Mick Sinatra 2: Love, Lies, and Jericho (8 page)

“You can see
your building,” Harper continued when it was obvious to him Mick wasn’t going to
cooperate.
 
He looked at Mick. “You
realize that?
 
You can see the top tip of
the Sinatra Industries building all the way from this side of town.
 
Your building.
 
Your baby.
 
Legit as it comes.
 
With a guy who
used to be one of us, and no better than us, as the owner, the chairman, the
CEO.
 
Guys like me would kill to have
that level of legitimacy you now possess Micky.
 
We’d give our right arm to be up there with you.
 
But what I don’t understand, and maybe you
can help me with this, is how do you stay on top?”

Mick was
about as interested in discussing his business skill with Harper as Harper was
about discussing the reason for their get together.
  
“You loaned my son fifty grand,” Mick said.

Harper
wanted to resist getting into the meat of the matter that quickly, Mick could
tell, but he knew Mick.
 
He smiled
instead.
 
“I run a payday loan facility,
Mick.
 
That’s what I do.
 
I loan money.”

“You’re a
loan shark masquerading as a payday loan facility,” Mick said.
 
“My son has no pay day.”

“Now that’s
where you’re wrong,” Harper said.
 
“Joey’s a trust fund baby just like all of your kids.
 
Even I know that.
 
Mick the Tick keeps all his babies and baby
mamas well stocked with green.
 
That’s
why I figured the kid was good for it.
 
Besides, if he wasn’t, then certainly his old man was.
 
You always paid your debts, Micky.
 
You owe no man.
 
I know that too.
 
So yeah, I loaned him the cash.
 
Never dreamed he’d bring it right back that
same night, belly aching about how you made him return it.”

“If any
child of mine ever come to you for anything,” Mick said, “you’d better come to
me.”

Harper’s
smile left.
 
Now he was angry.
 
“I’d better come to you?” he asked.
 
“Oh, yeah?
 
Is that how you think it works now?
 
I work for you now?”
 
Then his
voice became louder.
 
“You used to run
numbers for me, you ungrateful fuck!
 
I
ran these streets when your ass was just getting on them, and you’re going to
dictate to me?
 
You can kiss my ass!”

If Harper
thought he was going to talk to Mick the Tick that way and walk away, as he was
about to do, he had miscalculated badly.
 
Because as soon as he told Mick to kiss his ass, Mick was grabbing him
and banging his head, not against the back wall, but against the window glass,
causing the glass to shatter and Harper’s head to bleed.

Harper
wasn’t just dazed by the blow, but he was stunned by it.
 
He thought Mick had changed.
 
He thought living in the highest echelons of
the legit world meant he had too much to lose to be gangster still.
 
But the tick was still in Mick.
 
He realized, too late, that Mick’s
surroundings and bank accounts might have changed for the better, but Mick
hadn’t changed at all.
 
He was still the
vicious dog he used to be.

Mick dangled
Harper’s bleeding head out of the window, and Harper knew it would be nothing
for muscular Mick to toss his whole body out too.
 
But Mick wasn’t interested in doing the man,
his old running partner, any harm.
 
He
was upset it had come to this to begin with.
 
But he had to get his point across.
 
Gangsters only understood the gangster creed, and he knew it.
 
“If any child of mine come to you for
anything,” Mick warned him again, “you’d better come to me.”

This time,
Harper understood.
 
“I will, Mick, I
promise you,” Harper cried.
 
“I’ll come
straight to you!
 
I won’t give them a
dime, I swear it, Micky, not one dime!
 
You know me?
 
I’m a man of my
word.
 
I’ll keep my word, I promise you.”

Mick stared
at Harper a moment longer, to make sure he wasn’t just whistling Dixie and
meant what he said.
 
Satisfied that Harp
got the message, Mick let him go.

Harper
leaned back into the room and then moved away from the shattered glass.
 
He leaned against the back wall to regain his
courage.
 
He pulled out a handkerchief
and compressed the blood flow from his bleeding head.

“Stay away
from Joey,” Mick warned.
 
“Stay away from
all of my children.”

“You don’t
have to worry about me.
 
I’ll stay away
from them.
 
And if they come to me, I’ll
come to you.
 
You got my word.
 
That’s all I got to give.”

A look of
regret crossed Mick’s face.
 
He and
Harper went back too far for him to be treating the man this way.
 
But his son was his responsibility now and
nobody was going to influence him but Mick.
 
He was stepping up to the plate late, but at least he was stepping
up.
 

Mick turned
to leave.
 
He made his point.
 
No point in rubbing it in.
 
But Harper already felt the rub.
 
He already felt as if that ungrateful asshole
had disrespected him beyond his wildest dreams of being disrespected.
 
