“Hey, babe,” he said when Roz made her way up to him.
But Roz didn’t speak. She just threw herself against him, and wrapped him into her arms. Mick wrapped her up too and rested his chin on top of her head, relaxing in the warmth of her embrace.
Then Roz pulled back and looked at him. She had to see for herself that he was okay. His big, green eyes looked as if he’d been spooked, and she was willing to bet why. “It’s her,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
Mick nodded. “It’s her. Yes.”
“Certain?”
Mick almost never answered such a question affirmatively. Roz was stunned when he did this time. “Yes,” he said.
Roz swallowed hard. This was some complicated shit. Because if she was indeed his sister, and if her people indeed tried to take Mick, Charles and Teddy out, then Mick had a problem. And his so-called sister had an even bigger one.
Mick kissed Roz as they unembraced, and then he placed his hand on the small of her back and escorted her back inside the meeting room. Amelia, along with Charles, was seated behind the conference table, with her back to Roz, as they entered the room.
What struck Roz first was the fact that no security was in the room. Just Big Daddy. Roz even glanced at Mick, and wondered if he was allowing their potential kinship to get in the way of his better judgment, as they made their way to the table.
But when Roz walked around and saw Amelia face to face, security was the last thing on her mind. She found herself as shocked as Mick and Charles had been. And there was no doubt in Roz’s mind either. This woman was a Sinatra. But what was equally jarring for Roz was how elegant and sophisticated she appeared. She came across as a gorgeous African-American woman in her furs and diamonds, and one would think, just by looking at her, that she could be a criminal court judge, like Roz’s mother, or a professional woman of some equal esteem. Not some drug dealer. Not some flat-out mobster. But she was a Sinatra, Roz had to remind herself. Even Big Daddy Charles Sinatra, when pushed, was as gangster as they come.
Mick pulled out a chair for Roz and Roz sat down between his seat and Charles’ seat. Mick sat down too. All three sat across from Amelia.
“This is your wife,” Amelia said as if it was a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” Mick responded, although Roz could detect hesitancy in his voice, as if he was uncomfortable telling this woman too much about his personal life.
Amelia, however, seemed amused. “You have your son and your brother on kill runs,” she said, “and your wife sits in on the interrogations. Such a family business. I don’t know how wise it is, but that’s your business.”
“Yes,” Mick said. “It’s my business.”
Amelia smiled again as if she had no issue with his response, and began looking around the room. Roz, Mick, and Charles were staring at her as she looked around. Especially Mick, Roz noticed. Of the three of them, he seemed the most affected by Amelia’s presence. Roz remembered when Charles once told her that of all of his siblings, Mick was the closest to his mother. He was enchanted by her, and her death changed him forever. Other than her skin color, Roz thought, this woman, this Amelia, could have been their mother’s twin.
“Is this where you bring all of your enemies?” Amelia asked the brothers.
Mick nor Charles responded.
“I must say I am impressed,” she continued. Then looked at Roz. “It is, quite frankly, beautifully appointed. The most attractive safe house I have ever been held in.”
“Are you often held in safe houses?” Roz asked.
Amelia laughed. “I suppose I walked into that one,” she said.
“Who do you work for?” Mick asked.
Amelia looked at him. She didn’t skip a beat. “Who do you work for?” she responded.
Mick inwardly smiled. No one had ever had the nerve to come back at him that way. “Myself,” he said.
“Myself,” she said. “I do my own thing.”
“And what thing is that?” Charles asked. “Drugs?”
“Among other things, yes.”
Roz was surprised by her bluntness. But, then again, she thought, this woman was no fool. They caught her because she was Teddy’s supplier. Lying would only exacerbate the trouble she was already in.
“Why did you and your people try to ambush us during that drug run?” Mick asked.
“I didn’t try to ambush anyone,” Amelia said. “And they were not my people.”
Charles nor Mick believed her. “You expect us to believe that?” Charles asked her.
“I don’t care what you believe,” said Amelia.
