Mick waited a moment longer. Then he spoke. “A year ago,” he began.
Hugo grinned nervously. “A year ago? Get a load of this guy, Blanche! A year ago? You came to see me about something that happened a year ago?”
“A year ago,” Mick continued, “you iced Mouse.” Mick said this and then looked at Hugo. He stared hard at him. Mouse Cucharta was a mob enforcer who was killed by a sniper’s bullet. He rode shotgun when Mick needed muscle, and sometimes he handled security at some of Mick’s lesser known businesses.
But after Hugo took him out, he left the scene. Went abroad for nearly nine months, pulling jobs all over the place, and then returned figuring the heat was off because Mick never gave any indication it was on. Mick never knew he was the one who took Mouse out. How would he know now?
But he knew, or he would not have said so. Hugo couldn’t go the pretend route. He had to go the I did you a favor route. “Why would you care what I did to Mouse?” he asked Mick. “He betrayed you, man. He was one of your people feeding intel to the enemy. He betrayed you, Mick. You should give me a metal for what I did.”
“He was one of my people,” Mick said. “That’s the point. Nobody takes out one of my men and expect no retribution.”
“You took out seven of them yesterday. At least that’s what I heard. Why is that different?”
“Nobody takes out one of my men,” Mick said again, “and expect no retribution.”
Hugo’s heart began to pound. Blanche began to consider making a run for it herself. “But I don’t get it,” Hugo said. “I was doing you a favor.”
“Now that’s bullshit,” Mick responded.
“Bullshit?”
“Bullshit!” Mick said again. “You didn’t know he had two-timed me until after he was dead, and you didn’t give a fuck. You were doing yourself a favor. You were taking out a witness.”
Hugo hesitated. How could he know? “But that’s ridiculous,” he said, with less umbrage. “What was that fucking snitch a witness to?”
“He saw what you did, Hugo,” Mick said. “He saw you skimming off the top. When I hired you to put a squeeze on those business owners who wanted out, but didn’t want to sell out to me, you took bribes to let them slide. You took bribes to report to me that they were going to come through, only to give them time to sell to my competition. Mouse got wind of your little schemes, and wanted a piece of the action. You got rid of him. I was going to, you’re right about that. I already knew he was snitching. He was on my kill list. But so were you.”
Mick had to hesitate. Betrayal was a nasty business. But in his world it was as commonplace as air. He was accustomed to it. But that didn’t mean he tolerated it. “I have eyes on my eyes,” he continued. “I have people watching my people. They found out Mouse was two-timing me alright. He had to go, no two ways about it. But you were already pulling that shit on me. You were already stiffing me in favor of lining your own pockets. You’ve got to go too. No two ways about that either.”
The fat lady was singing and Hugo could hear her screeching voice. He also knew he had to be quick about it before she ended her song. Because you could never tell with Mick. He could go on and on. Or he could stop abruptly and end it right then and there. Hugo, deciding he couldn’t wait to see which way Mick was going to end the song today, took matters into his own hands.
“Mick, watch out!” he screamed as he looked toward Mick’s left side. The idea was for Mick to be caught so completely off guard that he would turn to see what he needed to watch out for. And in that brief moment, Hugo was prepared to pull out his gun and take that fucker out.
But to Hugo’s dismay, that fucker wasn’t fooled. Mick, who already had his gun at his side, didn’t flinch or look anywhere but straight at Hugo. And as Hugo was attempting to pull out his own firearm, Mick was discharging his. Right into Hugo’s gut first, and then straight through the heart. Hugo fell back, against the wall, and then slid down dead. Blanche, mortified, began to scream.
Mick stood up, his gun still smoking in his hand, and looked at his onetime hired hand. Mick then looked at Blanche. “Shut the fuck up,” he said to her calmly.
Blanche, hearing that calm voice but seeing that I may not be shouting, but I’ll kill a motherfucker look in Mick’s eyes, immediately shut up.
Mick walked up to Hugo’s body and stood above it. His nearness caused Blanche to flinch, but he didn’t even look at her. He was staring at Hugo.
