Mick Sinatra 3: His Lady, His Children, and Sal (19 page)

“Eat up,” Mick said.
 
“I don’t give away free food too often!”

They laughed.
 
And they all ate, drank, and were happy.

Happy was the way Gloria felt when she made it back
to her apartment.
 
It was later that
night.
  
After leaving her father’s home,
she and her date, along with Jimmy Mack and Val and her cousins from Jericho,
had partied for hours at a club whose name she couldn’t even recall.
 
The music from the club, all hard rock, was
still ringing in her ears.
 
Coldplay,
Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister.
 
It had been
one of those crazy, nothing-but-fun nights.
 
And then he dropped her off.

But as soon as she unlocked and opened her door, the
fun ended.
 
She felt a hand grab her
hand, pull her into the apartment as if she were a rag doll, and slammed the
door shut.
 
She wanted to scream, and
would have, but her mouth was immediately covered.
 
When she realized it was Marco, the man she had
fallen for, the man her father had warned her to stay the hell away from, she
became more angry than afraid.

But he didn’t give her a chance to voice her
displeasure.
 
He, instead, pulled her
face up to his with an angry thrust, and put a knife to her throat.
 
“I got your message,” he spat out at
her.
 
“Your coldblooded, coldhearted
bitch.”
 
Then he began mocking her voice.
 
“’I’m a liar,’ you said.
 
‘I’m a cheat.
 
You’re married, and I don’t mess with married men.’
 
Give me a fucking break!
 
But you went on and on.
 
You don’t want to see me again, you
said.
 
You don’t want to have anything
more to do with me.
 
How
can I
do that to my children, you said.
 
You were so arrogant in that message.
 
You were so full of your little spoiled
self.
 
And you thought that was all it
took.
 
You thought that would do the
trick.
 
You thought that was going to
work.
 
You thought wrong, you bitch!”

He tightened his grip on her body, a grip that
caused her face to wince with pain.
 
“I
love you, Glori,” he declared.
 
“I love
you more than any woman I have ever loved before.
 
And I’m not losing you.
 
You hear me?
 
I’m not losing you!”

He began to kiss her, harshly, on her lips.
 
Gloria started to fight against it.
 
She started to push against him and fight his
advances.
 
But she thought again.
 
He was too tight and too harsh.
 
Fighting him could get her killed.
 
So she didn’t fight.
 
She didn’t push back.
 
She returned his kiss, his passion, even more
passionately than he was giving it.

She could tell it startled him.
 
He almost pulled back.
 
But Gloria knew her worth.
 
She knew what kind of effect she had on men
when she did it right.
 
So she did it
right.
 
For self-preservation, she began
kissing Marco as dutifully as she kissed him when she was in love with
him.
 
She kissed him with a hunger she
had never displayed before.

And it worked. Marco eased his grip on her and
removed that knife from her throat.
 
She
reached her hand inside of his pants and began to fondle him as she kissed
him.
 
He became so relaxed that he leaned
his head back and allowed her to kneel down and unzip his pants.
 
This was the very reason why he wasn’t going
to let her go.
 
She knew how to do him
unlike any other woman could.
 
And she
was about to do him again.
 
He could not
have hoped for a better outcome.

Until Gloria, certain that he was now totally
relaxed and loose, grabbed that knife, stood up quickly, and placed it at his
throat.

She thought that would do the trick.
 
She thought she could point it at him and he
would leave her condo and her life forever.
 
But she wasn’t dealing with a rational man.
 
She was dealing with a love sick man who, if
he couldn’t have her, nobody else would.
 
And instead of retreating and leaving, he pounced.

He grabbed for the knife and nearly succeeded.
 
But Gloria had her father’s instincts.
 
She knew it was kill or be killed time.
 
And she wanted to live.

She stabbed Marco repeatedly.
 
She stabbed him and stabbed him.
 
But he kept coming back.
  
She cried as she stabbed.
 
She cried as the horror of what he forced her
to do materialized in her soul and she wept.

But she lived.

She survived the slaughter.

And Marco, the man she once thought she loved, a
federal agent no less, dropped at her feet like a stone dropped in the river.

Shaking, she hurried and found her cell phone, and
nervously, fighting back panic, placed a call.

But it wasn’t to 911.
 
Her instincts kicked in.
 
It was to her father.

“Daddy,” she said when he finally answered.
 
“Please come.”

The door to the condo was barely opened by Gloria,
and Mick, Reno, Sal and Roz had to squeeze their way through.
 
But when they made their way inside, and saw
the blood first and then the body, they understood her nervousness.
 
Over the phone she told Mick what happened,
but he didn’t tell anybody else.
 
He just
told them to come.

“Are you alright?” Roz asked urgently as she pulled
her into her arms.
 
Gloria wasn’t crying
hysterically, but the look on her face, that look of innocence lost, was even
more telling to Roz.
 
“Oh, baby,” she
said as she moved her away from the bloody scene.

As Roz walked Gloria over to the sofa, where they
sat down, Mick, Sal, and Reno surveyed the situation.
 
