Roz sat erect. Her neck was stiff with stress and she wasn’t trying to add to her woes. “Look, Bess,” she said, “I know you’re shaken up right now. I am too. But I’m not about to sit up here and let you blame Mick for what happened at that airstrip tonight. It wasn’t his fault.”
“But you make it sound like it was nothing,” Betsy complained. “It was surreal enough when you came to New York in his private plane when I told you Jason had jumped on me. I’m grateful you came to my rescue, I really am, Roz. I’m glad you’re letting me stay with you for a week or two. But we weren’t off the plane two minutes and barely got in the limo when we’re knee deep in a shootout! Now the limo driver is dead.”
“He’s not dead, thank God,” Roz said. “He’s wounded, but the doctor is taking care of him now. He’s going to pull through.”
“But what I’m trying to say is that you won’t have to live this kind of life if you get yourself a regular Joe. I’m concerned for you. This guy, Mick, isn’t worth it!”
Roz squeezed Betsy’s hands. “We’re going to be alright, kido,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about me. We’re here with Mick now. Nobody’s harming us here with him.”
Betsy shook her head. “You used to be the levelheaded one. Now you’re talking crazy. Because I don’t have any confidence in him at all.”
“That’s fine,” Roz said, “because I have enough confidence in him for the both of us.” But Roz was no fool. She could tell Betsy wasn’t feeling Mick. If she was ambivalent toward him before they were ambushed at the airstrip, she was unequivocal now.
Mick was bad news to Betsy, and Roz, she felt, was in complete and utter denial. She was about to tell her so when knocks were heard on the guest room door. And then the door was opened. Bryce Bookman, Mick’s new House Manager, peeped inside. “Sorry to disturb you, Miss Graham,” she said, “but Mr. Sinatra is looking for you.”
“He’s looking for me?” Roz asked.
“Yes, ma’am. He told me to come and get you.”
“Where is he? Is he still in his office?”
“He said he’d be upstairs,” Bryce said. Then added: “In bed.”
Despite all that had gone on tonight, Roz still managed to feel her vagina pulsate at the thought of Mick waiting for her in bed. But she wasn’t about to share those feelings with his estate manager. “Okay,” she said to Bryce.
Bryce glanced at Betsy, and then he left and closed the door behind him
“Little sweet, isn’t he?” Betsy asked with a smile. “Are you sure he doesn’t want Mick for himself?”
“You mean like you wanted him when you first met him?” Roz responded.
Betsy laughed. “Touché,” she said.
“Most of the women I encounter want him,” Roz said, “and some of the men. That comes with the territory when you hitch your wagon to a desirable dude.”
“But how do you handle that?” Betsy asked.
“I don’t,” Roz said. “I let him handle it.”
“And you actually think Mick’s going to keep his hands off of all of these gorgeous women out here? Women that look way better than you and me both?”
“When it comes to choosing a permanent mate, it’s not about looks for Mick,” Roz said. “That’s what you don’t understand. If it was all about looks and seductive capabilities, he would have chosen you over me hands down when he first saw us in New York.”
This was a sore spot for Betsy. She was always the one chosen first over Roz. All men, black and white, used to choose her youth and blonde hair and blue eyes over Roz every time. The only exception so far was that day Mick showed up. “What did he see in you that I don’t have?” she asked Roz.
“Oh, come on, Bess. You don’t want to go there.”
“I do! What did he see in you? Other than the fact that you have a big heart and you’re smart and tough and a beautiful black woman?”
Roz looked at Betsy. She was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, but surely she understood how insulting her comment was. “It can’t possibly be other than those factors you just mentioned,” Roz responded. “You do understand that, right?”
She didn’t. Roz realized it as soon as Betsy had to think about it. She stood up.
This alarmed Betsy too. “Wait. Where are you going?”
“It’s okay,” Roz said. “I’m just going to see what Mick wants.”
