Mick Sinatra 2: Love, Lies, and Jericho (22 page)

Although they never discussed it in any detail at all,
Mick knew Roz was on birth control.
 
He
never dated a woman as responsible as Roz who wasn’t.
 
And it was a good thing tonight because he
knew, if she had not taken the pill, and given the way he was pouring inside of
her and still putting it on her, there was no doubt in his mind that conception
would have occurred.
 
It was too
electrifying.
 
Too special.
 
And they rode it out until they couldn’t ride
any longer.

Mick laid Roz’s legs back down, pushed his dick deep
inside of her one last time, until both of them, satisfied beyond belief, gave
out.

Jenay had to
work the next day.
 
It couldn’t be
helped.
 
A major tech convention was
being held at the hotel and she had to oversee the staff and make sure
everything went off without a hitch.
 
It
was one of their biggest events of the year.
 
But Charles, in testament to the importance of his baby brother’s visit,
did that rarest of feats and actually took the day off.
 
It astounded even his wife.
 
But he wanted this reunion to work as much as
Mick wanted it to work, and he decided that he would show Mick and Roz the
sights and sounds of a town that may not have changed in its atmosphere, but
had a lot of changes in its look and presentation.

But after
breakfast, as the threesome walked out of the front door, Robert drove up in
his Infiniti.
 
He got out in his
expensive suit and shoes, as if he was emulating his father’s style, looking
more like a playboy than a property manager if you asked Charles, but Mick and
Roz loved his enthusiasm.

“Why aren’t
you at work?” Charles asked him.

“I took the
day off,” Robert boldly proclaimed.

“Oh you did,
did you?”

“I figured
I’ll be your chauffeur for today.
 
Uncle
Mick’s used to being chauffeured around, I’m sure of that.
 
So I figure we can take the Masi and I’ll
drive you guys around.”

Mick and Roz
laughed.
 
Charles shook his head.
 
“You always find a way to make it all about
you.
 
Don’t you, Robert?”

“Always,”
Robert said with a grin.

But if he
thought Mick was going to toss his keys to him, he was sadly mistaken.
 
“Sorry son,” Mick said, “but I don’t lend out
my baby.”

“I’m not
asking to ride Roz,” Robert quipped.
 
“Just your car.”

Roz and
Charles couldn’t help but laugh.
 
Even
Mick smiled at his nephew’s quick comeback.
 
And then Mick turned serious.
 
“It’s Miss Graham to you,” he said.

But Robert
continued to smile.
 
He felt ridiculous
referring to Roz that way.
 
Especially
since they were practically the same age.
 
It would be like little Brent, Junior being forced to refer to little
Bonita, who was younger than Junior, as his auntie.
  
“Yes, sir,” he said.

Robert’s
enthusiasm was effectively curbed.
 
Roz
saw it, and Mick did too.
 
Just as Mick
had undoubtedly curbed his own children’s enthusiasm all these years when he
was emotionally absent from their lives.
 
A confident man like Tyson Graham, Roz’s brother, could handle the
rejection. But Robert was just getting to know Mick.
 
Mick had to show some signs that he wanted to
get to know Robert and all of Charles’s children too.
 
He had to change.
 
And if he didn’t start now, when was he going
to start?

And then, he
did something that shocked even Roz.
 
Shocked Charles too and he didn’t know him like that.
 
Mick tossed the keys of his four-door,
Maserati Quattroporte to Robert.

Robert
couldn’t stop grinning as he got behind the wheel.
 
Mick sat Roz on the passenger seat, and then
he and Charles, like two titans of industry on a well-deserved vacation, got in
the backseat.
 
And Robert happily
chauffeured them all around Jericho.
 
He
was also extremely careful to hit the hot spots, where he knew females roamed,
to make sure the ladies saw him driving all around Jericho, but driving a
Maserati.

But then he
took them off the beaten path.
 
At first
Mick and Charles were in the backseat talking so much that they didn’t realize
what was going on.
 
Until Roz asked, “who
lives here?” And it was only then did both men look out of the car’s
window.
 
That was when they realized
where Robert had actually taken them.
 
Charles looked at Mick.
 
Mick’s
heart fell through his shoe.

Charles saw
the sudden distress on his kid brother’s face.
 
He looked at Robert.
 
“Turn around,”
he ordered.
 
“Let’s get out of here.”

But Mick
knew confronting ghosts was what this trip was all about.
 
And the largest one of all lived in this very
house.
 
“No,” he said.
 
“Don’t go anywhere.”
 
He unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the
car.
 
He also opened the door for Roz so
that she could get out with him.
 
Charles
was impressed by how much his brother depended on Roz.
 
A man was really strong, he felt, until he
understood the limits of his strength.

Mick and Roz
walked toward what was now a rundown, very dilapidated two-story home.
 
Robert was about to get out too, but Charles
told him to stay.
 
“Let him have his
private time,” he said.
 
Then he asked
his son why in the world did he bring his uncle here?

“I thought
he’d get a kick out of seeing the old place again.”
 
Then he looked at his father through the
mirror.
 
“You come here every now and
then.”

That was
true, but Charles knew this place affected him differently than it affected
Mick.
 
What they experienced here made
Charles stronger, but it broke Mick down.
 
It hardened both men, but it took Mick to another level of
hardness.
 
Charles looked at his brother
as he and Roz walked toward the house.
 
Mick lost his way right on this very soil, and all these years later,
Charles still blamed himself.
 
He didn’t
know what to do.
 
