“What about the twins?” Hillary asked bitterly. “Where do they fit in?”
“Don’t you worry about them,” Roz fired back. “That’s our business.”
Teddy nodded. He understood. He wasn’t ready yet, and he’d be the first to admit it. Gloria understood also. Joey did too. He wasn’t ready yet either. Although, for his mother’s sake, he would never so much as acknowledge it.
The meeting ended almost as quickly as it had begun. They all stood, and although their mothers were completely dissatisfied, especially Ursula, they left anyway. They didn’t have a choice.
When the last one walked out and the door was closed, Roz looked at Mick. He still looked shocked by his outburst.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’ve got to make a trip to Florida in the morning,” he said, abruptly changing her subject.
“On business?” she asked.
“Something like that,” he responded.
“Is it an overnight trip, or you’ll be back tomorrow?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Mick said. “I won’t stay overnight. But Florida is no New York. It’s further away. I want you to work from home tomorrow until I get back in town.”
That answered all of her questions about the trip right then and there. She would have preferred to work from her office, but she understood it made sense that she didn’t. “Okay,” she said. “Be careful,” she added.
He looked at her, nodded his head, and then he made his way to the Nursery.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Early the next morning, Mick had already left for Florida, and Roz was still asleep in bed, when her cellphone rang. It required some effort, and she had to feel around the nightstand until she landed on her phone, before she swiped it and placed it to her ear. “Hello?” she asked in a voice so filled with sleep that the word barely registered.
But Joey, on the other end, heard it. “Hey, Roz,” he said.
Roz opened her eyes. “Joey?”
“Yeah, hey. How are you?”
“Asleep,” she said. She removed the phone from her ear and looked at the time. It was 7:30. Not as early as she had thought.
“Sorry to wake you up,” Joey said.
“Your father is out of town.”
“In Florida, I know. That’s not why I’m calling. I’m calling about last night.”
“What about it?”
“Dad got pretty upset.”
“As he should have.”
“I know. I don’t know where Miss Hillary gets off questioning your position in the family. Your position is solidified.”
What did this boy want? Roz wondered. “How can I help you?” she asked.
“I wonder if you could meet with my mom today.”
Roz turned onto her back. “Say what now?”
Joey laughed. “I know it sounds crazy, but really it’s not. She really wants to make amends, Roz.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I know how you feel. I would doubt it too. But that’s not the only reason.”
“Nor the real reason,” Roz said. “What’s the reason, Joe?”
Joey decided to come clean. “She wants to talk to you about me.”
“You? What about you?”
“About me and Dad. It’ll mean a lot to me if you’ll meet with her. She can come to your office today.”
“I’m not going into my office today. I’m working from home.”
“Then that’s even better. She can come to Dad’s house. I mean, it’s your house too. And she can talk to you there. It’s about me. She wants to make my case for me.”
Roz really didn’t want to deal with this. Not at all. “What kind of case?” she asked him.
“Will you meet with her, Roz? It won’t take ten minutes of your time, I promise. Please?”
Roz knew how badly Cathleen was manipulating Joey’s love for her own twisted gain. Cat wanted Joey on top, not for his good, but for her own good. That had to stop. Maybe if they met face to face, and Roz exposed her for the fraud she knew her to be, it could get her to cut her crap. Or, at the least, let her know that Roz wasn’t buying whatever she was selling to her son. “Tell her to come by this afternoon. Around one.”
Joey was ecstatic. “Thanks, Roz. You won’t regret it.”
“Okay,” Roz said, and hung up the phone. But as soon as she did, she remembered what Mick had said. In times like these, she was not to take anything for granted. Anything out of the ordinary, he said, should be met with suspicion and red flags. Anything. Including, she now realized, some meeting with Cathleen.
Instead of putting her cellphone back on the nightstand, she made a call of her own.
Mick was still on his plane, about to touch down in Miami, when the call came through. When he saw that it was Roz, he answered quickly. “You’re okay?” he asked.
