Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life (2 page)

And they
waited.
 
They waited as Mick walked
around that room as if he was a police detective in search of clues.
 
They waited as he moved like a man in
conflict with himself.
 
And when he
stopped walking, and stood in the middle of the room, his face so serious they
wondered if he had suddenly discovered something, they just knew he was in it
for the long haul.
 
This was going to
take a while.
 
But as quickly as he had
stopped, he started again. Only he didn’t pace the room this time.
 
He hurried out of the room and up the stairs,
his white coat flowing behind him as if his very movements created its own
breeze.

“Where?” he
asked Leo as he approached him.

Leo escorted
Mick, and his men behind him, to the master bedroom.
 
Flo was lying across the bed, on her back,
with a bullet hole through her forehead.
 
Mick stood there, watching her.
 
Her deceased husband worked for him, and he died in the line of
duty.
 
On his death bed, he begged Mick
to look out for his wife and son.
 
Mick
hired Flo, at Sinatra Industries, and provided for her son the way he provided
for his own children.
 
He never liked
Flo, she was too unreliable for his taste, but he respected her husband.
 
Unlike downstairs, he was out of that room in
seconds.

Leo escorted
him and his men to a second bedroom.
 
This room held three bodies: two ladies and one man.
 
Relatives of Flo’s.
 
All three shot in the head too.
 
It was a bloody scene, with blood splatters
on the walls, as if they all fought for their lives to the bitter end.
 
But they were dealing with pros.
 
They never stood a chance.
 
Mick was out of that room even faster.

The third
room was next, but Leo stood in front of the door.
 
“It’s bad, boss,” he said.
 
“I don’t think you should go in there.”

Mick looked
at Leo as if he had lost his mind.
 
Who
did he think he was dealing with?
 
A
fucking flower girl?
 
“Move,” he ordered.

Leo moved.

Mick and his
men entered a room filled with young bodies.
 
Five of them.
 
Three children Flo had
with other men, one child Mick didn’t recognize, and Shane.
 
The reason Leo didn’t want him in there in
the first place.
 
Flo’s ten-year-old son
Shane.
 
The child Flo had with her
deceased husband, a man who had been Mick’s friend and security chief.
 
On his dying bed, Flo’s husband asked Mick,
begged Mick, to take care of Shane as if he was his own.

When Mick
saw Shane, piled on the other young people as if he was discarded rubble, or,
more likely, the cherry on top, his knees buckled.
 
He nearly fell.
 
But he didn’t fall.
 
He, instead, lifted the young man and held
him.
 
He removed his blonde locks from
his forehead and cradled him in his arms.

He took it
to the head too.
 
But two shots, not
one.
 
He was the message.
 
The kill shot.
 
The understanding that everybody would get it
one way, but this one, the great man’s son, would get more.

Mick took
the boy, laid him on the bed, and placed his arms folded across his
stomach.
 
And stared at him.
 
He was not Mick’s biological son, but
apparently the killer thought he was.
 
Which got Mick thinking again.
 
His eyes were so intense as he stood there, that his men looked at each
other, fearful of what would happen next.
 
But nothing happened.
 
Mick just
stood there, watching Flo’s child.
 
He
was not close to the boy.
 
He saw him
whenever he could, which was almost never, and provided financial support.
 
But he was still a kid.
 
Who would hate Mick so much that he would
kill a kid?
 
He stared at Shane, as he
fought back tears.

And just
when his men were about to pronounce him superhuman for the way he was handling
the boy’s death, just when they were about to add this scene to the Mick
Sinatra mystique, Mick angrily grabbed the nightstand next to the bed and threw
it full force out of the closed window, crashing the window and decimating the
stand.

Everybody
were so shocked by his sudden rage that they backed up themselves, afraid they
could be next.
 
Leo ran to the window,
leaned out, and waved off the guards who weren’t sure what had happened and
were already advancing toward the house.

Leo looked
at Mick.
 
