Carmelo leaned his bloody face back into the house, holding onto his neck.
But as Mick began to move away, to walk away, he thought about Rosalind. And those photographs. And how badly that prick had hurt her. Face cuts didn’t seem to capture how Mick felt about what that man did to Rosalind’s heart. Rosalind’s heart deserved better than this. “On second thought,” Mick said, turning around.
As soon as he turned, Carmelo tried to push back through the broken window, but it was too late. Mick pulled out his gun and shot Carmelo within an inch of his penis. Carmelo doubled over, terrified that he had actually struck his golden cock, and then dropped to his knees.
“That’ll make it clearer,” Mick said. He handed Danny the pistol, and then left the house.
Danny emptied the gun’s chamber, and then threw the gun at Carmelo’s side. “Accidents happen, right?” he asked Carmelo.
Carmelo was nodding his head. He was in agony, but he knew he had to agree with whatever Danny said. “Yes. Accidents happen.”
“You did this to yourself. Didn’t you?”
Again Carmelo nodded his head. “I did it to me. I did it to myself, yes, sir.”
“Talk. Tell anyone, even your mama, and you’re dead, lover boy. You’re dead and your dick will be in the fucking river. Understand? Is that clear, too?”
“It’s clear,” Carmelo said again, praying that these people would just leave. He needed medical attention. He needed help! “Nothing has ever been more clearer in my entire life,” he added.
Danny smiled. “Good,” he said. “Because accidents do happen.”
Then Danny stared at Carmelo a moment longer, and then left too.
Carmelo immediately crawled on his knees to the nearest phone. He quickly called 911. “I need an ambulance!” he cried into the phone.
“What is your emergency, sir?” the 911 dispatcher asked. “What happened?”
Carmelo wanted to tell exactly what happened, but then he looked at the gun. It was undoubtedly unregistered. And he thought about both men, especially the main one: the boss. That man was no amateur. He knew what he was doing. “I shot myself,” he said. “I found this gun on the beach, didn’t know who it belonged to, and I shot myself.” Then Carmelo cried out as the pain intensified. “Send an ambulance,” he yelled. “Why are you asking me all these questions for? Send an ambulance now!”
And Carmelo thought about Roz through his agony. And how he always thought he got her good. But now, as he laid there, as he waited for the ambulance to arrive, he couldn’t believe how good she got him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Over the next several months, the relationship between Roz and Mick grew stronger. What surprised Roz was Mick’s level of commitment. He seemed determined to make it work. He came to town often, sometimes three times per week, just to spend time with her. He had businesses in New York, but none of them demanded that kind of attention. Whenever he was in town, he spent nearly all of his time with Roz. Her acting class was still going strong, even if her acting career continued to wane, but because she had Mick, because her life was no longer revolving around getting some elusive big break, she loved things just the way they were.
Until she got a call from Barry.
It was a Thursday night. Mick was in Philly taking care of business and Roz was at home, in for the night she thought, handling her own. But Barry called. He wanted her to come down to the rehearsal hall. He had a part for her in his current Broadway play. “We had to fire one of the actresses,” he said over the phone. “I thought about you. Come over to the theater and we’ll talk.”
Roz was certain that this was all Mick’s doing, so she took what should have been great news with a grain of salt. “I couldn’t get a part in your chorus line a few months back,” she said skeptically, “but now you want me as one of your featured actresses? This has Mick written all over it.”
“I knew you would think that,” Barry said. “But I’m telling you it’s not true. I haven’t spoken to Mick since you and he had dinner at my house. I’m his friend, I love him to death, but that’s how he treats me. Once per year, sometimes twice, he might give me a call or drop by. Mick has nothing to do with this. The fact that you’re dating Mick has nothing to do with this.”
Roz wondered how Barry would know she and Mick were still dating if he hadn’t heard from him, but she also knew that New York was a small big town. Word spread like wildfire. And she wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth any longer. She agreed to meet.
