Mick Sinatra_Heat Wave Read online

  “They ain’t all that new,” Joey said. “And Turk and Pop go back for years too. Don’t you, Pop?”

  But Mick had a million things on his mind. Ten million, to be exact. “Who’s the buyer for this import?” he asked.

  “El Salvador,” Joey said. “Turk is a middle man for the rebels down there.”

  “Damn,” Mick said with a grimace. The news kept getting worse.

  “What are we gonna do, Pop?” Teddy asked. “You don’t want to fuck with those motherfuckers. They expect Turk to deliver.”

  “We’re going to have to fulfill their order,” Mick said. “That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have to deliver.”

  “But how, Pop?” Teddy asked. “It’s their load that was compromised.”

  “We’re going to have to switch loads,” Mick said. “Somebody else will have to get the short until we can find out what happened to this one. We’ll have to switch.”

  But Teddy and Joey both were perplexed. “But switch with who, Pop?” Ted asked.

  Teddy’s response irritated Mick. “I made you second in command for my fucking health? You figure it out,” he ordered, and was about to turn to leave.

  But just as he did, a sudden and powerful explosion rocked the ship, causing Mick to swiftly grab his sons in a protective embrace and fall on both of them, covering their bodies with his. Just as he did, a second explosion occurred, rocking the hull again, causing Mick to huddle his sons even closer beneath him. Until all that could be heard was yelling from the crew, and feet running wildly above deck.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rosalind Graham-Sinatra woke up startled. At first, she didn’t know why. What scared her? And then she reached over and realized Mick was not in bed. For the third morning in a row, she woke up and he had already gone. Mick leaving early wasn’t unusual. Mick not waking her to tell her he was leaving was.

  She reached over and pressed button 15 on the intercom.

  “Yes, Mrs. Sinatra?” It was the front gate guard on duty.

  “Did my husband leave already?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He left a few hours ago. I can look at the log and give you the exact time, if you need it, ma’am.”

  “No, thank you. That won’t be necessary.” And she ended the conversation.

  She grabbed her cellphone off of her nightstand and called Mick’s phone, to make sure he was okay. She didn’t get startled for nothing.

  But her attempt was in vain. Whenever he was on “assignment,” he never answered her calls. He was apparently on assignment because he didn’t answer that morning, either. Roz was used to that too. Instead of leaving a message when prompted to do so, she ended the call. And used her phone to pull up the app Mick had installed to check on their twins’ nursery.

  Both toddlers, Mick, Jr., called Duke, and Jacqueline, were still asleep. The head nanny, a sweet soul they were fortunate to have, was in the rocking chair crocheting. Their other nannies had turnover rates that were ordinary for the profession, but way too high for Roz’s taste, and now a new girl was onboard. She was in the room, too. But she, like all of their nannies, had been fully vetted. And they all were still being vetted every single morning, with their every move monitored by tons of cameras while the children were in their care.

  Once satisfied that the twins were fine, Roz closed her phone’s screen and sat it back on the nightstand. But on sitting it there, she noticed the framed photograph of Mick at her bedside. She stretched, yawned, and then turned her body on its side for a better view. Mick wasn’t smiling, and was looking as intense as he always looked, but it was the best picture of him she had. A very handsome, very hard-edged, yet very regal man was how she saw him. And she missed him mightily. If Mick was here right now, he’d be between her legs doing something: licking, sticking, fucking. Something magical. And she would have awakened to wonderment. But all she’d been waking to lately was emptiness.

  She traced her finger around the contours of his unshaven face in the photo. When they first met, she was trying out to be a chorus girl in a Broadway musical. Mick was visiting his friend, who also happened to be the show’s producer. She was no dancer, and didn’t get the part. But she got him. Not at first, though. She was one of those sisters who wasn’t particularly into dating white guys. But Mick hung in there. And they stayed together. Most days, ninety-nine percent of the time, she felt as if she had bargained and won.

  But some days, like today, it was more a burden than a bargain. Because she was worried sick about him, and knew there was nothing she could do but wait it out. When Mick was on assignment, there was no phone conversations to be had. Even Teddy and Joey, who used to be reliable backups whenever she wanted to know if her husband was okay, stopped answering their phones too. They were following in his footsteps.

  But what was strange was the fact that, before he started tipping out all of these early mornings, things had been going really well between she and Mick. So well, in fact, that they were going to be renewing their vows in a couple months. Mick asked her to do so. It was such a shocker, and such a wonderful gesture, that she still couldn’t believe it. That was so not Mick! But it was set. In a couple months they would renew their vows for all the world to see. Roz was already in it to the end. On the day they renewed their vows, the world was going to realize that Mick was too.