Mick had a newborn son now, a beautiful baby boy. He wondered if some fucker would one day be standing over his son’s dead body too. And just thinking about it made Mick feel a shiver down his spine. That shit made this shit real. This life he led, the things he had to do, were starting to hit home to Mick. It was all starting to prick at his soul.
But in Mick’s world it wasn’t natural for a man to let another man play him for a fool. He couldn’t let that stand, no matter how long it took. He did what he had to do.
“That’s not why I came,” Mick said to Blanche.
Blanche was puzzled. “Then why did you come?”
Mick looked at Blanche. Blanche was mortified. “Me?” she asked. “You came for me? I had nothing to do with it, Mick. I don’t even know who you were talking about. Mouse? Whose Mouse? I never even knew him!”
“You know Nelson Gallor,” Mick said.
That was a curveball Blanche didn’t expect to be pitched. “Yeah, so?” she asked.
“He’s a Broadway Director.”
Blanche frowned. “Yeah, so? What does that have to do with anything?”
“I did my research. I found out all about Mr. Nelson Gallor and the play he was directing. I received a list of all of his investors. I knew a few of the names on the list. I could have contacted any of those names. Until I stumbled upon your name. You were on that list. I already knew you were Hugo Lebronski’s old lady. I already heard that. But then I discovered you were also taking all of that mob money your various mob boyfriends gave you over the years and investing in Broadway shows, including Nell Gallor’s show.”
“So what?” Blanche asked. “This is New York. We invest in Broadway shows. I’m an investor in a lot of shows. So what?”
“I could kill two birds with one stone by coming here today.”
Blanche frowned. “What are you talking about, Mick?”
“I had a long standing beef with Hugo. A beef that wasn’t worth my time and effort to handle on its own merits. But now that I had to come see you anyway, it was the right time to settle that beef.”
“You killed Hugo,” Blanche said with some hurt in her voice.
“Hugo killed Mouse. And he was right, Mouse deserved that killing. But that was my call, not Hugh’s. I knew I would avenge that killing someday, when I felt like it. Today it all came together.”
Then Mick’s look changed. It turned harder, although Blanche didn’t think that was possible. “Pick up the phone,” Mick ordered her. “Get him over here.”
Blanche was still baffled. “Get who over here? Nell? But why?”
“Just do it and live,” Mick said. “Or keep running your fucking mouth and die.”
Blanche quickly pulled out her cellphone and called Nelson Gallor. She’d heard about what went down yesterday, and how Mick took out several of his own top lieutenants. They said Mick had gone insane. She didn’t hesitate making that call.
As they waited, Mick went into the kitchen and made phone calls, while Blanche sat on the couch staring at her deceased boyfriend. Until Mick’s men arrived and took him away. Blanche was nobody’s fool. She used to be the boyfriend of a mobster. She knew you didn’t see and you didn’t tell. She knew Mick knew she knew.
Nearly an hour after her phone call, Broadway Director Nell Gallor walked into Hugo’s house. If there was ever a stereotype of a Broadway Director, Hank Zigston was it. But Nell was a close second: tall, lean, in khakis and loafers, with a scarf around his neck for good measure. And he walked in talking, concerned only about his play, his entire dem
eanor put upon and impatient. “What do you mean you’re pulling your funding?” Nell asked Blanche as he walked in. That was the line she used on the phone to get him to come. “And why this place? Why did you call me to come here? Who lives here?”
“Go into the kitchen, Nell,” Blanche told him.
“Go into the kitchen?” Nell asked. “Why? I’m not hungry.”
“Just do it. For once in your life, just do it!”
He could tell Blanche was upset, but what he couldn’t understand was why. “Are you ill?” he asked. “You don’t look well.”
“Nell,” Blanche said with anger in her voice. “Just do it. Okay?”
Nell still had his doubts, but he did as she asked.
When he entered the kitchen and saw a well-dressed man removing a pot of scalding hot water off of the stove’s burner, he went over to him. “Are you a doctor?” he asked. “Is Blanche ill? Is that why she’s pulling her funding?”
