Mick Sinatra 4: If You Don't Know Me by Now (2 page)

“But why so
many?” Tamron wanted to know.

“Two for the
dayshift,” Roz informed her.
 
“Two for
the overnight shift.
 
He doesn’t want
anybody tired and overworked.
 
He wants
them to be alert and fresh at all times.”

“Oh, okay,”
Tamron said.
 
“So there aren’t four
different nannies running around in your household at one time?”

“Oh,
heaven’s no.
 
Two at a time.”

“But still,”
Tamron said.
 
“Why didn’t you just put
your foot down and say one is enough?”

“Because one
isn’t enough,” Roz admitted.
 
“I work
fulltime plus.
 
Mick works fulltime
plus.
 
We both have slowed down
considerably, to be with the twins, but we still have to do what we have to
do.
 
Gloria, Teddy, and Joey help out
too, but none of them have ever had children of their own, so they still need
the nannies handy.
 
But when the twins get
a little older, like six months old, we’ll start taking them to work with us
and hopefully know what we’re doing by then.
 
But right now, Mick doesn’t want them out of the house.”

“He is so
domineering!” Tamron said.
 
“That’s why I
could never marry an Italian.
 
I can
barely handle a black man and his domineering ways.
 
But Mick?
 
He is too much!
 
The twins can’t leave the house?
 
Please.
 
I’m surprised he let
you
out
of the house.”

“He didn’t
want me out, believe that,” Roz admitted with a chuckle.
 
“He gave it a good try.
 
But he knew better than that.
 
I have a company to run too, and you can only
do just so much from home.
 
Especially
when I have actors and actresses and singers and comedians constantly in need
of my intervention.
 
I thank God for each
and every one of those nannies.
 
I’m
grateful Mick loves my black ass enough, as you put it, to hire each and every
one of them.”
 
Roz finally saw the
lingerie she was looking for.
 
“And he’s
really going to love it tonight when I put this on.”

Tamron
smiled.
 
“That is lovely.”

“Oh,
yes.”
 
It was red and white, lace and
frills.
 
“Beautiful.”

Tamron, as
if realizing an obvious truth, looked at her.
 
“Wait a minute.
 
Six weeks?
 
You had those baby six weeks ago and now
you’re buying fancy lingerie?
 
Are you
telling me, are you implying that Mick, of all people, hasn’t touched you during
your postpartum period?”

Roz found it
remarkable too, given Mick’s appetite for sex.
 
“That’s right,” she said.
 
“My
doctor advised against it, and he’s honoring that.”

“But doctors
advise against all kinds of ridiculous things!
 
I’ve had three babies and I’ve never known a man who still didn’t get
some however way they could.
 
Even before
the bleeding stopped!”

But she
didn’t know Mick, Roz thought.
 
“I think
I’m going to purchase this set,” she said.

“Wow,”
Tamron said, still amazed.
 
“No sex in
six weeks? In a month and a half?
 
You’d
better watch out tonight, girl.
 
Mick the
Tick, as in
Mick the ticking time bomb
,
is going to break that thang.”

“I hope so,”
Roz said, and Tamron laughed.
 
But Roz
was serious.
 
She was as horny as Mick
had to be.
 
“I sincerely hope so!”

The
nightclub was rocking and Teddy, Gloria, and Joey were sitting together at a
VIP table.
 
All three could have had
dates, but they wanted it to be a siblings’ night out.

“If the twins
were here,” Gloria quipped, “this would be perfect!”

Teddy
laughed.
 
“Dad won’t let Roz take them
outside, and you want them here?
 
I think
their clubbing days are a long way from now.”

“I think me
and Baby Jackie are going to be close,” Joey said.
 
“Every time I go to the house and sees her,
she smiles at me.
 
Nobody else.
 
Just me.”

“What about
you and Mick, Junior?” Gloria asked.

Joey shook
his head.
 
“Forget about it!
 
Every time I glance at Junior he’s staring at
me like I’m crazy or something.
 
I said,
yep.
 
Another Dad on our hands.”

Teddy and
Gloria laughed.

“I don’t
know what you’re laughing at, Teddy,” Joey said.
 
“Junior may act like Dad, but you look like
him.”

“I’m
saying,” Gloria said.

“Our father
is a very attractive, desirable man so I consider that a compliment,” Teddy
responded, raised his glass in a one-man toast, and drank more champagne.

Joey shook
his head.
 
“He doesn’t get it,” he said
to Gloria.

“I don’t get
what?” Teddy asked.

“That it’s
not cool to look like Dad,” Joey reminded him.
 
“What if you get mistaken for him?
 
