Mick Sinatra 4: If You Don't Know Me by Now

by Mallory Monroe

  She sat up, on top of her husband, and began to ride his rod. She rode him up and down. She rode him as he slid deeper into her folds and crushed her walls with his fullness, with his stiffness. She rode him for a long time. And he loved the feeling. He closed his eyes and relaxed for the first time since the day began.

  And then he pulled her down, so he could suck her breasts, as she fucked him. He sucked, and she fucked, and they made long, passionate love.

  And then he came. Mick pulled her further down on top of him, and wrapped her tightly into his arms, as he poured into her. He came first. It was rare. But Roz expected it. What she didn’t expect was for her orgasm to be so strong. She thought she was too tired. She thought she was too traumatized by being in that police car and sitting in that jail cell, and by Gloria’s predicament. But Mick’s sex took her there again. She was never too tired, nor too traumatized, to feel his penis penetrate her, and break in her, and deliver to her sensations nobody else ever could. And she took it all in. She had an orgasm delight. She came hard.

  But several hours later, after they had both cum and had managed to finally fall asleep, her ringing cell phone woke them up again. She answered quickly, hoping that it was good news about Gloria. But it wasn’t about Gloria at all. It was about her mother. She had taken a turn for the worse. Could Roz come?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Roz’s plan was to slip out of town quietly, get Mick’s pilot to fly her to Memphis, have a rental car waiting, and then drive over to her hometown of Belt Buckle, Tennessee and see about her mother. Mick, however, told her no. He squashed that idea in its infancy. She wasn’t about to go anywhere without him. Somebody tried to frame her for Gloria’s disappearance. And that craziness in New York. As far as he was concerned, she was still the target.

  “But I need to see my mother,” Roz said.

  “I agree,” Mick responded. They were still in bed, and it was just after the call.

  “Then how am I going to see about her if you won’t let me go and see about her?”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t go see her. And you can do all those things you mentioned. You can slip out of town quietly. My pilot can fly you to Memphis. A rental car can be waiting. But I will be with you.”

  Roz turned and looked at Mick, her breast uncovered along with her deep concern. “You?” she asked. “But you can’t leave Philly, Mick. What about Gloria?”

  “I have every man I employ working on finding my daughter. With the cops involved now, it’s become a little more complicated. They will get in the way. But nothing has slowed down or stopped. But I have a responsibility to you too. I’m not going to skirt my responsibility to you.”

  Roz considered him. “You think it’s a plot to get me to Tennessee, the same way Melo got me to New York. Don’t you?”

  Mick shook his head. “No. Of course not. Your mother was ill before Gloria went missing. You need to see about her. So we’ll go see her and come back. A day trip is the best you can do right now. If her situation is determined to be even more dire, then I’ll have to reassess. But one thing will be clear, my darling: what I say goes. No debates. No second guessing. Do I make myself clear?”

  Roz remembered New York and what her decision to go against his wishes almost cost her. She wasn’t about to make that mistake again. She was married to Mick the Ticking Time Bomb Sinatra, not some average Joe. “Perfectly clear,” she said.

  And with that understanding they showered and dressed, Mick put Teddy and Deuce in charge of the twins and the twins’ nannies for the day, and they flew to Memphis. From Memphis they got into their rental car, a Chrysler 300, and drove to Roz’s hometown of Belt Buckle, Tennessee. Population: 2000. Roz’s father, Cecil Graham, was still in town. He answered the front door.

  When Roz saw the worry on her father’s face, she pulled him into her arms. He and Roz’s mother were divorced, but he still loved her.

  Cecil extended his hand to Mick, and Mick shook it. “Come on in,” Cecil said.

  They walked into the beautiful, Tudor-styled home of Judge Bernadette Graham.

  “How is she, Dad?” Roz asked as he closed the door behind them.

  “She’s feisty as ever. She’s disagreeable as ever. She’s mad.”

  “Dogs get mad,” Roz said. “You mean she’s angry.”

  “I mean she’s mad. I know what I’m saying.” Then a sad look came over his handsome face. “She’s ill.”