“You know what he wants,” Betsy said. “He wants to have sex with you. That’s why I used to hate when he came to New York to see you. He kept you in bed most of the time he was there. Which means I probably won’t see you again tonight.”
“Stop worrying, Betsy. We’re safe now. Mick has more men guarding this place than Ft. Knox ever had. You’re safe here.”
Betsy nodded. “If you say so, girl,” she said, with doubt in her voice.
Roz hugged her. “Stop worrying. I got you.”
Betsy smiled. “Yes, mother,” she said. Roz laughed, and then left.
Betsy waited, to make sure Roz had left, and then she pulled out her cell phone.
“Jason,” she said, when a voice answered on the other end. “It’s me.”
Mick was naked in bed, rubbing his penis, when Roz made it upstairs.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “After you left my office I thought I told you to shower and take yourself to bed. Where were you?”
“I showered,” Roz said as she closed and locked the door, and headed his way, “but then I wanted to check on Betsy before I called it a night. It’s been very difficult for her.”
“It’s been difficult for all of us,” Mick said. “You included. Hell, you’re the one who had to kill that bastard. You’re the one who drove that limousine, and because you were quick on your feet, saved Deuce’s life. All her ass did was scream.”
“She’s sensitive, Mick,” Roz said as she removed her bathrobe, revealing a naked body that not only caused Mick’s penis to respond with a hard throb, but his eyes to react as well. He was staring at her bod. “I told you how sensitive she was, but you won’t believe me. She’s a nervous wreck.”
But Mick didn’t want to hear any more about Betsy Gable. He needed Roz. He lifted her on top of him and held her in his arms. He almost lost her tonight. If she had not been as quick to act, and if she would have responded in the same manner Betsy responded, he was certain he would not be holding her now. And that thought alone made him hold her tighter. He placed his finger beneath her chin and lifted her face, and then he kissed her for a wonderfully long time.
They made easy love that night. He mostly kissed her, and massaged her naked butt, and held her for long moments on end. And when he guided his fully aroused penis into her wet and ready vagina, he eased it in. He enjoyed the thrill of entry for longer than he usually did. It was always a sweet spot for them, when his cock slid along her pussy, as if that sensual feeling was the most remarkable place to be, and he lingered at that entry point.
He stroked her as he pushed further into her tightness. He stroked with slow, sensual strokes. He planned to keep this pace for the duration. But when he finally pushed in far enough, and hit her special spot, he felt the coming change. And when her vaginal muscles squeezed his cock hard, virtually choking it, his mouth found hers in an exercise of heightened passion, and they couldn’t go easy any longer. The feelings wouldn’t let them.
They started fucking. She sat up and started riding his cock and he arched his ass and started thrusting it inside of her. He thrust and shoved it so far in that his balls began slapping against her ass. And then his pre-cum and her vaginal juices gave way to the main event. They came. Together. And forcefully.
Mick lifted his prone body up, lifting Roz with him, as he throbbed and released, and kept fucking her with even more force. He thrashed her hard until her orgasm was over and her vagina was no longer pulsating. And until his cock had emptied out, and there was no more push within him.
It was only after that exhaustive session, a ses
sion that was supposed to be slow and easy, he pulled her down into his arms, and held her there all night.
That next day, after Mick had showered and left Roz relaxing in the bathtub, he made his way to his office downstairs. Archie Bloom, his front gate chief, and Danny Padrone, his second-in-command, were waiting for him in the office. They had been working through the night, searching for every ounce of intel they could come across, to find out what happened, and who was responsible.
The heads of two organized crime families, the two men who had been meeting with Mick when the ambush at the airstrip went down, had been removed to a safe house. But they were still under guard until Mick got the answers he sought. The third head, Carp Bianchi’s son Nat and the new head of Carp’s organization, had been iced by Mick after he demanded Mick take a smaller percentage from their organizations, or face war. It was a serious threat that Mick did not tolerate from any of his underlings. Nat’s body had long since been removed.