And he wasn’t about to let that fucker just
walk away.
 
Harper felt some kind of
crazy about it.
 
He felt as if he was
allowing Mick to carry his manhood away, if he allowed him to just walk away.

That was why
he decided to strike.
 
It couldn’t be a
gunshot.
 
That would be too loud, and
would be too risky.
 
But he still carried
his switchblade.
 
And he pulled it out
angrily, and began to advance on Mick Sinatra’s retreating form.

But if
Harper thought he was the first man to try to stab Mick in the back, he was
sadly mistaken.
 
Mick never turned his
back on any man without a plan.
 
He did
once, when he was still young and dumb, and nearly died.
 
He learned his lesson well.
 
Now he relied on his car’s key fob.
 
The front side was a fob, but the backside
was a mirror.
 
A mirror he already had in
his hands and was looking through as he left Harper’s side.
 
He already had his eyes on Harper.

And that was
why, when Harper lunged at him with his switchblade, Mick leaned down, lifted
Harper’s surging body over his back, and Harper fell onto the concrete floor
with a hard thump that caused him to cry out in agonizing back pain.
 

But his pain
was just beginning.
 
Mick wasn’t about to
let a man who had just attempted to assassinate him live.
 
He got down on top of Harper, took that very
switchblade that could have been his own undoing, and undid Harper.
 
He stabbed the knife down Harper’s
throat.
 
Harper’s entire body leaned up
in horror, as his eyes seemed to want to pop out of his head, and then he fell
back dead.

Mick was
breathing so hard he was nearly hyperventilating as he watched his old friend
fade out.
 
And for some strange reason,
Mick thought about Rosalind.
 
He thought
about his lady.
 
He thought about how he
would feel if somebody harmed her.
  
He
stood up, still staring at Harper but thinking about Rosalind.
 
He didn’t feel sorry for Harper.
 
He tried to kill Mick, and would have if Mick
wasn’t hip to the ways of the street.
 
Harper had it coming to him.
 
But
did Roz have this lifestyle coming to her?
 
He was doing her no favors by loving her.
 
Just last night she was hurt because he
didn’t mention his past relationship with Carolyn.
 
If she felt betrayed by something that small,
how in the world would she feel if she ever found out the true extent of his
life?
 
Could she even picture him in a
dive like this, standing over a dead body he caused to be?
 
Would she understand the nuance?
 
Would she understand that he never started
this shit, but that he had to finish it to survive?
 
Or would she be some dainty lady and wouldn’t
get it?

Mick shook
his head.
 
Rosalind already proved her
mettle to him when he gave her a gun in that safe house in New York and told
her to kill or be killed.
 
She
fired.
 
She was ready to kill.
 
She misfired, it was the first time she had
ever handled a gun, but at least she stepped up.
 
She would understand.
 
He was convinced of it.

He got on
his cell phone and called for his men to clean the scene by dumping the body
and the murder weapon, and then he headed out.
 
He had to make a decision regarding Roz.
 
He loved her, and didn’t want to lose her, those were the easy
answers.
 
But did he love her in a higher
way?
 
In a way that would cause him to be
willing to lose her for her own sake, even if it meant never seeing her again
or being with her again?
 
Even if it
meant seeing her in the arms of another man?
 
That was the hard one.
          

He had to go
to her.
 
He hurried down those side
stairs and made his way back to his car.
 
Seeing her face again would give him the answers he desperately needed.
 
He would know then if it was even possible to
let her go.
 
Her face would tell the
story.

But a
strange thing happened on the way to Roz.
 
Their song,
For Once In My Life
by Stevie Wonder, came on his car’s radio.
 
And although he was still on his way to see her, he was kidding
himself.
 
He wasn’t losing Rosalind.
 
Not now.
 
Not ever.
 
She meant too much to
him.

For once I
can say,

This is mine,
you can’t take it.

Long as I
know I have love, I can make it.

For once in
my life,

I have
someone who needs me!

Unlike the mammoth
SI, the Graham Agency was a three-story building in a quiet, less bustling
section of town, and it had the vibe of an art gallery rather than a talent
agency.
 
Although it was a beautiful
building, purchased for Rosalind by Mick himself, it was basically a small
operation.
 
It had only been in full
swing a few months, and although it was already having an impact on local
talent, it would take many moons before it was the international powerhouse
Rosalind envisioned it being someday.
 
At
least that was Mick’s take on it.
 
But he
also knew he knew next to nothing about talent agencies and believed, if
anybody could raise it up to that kind of superstar status, Rosalind could.

He parked in
the slanted space near the front of the building, beside Roz’s white Bentley
(another gift from Mick), and made his way into the entrance.
 