But even with her response, Mick continued to follow his brother’s question with one of his own. “You expect us to believe that some strangers just happened to come by and attempt to assassinate my brother and I,” he asked, “and that your driver, your driver, attempted to assassinate my son?”
“My driver,” Amelia said, “like those men, do not work for nor answer to me.”
“Who do they work for?” Roz asked.
Amelia hesitated. It was the first time, it seemed to all of them, that somebody had touched a nerve. “My husband,” she said.
“And whom might that be?” Charles asked.
Again, Amelia hesitated. “Angus Valtone,” she said, and then looked at them. “Everybody calls him Bulldog.”
But if she expected them to know the name just by the mention, she was mistaken. Charles and Roz looked at Mick. This was his world. He would know the players. But the only thing Mick knew about the name was that Angelo had mentioned it, and that his men were checking it out. But Mick hadn’t heard anything back.
“You wouldn’t know him,” Amelia said. “He’s, by and large, legitimate.”
“In what business?” Mick asked.
Amelia smiled. “Real estate. He’s a builder. But his main job these days,” she added, “is all things Sinatra.”
This interested all of them. “What do you mean?” Charles asked.
“He’s obsessed,” Amelia said. “Ever since I told him what I knew, he has been obsessed with tearing down the Sinatra brand. Taking the glow off of it, if it had any glow to begin with. But, apparently, he thought it had.”
But Mick was still at ground zero. “What do you mean you told him what you knew?” he asked. “What do you know?”
She looked Mick dead in the eyes. “What do you think?” she asked.
Mick stared her dead in the eyes. “You know?” he asked.
Charles heart was hammering. So was Roz’s. But Mick was too focused for any wild emotions. He had to make sure this wasn’t some set up.
Amelia twirled her bracelets around on her wrist. “I know who I am,” she said. “Yes.”
Roz looked at Mick. But Mick was still staring at Amelia. “Since when?” Mick asked her.
“When I was fourteen years old and Bulldog and his wife, God rest her soul, bought me. The lady who raised me, Maxine DeCoppola, sold me to them.”
Charles and Mick both were stunned. “She sold you?” Charles asked.
Amelia nodded. “Yeah. That’s the only way I can put it. We moved away from Jericho, Maine when I was still a baby. We meaning myself, Maxine, her daughter, and her son Angelo, settled in Maryland. In Baltimore, where I still live to this day. I can get to Philly in about an hour-and-a-half, handle my business, and leave this hateful town where it stands.”
“We can do without the commentary,” Charles said.
“Anyway,” Amelia said, “Bulldog was a pimp back then, and my sister became one of his hoes. Years later, when I was in my teens, she stole some money from him. Or, more accurately, she didn’t give up the money she earned for him. And he wanted her dead. Maxine had nothing of value but me, and Bulldog wanted me in his lair. So she gave me to him.”
Roz was upset. “She gave you to him?”
“That’s right. She traded me to spare her daughter’s life. Her real daughter. I was only fourteen, but Bulldog figured I could bring in some cash and h
is wife figured I would make a passable maid. One that would work for free, in other words.” She smiled, as if any of it was funny. “These people weren’t exactly the Brady Bunch, know what I’m saying?”
Then her smile left. “I went to work for, and lived with in every sense of the word, the anti-Brady Bunch. The Valtones.”
Roz could sense problems with that scenario. Major problems. “How did that work out for you?” she asked Amelia.
“Swimmingly,” Amelia said. “Until the wife died. Or turned up dead. I had only been there a couple of months. He falsified documents, lied about my age, and married me almost immediately after his wife died. He buried her, and married me.”
They all stared at her.
She continued. “I saw Angelo, about a year ago, and he told me the truth. The whole story about his mother delivering me. About the black man from Memphis, who was supposedly my father, but nobody had ever seen again.” She looked Mick and Charles dead in the eyes. “About your mother and how she tried to kill me. He told me everything.”
“And you told Bulldog?” Mick asked.
