Mick Sinatra 2: Love, Lies, and Jericho (14 page)

Mick knew he was fighting an uphill battle.
 
Roz told him that it was going to be
hard.
 
She told him that her mother was
an “aggressive” woman.
 
Somehow, however,
he didn’t expect this.

But before he could delve any deeper into a malaise
even Roz stopped trying to delve into, his cell phone rang.
 
It was a call he had to answer.
 
It was his son Teddy.

“You’ve got to come home, Dad,” Teddy said when Mick
saw the Caller ID, excused himself, and answered.

“And why is that?”

“It’s Joey,” Teddy responded. “Somebody tried to kill
Joey.
 
Joey’s been shot.”

The hospital
doors slid opened and Mick, with Roz by his side, hurried in.
 
All Mick knew was that Joey was out of surgery
and his mother and siblings were at his bedside.
 
But his prognosis, from the latest update he
received, was still unknown.

They stepped
onto the elevator and headed upstairs.
 
Although Mick had a heavy security presence at the hospital, they were not
visible at all to the untrained eye.
 
Mick did not believe in a visible presence.
 
If some asshole wanted to strike, they were
going to be watched without knowing they were being watched.
 
That was the Sinatra way.

Mick was
also in a state of panic and couldn’t calm his inner strife.
 
He was so worried about Joey that he could
hardly think straight.
 
Roz was
there.
 
She was his rock.
 
That was why he held her hand so
tightly.
 
His son was in trouble.
 
He needed her.

When they
arrived at his hospital room, Roz allowed Mick to walk in ahead of her.
 
Mick walked into the room and found his
normally vibrant eighteen year old son lifeless in a hospital bed.
 
And it shocked Mick even more than he thought
it would.
 
Roz could see the stress on
his face, and his sudden hesitation.
 
A
beautiful woman was knelt down beside the bed, crying and holding Joey’s hand,
and Teddy, Gloria and Adrian were also there.
 
When the woman heard the door open, and looked up and saw that it was
Mick, she stood up and hurried to him.
 
She ignored Roz completely as she slammed her slender body against
Mick’s rock hard form, and threw her arms around him.

“Oh, Mick,”
she cried as she held him.
 
“They say he
may not make it!”

Mick placed
his hands on her waist, and then he embraced her.
 
Her name was Cathleen Thomas, and she was
Joey’s mother and Mick’s former lover.
 
She sobbed in his arms.

Roz stayed
back.
 
She had already worked out that
the woman was undoubtedly Joey’s mother, and she couldn’t begin to know the
pain that woman was feeling.
 
Even Adrian
looked distraught.
 
It was bad
enough.
 
She wasn’t about to make a
scene.

Mick moved
away from the woman and made his way over to Joey and his other children.
 
It was only then did the woman look at Roz.

“Who are
you?” Cathleen asked.

“My name is
Rosalind.”

“I didn’t
ask your name. Who are you?”

Any other
time and Roz would have told this woman a thing or two.
 
But this was not that time.
 
“I’m Mick’s fiancée,” she said.

The woman
seemed almost as disgusted about Roz’s elevated position in Mick’s life as she
was about her son’s condition.
 
She gave
Roz a sneering look. But Roz looked away from her.
 
Mick was her concern.

Mick’s heart
was pounding as he looked at his youngest son.
 
Joey was asleep.
 
He looked so
young and angelic to Mick.
 
He was tough
on him.
 
He was tough on all of
them.
 
All the good it did.

He looked at
Teddy.
 
“What happened?”

“I don’t
know.
 
Somebody shot him, that’s all we
know.
 
Somebody . . . tried to kill him.”

Mick looked
at Gloria, and Adrian, and then back at Teddy.
 
“What’s the prognosis?” Mick asked.

“We don’t
know,” Cathleen said, hurrying back beside Mick, and back at her son’s
bedside.
 
“They won’t tell us anything.”

Mick looked
at Teddy.
 
“Go get the doctor,” he
ordered.

Teddy hurried
out of the hospital room, giving Roz a hug as he hurried past her, and did his
father’s bidding.

Roz took a
seat near the door as they all gathered around Joey’s bed.
 
She was there for Mick, but he seemed to have
it all in control right now.
 
Until Teddy
returned with word that the doctor would not come.

Mick
couldn’t believe it.
 
“What do you mean
he won’t come?”

“He won’t
come,” Teddy said again.
 
“He said he’s a
busy man and he’ll get here when he gets here, or some such flippancy.
 
He’s not coming right now.”

Mick’s blood
began to boil.
 
His child could be dying
and the doctor wasn’t available to tell him the prognosis?
 
He tore out of that hospital room.
 
Roz didn’t try to stop him because, if it was
her son, she would have had the exact same response.
 
But she didn’t have the same temper Mick
had.
 
She hurried out behind him, not
because she objected to his anger, but because she knew how angry he could get.
 
Doctor beware, was all she had to say.

Mick glanced
back at her as he hurried toward the Nurse’s station, with his suit coat
flapping wildly because of his fast walking.
 
When he saw that concerned look in her expressive eyes, he slowed down
and waited for her to catch up.
 
He held
out his hand for her.
 
As soon as her
hand clasped his, he did manage to calm down.
 
He was still at a ten, but it was a more manageable ten.

And when
they arrived at the Nurse’s Station at the end of the corridor, Mick even
sounded like a reasonable man.

“May I help
you, sir?” one of the nurse’s asked.

“My son is
Joey Sinatra,” Mick said. “I’m looking for his doctor.”

The nurse
turned toward the doctor inside the station.
 
The doctor was sitting at a computer, leaned back and laughing and
talking on his cell phone.
 