Mick entered his office in a business suit, his usual Versace, Danny decided, and then leaned against the front of his desk and folded his long legs at the ankle. He was always a serious man, but they knew he was still furious too. “I want to know what fucker was crazy enough to ambush my woman, try to take out my driver, and was powerful enough to pay off my men. And I want to know now.”
“I know you don’t wanna hear it, boss,” Danny said, “but we can’t tell you who.”
“Don’t you tell me that. Don’t you fucking tell me that!”
“We looked under every rock,” Archie chimed in. “We called in favors. We checked out everybody in the pipeline and every big wig in the know. But nobody knows anything. And those that do aren’t willing to talk.”
“What do you mean they aren’t willing to talk?” Mick asked. “They know something and won’t tell us?”
“They say they can’t tell us,” Danny said.
Mick frowned. “Why the hell not?” Then Mick thought about it. “Somebody big?”
“He’s got to be,” Danny agreed. “He’s got to be bigger than you.”
“Who the fuck is that?” Mick asked. “Name him.”
Danny shook his head. “I don’t know. Here in Philly, there is no one. And we can’t begin to know where else to look.”
Mick ran the back of his hands across his eyes. “What about the two mini-dons? The head of Teddy Stefani’s organization and Vito DeLuca’s?”
Archie shook his head. “They don’t know shit. They aren’t involved.”
“Their people are calling, and demanding their release,” Danny said. “They say it’s not right for you to detain them like this. They had nothing to do with that ambush.”
Then Danny exhaled. “Carp Bianchi called too. He wants to know what happened to his son. When he finds out, there’s gonna be trouble. Trouble we can handle because Carp answers to you, but trouble nonetheless.”
But Mick’s singular focus was Roz, and who tried to pull a snatch and grab on her. And they talked and talked it out. Mick made his own phone calls, to men and women in the higher echelons of city power who were under his protection, but they didn’t know a damn thing either. He was sitting behind his deck, and hanging up from yet another dead end phone call, when Roz walked in.
Mick looked at her. Because he knew she knew better than that. “I’m in a meeting,” he said.
“I know,” Roz responded as she continued to walk toward the desk. Danny and Archie glanced at each other. What the fuck?
“Later, Rosalind,” Mick said. “I’m in a meeting.”
“But since this meeting is about me and what happened to me last night,” Roz said, “I feel I have the right to find out what’s going on.” She looked at the two men standing on either side of the desk. “Good morning,” she said to them.
“How are you?” Danny asked.
“Good morning, ma’am,” Archie said.
“We got nothing,” Mick said as he leaned back in his chair. “Nobody knows a gotdamn thing.”
Roz stood at the front of the desk. She, too, was dressed for work, in a smart sky-blue Armani pantsuit, and her hand was on her hip. “What about those guys that were here last night? Those two heads of families?”
Danny and Archie glanced at each other again. They were amazed how much Mick allowed her to know about their set up. Too much pillow talk, in their estimation.
“They don’t know anything either,” Mick responded to Roz. “They aren’t involved.”
“What about that guy you had to deal with in Jericho?” Roz asked. “Could he have something to do with this?”
Mick shook his head. “Even if his people had reach like that, which they don’t, but even if they did, they couldn’t pull off an ambush like that. They couldn’t pay off my men. This was a power hit. Major power was behind this hit.”
“Could there be new heat percolating, boss?” Archie asked. “Is there anybody out there you had dealings with lately, somebody with some real reach that we don’t know about?”
Mick thought about it. “I told you the latest characters I dealt with. You checked out Harper Curly.”
“His people are too busy trying to take over the business after Harp’s death,” Danny said. “They don’t give a fuck about revenge, and they don’t have that kind of power either.”
“Neither does Tony LeKirk,” Archie said, “the other guy you told us about. He’s a zero too. Everything we found out about the guy is that he does dirty jobs for anybody with enough cash. And he works alone. His legacy ended the day he was iced.”