A few people were sitting in the waiting room
filling out paperwork, and the quietness calmed Mick down too.

“Good
morning, Mr. Sinatra,” the receptionist said with a pleasant smile when she
realized he had arrived.
 
“She’s in the
conference room, sir.”

 
Mick thanked her, wondering why his employees
couldn’t be this pleasant toward him, and took the side elevator to the third
floor.
 
When he stepped off, the door of
the conference room was wide open and he could see Roz standing at the window
talking with a young, attractive black man.
 
Mick walked up to the door and leaned against the doorjamb as the young
man talked about his dream of making it big someday.
 
Roz was dressed beautifully in a bright white
skirt suit and heels, as she listened in that caring way of hers that always
bothered Mick.
 
Not because he didn’t
want her to be caring, but because he knew how sexy that was to other men.
 
He knew what a catch she was.
 
And that young man knew it too, if looks
could tell.

But the
lustful look on that kid’s face only reinforced Mick’s grave concern.
 
Why would Rosalind want to saddle herself
with a complicated man like him when she could have a carefree gorgeous George
type like that young man?
 
He could lose
her.
 
It was as clear to him as the
sparkle in her eyes.

It was also
clear that it might already be too late when the young man started laughing at
some joke Roz told and placed his hand on her upper arm, and squeezed it.
 
Mick’s jaw tightened as soon as he saw that
squeeze, and he pushed his big, muscular body from the doorjamb and began
walking toward his lady swiftly.

The young
man didn’t hesitate to remove his hand from Roz’s arm when they looked over and
saw this big dude approaching them.
 
The
young man had never met Mick before, but he’d heard about Roz’s rich white
boyfriend.
 
He was pretty certain the man
approaching now was the one he’d heard about.

Roz didn’t
know how to feel when she saw Mick approaching.
 
It wasn’t that she was surprised to see him: she wasn’t.
 
She expected him to pay her a visit sometime
soon.
 
But she was surprised that he came
this early.
 
It wasn’t even noon yet, and
he was already there.

The young
man smiled awkwardly.
 
“Hi,” he said to
Mick.

“Good
morning.”

“You must be
Miss G.’s friend.”
 
He wanted to say Miss
G.’s
boyfriend
but the guy looked so
menacing he wasn’t sure how that would go over.

“He’s Mick
Sinatra, June,” Roz said.
 
“Mick, meet
Junis Abernathy.
 
He’s one of my clients,
and a former student.”

Mick was
surprised.
 
Roz used to teach acting in
New York before she relocated to Philadelphia to be with him.
 
Two of her other former students lived in
Philly too now.
  
What was this
about?
 
“Another one?” he asked.

“Yeah.
 
Only he still lives in New York.
 
He came down to see if I would represent
him.”

“She knows a
lot of Broadway producers and directors,” Junis explained.
 
“She could open some doors for me.”

“It’s more
like off-Broadway producers and directors,” Roz said, “but June isn’t getting
any gigs right now, so anything will help.”

“Anything,”
June agreed with a charming smile.

Mick smiled
too, he could put on the charm when needed, but he still wasn’t buying it.
 
Guy leaves New York to come to Philly to get
an agent to help get him a job back in New York?
 
Made little sense to Mick.
 
And when it didn’t make sense to Mick, he
assumed it wasn’t true.
 
He was going to
keep an eye on this kid.

Roz could
see the skepticism in Mick’s eyes.
 
She
wasn’t even going to broach the subject of any nonsense like that.
 
But she knew they did need to talk.
 
“June,” she said, “why don’t you wait
downstairs?
 
We’ll go over the contract
specifics in a few minutes.”

“So that
means you’ll represent me?” June asked excitedly.

Roz smiled.
 
“Yes, I will.
 
You have what it takes to make it.
 
But it may be a long road before you even make it to your first casting
call off-Broadway.
 
You understand that?”

“But at
least I’ll have a chance to make it there,” June said.
 
“All I want is that chance.”

Roz
nodded.
 
“That’s what I’ve always liked
about you.
 
You understand the
stakes.
 
But we’ll talk specifics.
 
Give me a few minutes.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” he said, smiled again at Mick and told him how happy he was to meet
him, and left the room.

Mick watched
him leave.
 
“Cute kid,” he said.

Roz folded
her arms and leaned against the window frame.
 
Although she was still a little pissed with him from last night, she was
glad to see him.
 
“What brings you this
way?”

Mick was
staring at her.
 
He didn’t mean to, but
he was.
 
It was her face.
 
Although she was laughing with lover boy and
allowing him to squeeze her arm, there was nothing joyous in her eyes.
 
She was distraught.
 