Mick opened his jacket, placed his hands on
his hips, and stared at the corpse.

Gloria looked at her father.
 
She knew he lived this kind of life.
 
She knew he saw scenes like this all the
time.
 
How did he handle it, she
wondered?
 
How did he look at something
that gruesome without falling apart?
 
But
his face said it all to her. He wasn’t horrified as she was.
 
He wasn’t even terrified.
 
He was anguished.

He looked at her.
 
She expected him to ask her what happened.
 
She expected him to ask her to site chapter
and verse what led her to take a man’s life.
 
But he didn’t even go there.
 
“Have you told anyone else?” he asked her.

Gloria removed her black hair from her dark face and
shook her head.
 
“No, sir,” she
said.
 
Roz could feel her body trembling.

“Go change,” he said to her.
 
“Take off the clothes you have on and leave
them on the floor.
 
You’re coming with
us.”

“Coming with you?” Gloria asked, confused.
 
“But he’s a federal agent, Dad!
 
I’m going to prison forever when they find
out.
 
I killed him!”

“Hold on, baby,” Roz said, holding her again.
 
She was falling apart at the seams.
 
Roz looked at Mick.

Mick walked over to his daughter and sat on the
other side of her.
 
Sal and Reno looked
on. “Listen to me,” he said.

Gloria looked at him.
 
He towered over her even as he sat beside
her.
 
And even his presence didn’t ease
her fear.
 
The tears were flowing freely
now.
 
“I know you told me not to come
home.
 
I know you told me to stay at your
house until Adrian was found.
 
But I
didn’t think his would happen.”

“Of course not, honey,” Roz said.

“He’s a federal agent,” Gloria said again.

“I know what he is,” Mick said.

“I’ll go to prison for life if they find out what I
did.”

“Then they won’t find out,” he said.
 
“You understand me?
 
They won’t find out.”

Gloria stared at her father.
 
At first, what he said to her made no sense
to her.
 
Then she realized who he
was.
 
“He was going to kill me.
 
That was his knife I used.
 
You think they’re going to believe me?”

Mick was frank.
 
“No,” he said.
 
“You’re my
daughter.
 
They won’t believe you.”

Gloria and Roz both looked at him.
 
Gloria looked even more distressed.
 
“Then how am I going to stay out of
prison?
 
I didn’t just kill him.
 
He tried to kill me, I swear!”

Mick was unable to conceal his distress.
 
He hated that it had to happen to his little
girl.
 
“Go change,” he said to her.
 
When she still just sat there, lost and confused,
he looked at Roz.
 

“Come on, babe,” Roz said, stood her up, and helped
her to the room.
 

Mick stood back up and walked over to Reno and
Sal.
 
All three men stood there.
 
Mick exhaled.

“What are you thinking?” Reno asked.
 
“Out of town?”

“Yeah,” Mick said, glancing back at the body.
 
“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Maybe make it look like a suicide,” Sal said.

But Mick was shaking his head.
 
“Too much chance of them finding her DNA.”

“What then?” Reno asked.

“Burn and bury,” Mick said.
 
“That’s the only way.”

Reno and Sal looked at each other.
 
That made sense to them too.
 
“That’s the only way,” Sal agreed.

Mick ran his hand across his face.

“You hate that she had to experience this,” Reno
said.

“I was hoping she wouldn’t see this side,” Mick
said.
 
“I was hoping.”

“Yeah,” Reno said, “I felt the same way when Jimmy
Mack got a taste.
 
It’s always
bitter.”
 

 
“Nothing can
be done about it now,” Mick said with resolve in his voice.
 
“I’ll contact my men---”

Sal shook his head.
 
“No, you won’t,” he said, and Mick looked at him.
 
“Our men will handle this.
 
You get your wife and your daughter and get
the fuck out of here.
 
You aren’t the
only one who knows how to manage a crisis.
 
Between the two of us, we’ve been doing this shit for fifty years.”

Mick actually managed to smile.
 
And he considered Reno and Sal.
 
He considered them because, for the first
time in his entire life, he had back up that was actually his equal.
 
He had family.

Saturday evening, after the Gabrinis had left town
and all of the Sinatras, except Charles, had left too, Mick and Charles were
alone on the backyard patio.
 
Mick was
drinking a glass of wine.
 
It had been a
wonderful get together, but a tough one too.
 
Roz came out.

“How is she?” Mick asked expectantly.

Roz nodded.
 
“She’s resting comfortably.
 
It’s
going to take some getting used to.
 
She
thinks it’s her fault because she didn’t come back here like you told her
to.
 
She went home instead.”

Mick’s cell phone began to ring.
 
“It would have been avoided,” he said.
 
“That’s the truth.
 
But it’s not her fault.”
 
Mick answered his phone.

“Can I get you anything to drink, Charles?” Roz
asked.

“No, I’m good,” Charles said.
 
“I don’t have the stomach for a lot of
alcohol.
 
But I see my brother does.”

Roz smiled.
 
“And does he,” she said.