  Roz was shocked. “You don’t mean physically? You mean mentally ill?”

  “I mean both. She keeps going on and on about stuff that don’t make any sense. Like she’s saddled with a lot of guilt. I don’t know. She’s tried a lot of cases. I think she might have put some people in prison that she knew were innocent, and it’s getting to her now.”

  “May we see her?” Roz asked.

  “That’s why you’re here. See away.”

  Roz was nervous, and Mick placed his hand in the small of her back, as they made their way to her mother’s master bedroom near the backside of the house.

  Judge Bernadette Graham wasn’t lying in bed the way Mick and Roz had expected to find her, but was sitting in a rocking chair. She was sitting at her big, bay window looking out over her big, backyard.

  “Hello, Mother,” Roz said as they slowly approached her, and she smiled a weak smile, but it was the best she could manage.

  But as soon as her mother turned her way, with that look of umbrage she always displayed, Roz’s smile was gone. Most girls had a nurturing relationship with their mother. Roz had always had a contentious one with hers. “I hear you aren’t feeling well?”

  “I’m fine,” Bernadette said. “Wherever did you get that idea? Cancer is cancer. It’s hardly anything strange. People get it all the time. It’s just my time. I’ll beat it. I beat everything else. And why are you standing there like a scared child? Sit down.”

  Roz wanted to lash back at her mother, but she didn’t. And she sat down.

  “I see you brought Mr. Personality with you,” Bernadette said.

  Mick knew she was being facetious in that nasty way of hers. He returned the favor. “You aren’t exactly Miss Congeniality yourself,” he said. “How are you, Bernadette?”

  Roz expected her mother to order Mick out. She wasn’t above it. But she didn’t. A strange look appeared on her face. “Scared,” she said.

  Mick’s heart dropped. Roz’s did too. Neither one of them expected that. Roz leaned over, and took her mother’s hand. “It’s just cancer, like you said, Mom. You’ll beat it.”

  “I beat it before. I’ll beat it again.”

  “That’s right.” Roz glanced at Mick. She never recalled a time when her mother had cancer. But she’d only been back home once, and that was just before she married Mick, since she left for college. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Bernadette looked at Mick. Somehow she saw in him a man with life experience. The fact that he was closer to her age than to Roz’s helped too. “Is she right, Mr. Personality? Do I have nothing to be afraid of?”

  “You have plenty to be afraid of,” Mick said bluntly. “But what’s the point in being afraid?”

  Bernadette could relate to Mick’s response far more than Roz’s. Because he understood her. She nodded her head. “Rightly so,” she said. Then she looked at Roz. “Where’s your father?”

  “He’s up front. In the living room.”

  “Good,” Bernadette said.

  “He says you’ve been talking a little out of your head, Mom. He’s worried.”

  Bernadette smiled. “Oh, I know what I’m doing. If he thinks I’m going nuts, he’ll stick around longer. If he thinks it’s just cancer, and I’m getting the treatment I need, he’ll take off on one of those ridiculous gigs of his again. A man his age still doing gigs. Ridiculous. I keep him around this way.”

  Roz was shocked. “Oh, really now? I didn’t think you wanted him around.”

  Bernadette’s smile was gone. And she was reflective
again. “People always assume I don’t want anything or anybody. So they don’t come around. Not even my own children. But Cecil comes. Sometimes I think he’s all I have. I don’t want to lose him.”

  Roz had never seen this side of her mother before. Vulnerable? Her mother? She didn’t know how to respond to this person. So she didn’t. “What kind is it?” she asked.

  Bernadette looked at her. “Excuse me?”

  “What kind of cancer is it?”

  “Oh! Breast. Stage three. I’ve been on chemo, but it’s been making me really ill. Cecil thought I was going to leave this place before day this morning. That’s why he called you. But I’m fine. I’ll survive.”

  Roz smiled. “Glad to hear it, Mom.”

  “So you can go back to your life,” Bernadette added, the old Bernie coming out, “and feel good in knowing that at least you came and stayed ten minutes.”

  “That’s not fair, Mom.”