  But Roz knew she couldn’t just lay in bed fantasying about how that all would play out, or if something was going to happen to stop them in their tracks. Like Mick, she had a business to run, too. When she wasn’t acting on Broadway, which was getting rarer and rarer of late, she was running her talent agency. And it was booming. She had enough to worry about right now.

  She got out of bed, and headed for the showers.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mick looked at both of his sons as he laid on top of them, protecting them. The explosion had rocked the ship. Had it harmed them too?

  Joey could see the concern in his father’s eyes, and was the first to reassure him. “We’re okay, Pop,” he said. “We’re okay.”

  Mick felt embarrassed that he had allowed his concern to show, and stood back up. His sons stood as well.

  But, as usual, they didn’t have time to discuss it. Mick pulled out his gun, and his sons pulled out theirs, and all three hurried out of the hold, to find out just what happened above deck.

  It was a wild scene when they made it upstairs. Deckhands were scrambling as half of the containers on top had exploded. Longshoremen were running to get hoses to help put out the fire.

  “Get that fire out now,” Mick ordered Teddy, “and secure those containers!”

  “Yes, sir,” Teddy said as he and Joey ran to supervise the crew.

  “And, Teddy,” Mick said as Teddy was hurrying off. Teddy turned around. “Find out if we took any casualties.”

  Teddy nodded and hurried to assist wherever he could. Joey was doing the same. When Teddy made it over to the crew supervisor, he pulled him aside. “Any casualties?” he asked him.

  “We’ve got some injuries,” the supervisor said, “but they should be okay.”

  But when Teddy turned around, to tell his father that there was no body count, his father was already gone. Teddy wondered where in the world could have gotten off to that quickly, and he turned around and around again to see if he saw him, but he knew his father could take care of himself. He focused on the job he was given to do: secure those containers.

  And Teddy knew exactly which ones his father meant.

  Mick had gotten off of the ship, to do his own brand of looking around. Somebody was out there who knew that explosion was going to take place. He was certain of it. Because somebody would need to report back to whomever set it up. Either it was going to be a crew member, who didn’t know shit so he doubted it, or somebody on the outside. He was looking around the docks for somebody on the outside.

  It was early morning, so there wasn’t a load of people milling about, but there were some. But all of them were running o
ver to assist the ship. They all were grabbing buckets, fire extinguishers, whatever they could, to help put out the fire.

  Except for one man.

  Mick saw him before he saw Mick. He was standing, alone, on the back side of the container stacks that had already been unloaded. The only reason Mick saw him was through the gaps in the stacks.

  But before Mick could make any move toward the one stranger at the docks who didn’t seem at all surprised that a fire was consuming a ship, but seemed more interested in seeing how much damage the fire was causing, the stranger saw Mick. He saw him the same way Mick was looking at him: through a gap in one of the container stacks. The big stacks of containers separated the two men. But it was still too close for both of them.

  The stranger made eye contact with the well-dressed man staring at him, and wondered with some degree of irritation why he was staring at all. But when he suddenly realized just who that well-dressed man was, he understood why. And took off.

  Mick took off after him. But it was tricky. They were on opposite sides of those massive containers. But both men were running.

  Mick was only able to keep pace with him as they ran past gaps in the container stacks and he could see that the man was still running. Until there were no more containers to worry about, and it was Mick and the man.

  The man, much younger than Mick, jumped a fence and ran alongside the shore. Mick jumped the fence after him, and ran too, all the while pulling out his gun and placing a silencer on the muzzle. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to catch up with the younger man, who was as fast as he was agile, but he knew he could slow his progress considerably.

  And he did. He fired warning shots at the feet of the stranger, causing him to, at first, try to outrun the gunshots by attempting to jump into the water.

  But then, when Mick fired a warning shot that was so close it grazed his hair, he stopped at the water’s edge and put his hands in the air in surrender.

  Mick closed the distance between them, kicked the man’s feet from beneath him as soon as he ran up to him, and, with his knee on the downed man’s chest, got on top of him.

  Before Mick asked the man a single question, he blew off the man’s left ear with a gunshot that stunned the man shitless. He screamed out and grabbed his now-bloodied, decimated ear.

  “Who?” Mick asked him.

  “I didn’t, please. I don’t--”

  Mick was about to blow off the man’s right ear.

  “Turk!” the man yelled. “Turk Fellini ordered me to destroy those containers!”

  Mick was shocked. It was Turk who made the order in the first place. “Turk?” he asked.

  “He ordered me to do it. He ordered me to destroy those containers.”

  “Why?”

