“Sorry to disturb you, sir, and ma’am,” the chief said.
Mick and Roz looked at him, but kept holding each other and moving to the rhythm of the beat. “What is it?” Mick asked.
“The lawyers are here, sir,” the chief said. “A deal’s on the table.”
Mick and Roz both stopped dancing, and looked at each other. It was no question that it was worth the interruption. They headed for the main house too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Mick and Roz sat down on the sofa in front of the team of lawyers, a team that included the lead attorney, famed criminal defense lawyer Bo Dodd, five more of the world’s greatest lawyers, and Gemma, to make certain the family’s interests were upheld first and foremost.
They were in the living room. Charles and Jenay, along with the Gabrinis, were in there too. Joey and Gloria, along with Nikki, were in the family room with the twins. So those in that living room knew they could speak freely.
“What’s the offer?” Mick asked the lawyers.
“Plead guilty to all charges,” Bo said, “and they’ll be willing to recommend forty years.”
All of the family members in the room were deflated. They couldn’t believe that was the offer. “Forty years?” Roz asked. “What kind of deal is that?”
“The best he’s ever likely to get,” said Bo. “And the U.S. Attorney’s office made clear: their first offer is going to be their best offer. And they ain’t lying, sir.”
Everybody looked at Mick. Roz’s heart was pounding. Forty years? Was that the best they could hope for? She would be eighty when he was released, and he would be damn-near dead when he was released!
“No dice,” Mick said. “No deal.”
“Damn right,” said Reno and Sal at the same time.
“You’re certain about that, Uncle Mick?” Tommy asked him.
Everybody looked at Tommy. “Of course he’s certain, Tommy,” said Sal. “Why would you even ask that question?”
“I just don’t want him to get the death penalty,” Tommy admitted, and everybody stopped. And looked at the lawyers. Roz was floored. But this time, the entire family didn’t want Bo to speak. They needed to hear it from Gemma.
“Is it true, Gemma?” Charles, who was floored too, asked her. “The death penalty is on the table?”
Gemma was Sal Gabrini’s wife. And as the wife of a mob boss herself, she was accustomed to being the bearer of bad news. But even she was stumped for words. But she nodded. “The federal government has determined that the crimes alleged are considered capital offenses,” she said. “So yes, the death penalty is on the table.”
That put a pin in their balloons. All except Mick. He was still firm. “No deal,” he said again.
Roz wasn’t so quick to agree with him that time. “But what if they find him guilty?” she asked the lawyers. “Then it would be more than on the table, wouldn’t it? They would absolutely ask for Death, wouldn’t they?”
“Not necessarily, Mrs. Sinatra,” Bo said.
“Don’t not necessarily her!” Charles fired back. “You tell her the truth. They would have just convicted Mick the Tick Sinatra in what’s sure to be the trial of the century in the mob world. They’ll have him exactly where they’ve always wanted him. Why wouldn’t they ask for Death?”
It was absolutely true, and everybody in that room knew it too. But only Gemma, on the legal team, had the balls to speak up. “Yes, Roz,” she said. “If Uncle Mick is found guilty, they will, in all likelihood, ask for Death.”
A chill filled the already chilly room, and everybody seemed to deflate and lean back. Until Bo received a call, answered it, and then quickly ended the call. He looked at Mick.
“What is it?” Roz asked him.
“They picked up Teddy,” Bo said, and everybody gasped.
“What do you mean picked him up?” Charles asked.
“He’s been arrested, sir,” Bo explained.
“They’re putting the squeeze on him,” said Sal.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Roz asked.
“They will lock him up and throw away the key, too,” Bo said, “if he doesn’t snitch on his father. They want him to turn on Mick.”
More deflation and chill in the room. They didn’t think they could bear any more bad news. “Dear Lord,” Jenay said for everybody.
But Roz was looking at Bo. “How many years are they talking about giving Teddy? What do you mean by throw away the key?” she asked him, although intellectually she already knew.
“He’ll be subject to the same punishment as your husband,” Bo answered her.