“I’m good. I missed you this morning.”
“I left early. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You’re in Florida yet?”
“Just about to touch down. What’s up?”
“I got a call from Joey this morning. He says, in light of what happened last night apparently, at our so-called family meeting, he wants me to meet with his mother.”
“With Cathleen? What about?”
“Him,” Roz said. “And his position in either your life or your organization. I couldn’t figure out which.”
Roz could feel Mick’s frown. He was a man’s man. All this kid bullshit Joey played was alien to him. “Why would that boy need his mama to speak up for him?”
“That’s how it’s done, Mick, when you’re close to your mother. Neither one of us have ever been close to our mothers, so we wouldn’t understand. But apparently when you have a bond like that, she helps you that way.”
“A man-baby,” Mick said. “Joey is a man-baby. That’s what he is.”
“He wants me to meet with her today. I told him okay. Around one. But I wanted to make sure it was okay with you.”
“I don’t trust her, Rosalind.”
“Neither do I.”
“If you want to have the meeting, then that’s fine. But I want Deuce right there beside you, along with every other man on your security detail.”
Roz was surprised. “You think all of that is necessary? You think it takes all that?”
“I hope not. But where Cathleen is concerned, I don’t want any surprises. Tight and total security when she steps foot on our property without me there. Understood?”
Roz nodded. Sometimes Mick ruled with a serious iron fist. “Yes, Daddy,” she said.
Mick laughed. “I’ll Daddy your ass when I get back there.”
Roz smiled.
“But don’t trust that bitch, Rosalind,” he warned her. “Keep an eye on her.”
“I will, don’t worry. You just get back to me in one piece.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said. “On a scale of one-to-ten in terms of danger, this mission is a zero.”
Roz felt better. Much better. “Good,” she said. “You just made my morning.”
“Oh, it’s beautiful, Manny. Thanks. My daughter is going to be so happy.”
“Tell her I made it specially for her,” Manny replied.
“I will. It’s better than I envisioned it would be.”
Carmen paid for the birthday cake, paid for a box of birthday candles, and headed out to the curb with Manny following with the cake in his arms.
Bodyguards surrounded her as she exited the bakery. Manny moved to place the cake on the passenger seat beside her, but a burly bodyguard grabbed the cake from him and pushed him aside.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Manny responded.
“It’s okay, Manny. Joe forgot his manners. Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome, my darling,” Manny said, smiling. And then he growled at the bodyguard and went back inside of his store.
Carmen Renault got in under the steering wheel on the driver’s side, while one bodyguard got on th
e front passenger seat, and the other bodyguard got into the backseat. Another bodyguard got into the car parked behind her car as she buckled her seatbelt and applied a fresh coat of lipstick onto her lips. And then she pressed her feet on the brake and hit the Start button.
At the back of the street, on a corner that intersected the suburban Miami neighborhood, Mick Sinatra saw her get in, saw her bodyguards get in, and saw when the car was cranked up. He saw when the brakes were engaged.
And he didn’t hesitate. The same way Poppa Renault didn’t hesitate when they were gunning down Mick like a dog in the street. He had no sympathy. And he pressed the button. He pressed it hard. And as soon as the car began to pull away from the curb, it exploded into a fireball of metal shards. It exploded with body parts flying too.
The entire street went crazy. Car alarms began going off as straps of metal hit their windshields. Dogs began barking uncontrollably and getting away from their owners’ leech. People were running to the scene, while others were running away from the scene.
And Mick cranked up his rental car, and slowly drove away.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Roz was on the back patio, seated at a small patio table. She was reading over a stack of papers and comfortable in the unseasonably mild weather in her shorts and t-shirt. Deuce escorted Cathleen through the servant’s quarters and around to where Roz was seated. Roz removed her shades, and looked at Cathleen. “Good afternoon.”
“How are you, Roz?” Cathleen had a grand smile on her face. “You look like a million bucks.”
Roz didn’t return the compliment. “Have a seat,” she offered.