She arrived at the rehearsal hall in the middle of set runs. Barry was in the middle of it all, as usual, but he managed to pull away when he saw Roz.
“You made it,” he said with a grand smile.
“You convinced me that Mick wasn’t behind your decision,” she said.
“On come, Roz. He doesn’t control me in that regard. But come with me. I need to explain this part to you carefully. You have some big shoes to fill,” he added, as he began walking away.
Roz hurried behind him, and followed him upstairs to one of the private rooms. “Why did you have to fire her?” she asked as they walked.
“Too many demands. Lack of chemistry. A plethora of reasons. We’re glad she’s gone.” Then Barry glanced back at Roz as she hurried behind him. “But I will not tolerate all of that diva drama with you.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Roz said. She was surprised that she wasn’t more excited. Just a few months ago and this would have been like a dream come true. But now that she had Mick, she realized how limited everything else affected her. Especially since it was Barry giving her this break. Especially since Barry wouldn’t give her the time of day just a few months ago.
“We’ll talk in here,” he said, unlocking one of the private rooms. He and Roz went inside. He closed the door behind them.
But when they got into the room, and Barry leaned against an old discarded desk, Roz felt strange. He was a very busy man. Why was he lingering like this? “So which part is it?” she asked. Normally, the director would give the new actress the Book and do some dry line runs with her. But Barry was just sitting there staring at her.
Roz began feeling uncomfortable. “Okay now, what is this about, Bare?” she asked.
“Why it’s about you, Roz,” he said. “It’s always about you.”
Roz frowned. “What’s always about you?”
“You want in?” Barry asked her. “Would you like to be in my play?”
Roz was puzzled. That was the reason why she had come. “Yes,” she said.
“The part is yours if you give me some and give it to me raw.”
Roz was floored. What? This was Barry. Mick’s friend! “Excuse me?” she asked, with high offense in her voice.
“I want to go inside of you exactly the way Mick goes inside of you. Because I know he’s hitting it. I know that Mandingo dick of his is hitting you real good. I want to feel what he feels when your pussy melts in his mouth.”
“You perverted asshole!” Roz yelled. “What’s wrong with you? I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last man alive! You think I’m going to do something that vile just to get a part? Are you out of your mind? Let me get the hell out of here!”
Roz began hurrying out of the room. Barry, stunned by her response, hurried behind her. If Mick found out he was dead. He knew it. He had to make amends. He had to make sure that bitch didn’t tell!
Roz managed to make it out of the room and was heading down the stairs by the time Barry was able to catch her and grab her arm. They began tussling on the stairs.
“You can’t tell, Mick,” Barry was insisting. “If you tell Mick I’ll kill you, Roz! I swear I will!”
But Roz wasn’t thinking about that awful man. She was fighting to break free.
But it was all about Mick with Barry. “Mick can never know,” he said anxiously. “You was supposed to say yes. What bed action whore like you wouldn’t say yes? Since when did you get morals?”
“Si
nce my parents birth me, you moronic creep. Let me go!”
But Barry wouldn’t. Roz had nearly lost her balance twice on those stairs, so she became more anxious. And then she was able to thrust herself out of his grasp. But when she did, Barry was the one to lose his balance. Only he didn’t correct, but overcorrected and fell.
Roz was horrified as he fell down that long flight of stairs. His thumps, as he hit stair after stair after stair, were so loud that a few of the actors on stage hurried back stage to see what was going on.
By the time they arrived, Barry was just making it to the bottom. One actor quickly checked his pulse, praying for a reading. But then, after the check, he looked at the other actors. “He’s dead,” he said, unable to believe it himself.
And then the actors, every one of them, looked up at Roz.
Roz was too stunned to speak.
Mick motioned for Deuce to drive. He was in the backseat of his limousine, with the three Dons seated with him, as Deuce drove them the two blocks to Stanislav Provensano’s house. Teddy Stefani was on board. He trusted Mick’s judgment. Carp Bianchi had his doubts, but after what Mick did to him previously, he wasn’t about to verbalize those concerns. Vito DeLuca was lukewarm. He trusted Mick’s judgment, but he also knew Provensano. He didn’t honestly see how this could work.