“I told him. I thought he would want to know my history. And he listened. And then proceeded to tell me horrific things about the Sinatras, and made it his mission to tear your family down.”
Charles frowned. “But why?” he asked.
“You don’t understand,” Amelia said. “That man is obsessed with me. I am the air he breathes. I am everything to him. Anybody threatens to take me away from him, is a clear and present threat to his very sanity. He will stop at nothing, and has stopped at nothing, to remove all threats.”
“And how has he gone about removing the Sinatra threat?” Mick asked.
“He had his men kill some lady and make it seem like a suicide so that Bulldog could convince the lady’s boyfriend, a loser named Johnny Choo, to blame your wife. And then he ordered Johnny to get revenge, to try and kill her.”
Roz was shocked that that hostage scene had something to do with this.
“His men ambushed your son Teddy in Paris,” Amelia said, “and planted the story that it was Angelo’s people involved in the ambush. They claimed it was because Teddy slept with Angelo’s wife. Of course, she wasn’t Angelo’s wife, just some female from your past, Mick, who went along with the scheme. But it managed to put Angelo on your hit list. Which was the point. Angelo told me the story of my birth. Bull wanted him gone too.”
But Charles was curious. “Why didn’t you come to us at that time,” he asked her, “if you knew what he was up to? You lived with Angelo and his family until you were fourteen years old. Didn’t you have some affinity for Angelo?”
“Why should I have an affinity for that bastard?” Amelia asked. “He let that man take me too. He was as guilty as his mother, as far as I was concerned.” A sad look came over her pretty face, and for the first time Roz could see that terrified child in her.
“Go on,” Mick said.
“He was behind everything. He even ordered that producer, Wyatt Grien, to not hire your wife.”
Roz frowned. “How in the world would that man know about my audition? There’s no way.”
“Through Joey,” Amelia responded to Roz. “Your stepson? Or, as Bulldog called him, your family’s weakest link. Your stepson also has a weakness for hookers, and Bull, well, you know that used to be his stock and trade. All he had to do was get a beautiful one to come on to Joey. He chose Zina Klein, because she was your friend, and because she would do anything if the price was right.”
Roz couldn’t believe it. “Zina?”
“Your good old friend, that’s right,” Amelia said. “She was the one who gave that director friend of yours that sex tape. On my husband’s orders, of course. Where he got that tape from? Who knows. My husband has so many connections! But Zina, a gorgeous girl in her own right, hit on Joey majorly, got him talking, and Joey shared all the family news. Including that problem his old man was having with his cargo. That’s when Bulldog traveled to Rome, and got involved there too.”
Mick was floored. “Involved how?” he asked her.
“Although your men in Rome did indeed steal that cargo from you the first time,” Amelia said to Mick, “it was my hubby who intercepted the second shipment. His men stole guns from that shipment.”
Roz looked at Mick. All along they thought it was Joey. Joey’s men even said it was him. All along they thought Joey was in hiding because of that intercept. “Bulldog intercepted my shipment,” Mick asked, “and did what with it?”
“He gave it to Joey’s men.”
Mick frowned. “You mean to Joey?”
“No,” Amelia said. “To Joey’s men. They were ordered to accuse Joey of orchestrating the intercept, although Joey had nothing to do with it.”
Mick rose swiftly, knocking his chair over in the process. Charles rose quickly too. It was the first time they felt a sense of urgency about Joey. He’d had disappearing acts before when he fucked up. Now it wasn’t him behind that cargo shortage? It wasn’t him who fucked up?
“Where’s my son?” Mick asked her, unable to hide the urgency in his voice.
But Amelia shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know what I overheard.”
Mick looked at Charles. “His men?” he asked.
Mick nodded. “His men,” he said between clenched teeth.
Charles squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “I’ll stay here,” he said. “Between Roz and myself, she won’t try any stupid moves.”
Roz, very concerned, stood up too. “I’ll handle Zina,” she said. “You find Joey.”
Mick touched her on the small of her back. “I’ll be back,” he said.