What a bitch, Cathleen thought as she sat at the table too. Deuce remained on the patio, just out of earshot of the two ladies, and a team of bodyguards surrounded the backyard. Cathleen smiled. “You would think the Pope lived here with all of this security.”
Roz smiled. “I actually agree with you on that.”
“Mick really knows how to do it. Or to overdo it,” Cathleen added, “depending on your point of view.”
“Would you like some tea?” Roz asked, lifting the pitcher of fresh ice tea. She wasn’t about to denigrate Mick in front of this woman for any reason.
“Yes, thank you,” Cathleen said. “I’ll love some.”
Roz took a glass from the tea tray and filled it for Cathleen. Then she handed it to her. Cathleen immediately took a swallow. “Ooh, it’s good.”
“So what’s this meeting about?” Roz asked. “Joey said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I did. And thanks for agreeing to meet with me. I know we haven’t exactly been friends. But last night, when I apologized, I meant every word.”
The heifer was lying, and Roz knew it, but she listened. She promised Joey she would listen and hear what the witch had to say.
“I treated you badly from day one,” Cathleen continued. “From day one. I don’t know why I did it. Wait. I take that back. You and I both know why I did it. But I was wrong.”
Roz stared at her.
“You ever wondered why none of the mothers of Mick’s children ever married after we had Mick’s child?”
It had crossed Roz’s mind a time or two. But she didn’t share that thought with Cathleen.
“But it’s true,” Cathleen continued. “None of us ever got married. It was like after Mick, what do you do?” She smiled. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. But there’s no after Mick. There’s just Mick. A man with more flaws than any man I’ve ever known. And yet the best man I’ve ever known. Isn’t that crazy?”
A look of sad and bitter regret appeared in Cathleen’s eyes. She drank more tea before she continued. “I could have been Mrs. Sinatra if I would have played my cards right,” she said. “That’s what I used to tell myself. I think that’s what all of his baby mamas tell ourselves. If only we would have done this, or that, or that other thing, we would be in your position. But, of course, it’s all lies.”
Roz continued to stare at Cathleen. Suddenly, she wasn’t the beautiful, glamorous woman of Roz’s mind, but this aging, fading beauty queen who once commanded the attention of kings, and now couldn’t even command her own attention. But what Roz was mainly trying to see was what was her angle. Roz was certain there was an angle. Joey had already told her that it was.
But it didn’t identify itself at first. Cathleen kept talking, Roz kept listening, until they eased into a quiet calmness. Even the guards were bored.
But then Cathleen got to the point. “Ursula called that meeting last night because she felt Teddy should be advancing in Mick’s organization faster than he was. It wasn’t about the family or anything like that. It was all about golden boy Teddy.”
Roz had assumed as much.
“My meeting with you today,” Cathleen continued, “is along those same lines if I were to be honest. I wanted to meet with you today to discuss my son. To discuss Joey.”
There it was, Roz thought. She was finally getting to the point.
Cathleen took another drink, and then paused. “Joey needs your help,” she said bluntly. “He’s done everything he can do to get his father’s attention, but nothing’s worked.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Roz responded. “He has his father’s attention.”
Just as Roz spoke those words, her cellphone rang. Cathleen knew this was her opportunity. Maybe her one and only opportunity.
Cathleen did it exactly as Jake the Snake had taught her. As soon as she heard the cellphone buzz, and before Roz even glanced at it, she picked up the pitcher of tea and began refreshing their drinks. “I know he’s working with his father now,” she said, “and that’s a good thing. But that’s not the kind of attention I mean.”
As soon as Roz grabbed her cellphone and looked down at its Caller ID, Cathleen moved her arm so that the poison-filled capsule she had up her sleeve could effortlessly flow into Roz’s cup of tea. There was no way anyone would see her do it, Jake assured her, and he was right. Cathleen didn’t have to linger over Roz’s cup any longer than it took for her to refresh it. When Cathleen sat the pitcher back down, she was inwardly elated. It was flawless. Nobody, not all those guards on duty, not even noisy-ass Deuce McCurry, saw a thing.
