Mick Sinatra: The Harder They Fall (6 page)

“Strange
wasn’t the word.
 
It was beyond
strange.
 
And to make it worse, Joey’s
mother was at Akon’s too, and she saw my reaction.
 
She ran and told Mick.”

“She told
him?
 
But how would she know the
history?”

“She doesn’t
know the details,” Roz said. “She apparently saw how freaked out I was when I
saw him, and she told Mick about my response.
 
I don’t know.
 
Whatever she told
him it concerned him enough that he dropped everything and came and saw me.”

“And you
better not have told him anything about that crazy-ass Chad.”

“I didn’t,”
Roz said.
 
“At least I didn’t tell him
the full story.”
 
A sorrowful look
appeared in Roz’s eyes. “But I should have.”

Tamron
nearly jumped out of her skin.
 
“Are you
kidding me?
 
Why would you?”

“What do you
mean why?
 
He’s my husband and I don’t
like lying to him.”

“Who’s
lying?” Tamron asked.
 
“You just aren’t
telling him the whole story.”

“I lied, in
other words.”

“Don’t tell
him, Roz,” Tamron insisted.
 
“He won’t
look at you the same if you tell him the truth.”

“Yeah, I
know,” Roz said.

“Mick
Sinatra is the first relationship you’ve ever had that didn’t end badly,”
Tamron also reminded her.
 
“If you go
down that Chad road with him, you just might end up with another heartbreak on
your hands.
 
Don’t tell him, girl.
 
I beg of you.
 
Don’t tell him!”

Roz heard
her friend.
 
But she hated the times when
she caught Mick in half-truths.
 
She
hated when he didn’t tell her the whole story and she had to find out the hard
way.
 
Despite Tamron’s advice, she knew
she had to tell.

She believed
Mick loved her, and she had to depend on that love.
 
Because she knew Tamron was probably right.
 
It was going to change how she looked in his
eyes.
 
That innocence he seemed to bestow
on her would be shattered forever.
 
But
she also knew she had to be woman enough to accept a past he had a right to
know about.
 
She had to be woman enough
to accept a past she could not change.
 

Mick Sinatra
had five living children from four different women.
 
Three of those children, Joey, Gloria, and
Teddy, were grown.
 
The other two, Michello
Sinatra, Jr., named after Mick himself, and Jacqueline Sinatra, named after
Mick’s deceased sister, were twin babies Mick and Rosalind had together.
 
Although all of his grown children harbored
resentment over the fact that he was not there for them emotionally when they
were growing up, only financially, Gloria and Teddy had long since moved
on.
 
They doubted if Joey, the youngest
of the three in his early twenties, ever would.

“They’re
late,” Joey said.
 
He and his siblings
were seated in a large booth at a family restaurant waiting for Mick and Roz to
arrive.
 
All three were seated on one
side of the booth, with Gloria in the middle.
 
Joey looked at his watch.
 
“They’re never on time for these so-called family dinners.”

“Dad and Roz
are very busy people,” Teddy said.
 
“Sometimes busy people run late.”

“That’s
right, Teddy,” Joey said.
 
“Keep making
excuses for Dad.
 
When he chain-whips
your ass one of these days, I’ll bet you won’t be excusing him then.”

Although
Teddy dismissed Joey’s slight with a charming smile and a wave of the hand,
Gloria looked at her younger brother.
 
“What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why?”

Joey looked
at her.
 
Like Teddy, Joey was white.
 
But like Mick’s twins, Gloria was biracial
black and white.
 
And Mick’s oldest
daughter.
 
She and Mick seemed to have a
growing bond Joey envied.
 
“What do you
mean why?” he asked her.

“Why did
Daddy chain-whip you like that?
 
He
didn’t just do it for the hell of it.”

“Oh, and you
know him like that, do you, Glo?” Joey asked.
 
“Well let me tell you something, Miss Blind, you don’t know shit about
Mick Sinatra!
 
He wasn’t a father to any
of us until here recently, so you don’t know him, alright?”

“But I know
his ass,” Teddy said.

“Yeah,
right,” Joey said doubtfully.

“I know him
better than you!” Teddy shot back.
 
“I’ve
seen how sadistic he can be.
 
