 
By her little display alone, his own eyes
were now fraught with concern.
 
“What is
wrong?” he asked her.

“I miss
you,” Roz told him.
 
“That’s all.”

But her big,
beautiful eyes were telling him a different story.
 
Mick didn’t take shit from Roz either when
she didn’t shoot straight with him.
 
He’d
kick her ass, and she knew it.
 
“What is
wrong?” he asked her again.

Roz could
feel his strong arms tighten around her waist.
 
It was almost an unconscious move by Mick, a move she wondered if he
even realized he was making, but she knew where it often led.
 
She moved to get out of his grasp, to test
him.
 
When he wouldn’t let her, but
tightened his grip even more, she knew her instinct was right.
 
She was bullshitting him, and he knew it.

She gave
in.
 
“I’m just . . . It’s been a rough
day,” she admitted.

Now they
were getting somewhere, Mick thought.
 
He
put her back on her own two feet.
 
“Tell
me how,” he said.

Roz began
moving back behind her desk.
 
Mick
watched her tight ass move beneath her tight skirt as she walked.
 
But when she got behind her desk, and saw the
strain on Mick’s own face, she exhaled.
 
“I should be the one worried about you,” she said.
 
“How are you?”

Mick knew
what she meant.
 
“I’m okay.”

“Is the
dinner date with the kids still on?”

“It’s still
on,” Mick said.

“Joey still
invited?”

Mick
hesitated.
 
“Yes,” he said.

“Please
don’t change that, Mick.
 
What he did was
reprehensible, but he’s still your child.”

“The only
reason he’s still alive,” Mick admitted.

Roz stared
at him.
 
“What about the Gabrinis?
 
Have you spoken to them since it happened?”

“No,” Mick
said.
 
“They reached out.
 
But I’m not there yet.”

“You have to
put yourself in their shoes, Mick,” Roz started.

“I don’t
have to put myself in any fucker’s shoes!” Mick fired back.
 
“Nobody questions my integrity.
 
For them to think I would be a part of
something like that, the kidnapping of Sal’s child, should be
unforgivable.”
 
Then Mick exhaled.
 
“And if they weren’t my family, it would be.”

Roz was
sorry to hear it.
 
Mick had only just
recently rediscovered the Gabrini side of his family.
 
She would hate for him to lose them
again.
 
They truly loved him.
 
But one thing she knew about her husband: he
didn’t make a move until he, and he alone, was ready to make that move.

“Back to
you,” Mick said.
 
“Tell me why your day
has been so lousy?”

Roz let out
a sigh of frustration.
 
“Where do I
begin?” she asked.
 
“One of my clients
was promised a juicy role, the best of her career, but it didn’t materialize.
 
And I’m the one who has to tell her the big
break she thought she was going to have is not going to happen.
 
I’m the one who has to tell her that her
dream is not going to come true.
 
At
least not right now.
 
Then, not one, but
three contracts came back with clauses I can’t let my clients support, which
means they won’t be getting those gigs after all.
 
Which means they may have to find alternative
means to support themselves.
 
It’s just a
headache, man.”

But Mick
knew there was more.
 
He continued to
stare at her.

And then, as
she stood behind her desk, she got to the more.
 
She got to the meat of the matter.
 
“And then,” she continued, “I saw somebody I would have rather not
seen.”

Mick placed
his hands in his pants pocket beneath his buttoned suit coat and began walking
toward her desk.
 
For some reason, stone
cold killers didn’t scare him the way losing Roz to somebody else did.
 
“Who did you see?” he asked.
 
A
former lover?
he wanted to ask.

“A former
student,” she said before he had a chance.
 
“He was a student when I owned that actor’s studio in New York.”

When Mick
first met Roz, she taught acting to old and young alike, and was a struggling
actress herself.
 
But Mick still didn’t
get the nexus.
 
“Why seeing a former
student caused you to have a bad day?” he asked her.

“Let’s just
say it didn’t end well,” Roz said.
 
“He
didn’t think I was a very good teacher, he didn’t think I taught him a thing,
and he didn’t like it.
 
It was just a
mess.”

Mick
continued to stare at Roz.
 
He knew that
couldn’t be all.
 
Or was Cathleen, as usual,
exaggerating?
 
“Cat said she saw you
fleeing Akon’s as if you’d seen a ghost.”

Roz shook
her head.
 
“Really?
 
No!
 
I
mean, I left, yeah, because I didn’t want to get into any confrontation with
some disgruntled former student, but I wouldn’t describe my exit the way she
did.
 
I didn’t even see her at that
restaurant. I didn’t know she was even there.”

Mick could
see the strain on Roz’s pretty face, as if all she needed right now was to see
a student she disliked, and to know that Cathleen Thomas witnessed her
displeasure.
 
He began moving behind her
desk.
 
“You looked stressed,” he said.

“I’m okay,
truly,” Roz said, sitting down behind her desk.
 
“I just need to slow my behind down,” she added.
 
“That’s all I need.”

“I know what
you need,” Mick said as he walked toward her.