Mick Sinatra 4: If You Don't Know Me by Now (9 page)

She leaned
back and looked at him.
 
“But what about
Spain?” she asked.

“Spain will
have to wait,” he said, as he looked from her eyes to her luscious mouth.
 
“Everything after you.”

And this
time, when he moved to kiss her, Roz not only kept her mouth in range, but
placed her hands on the side of his face, and guided him to the spot.

They gave
her staffers inside the lobby something to talk about, something they could
witness for themselves and undercut Teegan’s soon-to-come version of trouble in
paradise, because they kissed passionately, like two teenagers in heat, in that
parking lot.

“What if it
doesn’t work, Hamp?” Betsy Gable asked anxiously.
 
“What if she sees right through this?”

“Why would
she see through it?” Hamilton Sturgess responded.
 
“She would have to believe J.J., whom she
respects, is as crooked as you are.
 
She
wouldn’t think that.
 
That’s why I used
J.
 
Roz doesn’t know what’s going on in
her life.
 
Roz will believe every word
J.J. tells her.”

But Betsy
flung her blond hair out of her face and continued to walk around that living
room.
 
She was not at all as convinced as
he was.
 
“But what if she told that
husband of hers?
 
You’ve had dealings
with him before.
 
He’s straight up crazy.
 
He’ll kill a brother, Hamp.
 
What about him?”

Hamilton met
Mick Sinatra when he tried to worm his way into Roz’s heart almost a year
ago.
 
Mick set him straight then.
 
He made clear that he was to stay clear of
his wife, and Hamp kept that promise.
 
Until now.
 
“Let me worry about him,”
he said.
 
“We were paid to do a job, and
we’re doing that job.
 
If we fail,
neither one of us will get paid.
 
You
want that?”

Both of them
were the most desperate they had ever been in their lives, and looked it.
 
Betsy, who used to believe her natural good
looks would be her ticket to stardom, was broke, abused, and hooked on crack.
 
Her beauty had faded into an ugly,
pinched-face look, and her body, which was really her calling card, was now too
thin, too punctured by too many needle pricks, and far too overused to ever be
deemed attractive again.
 
If this
get-cash-quick scheme didn’t work, and they didn’t get paid soon, she was going
to die.
 
That was why she was willing to
sacrifice her best friend.
 
The need was
on her too bad for her to turn this opportunity down.
 
Besides, she knew they wouldn’t hurt
Roz.
 
She knew the people involved.
 
They just wanted to teach her a lesson.

Hamp, like
Betsy, was less concerned about Roz’s fate than he was about his own
problems.
 
It wasn’t drugs per se for
him, although he was a user too, but he wanted the money to resume his
high-flying lifestyle.
 
He was the one
who enlisted Betsy.
 
He was the one who
enlisted J.J. Crane.
 
They were all
struggling for dough, all three of them, and delivering Roz Sinatra into the
hands of her enemy was the only way they were going to get it.
 
But first they had to deliver her.

“You just do
what you were told to do,” he said to Betsy.
 
“You follow the script as if it was written for a show on Broadway.
 
If you do that, and if I do my part, we can’t
lose.”

“But he’s
not gonna hurt her, right?” Betsy asked.
 
“He’s just gonna teach her a lesson, right?”

Hamilton
wanted to slap her.
 
Betsy was worse than
he could ever be, in his opinion, because she was betraying her best friend but
still wanted to pretend she had Roz’s best interest at heart.
 
He had no such illusions about his true
intentions.
 
But to keep Betsy and her
fantasy about being a good person onboard, he went along with her
foolishness.
 
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
 
“Just to teach her a lesson, that’s all.
She’ll be fine, don’t you worry about Roz.
 
Nobody’s going to harm Roz.”

“I know
that’s right,” Gwen Sutton said.
 
Hamilton and Betsy turned toward her.
 
She was the actress whom J.J. told Roz that Betsy was staying with.
 
They were in her house on Long Island.
 
It was nothing fancy, very rustic and
dilapidated, but it was secluded enough for them to do what they had to
do.
 
Because she, even more than
Hamilton, was the driving force behind this scheme.
 
She only had a passing knowledge of Roz when
they both once worked in an off-Broadway play, both with minor roles.
 
It wasn’t about money for her.
 
It was about helping, loving, and obeying her
old man.
 
“You know Melo.
  
He just wants to make her sweat a little.”

Hamilton
smiled.
 
Gwen was even more ruthless than
he was.
 
“Right,” he said.
 
“Just make her sweat a little for what she
did to him.”

Betsy still
hoped it was true.
 
She hoped it was
going to be a slam dunk like Hamp was saying, and everybody would get out of
this in one piece.
 
But when the doorbell
rang, and Hamilton was able to peep through the blinds without showing himself
and saw that not only Roz, but her husband Mick, was on the house’s front
porch, his heart sank.
 
Mick was with
her.
 
J.J. was supposed to warn her not
to even tell Mick, let alone bring him too!

“What is
it?” Betsy asked, as she stood at the closed blinds too.

“She brought
Mick along,” Hamilton said.
 
“She brought
Mick!”

“Oh, no!”
Betsy said in anguish.
 
“What are we
going to do?”

Hamilton
could hardly think straight.
 
But Gwen
could.
 
She didn’t know Mick like
that.
 
He didn’t scare her.
 
“You,” she said to Betsy,” get in the bedroom
and prepare to play your role if necessary.”

Betsy
hurried into the bedroom.

“You,” she
said to Hamilton, “get ready for the grab.”

“But what
about her husband?”