Roz’s heart dropped. Not Teddy too!
“Unless,” Bo continued, “Teddy rats out your husband. Then, in all probability, he’ll walk.”
“And Uncle Mick will fry,” Sal said bluntly.
But Charles and Roz looked at Mick. He was the only person in that room who wasn’t in an uproar. “What are you thinking, Michello?” Charles asked his beloved brother.
Mick looked at the lawyers. “Send Teddy word,” he said. “Tell him to save himself. Tell him I order him to testify against me, and save himself.”
They all understood why Mick was sacrificing himself for his son. Every family member in that room would have done the same thing. But damn!
“What about you, Uncle Mick?” Tommy asked. “Sal was crude, but he was right. If Teddy turns evidence against you, he’ll walk. But you’re get convicted. And we’ve already discussed what that would mean.”
“I know that, Thomas,” Mick said. “You don’t think I know that shit? I know what I’m facing. But I’ll be facing it, not my son. Not ever!” Mick looked at Gemma. “I want you, Gemma, to get the word to Teddy, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Gemma said.
“I want you to tell him that he’d better save himself or I’ll kill his ass. And he knows I don’t mince words.”
Gemma swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said.
Then Mick looked at the lawyers. “And as for the rest of you,” he said as he stood up, “your asses better make certain I beat this rap. I’m paying millions for your representation. You’ll rue the day you were born if you don’t earn every penny.” Then he reached for Roz’s hand.
She took his hand, stood up too, and they made their way to the family room. To be with their children.
Everybody else still appeared to be in shock after Mick and Roz left.
But Charles was looking at Bo. “It’s going to be the trial of the century,” he said to the lead attorney. “You’d better be Johnnie Cochran. And my brother, my beloved baby brother,” he said, his voice cracking, “better be OJ.” Then he got up, with Jenay, and left the room too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Calling it the trial of the century would not have been an overstatement. Media from around the world clogged up the federal court building in downtown Philadelphia right alongside the America press, as they broadcast nightly what was happening inside that courtroom.
At first, all was going well. Mick sat at the defense table flanked by his team of lawyers, while Roz and the family sat behind him in the gallery. They all looked like regular professional business people. But every time the agents and prosecutors looked their way, they snorted. Business people their ass!
But even Roz was upbeat by how lame the prosecution’s case-in-chief was going. She even leaned over to Charles and whispered if he had paid the prosecutors to fumble the ball.
Charles smiled. “Seems that way to me too,” he said. “But nope. They just aren’t very good,” he said happily.
And it continued to be that way as witness after witness gave accounts contrary to what they had said at their Depositions, and each of them were contradicting the other one, and all of them were pointing so many fingers at various dead mobsters that it became a regular freak show. The press was taking the prosecution team to task with their brutal commentary, and their case against Mick quickly became a public embarrassment. The lead prosecutor and his team
were in panic mode. The Sinatras and Gabrinis loved it!
But they still knew they had a major problem. Because the press saw it too. Despite the prosecution’s fumbles, the jury seemed to remain on their side. The jury still seemed convinced that the brooding man with the sleepy eye and the slick black hair at the defense table, was guilty as sin. He projected the air of a vicious mob boss even without doing anything but sitting there. Mick, by just being himself, was their biggest problem. And that was what kept the family on edge.
But everything changed on day twenty-six of the trial. The lead prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Alan Cunningham, stood up and announced the government’s next witness. “The government calls Theodore Sinatra to the stand,” he announced, and although the family knew it was coming, the public didn’t. There were audible gasps in the packed courtroom as everybody turned around toward the entrance, and waited for the arrival of the prosecution’s star witness.
In a room across the corridor from the courtroom, Teddy could hardly believe he was there. Locked up for over a month. Unable to see his family. Unable to see Nikki! Being threatened with the death penalty if he didn’t snitch and went down with Pop. He could hardly believe it.
The prosecution requested no bail and the judge denied him bail, despite the fact they had granted his father bail! But they wanted him under their thumb. They didn’t want him to change his mind.
