Teddy Sinatra_Chains For Love Read online

  Joey and the twins then looked at Teddy. They all were afraid of him, too, when he got like this.

  Teddy was breathing heavily. Unlike many underbosses in his position, he didn’t like when he had to get like this. But that fucked-up crew of Joey’s kept putting him in that position! “Another fuckup by another one of your men,” he warned his kid brother, “and you’re out.”

  But Joey, being the young, hothead he was known to be, was offended. “You can’t take me out of shit. Dad runs this bitch! Who the fuck are you to---”

  Before Joey could even finish his sentence, Teddy rushed him, grabbed him by his oversized jersey, and ran with him until he slammed him against the wall. Teddy’s teeth were clenched. “Another screwup by another one of your men,” he said between his clenched teeth, as he knocked Joey’s back against that wall again, “and you’re out. You want to see what I can and can’t do? You try me, Joey. Try me!”

  Joey was sufficiently put in his place. His lack of response proved that. But Teddy was still angry with him. “Who do you think has to go to Boss Bovenconti and admit we fucked up? You? Who do you think this shit is going to blow back on if Pop finds out? You?!”

  Teddy was breathing so hard he could hardly control his breaths. He was beginning to hate this job. And hate the wedge it was developing between he and his kid brother, a brother he loved with all his heart. He released him.

  “Bag him up,” Teddy said to Joey, “and get him ready for transport.” Then he gave his brother another hard look. “You’d better pray Pop doesn’t get wind of this,” he said. And then he walked out.

  One of the twins, Big-Eye, the instigator-in-chief, looked at Joey. “What, Joey? You’re going to let him talk to you like that?”

  “Yeah, Joey,” Ron agreed. “He’s no better than you or us. He was on the line same as all of us. But now, just because he got a little promotion, he gets to dictate everything like he’s your old man now? You gonna stand for that shit?”

  Joey and the twins knew Teddy didn’t get just a “little” promotion. They knew Teddy was Mick’s second-in-command: a bigger position than any head of any family in any other syndicate in the country. But Joey also knew his father didn’t play that insubordination shit, especially when it came to somebody disrespecting Teddy. “Don’t worry about what I’m going to stand for.”

  “But how we gonna ever get ahead if you get stuck, Joey? This our futures too!”

  “What you talking?” Now Joey was talking with his hands, which was a sure sign of his frustration. “I ain’t got shit to do with your futures. This ain’t no volunteer work. You’re getting paid to do what you do. What are you talking?”

  “You know what he means,” Big-Eye said. “When you gonna make your move?”

  Joey understood exactly what they meant. If he was ever going to get ahead, he had to knock Teddy down to get there. He’d been on the backburner too long. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see he was itching to get ahead, and the twins weren’t stupid people. They saw the eye of the tiger in Joey’s eyes. Joey was young and he was beyond restless.

  But, to Joey, that wasn’t the twins’ business. “Bag him up,” he ordered them. “And remind those fuckers downstairs that they didn’t see shit, or they won’t have eyes to see any more shit.”

  “Sure thing, Boss,” Ron said with his mouth, as he and Big-Eye looked at each other with disappointment in their eyes. Where was his fight? How were they ever going to get ahead in this organization if he didn’t make a move? But they left to do what they were told.

  And Joey, feeling the heat too, took the chair Khaki had been sitting in and angrily threw it against the wall.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nikki clocked out at one a.m., California time, caught a cab, and made it to her Los Angeles walk-up a half-hour later. She entered the tenement and began dragging herself up the stairs. She tried to be quiet. She tried to be as quiet as a mouse. But the downstairs door to Louie’s apartment opened, and the big-belly building superintendent stepped out. She wasn’t quiet enough.

  “Where’s my money, Nikki?” he asked.

  Nikki continued to drag herself up the stairs. “I told you tomorrow.”

  “It is tomorrow!”

  “It’s one a.m., Louie. Do I look like a bank?”

  Louie looked at her sizeable ass. His dick began to get hard. “It’s one-thirty a.m.,” he said. “And maybe.”