  “I know it’s not. I know, in your mind, you give me what I deserve. In my mind, I deserve so much more from you. You ungrateful bitch.”

  Roz, astounded, stood up. Mick was staring at Bernadette. “I came to see about you. And I had every intention of staying longer than ten minutes. But you will not talk to me any kind of way, or mistreat me in any way. I allowed it my whole life. Not anymore.”

  Bernadette smiled. “Oh, so you marry the gangster and all of a sudden you’re gangster too? You’re still the pathetic human being you’ve always been. Even as a child you were pathetic. Now you have the nerve to tell me what you won’t allow anymore. You don’t tell me any such thing. I tell you! And I’m telling you to get out of my home, and my life, at once! Leave now, while you still can.”

  Roz was so hurt she could barely stand the sight of her mother. And she wasn’t about to argue with her own mother about something she’d been arguing with her about all of her life: her right to exist. She left. She walked right out.

  Mick left too. But as Roz went out onto the front porch to cool down, and as her father hurried out onto the porch to comfort her, Mick began thinking. Something wasn’t right about that encounter. Something didn’t feel right! And suddenly, he had an idea. A terrible idea. Bev, Beverly. But instead of Bella, could Devin Terranz have meant Bernadette?

  He pulled out his cell phone, and phoned his background man. “I need you to check out one of my wife’s parents,” he said.

  “Her father?” Mick’s man asked.

  “No,” Mick said. “Her mother.”

  Later that day, after Bernadette continued to refuse any contact with Roz, Mick said it was time for them to go. They piled back in their rental car, and headed back toward the airstrip in Memphis.

  “I don’t want to leave her this way,” Roz said regretfully as Mick drove them back toward Memphis.

  “I know you don’t want to,” Mick said, “but you have to.”

  Roz had already resigned herself to that reality. “I know. We have to think about Gloria. But the things my mother said to me. She was so heartless. Why does she hate me so?”

  Then a thought occurred to Roz. A horrible thought. She looked at her husband. “Mick,” she said. “What if he meant Bernadette? What if the guy who said somebody named Beverly set Gloria up, was misremembering the name?”

  Mick nodded. “I’ve reached that conclusion too. She’s a judge, she has reach. Maybe some crook she promised to give probation to if he did her a favor. Maybe somebody else owed her and were willing to kidnap my daughter. Maybe she’s not as sick as she’s making out to be.”

  “But that would mean she knows something about Gloria’s whereabouts.”

  “She may,” Mick said.

  “Then why are we leaving Belt Buckle? We need to get back there and question her!”

  “I’m going to handle that,” Mick said. “But I’m getting you on our plane back to Philadelphia first.”

  “Alone?” Roz asked. “Mick, you can’t do that to me! It’s my mother we’re talking about. I have to be there too!”

  But Mick wouldn’t hear of it. She was going back to Philly and would remain under heavy guard until he returned. If the answer was to be in Tennessee, Mick and Mick alone was going to find that answer.

  But just as he was going down yet another long, country road that led to the interstate; just as they were passing yet another dirt road intersection, a red, white, and blue pickup truck came charging out of nowhere, and bullets began to fly.

  “Get down!” Mick yelled as he pushed Roz’s head down with one hand, and steered the wheel with his other hand.

  He couldn’t fire back, but he was able to deftly dodge the hail of bullets until the shots were no longer ringing out. But if those bastards thought Mick the Tick was going to take their onslaught and just run away, they were mistaken.

  As soon as the firing ceased, Mick swerved the Chrysler around in the direction of the pickup. When he saw that the truck was already turning tail and taking off, he gave chase. “Hold on,” he said to his wife. “Keep your head down, and hold on! No asshole alive is going to ambush us and get away with it!”

  Roz could hardly believe what was happening. It felt as if she was in a dream. Her mother might be involved with her stepdaughter’s disappearance? Her mother might have ordered this ambush? Her mother might want her dead? Roz closed her eyes. She could hardly believe it.