I’m the
only one who truly knows him in this bitch, so watch yourself, little brother.
 
Which means Gloria’s right.
 
Dad did not beat your ass for the hell of
it.
 
You can pretend he did.
 
You can pretend all this anger and resentment
you please.
 
But I know better.
 
I know Dad.
 
I work with Dad.
 
He’d just as
soon kill you rather than waste his time beating you for nothing.
 
He didn’t beat your ass for nothing.”

“Yeah,
well,” Joey said, still angry, “Dad’s the one who better watch out.
 
That’s all I know.
  
I know I’m going to beat his ass if he tries
to chain-whip mine again.”

Teddy
laughed.
 
“You ain’t gonna do shit,” he
said with another dismissive wave of his hand, “so cut the bull.
 
Dad will have you sleeping in your grave you
come at him like that.”
 
Then Teddy
exhaled, staring at the chain marks on his brother’s arms.
 
“But that ain’t right.”

“I still
want to know why,” Gloria said.
 
She
looked at her kid brother.
 
“What did you
do that made Dad put a chain to you?”

“I didn’t do
anything!” Joey insisted.
 
“Why do you
keep asking me that?
 
He hates me, that’s
why he did it, okay?
 
He hates my guts.”
 
Then a sad look appeared in his eyes.
 
“Because he hates my mother, he hates me.”

A sad look
came over Gloria and Teddy too.
 
“It’s
not just you,” Gloria admitted.

Joey looked
at her.
 
She was really very beautiful
even to him.
 
“What do you mean?”

“None of us
are where we want to be with Dad.”

“None of
us,” Teddy agreed.

Joey was
surprised to hear it.
 
“But you two have
a great relationship with Dad.
 
He
promoted you to an executive in his corporation, Glo, and you’re his right hand
man Teddy in his other business.
 
You’re
almost like one of his underbosses for crying out loud.
 
What do you mean none of us are where we want
to be with Dad?
 
How can you put
yourselves in my category?”

“Because
we’re all in this boat together, Joey,” Gloria tried to explain.
 
“And it’s a leaky-ass boat because it’s
Dad.
 
If you do everything he wants you
to do, it’s great.
 
But if you don’t . .
.”
 
Gloria looked at Teddy.

“If you
don’t,” Teddy finished for her, “then it’s hell to pay.
 
He’s merciless.”

Joey decided
to test it.
 
“Even with Roz?” he asked.

Teddy
frowned.
 
“Hell yeah.”

“I heard he
beats her ass when she messes up,” Joey said.
 
“That true?”

“I’ve never
seen him lay a hand on her,” Gloria said.
 
“No, it’s not true.”

Teddy,
however, remained silent.
 
Gloria,
surprised, looked at him.
 
“Right,
Teddy?”

“Let’s just
put it this way,” he said to his younger siblings.
 
“He don’t put up with our bullshit, and he
don’t put up with hers either.”

Joey
smiled.
 
He knew his mother and Hillary
would love to hear that.
 
“Mick the
Tick.
 
Mick the ticking time bomb.
 
What a nickname.
 
I heard Dad was a ruthless sonafabitch when
he was young!”

“And what,
pray tell,” Teddy said, “makes you think he still isn’t?”

Gloria
laughed.
 
Joey did too.
 
“You’ve got a point there,” he said.

And they
continued to drink their drinks and laugh and talk as if their lives were
ordinary too.
 
Joey was especially having
a blast.
 
He truly loved Gloria and
Teddy.
 
He even loved the twins, although
he wasn’t allowed around them after Mick put that beating on him.
 
He had already decided to ask tonight if he
could start hanging around them again.
 
That, more than anything else, would prove to him if he was back on his
father’s good side.

Mick arrived
nearly half an hour late.
 
Joey elbowed
Gloria when he saw their father enter the restaurant.
 
All three children looked as he walked toward
them.
 
They stared at their father as if
they were staring at something alien.
 
He
was a muscle-tight tall man, with a swag that had most women in the room taking
modest, and not-so-modest peeps at him as he walked past.
 
But he was such a contradiction to his
children.
 

Like
tonight.
 
As they sat there and stared at
him, he didn’t look gangster at all.
 