  Nikki stopped walking and looked down at him. She held one hand on the rickety railing for support. She was that tired. “I haven’t been to the bank yet, okay? I just got off work.”

  “The owner put me in charge of maintenance and rents. You owe me rent.”

  “Are you deaf? I just told you I haven’t been to the bank yet, Louie!”

  “The bank, yeah right. Who are you kidding? I doubt if you even have a bank account.”

  “Ah, forget you,” Nikki said with irritation in her voice and continued to walk up the stairs.

  “I want my money, Nikki!”

  “You’ll get your money.”

  “You work at a bar in Beverly freaking Hills! You should have my rent payment with tips alone. You’re the only woman I’ve ever heard of who works in a bar in Beverly Hills and don’t get tips!”

  She didn’t get tips. It was by Pablo’s design. It was under the guise of a tip-sharing system, where all the workers got an equal cut at the end of the night. But it really didn’t work that way. Pablo gave the lion’s share to the girls who also worked upstairs, fucking rich men, whenever duty called. Something Nikki was never going to do. Her tips barely paid her cab fare.

  She continued heading upstairs to her own apartment. “You’ll get your money,” she said again.

  “Shouldn’t have gotten demoted,” Louie said. “You paid on time when you managed that joint.” Then he smiled as he looked at the movement of her ass. “Need to get your fat ass in shape,” he said, lusting after that fat ass. “That’s what you need to do.”

  “And you can kiss my fat ass!” Nikki shot back.

  Her words angered Louie, and he rushed to the bottom of the stairs. “You owe me money, you fat bitch, and you talk to me like that?”

  But Nikki had fire too. “Because I owe you money doesn’t mean you’re going to talk to me like that!”

  “Fuck you, bitch!”

  “Fuck you, bastard!”

  Then Nikki made it into her apartment, slammed and locked the door, and leaned against it.

  And her bravado, just like that, was gone.

  Nothing was going right in her life. Not the job. Not trying to afford that L.A. rent on a bartender’s salary. Not even her nonexistent love life. Teddy Sinatra, the one she had such hopes for, the one who used to call her every day after their brief encounter in L.A., said he would go see her again as soon as he was able to get away. They talked almost daily for months. It was a long-distance relationship that she definitely thought was going somewhere.

  But then he went silent on her. Singing like a canary one day, and then silent as a mute the next. She hadn’t heard from him in over a week. She picked up the phone a couple times and called him herself. She even left him a couple voice messages. But he never called her back.

  Not that she blamed him. What she had to offer a guy like him? He was rich. Great looking. Strong and rough, but with a big heart too. At least that was how she saw him. And she was a barmaid. Thirty years on this green earth and barmaid was all she had to show for it. Yeah, some match she’d make him. Great going, Nikki. Some match you’d make!

  But forget it, she thought, as she pushed away from the door. Love and all that shit was a pipedream anyway. And Nikki was no dreamer. Time to get rid of the bar dirt, she decided, and to get her head out of the clouds.

  She headed for the tub.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Teddy drove a company car, which meant an untraceable car, beneath the bridge in Philly. He drove just past another car that was already there. Then he waited. If they thought he was ge
tting out first, they were fools. He stared at his rearview mirror and waited. Teddy had the patience of a saint when he needed to.

  And it worked. The doors of the second car eventually opened, two bodyguards stepped out: one was behind the wheel, and the other one was on the front passenger seat. They looked at Teddy’s car, and then one of them opened the backdoor. When Boss Bovenconti got out, Teddy then got out too.

  Boss Bovenconti was a highly regarded mob boss, but was small potatoes compared to the Sinatra Crime Family. Teddy knew many other mob families of their caliber wouldn’t give Bovenconti the time of day. What was his small ass going to do to their behemoth organizations? But Teddy knew small guys were the hungriest. They could cause major trouble if they didn’t get fed.

  Teddy walked to the back of his car, and he lifted the trunk.

  Bovenconti stared at him momentarily, and then walked up to the trunk. When he saw Khaki’s body inside, he exhaled. “He’s the one?”