And there he was. Sitting in a guarded room that amounted to yet another cell, waiting to take that walk of shame across the hall and rat out his own father. But Mick himself gave the word, and sent it by Sal Gabrini’s old lady no less. Save yourself, Pop said. What would be the point of both of them facing the chair?
Teddy ran his hands through his hair and leaned back. It seemed as if all was well one minute, they all had fun at the wedding, and then the next thing they knew they were arresting Pop? And Teddy knew the drill. He immediately had to get and stay out of sight, off the grid, to protect the future of all of the families in his father’s syndicate. It was what he always wanted, to be number one, the head man in charge. But not like this! And then the Feds tracked him down anyway.
A knock was heard on the door, and the guard opened it. “They’re ready,” the bailiff said and Teddy was grabbed by the guard and handed over to the bailiff.
And Teddy, in some cheap suit the jail provided for him, walked into that courtroom and on to that stand, facing his family for the first time in a month. Seeing Nikki, who had tears in her eyes. And his father, who sat at that defense table looking like his normal menacing, powerful self, as if he owned that too. Teddy’s heart dropped. It was going to be even harder than he thought.
“Mr. Sinatra,” Cunningham began, “please tell the jury what was your role is in your father’s organization.”
“I was his second-in-command,” Teddy said, and the family, especially the Gabrinis, looked at each other. They were shocked. He was going to rat Mick out just like Mick told him to. They knew he was in a rough spot, but it still wasn’t done. Not in their family!
But Nikki continued to hold out hope. Teddy wasn’t that kind of man, and she knew it. He faced an awful choice: snitch on his father to save himself, or they both might go down. But she knew Teddy. He was too proud to go down that rabbit hole, and live with that decision. She wanted him free, and Mick free. But it looked as if somebody had to be sacrificed. It was an awful spot Teddy was in.
“As his second-in-command,” Cunningham continued, “you knew and had dealings with certain people. Am I correct, sir?”
“You’re correct,” Teddy said.
“Certain people like Frankie DiGenova?” Cunningham asked.
Teddy nodded. “That’s correct.”
“And you knew his wife, and two daughters too. Didn’t you?”
Teddy nodded again. “Yes.”
“On the night they were murdered, Mr. Sinatra, weren’t you and your father at their home?”
Everybody stared at Teddy. If the government got Mick on those murder charges, it was going to be all she wrote. It would be over. He might as well gas up the gas chamber himself!
Say no, they were all inwardly begging Teddy to say. Just say no!
“Yes,” Teddy said, and the courtroom gasped again. “On that night in question, my father and I were at their house.”
The family was outwardly angry at Teddy. Joey, Sal, and Reno even turned around in their seats. “Motherfucker,” Amelia Sinatra said beneath her breath, staring angrily at her nephew too. Even Hammer Reese, who was there to show his support for Amelia, was surprised. And the Drakos clan, including Oz Drakos and his billionaire brother Alex Drakos, who were there to support Gloria, were all shocked too. But like Nikki, Gloria still couldn’t believe it either. Her on-again off-again boyfriend Oz took her hand, and squeezed it.
But despite all the histrionics around him, Mick didn’t bat an eye. He sat there stoically, staring at his son while the jury, and members of the public in the gallery, kept taking peeps at him. Teddy was smart and capable. That was why he made him his number two. That was why Mick believed, when he was long gone, Teddy was going to still be standing.
“Just so I’m clear,” the prosecutor said, “you did say yes, you and your father were at the house on the night of the murders. Is that what you said, Mr. Sinatra?”
“That’s what I said, yes,” Teddy responded.
“What did you and your father do after you arrived at the DiGenova home?”
“We sat down to dinner,” Teddy said.
“Dinner with whom, Mr. Sinatra?”
“The DiGenovas. Frankie, his wife Molly, and their two daughters.”
Cunningham glanced at the jury. They were spellbound. He was loving it! “So you and your father had dinner, on the night of the murders, with the DiGenovas. Did I hear you correctly, sir?”
Teddy nodded. “You heard me right,” he said.