“You okay, boss?”

“A kid,”
Mick said, as if he still couldn’t believe it.
 
“They killed a kid?”
 
Then his
voice rose.
 
“What fucker alive is bat
shit crazy enough to do something like this?
 
Who did this?”

“One dead
motherfucker, that’s who,” one of his men answered.

All of the
men froze.
 
Then looked at him.
 
Mick looked too. Only he wasn’t seeing what
they were seeing.
 
He wasn’t seeing a man
cocky enough to even attempt to appease him.
 
He saw what was bothering him about the scene to begin with.
 
Too methodical.
 
Too staged.
 
Like a show rather than a shooting.
 
And his instincts took over.
 
He
lifted his gun and pointed it straight at that cocky man’s head.
 
“Drop the weapon,” he said.

But the man
lifted it instead, ready to take Mick out.
 
Mick, however, shot him before he got the chance.

All the
other men backed away.
 
They all looked
at Mick.
 
Terrified for their own
lives.
 
But Mick wasn’t thinking about
them.
 
“He’s wired,” he said.
  
“My life I will bet on it.”

Leo, unable
to accept that one of his men could be stupid enough to rat on Mick, hurried to
the dead man and tore open his shirt.
 
And Mick was right.
 
The guy was
wired, not only for sound, but for video too.

“Motherfucker!”
Leo yelled, as he ripped it all out.

And just as
he did, just as those listening and watching realized the gig was up, they
accelerated the game.
 
The sound of
gunfire was suddenly heard outside.

Mick looked
at Danny.
 
“Stay with Shane and call for
men to get my children to safe houses!”

“Yes, sir!”
Danny said, as he pulled out his cell phone.

Mick, Leo,
and their other men raced downstairs and out of the front door.
 

But what
they saw staggered them.

All of the
new guards were already down, all with bullets through the brain, as if this
shit had been orchestrated to the last man.
  
And the car that penetrated their defenses, the car that had just
moments before gunned-down those guards, was now racing toward the very steps
where Mick Sinatra himself, the prize, stood at the top.
 
They raced for a sidelong collision with
Carissa and the parked limo.
 
Carissa
pressed on the gas and accelerated the limo out of harm’s way, and Mick’s men
began firing at the car whose occupants were only just beginning to draw.

But as
Mick’s men were in a shootout with the men in the car, Mick drew out his big
guns that he kept concealed in his coat.
 
With one gun in either hand he began running fearlessly down the steps,
thinking about Shane and the fact that these very men were probably the ones who
killed him.
 
He was firing nonstop, as
the car raced wildly toward the very steps he was running down.
 
But unlike his men, he was hitting every man
he aimed for, including the driver.

When the
driver went down, the car lost control and careened into the bottom step in a
hard crash.
 
But the acceleration was too
great to stop its’ momentum.
 
The car
flipped in the air as if it was riding a wave, and crashed back down, belly up,
as if a monster truck had just crushed it.
 
If Mick’s shots didn’t completely kill every one of those men inside,
the horrific way their automobile landed did.

And Mick
stood there, at the top of a mangled empire, looking, not as a man under siege,
but as a businessman assessing risk.
 
He
was less concerned about what his next move needed to be, and more concerned
about his enemy’s next move.
  
Their move
would determine his move because it wasn’t clear to him why they would hit
Flo.
 
She no longer worked for him.
 
And why would they mistake Shane for his son?

But before
he could fully incorporate it, another car drove onto Flo’s estate.
 
Mick and Leo and his surviving men drew their
weapons ready to fire again.
 
Until the
door opened and Barkley, one of Mick’s men, stumbled out.
 
“They hit Silvio Fontaine,” he yelled, blood
on his chest.
 
“And Paul Ricci’s place
too!”

“Who fell?”
Mick asked him.

Barkley
shook his head, as if he was reliving a horrific scene.
 
“Who didn’t?” he asked.
 
“At least twelve of our men went down.
 