  Since there would be absolutely no other reason to be showing him a dead body in his trunk, Teddy remained silent.

  “Fucking shame,” Bovenconti said, still looking at the body.

  Teddy looked at him. “How’s your son?”

  “In bad shape. Real bad shape.” Teddy could see the pain all over Bovenconti’s fat face. “He’ll live. By the grace of God, he’ll pull through. But barely.”

  “As you can see,” Teddy said, “the guy responsible has been dealt with.”

  “And I appreciate that. You’re a stand-up guy, Teddy, you always have been. But why isn’t Mick here? That’s what I wanna know. Where’s your old man? This is downright disrespectful. I’m a boss. He’s a boss. I didn’t send no fucking underboss. I came. My son is in ICU, fighting for his life because of something one of Mick’s men did. But I came.”

  Teddy attempted to be polite about it. “I run this sector of my father’s business,” he said.

  “But he could have come, Teddy! He could have showed up here like I showed up here and said, ‘I’m sorry, B.B.,’ he could have said. I’m sorry for what happened at that club. It was wrong. It was unfortunate. How do I make this right?’ That’s what he could have done. That’s what I would have done if it had been one of my men fucking up.”

  Teddy didn’t want to put salt in the guy’s wounds. “This is what I do,” he said. “This isn’t something my father can be bothered with.”

  Bovenconti was offended. “What the fuck that’s supposed to mean? My son’s life can’t concern your father? I’m the head of a family, Teddy! What the fuck are you trying to say?”

  “Who the fuck are you yelling at, first of all,” Teddy responded with bass in his voice.

  Bovenconti backed down and changed his tone. “I’m just saying it’s not right. That’s all I’m saying. I’m the head of a family. And the head of a family should get more respect.”

  “Okay, let’s get this shit straight.” He didn’t want to go there, but this asshole took him there. “You’re the head of a family, but your ass ain’t on my father’s level. You aren’t even on my level, okay? Let’s take it there, motherfucker. My father is in another world compared to you, and your ass knows it! I’m sorry about your son. What happened to him shouldn’t have happened to him. And, yes, it was disrespectful for Khaki to come at a boss’s kid like that. It’s not done, and he knew it was out of bounds. But don’t pull my father into this. My father doesn’t give a damn about shit like this. It doesn’t even reach his plate. Let’s get this shit straight.”

  Bovenconti felt disrespected unlike he’d ever felt. In his world, he was king and he wasn’t accustomed to this kind of blatant disregard. And to have an underboss, he didn’t care whose, talking to him like that? Not to mention what that fucker in that trunk did to his son!

  But he was nobody’s fool. He knew, with the Sinatras, umbrage was the only commodity he had at his disposal.

  “You want the body or not?” Teddy asked him.

  “What do you think?” Bovenconti responded. “You think I came out here for my health?” He nodded toward his men. They walked over to the trunk and removed the body. They took it to the back of their car, and then placed it in their trunk.

  Bovenconti then looked at Teddy. “Tell Mick I said thanks for his concern.” It was a parting shot, Teddy knew. And if it wasn’t for the fact that Bovenconti’s son was fighting for his life because of shit one of his own men pulled, Teddy wouldn’t let that asshole get away with it. But he let it slide. Better to be the bigger man than create more drama.

  “Will do,” Teddy said with a smile of his own, to Bovenconti’s dissatisfaction. And Bovenconti walked back to his car, got in, his men got in too, and they drove away.

  Teddy stood there momentarily. Taking in the early morning chill. Nearly five in the fucking morning and he was fixing problems that were not of his making. Again. Sometimes it felt as if that was all he did. Fix somebody else’s bullshit. Day in and day out. He wasn’t living a life. Just problem solving!

  He got into his car, too. But he remained where he sat.

  He found himself thinking about Nikki again. Why was he always thinking about her? But that was what he was doing at that time of morning. What was she doing, he wondered? Was she asleep, awake, working, not working, fucking? Teddy squeezed the steering wheel at the thought of some guy touching that fine black body.

