“We do,” said Jenay, the waiterbowed, and left. “You said was,”Jenay said to Roz. “He was therefor you. Not anymore?”
Amelia smiled. “I thought we weren’t going to talk aboutthat,” she said, and Jenay kicked her under the table. But then Jenay smiled too. Amelia was getting married to the man of herdreams in a few weeks. She was giddylike a kid. Jenay would forgive heranything.
But if they thought Roz was going tosit up there and tell them about her marriage, they were gravely mistaken. “He’s alright,” she said, and that was allshe planned on saying about it.
But Amelia had different ideas. “Youdon’t think you’re making a mistake?”
Roz looked at her. “By doing what?”
“By letting Mick get away with hisbullshit,” Amelia said. “I’m justkeeping it real. Every time I talk toyou he’s somewhere other than with you.”
“He’s a busy man, Millie,” Jenaysaid.
“Ain’t that much busy in this world,”said Amelia. “Roz knows that.”
Roz exhaled. She wasn’t going to lie. “Yeah, I know.”
“And what are you doing about it?”
Roz didn’t respond to that. They didn’t understand Mick’s kind of busy,and the irons he had in so many fires. Sometimes she didn’t understand it either. “Excuse me, ladies,” she said as she stood upfrom her chair. “I need to use thelittle girls’ room.” And she walked away.
When she made it to the restroom, sheleaned against the side wall and rubbed her forehead. Two nights ago she had another failedaudition. Today she already lost twomore clients to bigger agencies in New York. And Mick was out of the country on business too serious for her to evenmention. And they wanted her to talkabout it? They didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what it was like to bemarried to the notorious Mick Sinatra, and the sacrifices she had to make to behis woman. To keep their family togetherwhen he was absent. It was all too rawfor her to just talk about.
She went to the sink, threw somewater on her face, and then took her time to pull herself together. Then she wiped her face and headed back tothe firing line.
Fortunately for Roz, the conversationhad shifted, and they were ready to order their meals.
CHAPTER TEN
The jumbo jet landed at the Montrealairfield and Mick and Teddy, looking like two well-dressed businessmen,deplaned and hurried across the tarmac. Hammer Reese’s plane was readying for takeoff, but he had agreed to meetwith Mick. Teddy, however, didn’t thinkit was a good idea.
“This is going to look all kinds ofcrazy, Pop, if the Feds are tailing us,” Teddy said as they walked.
“The Feds aren’t tailing us.” Mick knew because he had his men tailingthem. “And what’s weird about it? He’s about to marry my sister. He wanted to ask me if I’d be his bestman. I’ll tell him no. What’s wrong with that?”
Teddy looked at his father. “There is no way Hammer Reese asked you to behis best man. The two of you hate eachother.”
“We don’t hate each other.”
“You hate the fact that he’s alawman, and he hates the fact that the brother of his soon-to-be wife iseverything a lawman is against. That’spowerful hate.”
“That’s not the point,” Micksaid. “I wouldn’t be his best man if Iwas the last man on earth. But if theFeds ask you what this meeting was about, that’s the reason you give. He wanted me in his wedding. Period.”
“With just three weeks before thewedding, Pop? The Feds won’t fall forthat.”
“They’ll fall for whatever we tellthem to fall for. Besides, it shouldn’tcome ever come up. Wait here,” Mick saidwhen they arrived at the steps of Hammer’s plane, and then he left Teddy on thetarmac as he climbed up.
Teddy was pissed that his father,once again, left him out of the action. He felt like some kind of glorified securityguard standing there like some idiot. But that was his old man lately. Always leaving him out of major decisions. Always telling him just enoughinformation. And Teddy was getting tiredof it.
But inside the plane, Mick sat downacross from Hammer Reese in the plane’s conference room, his crew chief closedthe door behind them, and the two men got down to business.
“Yes,” Hammer said before Mick askedhim, “It was an inside job.”
“One of my men?” Mick asked.
“One of your men in Rome, yes. I don’t know who snitched in Belarus.”
“Which one of my men in Rome?”
“I don’t know that either. But my money’s on Pauley Jay.”
Mick nodded. “Yeah, mine too. And you don’t know who sung in Belarus?”
“I don’t know, Hammer said.
Mick frowned. “Your ass the former head of CIA, and thecurrent special ops chief, and you couldn’t find that get little intel?”
“That’s exactly right, Mick,” Hammersaid a little annoyed. “What did youthink I was going to do? Ask a directquestion? I had to do some digging, andI couldn’t dig too deep or I’ll get flagged. My ass had no business doing that much.”
Mick understood it. But he needed intel! “Did my man in Rome go to ATF?”
“No,” said Hammer.
“Then who did he feed it to?” askedMick.
“One of the heads of a friendlyfamily, at least friendly to the Sinatra crime family.”
“There’s no such thing as a Sinatracrime family,” Mick said.
“Yeah, sure, Mick.”
But Mick was too hungry for info togo down that rabbit hole. “Whichpartner?” he asked Hammer.
“The one your ex is sleeping with,”Hammer said.
Mick found that an odd way to putit. “Which ex?”
“That’s right, you have so many.”
“Fuck you, Hammer!”
Hammer smiled. He and Mick might not ever see eye to eye onanything, but they knew when they were together they were in the company ofequals.
“Which ex?” Mick asked again.
“The one you’re most fond of,” Hammersaid.
Mick didn’t like the implication, buthe knew who he meant. “What else yougot?”
“That’s it. They collected files. Plenty of them in Rome. And the contraband, of course. But what they plan to do with all of the infothey collected? That I cannot tell youbecause I do not know.”
Mick exhaled. “Is there any chatter about bringing me up oncharges?”
Hammer smiled. “You? That’ll be the day. Your ass istoo big to fail, remember? You’refucking Goldman-Sachs in the mob world. They’ll have to be