I counted at least twelve.”

“It’s
willy-nilly, boss,” Leo said to Mick.
 
“It’s like they’re toying with you.
 
Fontaine and Ricci are two of your operatives.
 
They don’t know shit about your current activities.
They’re ghostbusters.
 
What the fuck do
they have to do with anything? And what would Flo know?
 
She doesn’t even work for you anymore.
 
It’s willy fucking nilly!
 
It’s like they’re trying to toy with you.”

“Or distract
me,” Mick said, his eyes still intense, his mind racing in too many different
directions.

Leo looked
at Mick.
 
“Distract you from what?”

“They’re
after something big,” Mick said.

“But what?”
Leo asked.

“What is the
biggest, most important---?”

And as soon
as Mick said those words, his heart nearly stopped.
 
“
Rosalind
,”
he said as if he could barely say it, and began running toward the limousine.

“What is it,
boss?” Leo asked anxiously, running with him.

“Get every
man I have in New York to Rosalind,” Mick said.
 
“I want a fucking army on her!”

And Leo was
pulling out his cell phone, gathering that army, while Mick was pulling out
his, attempting to phone his lady love, to warn her, as they raced to the
limousine.

Because Mick
knew it even if they didn’t.
 
Because
Mick knew, if they harmed one hair on Rosalind’s head, he was going to live up
to his name.
 
Mick the Tick was going to
drop the bomb.

Six Months Earlier

Roz Graham
walked around the windowless studio as her students rehearsed in groups of
two.
 
With her arms folded, her heels
stepping high, and her short, trumpet skirt highlighting her shapely legs, she
purposely presented the image of an unapologetic taskmaster rather than a
mild-mannered acting coach.
 
But she was
their acting teacher, and had been teaching similar groups for years.

“You have to
own it,” she said to one of her shyest students when she saw her struggling in
her twosome.
 
“Don’t hold back, my
darling.
 
Own it.
 
Express yourself.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” the student said as she looked at her script, and read the dialogue
again.
 
“That’s why I’m crying,” she
read.

“
But you aren’t crying
,” Roz admonished
her.
 
“You have a frowned face, and your
voice has gone to the next register, but I don’t see a single tear.
 
You’ve got to work this scene, Jennifer.
 
Not think about working it.
 
Work it.”

“I
will.
 
I got it, Miss G.
 
I’ll cry.”

“Then cry!”

“I will,”
Jennifer assured her.
 
“I’ll cry when it
matters, I promise you.”

Roz looked
at her as if she had just grown an extra eye.
 
And now it was her time to frown.
 
“When it matters?” she asked.
 
“It
always matters!
 
When you’re blessed to
act, when somebody gives you an opportunity to show your stuff, you had better
bring it.
 
I don’t care if you’re in a
Tony award winning musical.
 
I don’t care
if you’re in somebody’s living room.
 
It
always matters.”

The student
exhaled and nodded her head.
 
“You’re
right,” she said.
 
“I just have to sit
myself down and figure this thing out.
 
I’m going to cry.”

“Then
cry!
 
Don’t just say it.
 
Show it.
 
Missouri may be the
show me
state, but Broadway is the
show me
capital of the world.
 
You have to be
able to express yourself on a dime, darling, or you’re in the wrong
profession.”

“Preach!”
another one of Roz’s students yelled out, prompting other students to snigger.

“Does it
look like I need an amen corner, Terrell?
 
Get back to work,” Roz warned him, and the sniggering ceased.

And Roz kept
moving.
 
She had twelve students in her
class, which was only half of what she had last year, and only a third of what
she had the year before that.
 
It was
tough times all around and people couldn’t afford the luxury of acting classes
the way they once could.
 
But it was a
brutal business too, and many of her previous students simply gave up.

But Roz
didn’t let any of that get her down.
 
Her
own toughness, her discipline, her refusal to accept mediocrity even in her
most mediocre of students, made it imperative to her that she teach a class of
twelve just as fervently as she taught a class of fifty.
 
