Mick Sinatra 4: If You Don't Know Me by Now (8 page)

Teddy looked
flustered.
 
“So what was I supposed to
ask for then?”

“You don’t
ask for shit.
 
The mayor isn’t running
this, and he’s not going to be running you.
  
You dictate the terms.
 
Tell him
we’ll ensure the lady and his opponent will not come forward before the
election.
 
We will, in fact, force his
opponent to drop out of the race.”

“That’s a
tall order,
Pop
,” Teddy said.
 
“That will require a lot of forcing.”

Mick looked
at Teddy.
 
“You can do it,” he said with
total confidence.

Teddy felt
that confidence.
 
It was contagious.
 
“And all the mayor will have to do is install
one of our guys in as chief?”

“As chief,
and as commissioner.
 
If you’re going to
play in the market, you have to corner it.
 
We need both, or no deal.
 
The
commissioner can overrule the chief.
 
We
have to have both.”

Teddy
smiled.
 
Ruthless didn’t begin to
describe his father.
 
“Yes, sir,” he
said.

Mick’s cell
phone began ringing.

“I’ll get
right on it,” Teddy added.

“And Teddy,”
Mick said, as he pulled his phone from out of his pocket and looked at the
Caller ID.

“Yes, sir?”

“Barge in my
office again and I’ll kick your ass.”

Teddy wasn’t
sure if his father was serious or playing.
 
But he felt playful.
 
“Yes, sir,”
he said, and left.

“Hey, babe,”
Mick said as he answered the phone.

Roz was back
at her agency sitting behind her desk.
 
She turned toward her window that overlooked a series of construction
sites in the desolate area where her office had been built.
   
It was a call she was fretting, but a call
she knew she had to make.
 
“Hey,” she
said into her own cell phone.

“What’s up?”
Mick asked.

“I’m going
to take a drive to New York.”

Mick
hesitated.
 
What the fuck?
 
“Nope,” he said.

“I’ll fly
then.
 
Tell your pilot I want to leave
this afternoon.”

“Why are you
going to New York?”

Roz braced
herself.
 
“I need to visit a sick
friend.”

“What friend?”

Roz
exhaled.
 
“Betsy,” she said.

“Forget it,
Rosalind.”

“Mick, she’s
in trouble.
 
This is vital.
 
She might not pull through.”

Mick closed
his eyes.
 
He was sorry to hear that, he
really was.
 
But his wife wasn’t going
anywhere near that craziness.
 
“You can’t
go.
 
You can pray for her, you can wish
her well, you can even speak to her over the phone.
 
But you are not going anywhere near her.”

“But I have
to go!”

This angered
Mick.
 
“You don’t have to do shit but
what I tell you to do!
 
And you are not
going anywhere near that female and her dangerous lifestyle.”

“
Dangerous
?
 
Mick, that’s ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous?
 
Why is she sick, Rosalind?
 
Why is she fighting for her life?”

Roz didn’t
answer.

“You tell me
why,” Mick demanded.

“Because a
guy beat her up.”

“Dangerous.
 
Just as I said.”

“But that’s
beside the point!
 
I’m not going to let
her die alone.
 
I’m all she has.”

“She wasn’t
worried about you when she was putting you in constant danger.
 
You was all she had then and she didn’t give
a fuck.
 
So fuck her.”

Roz was
angry now.
 
“Don’t you speak about her
like
that!
 
She’s still my best friend.
 
Was
she a perfect friend?
 
No.
 
Was I a perfect friend to her?
 
Hell no!
 
But I still love and care about her, Mick.
 
And I will not let her die alone.
 
I’m going to New York.
 
I’ll drive if I have to, I’ll catch a
got
damn bus if I have to.
 
But I’m going.
 
I should be back before you leave for Spain
tonight.
 
You just take care of our
children until I get back.
 
Because I
will be going, whether you like it or not!”

And on that
note, Roz slammed down the phone.

She almost
picked it back up, because she knew Mick was going to kill her for talking to
him that way.
 
But she didn’t.
 
Betsy was her friend.
 
Betsy was in dire straits.
 
She was going to see about her.

That
confidence, however, became gravely tested when an enraged Mick Sinatra, not
half an hour later, walked through the doors of her bustling agency.
 

The lobby
guard saw him first, and then told the downstairs receptionist.
 
The downstairs receptionist phoned the
upstairs receptionist.
 
The upstairs
receptionist motioned to Roz’s secretary, and then whispered in her ear.
 
And Teegan Salley, Roz’s secretary, went into
Roz’s office to tell the news that had traveled all the way upstairs before
Mick could get on the elevator.

Roz was at
her file cabinet, searching for one particular file, when Teegan walked
in.
 
“Mr. Sinatra is in the building,
ma’am,” she said to her.