“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

Roz ran her
hand through her thick, bouncy hair, creating a cascading effect where some
strands dropped along her forehead, making her look, to Mick, as sexy as she
looked concerned.
 
“You know what’s
wrong,” she said.
 
“I didn’t like the way
things went down last night.”

“I spoke to
you harshly,” he admitted freely.
 
And
then he swallowed hard.
 
“I apologize for
that.”

Roz knew it
was never easy for a man like Mick to apologize for anything, and she
appreciated his effort.
 
But she couldn’t
lose sight of the underlying cause of his apology.
 
“I don’t like half-truths, Mick,” she said
with a grave look in her eyes.
 
“If I
allow you to tell me half a story, it won’t be long before you stop telling me
any story at all.
 
Or you’ll tell me whatever
you think I want to hear.
 
And I can’t
deal with all of those secrets and lies.
 
I don’t want to live like that.”

Mick
nodded.
 
“Neither do I.”

“When you
came clean to me about your life, about your past, I thought that meant we
crossed the threshold.
 
I thought from
there on out we were going to be straight with one another.
 
Because from my vantage point, that’s the
only way we’re going to make it.
 
But for
you to not even tell me that Carolyn was once your lover, and for her to spill
the beans like she just knew you would never tell, upset me.
 
Hell yeah it upset me!
 
I expected better from you, Mick.
 
I expect total honesty and trust from you, no
matter what that truth entails.
 
That’s
what I’m giving to you.
  
I’m not going
to accept any less in return.”

Mick’s
natural instinct was to lash back at her.
 
If she was anybody else he would have.
 
He would have told her that he bet she was sleeping around with lover
boy and who knew how many other boys, who the fuck did she think she was
preaching to him?
 
But he held his
tongue.
 
This was Rosalind he was talking
about.
 
This was the woman he knew had
his back, and that he could trust with his life.
 
This was the woman he loved more than life
itself, a woman who not only accepted his past, but embraced his present
baggage too.
 
Including the fact that he
had four grown children he had not been a good father to.
 
Including the fact that he had businesses
that were on the opposite end of legitimate, businesses he wanted to drop but
couldn’t yet.
 
What was he doing?
 
He was getting the better end of this deal,
not her.

He moved up to
her, placed his hands on the side of her arms, and turned her toward him.
 
“I love you, Rosalind,” he said.

She
frowned.
 
“I know you do.
 
That’s the only reason I’m still here.
 
I love you too.”

“And I need
you to know you can trust me.
 
I won’t break
your heart.
 
I promise you.”

Roz needed
to hear those words far more than she needed to hear of his love for her.
 
She nodded her head.
 
“That’s what bothers me.”

“I know it
does.
 
Every time I look into your eyes,
I know it does.
 
And you wanna know
something really fucked up?
 
I have the
same fear.”

Roz stared
at him.
 
“You fear I’m going to break
your heart?”

It pained
Mick to admit it, but it went to the larger issue.
 
He had to stop denying how far in he was with
this woman.
 
“Yes,” he said.

But Roz was
shaking her head.
 
“I’ll never do
anything like that to you.”

“And as
strongly as you believe what you won’t do to me, you’ve got to believe I won’t
do that to you.
 
I’ll never break your
heart.”
 
Then Mick exhaled.
 
“I fired Carolyn,” he said.

Roz looked
at him.
 
“When?”

“Last
night.
 
After I left you.”

“You didn’t
have to do that, Mick.”

“Yes, I
did.”

“Why?
 
Because she told me what you should have told
me?”

“Because she
tried to hurt you with that information,” Mick responded, and Roz couldn’t argue
with that.
 
She stared at him.

“I’ll take
the blame for not telling you,” he said, “but I will not let any member of my
household staff think they can harm you, or get the upper hand on you, or
whatever the fuck she was trying to do.
 
I got rid of her.
 
That’s over and
done.
 
My human resource director is
looking for a replacement now.”

Then Mick
frowned in a way that made his handsome face appear anguished.
 
“I’m no catch, Rosalind,” he said.
 
“You can have any guy you want, and believe
me I’d be at the bottom of that list.”

Roz could
feel his anguish.
 
She placed her hand on
the side of his face.

“I bring
danger to your life,” Mick continued.
 
“It’s even worse than you can imagine.
 
And that fact alone is more than enough reason for you to walk away from
me right now and never have anything more to do with me.
 
And I’ll understand it.
 
But I have to do this anyway.”

Roz wasn’t
following him.
 
He have to do what
anyway?
 
Now it was her time to look
anguished.
 
Was he giving up on them?
 
Was he willing to walk away from what they’d
been trying to build up just because they had a disagreement?
 
“You have to do what anyway?” she asked him.