Almost all of her students were young,
wide-eyed eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-olds, but a couple were in their
thirties.
 
All of them needed to be
ready.
 
Roz had been in the business for
a decade.
 
She knew what was required.

She stopped
as another twosome, a couple of weaker actors who should never have been paired
up in the first place, rehearsed their lines.
 
They were male and female, probably had the hots for each other, Roz
figured, and the male was reading his line.

“I lost my
shoes,” he read.

“You lost
your shoes?” the female responded in a bombastic voice, reading her line.
 
“Oh, no!
 
That’s terrible, Andre!”

“And that’s
too damn sympathetic, Karen,” Roz said, prompting “Andre” to laugh.
 
“He didn’t say he lost his mama.
 
He said he lost his shoes.
 
Don’t oversell it now.
 
Overacting is just as bad as underacting.
 
Keep it reasonable.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” the actress said.

Just as she
said it, the door to the small, upstairs rehearsal studio opened, and a young
man, carrying a backpack and sashaying his hips more dramatically than Roz
sashayed hers, hurriedly walked in.

“You’re
late, Jamal,” Roz said.

“Don’t blame
me.
 
Blame the New York Transportation
Authority.”
 
Some in the room
snickered.
 
“They need to quit making
people late like that.”

“And you
need to quit lying like that,” Roz responded.

“I’m not
lying, Miss Graham!
 
It’s awful out
there.”

“Put up your
gear and get in a group.”

“As Lead?”

“Hell
no.
 
As Understudy.”

“Not again,
Miss G!”

“Yes, again,
Miss Jamal!
 
You should have had your ass
here.
 
Play Understudy in one of the twosomes
and learn those lines as if they’re your own.
 
You may end up getting more Understudy roles than regular roles.
 
That’s how it works in this town.
 
You need to know what it’s like to be as
prepared as the Lead even though you may never get a chance to utter a single
word on stage.”

Jamal
exhaled.
 
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with
displeasure in his voice, as he headed for the back counters where everybody’s
gear were stored.
 
“I guess that’s what I
get for being late.”

“Exactly,”
Roz said with a smile.
 
She loved it when
students took responsibilities for their actions.

But then she
realized her own error.
 
She looked at
the round, green clock on the dingy wall, saw that it was already half pass,
and quickly made her way to the back counter herself.
 
“Talk about late,” she said as she hurried.
“I’m going to be late myself.
 
Marge!”

Marge was
one of her students.
 
One of the older
ones.
 
She hurried to her.
 
“Yeah, ma’am?”

“You’re in
charge.”
 
Roz placed her shoulder bag
satchel over her small shoulder.
 
“Let
them finish their dramatizations and then walk them through the same Improv set
from last week.”

“Straight
sets?”

“Yes.
 
They were awful last week.
 
Straight sets until they get it right.”
 
Then Roz addressed the entire class.
 
“No nonsense just because I won’t be here,”
she warned as she was leaving.
 
“This is
not a game.
 
This is your career we’re
talking about!”

And Roz
hurried out of the rented space, down the three flights of stairs, and out into
the busy, overcast New York evening as she hurried, practically ran the entire
way, to the Subway station.

As soon as
she got onto the train and sat down, she flipped the escaping strands from her
ponytail out of her face, leaned her head back, and exhaled.
 
She’d already text her friend Betsy and told
her to wait at the gate, which was their term when they needed someone to stand
guard at the entrance door to let her into the theater if she arrived too
late.
 

Although
teaching
acting paid her bills far more
often than her
actual
acting, it
wasn’t always that way.
 
Roz used to make
a living as an actress, a decent living, although all of her major roles were
off Broadway.
 
But then, two years ago
when she turned thirty, even those roles began to dry up.
 
Nowadays everybody wanted younger actresses
to play even the older parts, because one young actress, with the proper
makeup, could play two or three roles of various ages and save productions tons
of cash.
 