“Be careful,” was all she could say, although she wanted to say so much more. Their eyes met. Their look said it all. And Mick took off.
Roz sat back down, and pulled out her cellphone. Charles moved further away, and stood against the wall, lock and loaded and ready, should Amelia test her luck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bulldog Valtone ran his real estate empire, and his other shadier businesses, from the comfort of his mansion. But when Scarson, his lieutenant, walked into his home office and told him the news, he just sat there. And then, after registering what he’d just heard, he spoke. “What do you mean our men are dead? How many of our men?”
Scarson still couldn’t believe it himself. “All of them.”
Bulldog frowned. “All of them? All of them? How many of their people did we get?”
Scarson shook his head. “None.”
“Motherfuck! None?”
“I told you starting a war with Mick the Tick was a bad idea. I told you--”
“I don’t give a fuck what you told me!” Bulldog fired back. “You don’t run this. I run this!” Then he settled back down. “Where’s Amelia? You’d better tell me she got out before the shooting started.”
But Scarson punted again. “I can’t tell you that, sir,” he said.
Bulldog looked at him, his heart starting to pound. “What do you mean you can’t tell me that? You’d better tell me that. Where’s my wife?”
Scarson exhaled. There was no way to tell it but to tell it. “They have her, sir,” he said. “From what I can piece together, the Sinatras have Amelia.”
Bulldog couldn’t believe it. It was as if his worst nightmare had just come true. “Nooo!” he cried. “Nooo! Nooo! Nooo!”
The men across his estate, from security to lawncare workers, all heard his bellowing cry. And although they had no idea why all the wailing, they knew one thing: it had to involve Amelia.
They went back to their work. But the wails didn’t cease.
Zina Klein was escorted from the main gate to the meeting room guest house. She couldn’t recall ever being on the Sinatra estate, and was wildly impressed. She knew Roz was living large, but nothing like this.
Roz was still seated at the table when Zina walked in, but Amelia had been removed to a backroom with Charles. Roz and Zina were alone.
/> “What a spread, what a spread, what a spread,” Zina said when she walked into the guesthouse. “I mean, really, Roz? This place is gorgeous!”
But Roz wasn’t going along. “Have a seat,” she said.
Zina was surprised by the chill, but she sat down at the table across from Roz. “Okay, it’s serious then? I knew it had to be when you ordered me here. So, what is it? You’re getting complaints at work about me already?”
“Who gave you that tape?” Roz asked her.
Zina was confused. “I already told you who gave it to me. Your stepson gave it to me. Joey.”
“Who gave you that tape?” Roz asked again as if she was dismissing out of hand Zina’s response.
“Okay, now. What is this about, Roz?”
“It’s about you and your lying ass,” Roz said. “That’s what it’s about. Now you tell me the truth, Zeen. Who gave you that tape?” All Roz needed was one piece of confirmation that Amelia’s story was credible. She needed that confirmation.
Zina could have continued to deny, but she knew Roz too well. Roz didn’t call her all this way on a fishing expedition. She had dirt on Zina. “This guy called Bulldog, okay? Bulldog Valtone.”
That was all Roz needed to hear. Amelia’s story was confirmed. Roz stood up, and began walking around the table to Zina’s side.
Zina, concerned about that look Roz had on her face, stood up too, backing up. “What are you going to do?” she asked her. “I needed the money. I didn’t mean anything by it! You know what it’s like to struggle, Roz!”
“I know what it’s like to have a friend play me,” Roz said. “I know what it’s like to be used!”
Zina knew she was cornered, and she therefore turned the tables. She jumped defensive. “Okay, now, back up,” she said firmly. “Back up, bitch. You don’t want any of this.”
“I don’t want any of what?” Roz asked her, as she continued to approach Zina. And then, Roz balled up her fist and hit Zina with such a punch that Zina fell hard on her ass. “Any of that?”
Zina jumped back up, ready to fight. “Oh, you did it now. You know I can beat your ass.”
“Oh, really now?”
Mick Sinatra: Breaking My Heart Page 15