Roz was
surprised to hear it.
 
He came all this
way?
 
But if she was surprised, her staff
would never know it.
 
“And you thought it
was necessary to tell me this why?”

Teegan’s
high-yellow face turned red.
 
She knew
how much Roz hated gossip.
 
“I wasn’t
sure, but I thought you would want to know, ma’am.
 
I wasn’t sure if you were expecting him.”

Roz glanced
at her over the round reading glasses she wore.
 
“Anything else?” she asked.

“Oh.
 
No ma’am.
 
Nothing else.”

“You can get
back to work.”

When Teegan
left, Roz rolled her eyes.
 
What did she
expect her to do?
 
She had apparently
overheard Roz’s angry phone conversation with Mick and had ran and told the
news.
 
First to the receptionist
upstairs, who probably told her buddy the receptionist downstairs, who
undoubtedly spread the news too while shooting the breeze with the lobby
guard.
 
Mick showed up after such a
heated phone conversation, and now they’re all waiting for the fireworks.
 
Please.
 
She was going to giving them fireworks alright.
 
She was going to fire some of their asses if
they kept that up.
 
But right now she was
too concern with the fact that Mick had come, than about that gossiping staff
of hers.

She pulled
out a file, realized it was the wrong one, and stuffed it back into the
overstuffed drawer.
 
She continued her
file search when Mick walked into her office.
 
She already knew he was upset so she didn’t bother to look up.
 
The fact that he had left his office when she
knew he had a ton of things to do before he left town tonight, and drove all
the way across town to her office, proved just how angry he was with her.
 
Her hope was that he would calm his ass down
if she was patient enough to not take the bait, and match his rage.

It didn’t
work.
 
He started to pace inside her
office, to wait until she concluded her file search, but he was too upset with
her to pretend otherwise.
 
So he walked
over to her, and stood beside her at the file cabinet.
 
But the fact that she continued to pull out a
file, realized it was not the particular one she needed, and put it back in
without so much as acknowledging his presence, only angered Mick more.
 
He was cool with his anger.
 
Very few people outside of his wife and
children could even spot the extent of his rage.

But when she
pulled one file too many, as if she could somehow wait him out, Mick had had
enough.
 
He grabbed the file she had in
her hand, shoved it back into that file cabinet, and then slammed the drawer so
violently that the entire cabinet nearly tilted over.
 
Roz winced at the violence of it, remembered
as if she had momentarily forgot that Mick had that side to him, and finally
gave him her full attention.

“What did
you say to me?” he asked her.

Roz folded
her arms, but held her ground.
 
“I said
I’m going to New York to see about Betsy.”

“I said you
are not going to New York to see about Betsy or anybody else.
 
Guess which one of us are accurate?”

“Mick, why
can’t you see what I’m saying?
 
Bess is
in bad shape!
 
She asked to see me.
 
I can’t just ignore that.
 
I have a contract I have to amend before I
go, and then I’m out of here.”

“I wouldn’t
bet on that if I were you, Mrs. Sinatra.”

Roz could
see the coldness in Mick’s eyes.
 
She
knew exactly where it was coming from.
 
“This won’t be like the last time,” she said.

The last time
was their code for that one painful
time Mick went against his instinctive judgment and allowed Roz to go to New
York to handle some business.
 
She was
viciously attacked during that trip and was nearly killed.
 
His heart still squeezed in agony just
thinking about how close she came to certain death.
 
His number one job was to protect her.
 
But by allowing
her
to have her own way caused him to fail miserably in that responsibility.
 
Never again had been his vow.

“You don’t
know what it won’t be like,” he said to her.
 
“And you will not be finding out.”

“But she
wants to see me.
 
Don’t you understand
that?
 
If she dies---”

“It will
have nothing to do with you.
 
You have
warned her about these bad men she chose to take up residence with for
years.
 
She has dismissed your warnings
for years.
 
The fact that it has all
caught up with her is her problem.”

“It’ll only
be for today.
 
I’ll be back by
nightfall.”

“No.”

“Mick!”

“I said
no!
 
Now if you want a report, fine.
 
I’ll have one of my men go by and take a look
at her.”

Roz was
enraged.
 
“
One of your men
?
 
Are you
serious?
 
She wants to see me!”

Mick was
equally angry.
 
“I don’t give a fuck who
she wants to see!
 
My wife is not getting
involved with her nonsense again!”

“But she’s
dying, Mick!”

“Again, her
problem.”

Roz shook
her head.
 
She knew she was fighting a
losing battle.
 
Mick’s mind was made
up.
 
He was not, under any circumstances,
going to allow her to go anywhere near Betsy again.
 
And especially not while she was in New
York.
 
“Okay,” she said.

Mick looked
at her skeptically.
 
“Okay what?”