But when the limousine stopped outside of Provensano’s gate, DeLuca could hold his peace no longer.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this Micky,” he said. “A real bad feeling.”
Mick looked at him. “What’s your concern?”
“My life, that’s my concern! How are we going to approach this man? He knows what’s going down at the docks. His men are supposed to be seizing our cargo. And now all of sudden we’re paying him a visit? He’ll see us coming a mile away.”
“Good,” Mick said. “I want him to.” And then Mick got out of the limousine. He wore black trousers, a black turtleneck, and his long flowing white ankle-length coat. Hardly attire for a killing, the Dons thought, but Mick was odd that way. He never came the way they expected.
But going into enemy territory with just good looks and charm was too odd for DeLuca. “What the fuck is his problem?” he asked his fellow Dons. But Teddy was already getting out of the limo, and Carp, after that run-in with Mick, wasn’t trying to rebel right now. He got out too.
By the time DeLuca shook his head and said a few more expletives, he got out too, and then Mick and his associates walked up to the gate.
“How are we getting in?” DeLuca asked Mick. “Tell me that.”
And as soon as he asked it, a security force that was four men strong, opened the gate and met them with drawn weapons. DeLuca almost lost his lunch. He looked at Mick, who looked calm as a cucumber.
The men, all four of them, realized who it was and pulled their weapons down to their sides. To even Teddy’s shock, the four men stepped aside and allowed them unimpeded passage through.
DeLuca and Carp were beyond shock. Now it was Teddy’s time to look at Mick. “Why would Provensano’s men let us through this easily?” he asked him.
“Because they are not Provensano’s men,” Mick responded. “They’re mine.”
Mick smiled without looking at the Dons. Because he knew they were blown away. And they were. They looked back at the men as they headed for the mansion. By the time they made it to the front door, all three Dons were smiling too. Especially when the front door opened, and they were escorted in by another group of Mick’s security force.
But that was when it got real for them. Because they saw the bodies of Provensano’s security: in the living area, down the hall, on the stairs. Blood splattered the walls like spilled paint. There had been a bloodbath here.
And then Leo emerged from a side room.
DeLuca panicked. He knew Leo was their security chief. “Why aren’t you at the docks?” he asked him. “Why aren’t you guarding out shipment?”
“Our men took care of that. The shipment is secure. Provensano’s henchmen are all dead.”
“Did we have any casualties?” Teddy asked.
“Three,” Leo said. “Unfortunately. But they had fifteen.”
Since Mick already knew the count, he looked around. “Where is he?” he asked Leo.
Leo escorted the men to the parlor where Stanislav Provensano sat behind his desk with his dog, a French Labrador, in his lap. Two men stood beside him. When Provensano saw Mick, he attempted to rise from his seat. “Michello!” he declared. But the two men, each pressing on one of his shoulders, sat him back down.
“Michello, what is going on here? This is an outrageous power grab and the families won’t stand for it!”
“A power grab?” Mick asked as he and the Dons headed toward the desk. Leo remained at the door. “And what do you call your dock ambush? A get together?”
Provensano wanted to deny any involvement, Mick could see that terror in his eyes. But he didn’t. He knew not to play Mick that way. “So you knew about that?” he asked.
Mick appreciated that Provensano respected him at least that much. “I knew about it.”
“Your snitches were double agents? Is that what happened?”
“No,” Mick said. “But yours were.”
The three Dons looked at Mick. They had no clue Mick had infiltrated Provensano’s network. They had no clue Mick had planned any of this! The idea that some of them had doubted him seemed absurd now. Mick, they realized, knew what he was doing.
“So what are you going to do?” Provensano asked. “Kill me because I play the game too well? Kill me and start a war? Is that what you are going to do, Michello?”