He was so young and so
inexperienced and so unable to figure out how to take the shattered lives of
his baby brother and his now-deceased immature big sister, lives their father
ruined, and put them back together again.
 
He didn’t know how to do it.
 
That was why he never sold the property.
 
It would be like selling their souls, because
a part of each of their souls was still within this awful place.
 
That was why Charles still visited these
grounds.
 
That was why Charles looked
away now.
 
It was too painful to see Mick
standing there again.
 
But Mick continued
to stand.

And he held
Roz’s hand as he stood.
 
Although he did
not initially say a word, but just stood there, it didn’t take Roz very long to
figure out that they were standing in front of Mick’s childhood home.
 
And then Mick spoke.

“That was my
bedroom up there,” he said, pointing to a window whose wooden frame had long
since decayed.
 
“Our sister’s bedroom was
beside mine.
 
I still hear my daddy going
in that room at night.
 
I still remember
laying in my own bed listening to him fuck her, and thinking about how I was
going to kill his ass one day.”

Roz stared
at Mick.
 
And squeezed his hand.

“Charles
bedroom,” he said, “was around back.
 
Dad
made sure of that.”
 
Then he pointed at
the window beneath the first floor.
 
“That was the basement.”

Roz knew
what happened in that basement.
 
“We can
leave if it’s too much,” she said.

“That’s
where it all went down,” he said, refusing to even entertain leaving.
 
“That’s where we were when my father shot and
killed my mother’s lover, and then shot and killed my mother.
 
Right in front of all three of us.”

Roz leaned
closer against him, as his expressive eyes began to glisten.

“He didn’t
give a damn, you see,” Mick continued.
 
“He didn’t care what damage he was doing to his own children.
 
My sister Sprig was the oldest.
 
She was sixteen, but she lied and said she
was eighteen and they let us stay together because of that lie.
 
Because mentally, she was nowhere near capable.
 
She was already damaged goods from all the
abuse.
 
She might as well have been six
for the lack of judgment and insight she had.
 
And our father knew it when he pulled that trigger.
 
He knew nobody was going to take care of us,
nobody was going to love us, but Charles.
 
And Charles was only thirteen.”

Mick
squeezed Roz’s hand harder.
 
Roz leaned
even closer.
 
“We never were the same
again,” he said.
 
“Sprig became a drunk
and a whore.
 
Married a crazy-ass police
commissioner.
 
Nobody could tell her anything.
 
And then, as if to rub it in, as if this shit
didn’t stank enough, her own son, some gangster fucker named Sal Gabrini, ended
up killing her.
 
Her own son!
 
They claimed he had no choice.
 
That’s what his cousin Reno told me.
 
But what do they expect me to do?
 
Let somebody kill my sister and there be no
retribution?”

“Yes,” Roz
said definitively.
 
“If he had no choice,
yes.”
 
She wasn’t protecting Sal Gabrini,
a man she didn’t know, she was protecting her own man.
 

But Mick
didn’t respond to that. He couldn’t.
 
Dealing with Sprig’s death was another ghost he had yet to deal
with.
 
Then he exhaled.
 
“But that’s the way Sprig’s life went.
 
All downhill from right here.
 
And you see how I turned out.”

Roz looked
at him.
 
And shook her head.
 
“No, Mick,” she said.
 
“It wasn’t about turning out for you.
 
Not after what happened in this house. Not
after witnessing your mother’s death at your father’s hand, and then your father’s
incarceration for every day of your formative years.
 
It was about surviving.
 
And you survived.
 
You were tough and hard because you had to
be.
 
But you’re no bad man, Mick.
 
You don’t start shit.
 
You finish it.
 
But you don’t start it.
 
You’re a good man in my eyes.
 
No man has ever treated me better than you
have.
 
Not ever.”

Mick removed
his hand from hers and placed his arm around her waist.
 
She made him feel human again.
 
Because looking at this place, standing on
this property, only brought back the demons.
 
“Let’s go,” he said, and they left.

The ride
after that should have been more somber.
 
Charles expected that it would be.
 
But Roz started asking questions about this landmark and that lake and
soon the mood became festive again.
 
At
one point, as Charles was playing tour guide again, his hand landed on top of
Mick’s hand.
 
And he left it there.
 
He wanted to tell him that he was sorry he
didn’t do more to rein him in.
 
He wanted
to tell him he was sorry he didn’t have the wherewithal to raise him right, and
that guilt nearly ate him alive.
 
But he
didn’t say a word.
 
He wasn’t there
yet.
 
He, instead, allowed his hand to
linger on top of his brother’s hand.
 
And
his brother, feeling the force of that gentle touch as if it was love itself,
allowed it to linger too.

Then a sound
so loud it cause everybody to jerk forward and the front airbags to deploy.

“What the
fuck?” Robert yelled nervously as he swerved to a stop.
 
Charles and Mick looked back to see what fool
ran into the back of them, but the car drove from behind them, and then quickly
began to speed away.

But Mick
wasn’t about to let him get away that easily.
 
“You okay, Rosalind?” he asked as he hurriedly unbuckled his seatbelt
and got out of the car.
 
Charles got out
too.

“I’m fine,”
Roz said, unbuckling her seatbelt too.
 

Mick pulled
out a gun that Charles was surprised he had on him, and aimed at the fleeing
car.
 
He shot out all four tires, and the
car sped out.
 
He had a reputation for
never wasting bullets, and every bullet he shot landed where he aimed.
 
The car was out of control, jerking and then
spinning and then ramming into a waterless ditch.