  But it wasn’t as if he had any claim on her. A relative, Tommy Gabrini, told him to go for it. You find a good woman, you go for it. And Teddy almost did. He called her for months on end. It was like they were having a relationship by phone alone. It was so good that he would have wondered if he was being catfished had he not seen her in person some months earlier.

  But he enjoyed talking with Nikki. She was honest and direct and didn’t try to impress him with being something she wasn’t. For a while it became the highlight of his night to go home and talk on the phone with Nikki. He kept promising, the first chance he got, he was going back to Cali to see her and spend time with her.

  But then more shit happened in his father’s organization that required his attention. The kind of shit that couldn’t wait, and that couldn’t be handled by anybody else. And he gave up the pipedream. He realized what he’d known all his adult life: his life was fucked up enough. Why would he want to put a relationship on the table too?

  Besides, he thought, as he cranked up and drove away, a woman like Nikki, who was a sassy, full-of-life, take-no-prisoners cyclone of a classy lady, could do better than a gun-toting, edge-dwelling, dangerous joker like him.

  Way better.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He unlocked the door, including the deadbolt, and entered the apartment like a man who’d broken into more than his share of ladies’ apartments. He wasn’t on tiptoes like inexperienced burglars would be. He was flatfooted, moving stealthily, making certain that he avoided that part of the floor that creaked. And he knew every part that creaked. That was his preparation. Whenever Nikki was at work late at night, and the rest of the apartment dwellers were indoors worrying about their own lives, he entered her apartment. Smelled her clothes. Laid on her bed. Came thinking about her juicy black ass. Went through her things.

  It was a creep’s life, but what did he care? It got him through the night. But he was always careful to place everything back as it were. He prepared!

  Not that he planned to ever have to use his preparation. Nikki had too much mouth for him to take that chance. She was a feisty bitch he didn’t want to tangle with.

  But she’d crossed a line tonight. Nobody talked back to him the way she had. And especially not some nothing nigger on the begging list. She was going to pay dearly for what she owed him tonight, and then he was going to do to her what he had to do to his wife that time in Tahoe when she disrespected him. He was going to silence her forever. And take pleasure in doing so too.

  But first, she was going to give to him what he felt was rightfully due to him. She was going to pay her rent, all right, but she w
as going to pay it on her back!

  He could hear her snoring in the bedroom, as he made his way further into her apartment. She was clean, he’d give her that. One of the cleanest apartments in the building. He’d clean up the mess, too, when he was finished with her. All the cum he was going to enjoy spilling all over her, was going to be wiped clean. And then he’d take out the trash. It was going to take a hefty bag, big as that ass was, but he’d take her out.

  He went, first, into her kitchen. As he already knew, she had a knife holder filled with generally weak, in-need-of-sharpening kitchen knives. He took the entire holder and placed it on her top cabinet shelf, so far back she would need a chair to reach it, and so behind everything else that she wouldn’t even see it. Just in case, he thought.

  Then he pulled out his own tools: the rope, his own big knife, and the ether-filled cloth he was going to place to her big mouth to put her to sleep. Then he was going to have uninterrupted pleasure. For as long as he could. Maybe multiple times. And then end it all.

  And when he gingerly walked into that bedroom, and he saw her laying there with the covers pulled back, in a skimpy nightie that barely covered her ass, his dick began to get hard already. He’d never admit it out loud, but Nikki, like a lot of black women in his building, had the kind of body he craved. Curves going to town! And every curve in just the right place. He was going to enjoy this!

  He sat the rope and knife on her dresser, and then walked to her bed. As she slept the sleep of the seriously tired, he prepared the ether-filled cloth in his hand. Then he slowly, delicately, lifted her nightgown just above her butt. Tight and right, he thought, when he saw her bare butt. Perfection! And he touched that brown mound of gorgeousness as if he was touching something remarkable. But then, to wake her up so he could see the terror in her eyes when he put her into a drug-induced sleep she wouldn’t be waking up from prematurely, he rubbed her.