“I’ll handle
him,” Gwen said the way a person who did not truly know Mick Sinatra would have
said.
 
“You and your guy just be ready.”

Hamilton
hurried to get prepared as the doorbell rang again.
 
They had to get this right!

Gwen
exhaled, and answered the door.

Roz Graham
looked even more graceful than she remembered her.
 
Even when she was poor as dirt, just like the
rest of them, she had an elegance about her.
 
Now that she was married to this guy they called Mick, a very
distinguished and elegant-looking man if Gwen had to say so herself, it only
enhanced her beauty.
 
But Gwen still
wasn’t a fan.
 
“Roz, what a surprise!”
she said when she opened her front door.
 
“I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

“How are
you?” Roz asked.
 
She hadn’t seen Gwen
Sutton in years.
 
“It’s been so long.”

“Over a
decade, I’d say.
 
But you haven’t changed
a bit.”

“Neither
have you,” Roz said.
 
All of this seemed
almost out of place considering why she had come.

Gwen,
however, was giving Hamilton time to prepare.
 
She knew what she was doing.
 
“Did
you drive, or what?”

“I flew,”
Roz said.
 
“We flew.”

Gwen looked
at Mick.
 
“And you must be?” Gwen asked,
extending her hand.
 
Just to make
certain.

“This is my
husband,” Roz proudly said.
 
“Mick
Sinatra.”

“Oh, Mick,”
Gwen said as they shook hands.
 
“That’s
what I was afraid of.”
 
She looked at
Roz.
 
“Betsy is terrified of him.
 
Did you know that?”

“Terrified
is a strong word,” Roz responded, “but yes.”

“She’ll go
nuts if she knows he’s anywhere near her.
 
And she’s in bad shape.”

“Yeah, J.J.
told me.
 
She said the guy beat her
pretty badly.”

“That’s an
understatement, Roz.
 
You’ll see.”
 
She looked at Mick.
 
“But I’m afraid, sir, that you’ll have to
wait out here.
 
I cannot risk her knowing
that you’re anywhere near her.
 
I will
not risk it.”

The fear in
Gwen’s eyes were extraordinary, Roz thought.
 
What in the world had Bess told her?
 
Roz looked at Mick.
 
It was always
unclear if he was convinced.
 
But he
didn’t fight her on it.
 
“I’ll wait out
here,” he said to her.

Roz loved
him even more for his understanding as Mick removed his hand from the small of
her back.
 
Gwen opened the door wider,
Mick looked inside, as Roz entered the house.

But as soon
as the door was closed and locked, and Gwen began escorting Roz toward the
bedroom, Hamilton and a small time crook they called Face came up behind
Roz.
 
Roz had only just saw Betsy lying
on a bed when Face quickly covered her mouth with duct tape, and he and
Hamilton slammed her backwards onto the floor.

Roz could
feel her heart shake with terror as the two men taped her mouth so completely
that she could barely breathe through her nose.

“Go right
now,” she heard Gwen say with panic in her voice, “
before
he has a chance to even think about coming in here!”

And they
were off.
 
Hamilton and Face lifted Roz
by the catch of her arms and began running her toward the back door of the
home.
 
She was trying to flail out of
their grasp with everything she had, as the terror continued to grip her, but
they were far too strong.
 
She was
wasting her energy and realized it almost immediately.
 
She decided to preserve her fight for one she
had a chance of winning.
 
She moved to
their pull.

What
particularly upset Roz was seeing that Gwen was involved, and Hamilton.
 
She knew them both, and once respected them
both.
 
And Betsy?
 
Her best friend?
 
And what about J.J.? Was she involved in this
too?
 
Or had they just used her name as a
ruse?

But none of
that mattered now.
 
Roz had to
survive.
 
Mick was out front, thinking
she was in some bedroom comforting her old friend, and she couldn’t make a
sound.
 
Tears tried to come to her eyes
as the two men hurried her through the kitchen and then through the
backdoor.
 
Mick
, she inwardly cried.
 
Mick, help me!
 
You were right. I should have listened to you
!

But it was
too late now.
 
She didn’t listen, she
wouldn’t listen, and now she was on her way to something horrific.
 
Maybe even, she thought shockingly, her own
death.

But as soon
as Hamilton opened that back door and thrust her through it, her thought
changed.
 
Her beloved Mick wasn’t out
front as she had thought, but was standing on the back porch waiting for those
thought-they-were-being-slick
fools to
arrive.
 
And the seclusion of that house
that made it perfect for what they wanted to do to Roz, was suddenly perfect
for what Mick was about to do to them.

Mick raised
a gun and shot Face between the eyeballs, causing him to drop dead.
 
Hamilton, now the one terrified, pushed Roz
onto Mick and ran back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

Mick grabbed
his terrified wife, pulled her into his arms relieved that she was safe, but he
knew he had to act fast.
 
They weren’t
getting out of this alive.
 
He removed
the tape from her mouth, it was painful but necessary, and handed her his
backup gun.
 
“Shoot anything that moves,”
he ordered her.

“I will,”
she assured him.

 
He held onto the banister, leaned back, and
kicked the backdoor in with his five thousand dollar shoes.
 
And with gun at the ready, he ran inside.

He was met
with gunfire.
 
Not from Hamilton, he
realized as he took cover, but from Gwen.
 
She was walking toward him firing shot after shot, firing wildly
inaccurately, as if she was some action figure in a movie and aim didn’t
matter.
 
But this was no movie, and aim
was everything.
 
Mick took her out with a
single shot.