  Mick drove as fast and recklessly as their pursuers had driven, and chased them through the streets of Belt Buckle without any regard for public norms. Mick never got close enough to get a license plate. Nor did he get close enough to see who were in that truck, but he kept pursuing. It would be several miles of backroads and backwoods before the truck was completely out of sight. They knew those roads far better than Mick ever could, and proved it. Mick lost them.

  He pulled over to the side of the road and looked around, to ensure there was no backdoor ambush upcoming. When he was assured there wasn’t, he looked at Rosalind. She looked mortified. He hated that she had to keep going through this shit.

  Roz sat back up on the seat. But if he thought she was going to be cowered and afraid, he was wrong. She was angry. “What the hell is going on here?” she asked. “Who is behind all of this, Mick?”

  Mick’s cell phone began ringing. “I’ll find out, babe,” he said. “Don’t you worry about that. I will fucking find out.” He looked at his Caller ID, saw who it was, and answered quickly. He placed the call on Speaker. “What you got for me?” he asked.

  “A couple things on the mother.”

  Mick and Roz exchanged a glance. “Tell me,” Mick said.

  “The mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and she’s been having some complications from her illness. That’s one thing.”

  “And the other thing?”

  “She recently took out a life insurance policy on her daughter. On Mrs. Sinatra.”

  Roz frowned. “A life insurance policy?” she asked.

  “For how much?” Mick asked.

  “For two million dollars, boss,” Mick’s man responded.

  Mick was floored. So was Roz. “Two million dollars?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. And according to the paperwork, you signed for it, giving your approval.”

  Now Roz was beyond shocked. “I knew nothing about it,” she said to Mick, and Mick nodded. He already knew that. “Okay, Johnny,” he said into the phone. “I’ll be in touch.” And he ended the call.

  “Take me to her house, Mick,” Roz ordered. “You already tried to get me out of town and that didn’t work. I want to see my mother. I want to look her in the eye and get her to explain to me why she would do such a thing. And why,” Roz added, “she would involve Gloria. I want you to do everything in your power to get her to tell you what happened to Gloria.”

  Mick had never seen Roz so hurt, so angry, and so determined in all the time he’d known her. It was her mother. It was her life. Mick headed back to the home of Judge Bernadette Graham, with Roz at his side.

  CHAPTER T
WENTY-TWO

  “What the hell?” Cecil Graham asked in a low voice when he saw the bullet-ridden Chrysler pull back up into the driveway. He stood up from the front porch terrified that something had happened to Roz. But when she and Mick got out of the car, seemingly unscathed, he relaxed. But he was still concerned. “What happened?” he asked as the couple walked back onto the porch.

  “Where’s Mom?” Roz asked.

  “Still in her bedroom. Why?”

  Roz didn’t answer him. She and Mick hurried into the house, down the corridor that led to the master bedroom, and into her mother’s room. Cecil hurried behind them.

  Bernadette seemed shocked to see them again. It wasn’t lost on either one of them just how shocked she seemed. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a frantic voice. “I thought I told you to leave and leave at once!”

  “You don’t dictate my steps,” Roz said.

  “I don’t like your tone,” Bernadette said.

  “Who gives a shit?” Mick asked.

  Bernadette tightened her mouth. She was still a very beautiful woman, tall and bosomy. But she was a bitch deluxe. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “You took out a two million dollar policy on my life,” Roz said. “Then proceeded to destroy it.”

  “What?” Cecil asked, dumbstruck. Then he looked at his ex-wife. “What’s this about, Bernie?”

  Bernadette was too busy staring at Roz to respond to her ex-husband. But it wasn’t a stare of incredulity or outrage. It was just a stare. “That’s nonsense,” she said.

  “Don’t deny it, Mother,” Roz made clear. “You can’t deny it any longer.” Roz wanted to know why desperately. Her entire face was anguished with that need. But Gloria came first. “What happened to my stepdaughter?” Roz asked. “What happened to Gloria?”

  “Child, if you don’t get out of my face with this nonsense, you’d better.”

  “Or what?” Roz asked.

  “I don’t know anything about any Gloria, or anybody else,” Bernadette said. “And I don’t appreciate these accusations.”