“Okay, you
win.
 
Okay, I will not go to New
York.
 
Okay!”

Mick saw the
grave disappointment in her pretty eyes.
 
He was being a bastard to her right now, it was as clear as day.
 
And he wanted to explain himself further.
 
He didn’t think she understood how profoundly
that last incident in New York affected him, and how much he could not tolerate
some selfish bitch like Betsy trying to pull her back into harm’s way.
 
He paid her ass off, and ordered her to leave
Philly for good, after one of Betsy’s violent boyfriends jumped, not just
Betsy, but Rosalind for being with Betsy.
 
A bitch like that wasn’t worth the time of day, in Mick’s view.
 
His wife deserved a better best friend than
that.

He wanted to
explain all of this to Roz, to make her fully appreciate why he was so hard on
her when it came to that damn Betsy Gable.
 
But he didn’t go there.
 
When it
came to her safety, she had to accept his authority.
 
When it came to her safety, he didn’t give a
shit about her hurt feelings.
 
His word
had to be law.

“I’ve got to
get back to the office,” he said in a subdued tone, looking drained just by
coming to see her, and he leaned in for a kiss.

But Roz
wasn’t that easy.
 
She moved her face out
of range.

Mick’s heart
sank at her rejection.
 
But he never was
a man to take a slight lying down.
 
It
wasn’t in his DNA.
 
“Fuck it, then,” he
said out of anger.
 
He was hurt too
whenever she rejected him, deeply wounded in a way no other human being was
able to cause, but that vulnerability was for him to know and no one else.
 
He left.

Roz closed her
eyes when he closed her door.
 
She knew
he was looking out for her best interest, she knew it!
 
But what about Betsy?
 
What about the one woman who stood by her in
New York when nobody else did?
 
Betsy
kept her from losing many gigs, and even kept her a couple of times from losing
her Brooklyn brownstone.
 
Now she was
dying and Mick expected Roz to do what?
 
Fuck her, as he would say?
 
Forget
about all that woman did for her, not to mention the humanity of it, and keep
going her merry way?

Roz went
over to her desk and pressed her intercom button.
 
“Come here, Tee,” she said to her secretary.

Teegan, who
had heard Mick and Roz’s raised and angry voices through the closed door, even
if she couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, hurried into the office.
 
Roz never confided in her about her personal
business, but maybe this time, Teegan’s eager face seemed to suggest, would be
different.
 
“Yes, ma’am?” she asked her
boss.

“I need you
to find the O’Connor file for me.
 
I’m
going to have to leave for today.”

“Leave,
ma’am?”

“Yes, I’m
going to take a day trip to New York.
 
If
anybody phones tell them I’ll speak with them tomorrow.”

“Yes,
ma’am.
 
But I thought you needed to sign
off on the O’Connor amendment today?”

“Once you
find the file, call Jeffrey and tell him I can e-sign if he still must have it
today.
 
If not, tell him I’ll see him
tomorrow morning also.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” Teegan said, and went to the file to do as she was ordered.
 
The boss didn’t exactly confide in her, but
she was reasonably certain that the argument Roz had had with Mick wasn’t about
her going to New York, but about him ordering her
not
to go.
  
That was
something worth telling over the water cooler, at least.

It would be
another fifteen minutes before Roz left her office, however, as she became
stuck fielding phone calls from nervous clients who were either turned down for
a gig, or was on the verge of being fired from one.
 
And then she left.

But as soon
as she walked out of those lobby doors, still on the cell phone with yet another
problem client, she was shocked to find that her husband was not as easily
convinced as she had thought.
 
Mick was
leaned against the bright white Bentley he had given to her, with his arms
folded and his face significantly softened from the rage he had shown earlier.
He, in fact, seemed resigned.

She was
stunned.
 
“I’ll call you back,” she said
to her client, who was still talking wildly into the phone.
 
But Roz absently ended the call.
 
And walked up to Mick.
 
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

“Waiting to
drive you to the airport to fly you to New York,” he said.

It wasn’t as
dramatic as Hoke had said when he was waiting to drive Miss Daisy to the
“stow,” but it was close enough, in Roz’s view.
 
Her heart leaped with joy.
 
But unlike
Miss Daisy, she didn’t get in the car and let him drive her, she ran into his
arms and let him lift her.

Mick lifted
her high into his arms.
 
He shut his eyes
tight as he placed his hand on the back of her head and held the most precious
human being in this world to him.
 
He
braced himself for a trip he knew wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as Roz was
making it out to be.
 
But his love for
her was overruling his sense.
 
His love
for her was making him minimize the feeling.
 
But it was still there.
 
It was
still gnawing at him like a mosquito at a picnic.
 
But he had no choice.
 
He was not about to let Roz sneak out of town
and handle it herself.