“Isn’t it also true, Mr. Sinatra,” Cunningham said, “that while you and your father were at the home of Frankie DiGenova, and sat down at the dinner table with Frankie, his wife Molly, and their two daughters,” Cunningham said, “your father killed them all. Didn’t he, Mr. Sinatra?”
You could hear a pin drop in that courtroom as everybody from the family to the public to the judge and jury themselves waited for the answer with baited breath.
And Teddy delivered. “No, sir!” he said emphatically.
The family exhaled. The public gasped so loudly that the judge had to bring down the gavel and demanded order in the courtroom. And Mick, for the first time, looked at his son.
Cunningham was the one floored this time. He glanced at his second chair attorney, who glanced at their third chair attorney. That was not the deal they had agreed upon!
After the judge regained order, Cunningham continued. “Now, Mr. Sinatra. Are you telling me that your father did not kill the DiGenovas that night?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, yes, sir,” said Teddy.
“Then who killed them? You?” Cunningham asked.
“The old lady did it,” Teddy said. “Molly.”
“Oh, Mr. Sinatra, give me a break! Are you implying that that dear woman killed her own husband and children?”
“And herself,” Teddy said. “Yes, she did.”
“That’s not what you told us in Deposition, sir,” Cunningham said.
“Yes, it is,” Teddy said.
Cunningham quickly pulled out Teddy’s deposition file. “You said, and I quote,” he said, reading from the paper, “that ‘my father stood up from that table and watched them gunned down like rats in the sewer.’” Cunningham looked at Teddy. “Did you not say that, Mr. Sinatra?” he asked him.
“I said it, yes,” said Teddy. “And it’s true. They were gunned down like rats in a sewer. But not by my father. They were gunned down by Mrs. DiGenova!”
The audience laughed at the prosecution, although it was hardly a humorous subject. And Nikki, Joey, and Gloria relaxed. They should have known
Teddy would have it under control. He was smart like that.
Cunningham went over to the table and searched through a stack of papers with the other two government attorneys. They were all flustered. They were all watching their airtight case crumble before their very eyes. And Cunningham made an executive decision. He went back to the podium.
“Your Honor?” he said to the judge.
“Mr. Cunningham is recognized,” the judge said.
“Because of the change in testimony,” Cunningham said, “the government is now asking the Court to declare Mr. Theodore Sinatra as no longer a witness for the prosecution, but as a hostile witness, so that we may question him as such.”
The judge, however, looked at Teddy. “What do you have to say about that, Mr. Sinatra? Have your testimony changed from what you originally proffered to the prosecution?”
“No, sir,” Teddy said sincerely. “They want me to lie, Judge. They want me to get up here, under oath, and lie about my father. But he didn’t kill that family. I didn’t kill them either. The old lady killed them. Molly. Because she said Frankie was cheating with my half-sister’s mother, Bella Caine. And Mrs. Caine took video of those encounters and sent the video to Mrs. DiGenova. That’s why she killed her family. Because she was enraged. That’s why we went there in the first place.”
The judge didn’t understand. “Why did you go there in the first place?” he asked Teddy.
“Because of those tapes Bella Caine had given to Molly. Because when Frankie found out that Bella had gone to his wife, he had some of his goons work her over pretty badly. Bruises like you wouldn’t believe, Judge! So Pop and I figured we needed to let him know that he didn’t touch our family like that. You don’t hit a woman like that period. We wanted to have a civil conversation with Frankie. But his wife wouldn’t cooperate. Just bringing his cheating ways back up again caused her to go nuts on us, Judge. You should have seen her. It was awful.”
The Sinatra family sat as mesmerized as everybody else in that courtroom. Mick knew it was a lie overall. Frankie had never laid a hand on Bella Caine, mainly because Bella would not have let him. And they didn’t go see DiGenova to discuss any affair. But the main point, that Frankie had had an affair was Bella, was true. And that was all they needed to muddy-up the prosecution waters. Mick was pleased.
Mick Sinatra: Needing Her Again Page 17