He shook his
head at the nurse when she turned his way, and then she looked back at
Mick.
 
Roz could see the regret in the
nurse’s eyes.
 
She was only the nurse,
her look seemed to say.
 
The arrogant
doctors ran this show.

“He’s
unavailable right now, sir,” she said to Mick.

Mick looked
at Roz.
 
“You hear that?
 
Guy’s on the phone, laughing and
talking.
 
But he’s unavailable.
 
You hear that?”

“I hear it,”
Roz said, equally disgusted.
 
Then she
added: “Do what you gotta do,” she said.

Mick loved
her for saying that.
 
It wasn’t that he
needed her permission.
 
He didn’t.
 
But having somebody on his side for a change
felt refreshing.
 
And he agreed.
 
He did what he had to do.

He opened
the hatch that led inside of the nurse’s station and began walking toward the
arrogant doctor.

“Sir, you
can’t come in here,” the nurse proclaimed.
 
“Sir?
 
Sir?”

But Mick
wasn’t thinking about that nurse.
 
He
walked up to the phone-happy doctor just as the doctor was turning toward him.

Stunned that
a civilian had gotten this close to him, the doctor removed his ear from his
cell phone.
 
“What are you doing?” he
asked.

Mick grabbed
the doctor by his lab coat lapel and stood him up.
 
The doctor’s phone dropped onto the desk.

“What is the
meaning of this?
 
You can’t manhandle me
like this!”

“My name is
Mick Sinatra,” Mick said.
 
“You don’t
want to fuck with me.
 
My son is in your
care, and I need to know what’s going on with him.
 
His name is Joey Sinatra.
 
He was the victim of a shooting.
 
You tell me his prognosis.”

The doctor
saw the hard look and distress in Mick’s eyes.
 
He calmed down too.
 
“He’s in bad
shape,” the doctor finally said. “The bullet came within an inch of his
spine.
 
It’s going to take time for him
to mend.
 
But barring any infections or
other setbacks, he should be back to normal soon enough.
 
In a matter of weeks rather than months.”

Mick
exhaled.
 
So did Roz, who remained
outside of the station.

“That’s good
to hear,” Mick said.
 
Then added: “My
personal physician is on his way.
 
He’ll
supervise my son’s recovery.”

The doctor,
once again, took umbrage.
 
“Does he have
privileges here?
 
He can’t just waltz
into here and supervise anything.
 
Who is
this physician?”

“Mark
Blaxton,” Mick said.
 
He knew that name
would say it all.

And it
did.
 
The doctor immediately changed his
tune.
 
“Dr. Blaxton? Your personal physician
is . . . Why, of course, we’ll be honored to have such an esteemed doctor on
our team.
 
We will be honored to work
with him.”

Mick knew he
would be.
 
He left the nurse’s station,
took Roz’s hand, and headed back to Joey’s room.

Later that night,
the doors slid open and Mick and Roz emerged out of the hospital and up to a
convoy of SUVs.
 
He held her arm as he
walked Roz to one of the SUVs and opened the passenger side door.
 
Deuce McCurry was behind the wheel.

“I still
wish I could stay with Joey until we’re certain he’s going to make it,” Roz
said.

“I know you
do,” Mick responded.
 
“But Ted, Glo, and
Adrian are staying with him.
 
And his
mother’s there.
 
He has support there.
 
And plenty of protection.
 
I want you home, at my house, where I know
you’ll be protected.
 
Get in.”

He helped
Roz onto the passenger seat.
 
“You be
careful, Mick.”

But Mick was
more concerned about her than she could ever be about him.
 
“I’ll be okay,” he said.
 
“Don’t worry about me.
 
You just do everything Deuce tells you to do,
because if you don’t, what’s going to happen?”

Roz hated
when he drilled her like this.
 
But she
knew it was coming from a place of concern.
 
“If I don’t do exactly what Deuce tells me to do then you’ll be very
upset.”

“Then I’ll
beat your ass,” Mick made clear.
 
“I mean
it, Roz.
 
No stopping by your agency to
pick up any papers or going to see about some client of yours because they
won’t behave at some casting call.
 
You
stay at the house until I get there.
 
You
do whatever Deuce says.
 
Understood?”

Roz nodded
with a sincere nod.
 
“Understood.”

Mick,
satisfied, leaned in and kissed her on the lips.
 
Then he shut the door and Deuce took
off.
 
Three other vehicles drove off with
them.
 
All to protect Roz just in case
what happened to Joey was not an isolated incident.

An SUV
further back drove up, and Mick got inside.
 
Danny Padrone, along with two other men, were seated in the back.

“What do we
know?” Mick asked.

“He was hit
while leaving the Honey Spot,” Danny said.

Mick had
only vaguely heard of the place.
 
“A
strip joint?”

“In a black
neighborhood, yeah.
 
Seems your boy has a
thing for black women.”

Mick looked
Danny in the eye.
 
“What the fuck is that
supposed to mean?”

Danny
realized his error.
 
“Nothing.
 
It means nothing, boss.
 
I wasn’t trying to say because you had a
black woman he has a thing for them too.”

“Then what
the fuck difference does it make who he has a thing for?”

“It makes no
difference,” Danny said nervously.
 
“I
didn’t mean anything by it, honest.
 
I
was just saying.”

Mick knew
better than that.
 
Danny was one of those
old school Italians who viewed their ethnicity as a race onto itself and
figured an Italian man should be with a good Italian girl.
 
No ands, ifs, or buts about it.
 
It was nonsense to Mick, but he wasn’t trying
to deal with that tonight.
 
His boy was
on his mind.
 
“Did anybody see anything?”
he asked.