But Roz looked at Mick. “I know him,” she said.
Mick, Archie and Danny looked at her. “You know him?” Mick frowned. “You know who?”
“Tony LeKirk. I mean, I don’t know him personally, but his wife was once in an off-Broadway play with me. She’s an actress. Or at least she was.”
“But why would you remember him?”
“Because of the fight,” Roz said. “His wife was having fits about her part, and ultimately the producers fired her. We were all in the theater rehearsing one day when her husband and some big shot, his father-in-law, came storming in. They beat up the director pretty badly. He was hospitalized.”
All three men were dying to ask the question. Mick asked it. “Do you remember his father-in-law’s name? The guy you said was some big-shot?”
“I don’t remember his first name, but I remember his last name because he was later arrested on battery charges, and had the same last name of a famous former New York Senator: Alfonse D’Amato,” Roz said. “Yeah, that was his name. Something D’Amato.”
Mick stood to his feet. He couldn’t believe it. Archie and Danny were floored too. They were beyond belief.
“Tex D’Amato,” Danny said, his voice unable to shield his shock. “Stone Cold D’Amato. I’ll be damn, boss.”
“Who is he?” Roz said. “He’s Mafia or something?”
“He’s the largest drug dealer on the East Coast,” Mick said. “A stone cold killer, and every other stone cold name in the book.”
“And he was Tony LeKirk’s father-in-law?” Danny asked. “How did we miss that?”
“It didn’t come up,” Archie said. “I didn’t know that fucker was even married, let alone married to Stone Cold D’Amato’s daughter.”
But Mick was thinking. He was missing something. They were conflating too many events, and something was wrong. And then he remembered one event in particular. He hurried from around his desk.
“What is it?” Roz asked.
“What is it?” Danny asked.
“What’s D’Amato known for?” Mick asked.
“Drugs,” Danny said.
“And recruiting young dealers with connections,” Mick added.
“That’s right,” Archie said. “He liked his runners to have connections so that he could have too much to lose if they try something stupid.”
Danny was floored. “Joey,” Danny said. “You think Joey worked for D’Amato?”
“That bastard knows something he’s not telling me. I’m going to see his ass right now.”
“I’m going with you,” Roz said, as she moved to follow him.
“No, you’re not either,” Danny insisted, as if it was up to him.
Mick stopped in his tracks and looked at Danny as if he had lost his mind talking to Roz that way. Roz was already looking too.
“I was just saying,” Danny said. “It’s up to you, boss.”
Mick took Roz’s hand, looked at Danny one more time, and then he and Roz left.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Joey was able to move around easily and was already antsy when he saw his father’s Lamborghini drive onto the small, circular driveway of the isolated safe house. The house was in a deeply wooded area, heavily guarded and fortified, and Joey didn’t hesitate to rush to the door and make his way outside. But as soon as he opened the front door, a guard was stationed in front of it, and Joey was not allowed passage out.
He went to the window, instead, and watched his father help Roz out of the car and then began walking toward the front door. His dad had on one of his expensive suits, and Roz had on a pantsuit, and they both looked to Joey like some power couple on their way to lunch, not on their way inside a safe house. But that was the strange thing about his father. At SI, and all around Philly, he was this highly respected businessman. To the people Joey knew and hung out with, he was a feared crime boss. He used to wonder how he pulled it off, until Teddy told him. He was shrewd enough to pay off the big wigs, Teddy had said, and keep dirt on them too. Joey didn’t know how Teddy knew all of that, but it fascinated him. It gave him even more reason why he wanted to someday be as big, if not bigger, than his dad,
He hurried up to the door as soon as it opened. “Hey, dad,” he said, and then stood there like a kid at Christmas. Roz could tell Joey wanted to hug Santa, but wasn’t sure if Santa would like it.
Mick Sinatra 2: Love, Lies, and Jericho Page 19