Mick looked at him. “Are you Nelson Gallor?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“Nelson Gallor, the Director?”
“That’s right. Why? What is this about?”
“My wife is Rosalind Sinatra. You know her?”
“I know her as Roz Graham, but yeah, I know her. So you’re her husband. You’re that guy.”
“What guy?” Mick asked.
“The guy. The mobster. Her husband.” And as soon as Nell said those words, it all began to crystallize for him. And as soon as Nell’s eyes registered understanding, Mick grabbed his hand.
Nell, stunned, tried to wrestle it back. “What are you doing?” he asked nervously.
“Who put you up to it?” Mick asked him.
“Up to what? What are you talking about?”
“Who ordered you to fire my wife’s client?”
“Nobody ordered me to do anything,” Nell said.
But Mick wasn’t buying it. He began moving Nell’s hand toward the stove.
“What are you doing?” Nell asked. “You can’t put my hand in that water. It’s scalding hot! You can’t put my hand in that pot!”
“I don’t intend to put your hand in the pot,” Mick said as he maintained complete control.
“Then what are you doing?” Nell begged to know.
Mick forced Nell’s hand, palm down, not into the scalding hot pot, but onto the scalding hot burner the pot had been sitting upon.
Nell let out a screech filled with unbearable pain.
“Who ordered you to fire my wife’s client?” Mick asked him.
“Zigston!” Nell cried without hesitation. “Hank Zigston! He said he owed this mobster a favor. He said they were going to kill him, me, and the other directors if we didn’t comply and fire any of Roz’s clients we employed. So we did what he said. We didn’t want to get mixed up with gangsters. We did what he said!”
Mick knew there was more to that Zigston guy than altruism. He knew there would be a connection. “You will rehire Rosalind’s client,” Mick ordered him.
“Yes!” Nell cried. “Anything! Just release my hand!”
“You will rehire her client immediately.”
“Yes, I will. Immediately! Now please let my hand go. Please!” Sweat had already accumulated all across Nell’s forehead and was dripping down. He was going to pass out soon.
But even so, Mick didn’t heed his plea. His eyes turned even colder.
“Please!” Nell cried. “Why are you refusing to let me go? I said I’ll do it. I’ll hire her immediately! Why don’t you let my hand go?”
“You made my wife weep,” Mick said with quiet rage he could barely control, as he held Nell’s hand down harder. “You made her weep. Even I do not have that right.”
Nell cried in agony with the applied pressure. So much so that he began passing out. It was only then did Mick let him go.
Nell slid his hand from the heat as he began to crumble to the floor. But a good portion of the flesh of his palm remained scorched onto the burner. He fell to his knees in the kind of excruciating pain he would not have believed he could bear.
“Tell a motherfucker,” Mick said to him, ignoring his pain, “and it won’t be just a hand next time.”
Mick went into the living room and warned Blanche too. But he knew she wouldn’t talk. Because he knew her from way back. And, more importantly, she knew him. She knew she’d be joining her boyfriend Hugo in that unknown grave Mick’s men tossed him into, if she uttered a sound.
But Nell captured the moment without any assists from her, Blanche felt. He could be heard in the kitchen, still screaming enough for both of them, as Mick walked out.
Henry Zigston had just stepped out of the shower, ready to go to the theater for afternoon rehearsals, when he felt the barrel of a gun against his forehead. He fell back into the shower, taking the curtain with him. “What the fuck?” he asked angrily, staring at the gun first, and then the man. And he knew the man. It was Roz’s gangster-ass husband.
“You have one chance to tell me the truth,” Mick said, pointing the gun at Henry.
“How did you get pass the doorman?” Henry asked, astounded that he would penetrate all security and end up in his bathroom. “Who gave you permission to come up here?”
Mick was amazed at how arrogant this director was. He actually thought he was running this show too. “You have one chance,” Mick said. “Who ordered you to visit my wife?”
“Nobody,” Henry said. Mick, with the silencer on his gun, shot him in the arm.