With all his enemies?
 
It could be
lights out, Irene, for your cocky ass.”

Teddy
chuckled.
 
Joey, the youngest of the
threesome, worked as a supervisor in the mailroom of Sinatra Industries.
 
Gloria, in her early-twenties, was on their
father’s executive assistant staff and worked just outside of his office.
 
Teddy was working for him too, but they had
no idea to what extent.
 
They had no idea
that he was now fully entrenched, not in Sinatra Industries, but in Mick the
Tick’s Mafia activities.
 
They had no
clue that their big brother was now their father’s enforcer.

“What would
really set it off,” Gloria said, “is if Adrian could have been here.”
 
Adrian was their deceased oldest brother.

“Yeah,” Joey
said.
 
“I know he had problems, some
serious issues, but he was alright with me.
 
I miss the A-train.”

“I don’t,”
Teddy said bluntly.
 
“He would have
killed Dad if Dad wasn’t smarter than he was.
 
He would have took Dad away from us.
 
Forget that shit.
 
I’m not missing
him at all.
 
He got what he deserved as
far as I’m concerned.”

Gloria and
Joey looked at each other.
 
It was
unspoken among them, but they both knew a profound truth.
 
Teddy didn’t just look like their father, he
was becoming their father right before their very eyes.
 
It had been less than two years since Mick
let them into his world beyond just throwing money at them, and he was just
beginning to let them dip their feet into his inner circle. But Teddy, to their
surprise and sometimes envy, wasn’t just dipping his feet in, but had taken a
seat right dab in the middle of that circle.
  
He didn’t work at the company, but he was always at their father’s
side.
 
He and Dad were becoming very
close.
 
Gloria and Joey had grown closer
to Mick too, but they knew they still had a long way to go before all of their
past issues with Mick’s absence in their lives could be completely
overcome.
 
But Teddy seemed to already be
at that place.
 
They couldn’t understand
why.

And they
didn’t question it.
 
Mainly because they
feared their father would knock them through a wall if they dared to question
him.
 
But also because they feared the
answer.
 
Teddy used to leave town on long
so-called business trips that seemed shady to them even then.
 
Was he already involved in the underworld
back then?
 
They sipped more champagne
and left that subject alone.

“But for
real though,” Joey said, moving on from any discussion of their father or their
deceased brother or even Teddy, to his appreciation of good, rap music.
 
He began bouncing to the beat, with the gold
chains he wore around his neck bouncing too.
 
“At least the music is dope in here.”

“You like
rap music, don’t you?” Gloria asked him.

“Love it,”
Joey said.
 
“The only truly authentic
American music out there.
 
And yeah, I
like it.
 
I like this place too.
 
This place is tight.”

Gloria
agreed and started moving to the rhythm of the beat, and she and Joey started
to get up and dance.
 
Until one of her
ex’s spied her, and decided to leave his table and walk over to hers.

He was older
than Gloria, as all of her former boyfriends were, and was a tall white guy,
and slender.
 
He was also very good
looking, another one of her must-haves.
 
“What’s up?” he asked her.

“What’s up
with you?”

“Chillin’.”
 
He looked down, from Gloria’s gorgeous face
to her gorgeous body.
 
“I haven’t been
seeing you around, though.”

“I’ve been
around,” Gloria said.
 
“Just not around
you.”

The guy
smiled, but Teddy could see something else at work.

“I heard you
were working at Sinatra Industries now.
 
I heard you had moved on up in this world.”

“Troy, what
do you want?” Gloria was blunt.
 
She
wasn’t trying to pretend she held anything for him but contempt.

But Teddy
saw hope in Troy’s eyes.
 
Troy wasn’t
ready to concede that he blew it when he cheated on her.
 
From what Teddy could tell, Troy wanted a
second chance with Gloria.
 
What Teddy
knew for a fact, however, was that Gloria never gave cheaters a second
chance.

Troy,
unwisely, Teddy thought, decided to push harder.
 
He nodded toward Teddy and Joey.
 
“Who are they?” Troy asked.

At first,
Gloria didn’t want to bother with a response.
 
But if that would get rid of him faster?
 
“My brothers,” she said.

She could
tell he didn’t believe her.
 
“Oh, yeah?”
he asked.
 
Then he looked at them.
 
“Hey,
brothers
,
why don’t you guys get lost for a few?
 
I
wanna talk to your sister.”

“Man,
please,” Gloria said with a frown, as she looked away from him at the dancers
on the floor.
 
“I don’t have anything to
say to your cheatin’ ass.”

The guy was
immediately offended and Teddy could see it.

“Oh, so
you’re big and bad now?
 