He
looked like the very proper CEO of Sinatra Industries most people in Philly
knew him as.
 
He wore the kind of
uber-expensive, dark gray pinstripe business suit that made him look so
conservative, so mainstream respectable, that each one of his children wondered
why he didn’t just go with that and leave the other business, the dangerous
business, alone.

But then, as
he came closer and they saw that cold stare in his green eyes, and that
up-close smoldering look that encapsulated him, they knew why the dangerous was
necessary.
 
He
bought the danger to the dangerous.
 
Not the other way around.
 
He was smart enough to go legit too, but they
knew, deep down, Mick Sinatra was as gangster as they came.

But his
children were walking contradictions too.
 
Because, although they knew their father had that
bad-boy-on-a-massive-scale
side to him, they were unbelievably
proud to be his children.
  
He impressed
them unlike any other human being could.
 
They wanted his love and acceptance so badly that it pained them.
 
They felt that he was their connection.
 
They felt that they were special because they
knew he was.

“Dad, hey,”
Teddy said as Mick arrived at their booth.
 
Sitting on the outside end, he actually stood up and shook his father’s
hand.
 
They might have had a father-son
relationship, but Teddy worked for Mick.
 
He was one of Mick’s men.
 
And
Mick’s men stood whenever he entered a room.
 
Joey’s heart was hammering so hard that he couldn’t stand even if he
wanted to.
 
Gloria smiled.

“Hey, Dad,”
she said.

“Come and
give me a hug,” Mick said before he realized he had said it, and all three of
his children were surprised.
 
But he
couldn’t help it.
 
Gloria had been in
Paris with her mother the last couple days.
 
He missed her.

Gloria
gladly slid across the booth seat, stood up, and hugged her father.

“Welcome
back,” Mick said as they stopped their embrace.
 
“How’s your mother?
 
Still upset
with me?”

“Always,”
Gloria said with a smile.

But before
she could sit back in her seat, Mick, to everybody’s shock, got in the booth
and slid over beside Joey, taking over where Gloria had originally sat.
 
Gloria smiled at Teddy with that
WTF
look they often shared, but she sat
down on the end where Teddy had been sitting.
 
Teddy sat across from his siblings and father gladly.
 
Because he knew how Mick’s mind worked.
 
He knew Mick’s decision to sit in the middle
had less to do with him and Gloria, and more to do with attempting to mend his
fractured relationship with young Joey.

If Joey’s
heart was hammering before just because his father showed up, it was outright
pounding now that his father was sitting beside him.
 
He had such strong emotions when it came to
his father!

Like now,
even Mick’s fresh, cologne scent, and the bigness of his body in the confined
space against Joey’s slender frame, where their arms actually touched, was a
heady feeling.

And it made
Joey think.
 
Why should he want the love
of this man more than the love of his own mother?
 
His mother had always been there for him when
his father didn’t give a damn about him.
 
When he was a kid, he was always looking for Mick to show up when he
almost never did.
 
It was his mother who
nursed his wounded pride and picked up the pieces of his broken heart.
 
But yet it was Mick he wanted to please.
 
It was Mick he loved with all his broken
heart.

Mick looked
at his son.
 
Although Joey was in his
early twenties, he often behaved even younger than that, a fact that often
infuriated Mick.
 
But Roz told him to
make an extra effort with Joey.
 
He was
the youngest of Mick’s grown children.
 
He still felt the sting of Mick’s absence in his earlier life more that
Teddy and Glo.
 
“Hello, Joey,” he said to
him.

Joey attempted
to smile.
 
He wanted to reunite with his
old man too.
 
But he only managed a
barely registered smirk.
 
“Hey.”

Mick glanced
at his son’s small arm and could see the remaining scars of that beating he put
on him.
 
And he knew the emotional scars
were even worst.
 
But it was a necessary
beating, one Mick would never take back.

The waitress
arrived at the table, took Mick’s drink order, and left.

Mick looked
at Teddy.
 
“So where’s my wife?
 
I thought I told you to pick her up.”
 
Mick was concerned about Roz’s stress level
earlier, and the fact that he was dealing with some unknown enemy that stole
his shipment.
 
Until he knew who the bad
guys were, he was keeping a tighter rein on her.