“The kind of attention I’m talking about,” Cathleen kept talking, “is the kind that will get Joey somewhere.”
Roz held up a finger. “Bear with,” she said. “I need to take this.” She answered her cellphone. “Yes, Tee, what’s up? That’s right. No, keep the original. That’s right. But send it in triplicate. Everybody has to be on board.”
As Roz spoke with her secretary on the phone, Cathleen leaned back, crossed her legs and enjoyed the view of Mick’s gorgeous backyard. When they used to fuck, she and Mick, he never brought her to his home. Bella Caine and Ursula Mastriano said he fucked them a time or two in one of the many guest houses on his property, but never in his main house. But Cathleen didn’t even get the guest house treatment. It was always her house or hotels and motels for her. Now she was about to outdo them all. And nobody would be the wiser.
As Roz continued conversing with her secretary, Cathleen thought about what Jake the Snake had told her. The poison wouldn’t work right away, he said. It had to be in the system forty-eight hours before it all kicked in. But by that time, Jake said, Cathleen would be long gone and Rosalind Sinatra would be having symptoms of a heart attack right before her prick of a husband’s very eyes.
Jake made clear that Mick wouldn’t be able to pull any heroic shit and save his wife because, by Cathleen spiking Roz’s tea with that poison pill, that cake would have already been baked. Roz would die just as surely as she was born. The authorities would declare it a heart attack, as there would be no trace of anything else, and the glass Roz would have used to drink her death pill would have been cleaned and put away long before the day of her death. An ingenious plan. Cathleen was getting goosebumps just thinking about how ingenious.
By the time Roz ended her phone call, Cathleen h
ad already sipped half of her own tea. “Sorry about that,” Roz said. “We’re accepting new clients now and it’s always a lot of paperwork and back-and-forth with the lawyers to get it done.”
“Yeah, I saw that craziness surrounding your talent agency. So many of your clients wanted out of their contracts just because Mick has a past. I thought that was some stupid shit.”
“It was,” Roz said, staring at Cathleen. “But it’s no big deal. We’re starting to get new clients. And it’ll only pick up. The blacklist is slowly being lifted.”
“I don’t see why there was one in the first place,” Cathleen said, sipping even more tea in a reverse psychology way of urging, without saying a word, Roz to sip some too.
And it worked. When Roz picked up her cup of tea, Cathleen’s heart began to pound with unbridled joy and excitement. Once Roz took even one drink, Cathleen’s job would be done. And she could talk up a storm about Roz helping Joey, and then leave without incident. She would have just supplied the capsule that would kill Rosalind Sinatra, but nobody would ever know. It wouldn’t kick in for forty-eight hours. Cathleen wanted to smile. This felt better than sex with Mick!
But something happened on the way to Cathleen’s climax. Roz didn’t cooperate. “Now drink this one,” Roz said to her and sat her glass of tea in front of Cathleen.
Cathleen was thrown. “Pardon me?” Her heart beat was still quickening, but for all the wrong reasons. She decided to smile. To play it off. “Why would I drink your tea? I don’t drink behind anybody ever.”
Roz jumped up, and her anger was on full display. “Drink this one, motherfucker!” Roz yelled, and grabbed Cathleen by the neck and held Cathleen’s head back. Deuce and all of the other guards began running toward the ladies.
But Roz didn’t need their help. She began forcing the tea Cathleen had spiked down Cathleen’s own throat. And Roz was livid. “Trying to poison me, bitch?” she yelled. “Trying to poison me?”
Cathleen struggled mightily to break free of Roz, but Roz’s anger trumped Cathleen’s fear and Roz was too strong. Roz forced every ounce of that spiked tea down Cathleen’s sorry throat. And then she let go, and Cathleen, and the chair she still sat in, fell over.
Mick Sinatra: Now Will You Weep Page 12