Mick stared at him. “No,” he said. Then he looked at Teddy Stefani. “But Teddy will.”
Provensano smiled. “Teddy Stefani, are you kidding me?”
“Teddy will be the leader of Poltergeist when I drop out,” Mick said. It was high time, Mick though, that Teddy started acting like one.
And Teddy did. With pleasure. He riddled Provensano with bullets. He didn’t stop until Provensano was not only dead, but had fallen to the floor.
But if Mick thought he was turning over the reins to Teddy without dissent, he was vastly mistaken. Because Vito DeLuca and Carp Bianchi looked at each other. They were not ready to let go. Mick’s ability to plan ahead, to think and then rethink contingencies, to execute flawlessly with every changed strategy, had not gone unnoticed. Mick was not getting away from them. He wanted out, but they were shutting the door. Mick Sinatra was their golden goose. Mick Sinatra was a victim of his own success.
By the time Mick arrived at his big, quiet home, he could barely stand. He dropped his keys on his foyer stand, went to his bar inside his library, and poured himself a stiff one. He went upstairs, drank down his remaining liquor, and got in the shower. By the time he got out, and dried himself, he fell naked on top of his bed. By the time he pulled out his cell phone to call Rosalind, he couldn’t stop wondering about his choices. He wasn’t a kid anymore. How many more long days like this, where he not only had to orchestrate an ambush at Provensano’s house, but had to stop an ambush at the docks, were he going to be able to endure? Business shouldn’t be so dangerous and treacherous. Then he smiled. Maybe he just missed Rosalind, maybe it was all about the pleasure of life rather than the business of it, and he was conflating the two.
He called Rosalind, but she didn’t answer her phone. He then phoned the men he had secretly guarding her, only to be told that they left after she went home for the evening. Mick tried her phone again, home and cell. But still no response.
Now he was getting worried. This was not like Roz. She always answered her phone unless she was teaching her class. And she wasn’t teaching any class this time of night. He checked his cell phone messages. He had none. No text, no voice mail.
It wasn’t until Mick checked his home phone, did he realize he had a message. His cell phone was off during his Provensano run, and she might have tried to leave a message then. When he ch
ecked his home phone message, and realized it was indeed from Roz, he felt better. But only until he heard the message.
“Mick, it’s me,” she said. But he could immediately hear the distress in her voice. And when she said, “I’ve been arrested,” his already intense eyes opened wider. Mick was a very muscular man, and every one of those muscles tightened when she said those words.
But his heart nearly dropped when she added: “They say I killed Barry Acker. They said I . . . They said I was responsible for his death. I’m in trouble, Mick. I’m in trouble.”
Mick’s heart nearly stopped. He’d been in more harrowing situations than most men could dream about. But this news, about Barry, about Rosalind, cut him to the core. There had to be some mistake! But Rosalind needed him. That was all he could think about. Rosalind. He got up quickly, dressed, and ordered his pilot to get his plane ready.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Roz felt as if she had lived her entire life in a night. As she sat in the filthy cell and listened to others in other cells complain about the jail conditions, rather than their own condition, she felt as if she was living in the Twilight Zone. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since her arrest. Twenty-four long hours since that actor pronounced Barry Acker dead and looked up at Roz. Twenty-four hours since she left a message on Mick’s voice mail, and hadn’t heard a word back from him.
She lifted her legs onto the filthy cot and leaned her head back. In the jumpsuit they made her wear, in that stank cell they made her sit in, she felt like the common criminal they made her out to be. But she knew it was an accident. She knew she never pushed Barry down any stairs, as they were alleging, or did anything to assist his fall. He fell on his own. He tried to harm her, but harmed himself instead. How was that her fault?
But Mick didn’t know her side of the story. All he knew was what the cops were probably telling him or Barry’s wife Agnes, who arrived at the theater as they were taking Roz away. Agnes tried to snatch Roz’s hair out, and would have if those cops hadn’t provided the buffer. Murderer, Agnes had called her. You killed Barry!
Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life Page 19