That was why, once Roz turned
thirty and still wasn’t established, it became an uphill climb.
 
Now even auditions were few and far between.

But Roz was
a professional.
 
She didn’t allow the
dire side of her circumstances to get her down.
 
She closed her eyes from the bump and grind and noises around her and
focused on the positive.
 
She rehearsed
in her head each and every dance move of her upcoming routine.

When the
train stopped at the station, and she was off again, she ran the four blocks to
the backstreet,
off
-Broadway theater
where auditions were being held for an upcoming
on
-Broadway production.
 
Although she had a few minor roles in Broadway plays in her decade-long
career, she had yet to make so much as a dent on the Great White Way.
 
But this play, like all the other plays she
auditioned for, could give her that chance.

She looked
at the time on her cell phone as she made her way toward the back
entrance.
 
Although she was only a couple
minutes late, she knew if Betsy didn’t come through for her she would not be
allowed in.
 
But her pal Betsy Gable was
waiting at the door, holding it open, and she made it in.

“This is
different,” Betsy said as Roz hurried in.
 
“I’m usually the one who’s late.
 
You’re usually the one holding the door for me.
 
I like the change.”

“First Call
made yet?” Roz asked, and Betsy was about to tell her.
 
But Greg, the stagehand and door guard,
entered the back hall shaking his head.

“You’re
late, Roz,” he said.
 
“No admittance if
you’re late.
 
You know that.”

“But I’m in
now,” Roz said.

“Barry says
no admittance if you’re late.
 
You know
the rules.”

“But she’s
in now,” Betsy said.

“Then she
needs to get back out.
 
Barry says---”

“Ah, for
crying out loud, Greg,” Roz said, employing a tactic she would never teach her
students.
 
“It’s not as if I didn’t make
it at all.
 
I’m only a couple minutes
late.”

“That’s
still late.”

“Give it a
rest, Greg,” Betsy said.
 
“She’s in
now.
 
What difference does it make now?”

He didn’t
like it, but he waved them on.
 
And Betsy
and Roz, two pros on the circuit, didn’t delay.
 
They hurried along the narrow corridor that led to the dressing rooms,
knowing they had just dodged a bullet.

“I can’t
believe I let time get away from me like this,” Roz said as they hurried.

“It happens
to the best of us, girl, don’t worry about it.”

But that was
unacceptable to Roz.
 
It had been years
since she was late for an audition, and if it wasn’t for Betsy waiting at the
gate, she would not have been allowed in the door.
 
Since auditions nowadays were few and far
between, she knew she had no room for error.
 
She had to be on point.
 
She had
to do better than this.

For years
Roz had been doing all she could to break into the big time.
 
Now she was soon to turn thirty-three and
this so-called career of hers was still looking drab.
 
She had some major moments, like when she won
that plum role in the off-Broadway revival of
A Raisin in the Sun
, where she played Ruth Younger, Walter Lee’s
wife.
 
Or when she played second-lead in
the off-Broadway production of
Marcus Got
His Gun
.
 
But both of those roles
were nearly five years ago.
 
The work
remained steady after that, but nothing like it had been.
 
Then the roles became more and more
infrequent.
 
Roles that barely
registered.
 
An extra, the no-name lady
with a line or two, a member of the chorus.
 
Sometimes she was even the understudy, who never got the call.

It was
nothing like the life she had envisioned when she graduated Yale Drama School
and made her way to New York City, ready to take this town by storm.
 
She was going to make the big time, she
declared, if it was the last thing she tried to do.
 
And she tried and tried and tried.
 
For a decade she’d been out here hustling and
trying.
 
Now she was in the final hour of
her tries because it wasn’t happening for her anymore.
 
She knew decisions had to be made.
 
She knew she was going to have to face a
harsh truth she often taught her students to always be willing to face: that
this career she invested so much of her life into might actually be a fail for
her.
 
And she was going to have to face
it sooner rather than later.