Henry couldn’t believe it. He looked at the blood appearing on his arm, and looked at Mick. “You shot me,” he said, with pure amazement on his face.
“Next time,” Mick said, “you won’t live to tell me that.”
And it was only then, Mick could tell, did this fool realize the danger he was in. “Who sent you?” Mick asked again.
And this time, Henry didn’t hesitate. “Jake Vietti,” he said. “I owe his father money. Big money I can’t pay back. And Jake called to collect. But he said I could work it off.”
“He told you to get those directors to fire her clients?”
Henry nodded. “Yes,” he said, as he wrapped the shower curtain around his bleeding arm. “And to go to her and promise her the moon. I was to seduce her.”
Mick’s eyes drew smaller and even more filled with rage. “Why did he want you to do these things?” Mick asked.
“To do you in,” Henry said. “Piece by piece.”
The same way Jake’s old man had tried to do Mick in. It didn’t work then. It wasn’t going to work now. But that wasn’t Henry’s business. “I have a message for Vietti,” he said to Henry.
Henry looked at Mick. He would tell Jake anything if it would spare his life. “What message?” he asked.
Mick shot Henry in the balls. Henry screamed in agony and fell over holding onto his shattered dick. “Don’t fuck with my wife,” Mick said. “That’s the message. You won’t be alive to deliver it, but he’ll hear about the condition of your body, and get the message.”
Mick stared at the director a moment longer. Henry cried like a baby as his blood flowed. And then Mick left.
Within seconds of his departure, Henry Zigston was dead.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Roz walked into the conference room with a thick folder in one hand, and her coffee mug, with The Graham Agency written on it, in the other hand. Nine of the clients who chose to remain with her agency were present.
“Where’s everybody else?” Mark Simmons asked as Roz sat with them at the table.
“Laurie had rehearsal,” Roz said. “Her director is a good friend of mine and he doesn’t care about my husband’s past.”
“And the other two?” Jade Winston asked. “Last I remember we were eight strong, plus four that didn’t attend the last meeting. That’s twelve. It’s only nine here today. Ten with Laurie. Where’s the other two?”
It still irked Roz to think about the clients she lost after all of that hard work she did
to secure them. But her sole focus was on the faithful few that remained. “The other two ended their association with the agency late yesterday,” she said.
Jade shook her head. “They are so disloyal, Ms. G. After all you did for them. It’s like they have blinders on. For real.”
Roz opened her folder. “In any event,” she said, “it is what it is. But I do have some news.”
They all looked at her anxiously.
“I managed to get all of you auditions.”
They all smiled and thanked her. “That’s great, Ms. G.,” Mark said, leading the excitement.
“There’s no guarantee they will hire any of you,” Roz made clear. “But these are friends of mine who didn’t go along with the blacklist. At least it’s a start.”
“So your good name still gets things done after all,” Mark said with a grin, as Roz’s cellphone rang.
“What a nice thing to say,” Roz said with a smile as she grabbed her cellphone and looked at the Caller ID. She hesitated, when she saw that it was Nell Gallor, but decided to take the call. She also decided to place the call on Speaker, since it undoubtedly concerned Jade, one of her clients sitting at the table. “This is Roz.”
“Roz, hey, it’s Nelson.”
When Jade heard that name, she looked at Roz with confusion on her face.
Roz shook her head too. She had no idea why he would be calling either. “Hello, Nell,” Roz said. His voice sounded different, as if he had just come back from a long run or some other strenuous activity. “How can I help you?”
“I have to get back to work,” Nell said, “but I wanted to let you know that I’ve reconsidered my position and feel that I was wrong. You were right.”
Jade began to smile. But Roz wasn’t so easily convinced. “I was right about what?” she asked.
“About Jade,” Nell said. “She’s a talented girl. One of the better actresses we had in the cast. And I want to hire her back.”
Jade jumped from her feet, ready to shout yes, but held her tongue because she knew Nell was on Speaker and might not appreciate it. Mark and the others were happy for her too.
Mick Sinatra: Now Will You Weep Page 10