Around your
so-called
brothers
?
 
You’re having a field day now?
 
You wasn’t so big and bad, wasn’t having such
a field day, when you was sucking my dick.”

Joey
immediately jumped up, ready to beat that guy’s ass, but Teddy pulled him back
down.

Joey, and
Gloria were astounded. Joey looked at Teddy.
 
“So you’re gonna let this punk talk to our sister like that?
 
You’re gonna let him get away with that,
Teddy?”

“Stay out of
it,” Teddy said.

“Stay out of
it?” Joey asked, still astounded.

Troy
laughed.
 
“Yeah, little man, stay out of
it,” he said to Joey.
 
Then he looked at
Gloria, with nothing but pure hatred in his eyes.
 
“We’ll meet again,” he said.
 
“Bet that.”
 
And then he left.

Teddy,
knowing danger when he sensed it, pulled a couple hundred out of his pocket,
tossed them on the table, and began moving.
 
“Let’s go,” he said to his younger siblings.

“Go?” Joey
asked.
 
“Why do we have to go?”

“Let’s go,
Joey,” Teddy said.
 
“You’ve got a problem
with what I’m saying to you?”

Joey had
many problems with what he was saying, and so did Gloria.
 
They didn’t see how some punk should run them
out of the club.
 
It made them look like
punks.
 
But their father had already made
one thing perfectly clear to them: when he or Roz wasn’t around, Teddy was in
charge.
 
If he ever heard that they
disobeyed a direct order from Teddy, they would have to answer to him.

With that in
mind, Joey and Gloria both did as they were ordered, and left the club.

But they
didn’t leave completely.
 
They walked
out, got into Teddy’s Land Rover, and then Teddy turned and looked at
Gloria.
 
“Would you know his car on
sight?” he asked her.

Gloria,
sitting on the front seat beside him, was at first baffled.
 
“Troy’s car?”
 
She thought about it.
 
“Yeah,” she
said.

“Let’s go
find it then,” Teddy said, and smiled.

Gloria
turned around and glanced at Joey.
 
Joey
hunched his shoulders.
 
Maybe Teddy was
going to key the guy’s car or something.
 
It was underhanded, and kind of punkish if you asked Joey, but Teddy was
in charge.

They drove
around the parking lot of the nightclub until they found the car they were
searching for: a Dodge Charger.

“Are you
sure this is his?” Teddy asked.

“I’m
positive,” Gloria responded.
 
“Why?
 
What are we going to do?”

Teddy swung
his SUV around, and then backed it in beside the Dodge.
 
“We’re going to wait,” he said to his
siblings.

“Wait?” Joey
asked.
 
“Wait for what?
 
I thought it was over.”

Teddy looked
at his kid brother through his rearview mirror.
 
“Over?
 
Are you out of your
fucking mind?
 
This shit is just
beginning.
 
You think we’re going to let
some cocksucker talk to our sister that way and get away with it?”

Joey was
slow to understand, but when he did, he smiled.
 
“No,” he said.
 
“Not on your
life.”

And sure
enough, when Troy finally made his way out of the club, with some random girl
he undoubtedly just picked up on his arm, it all began.

Teddy and
Joey flung open the doors of the SUV, stepped out swiftly, and was upon Troy
before he knew what hit him.
 
Teddy
mainly did the honors, beating the shit out of Troy as his girlfriend fell back
and screamed.
 
Gloria got out too.
 
She wanted a lick or two in herself.
  
Not just for disrespecting her tonight, but
for disrespecting her by cheating on her to begin with.

But before
she could join the boys, Troy’s lady friend joined her, and began to beat her
ass.
 
Gloria fought back.
 
She and the girl were first pulling each
other’s hair, and then rolling on the ground fighting.
 
But in the end it was no contest.
 
Gloria was getting the better of that fight,
just as Teddy and Joey were getting the best of theirs.
 

It was so
one-sided that Joey stopped.
 
He wasn’t
trying to kill the guy, after all.
 
But
Teddy was still at it.
 
As if he was.
 
He was stomping on the man like the man was
beneath a dog.
 
He was kicking him in the
head, in the face, in the ribs.
 
Blood
was everywhere, a crowd had assembled outside, and sirens were being heard.

By the time
Joey grabbed Gloria off of the girlfriend, and they began to hurry to the SUV
to get away from there before the cops showed up, Teddy was still beating
Troy’s ass.
 
It was as if he had blacked
out from reality and had no clue about anything or anybody else.
 
Joey, astonished that his big brother didn’t seem
to hear, or care about the fast approaching sirens, hurried back out of the SUV
to grab Teddy.