  The man shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said. “He’s crazy. He don’t tell me why.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Another headshake. “Don’t know. He called and told me what I had to do. I owed him. He was going to kill me if I didn’t do everything he told me to do. He told me to set it off. That was all I was supposed to do. And that’s all I did. I set it off.”

  But as Mick knelt there, thinking, wondering why Turk would sabotage a ship containing his own load, unless he knew his load wasn’t on that ship, his captor suddenly pulled a knife from the side pocket of his khakis. He clenched his teeth, and through his pain, he was just about to slice into Mick’s thigh.

  But Mick wasn’t just thinking. He was thinking and watching his captor like a hawk. And as soon as he saw that knife, Mick grabbed his hand forcefully. There was a struggle. A powerful struggle. The captor was strong too. But Mick was stronger. And eventually grabbed the knife from the man’s hand.

  If the man didn’t know his time was up, he knew now. Attempting to murder Mick the Tick wasn’t going to be forgiven. He threw his hands in the air. “I was going to give that knife to you,” he said. “Honest I was! I wasn’t going to hurt you. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody on that ship, either. I was just doing what Turk told me to do. I was just doing my job. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody!”

  Mick’s jaw tightened. It was really rich for a man who would put an entire crew, not to mention Mick’s own sons, in deadly jeopardy, and then tried to take Mick out while he was at it, to say he wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. “You weren’t trying to hurt anybody?” he asked the idiot.

  “No, sir. Honest, I wasn’t! I’m not trying to hurt anybody!”

  “But I am,” Mick said bitterly, and slit the man’s throat with the very knife the man would have slit his with, if given the chance.

  And then Mick stood up, stared down at the man, and kicked the man, who was gripping his throat and attempting to staunch the unending blood surge, into the river.

  By the time the currents pulled the man further in, he was already dead.

  Mick stood there, his dripping knife still in his hand, and then tossed it into the river too. He looked around, into the fog of the early morning, to make sure he was alone, and then made his way back to his ship.

  Mick’s conclusion that he was alone on that shore was an accurate one. But further away, nearly a half-mile away, and with a camera with full zoom-lens capacity, JD Lockett stood beside his beloved Plymouth. He and his car were perched behind the fence. And he had recorded the entire encounter, all the way down to Mick tossing the knife, looking around, and walking off.

  JD smiled, revealing big, yellow teeth behind a thick mustache and unkempt beard. It could not have gone better had he planned it himself. Which, he knew, he had planned!

  Then he looked around too, grabbed his gear and got into his car, and drove away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gloria Sinatra was on top of Shaun Acer as if he was a horse and she was a cowboy. She rode him hard. Shaun was a young buck who could take the ride, and was moaning and groaning with joy.

  He looked at his bedmate. Never met a woman like Glo before. She was beautiful, but all of his women were. She didn’t have as big an ass as he was used to, but she knew how to ride. And she was riding him to the brink of cum. She was sitting straight up, rubbing her own brown breasts as she fucked him, and licking her lips as her hair dropped around her forehead. Gorgeous, Shaun thought.

  Gloria looked at Shaun, too, as sweat caused his short, blonde hair to mat against his small head. She was enjoying this too. Older men turned her on far more than guys like Shaun, who was her age, but he knew how to do her. He wasn’t as good as older men, but he wasn’t half bad either. He had what it took.

  And she was priming the pump to take it. She was moving back and forward, up and down, on his rod. She was taking it hard.

  Until she looked at the clock on her nightstand. And her already big eyes became bigger.

  He saw the change immediately. “What?” he asked in a voice that was nearly too hoarse to speak.

  “It’s that late?”

  She had shock in her own voice, but didn’t wait for an answer. She couldn’t believe it was that late! She got off of Shaun just as he was cumming, and hurried for the bathroom.

  Shaun poured out onto himself. He couldn’t believe she’d left him stranded like that. “Shit, Glo!” he yelled as he came. But it was a muffled yell. He was too busy enjoying the cum.

  But Gloria was running late. Seriously late. How in the world was she going to convince her father that she was ready to be in management again when she couldn’t even get to work on time? She was doomed to be his assistant forever! And not even his head assistant. Blair Witch held that role. Gloria was just one of many assistants in the office of the CEO. She was just one of many, and was doomed to remain that way.

  But Shaun was happy and angry at Gloria as he made his way into the bathroom. But those warring emotions, he was beginning to realize, were the sum and substance of their relationship: great sex. Terrible everything else.

  Sometimes he felt as if he was Gloria’s stud rather than her man.

  “Thanks a lot for taking my l
oad,” he said with a snide smile when he walked into the bathroom.

  Gloria had finished peeing and washing her hands, and was turning on the shower. When she didn’t respond to his little sarcastic remark, he lifted the toilet seat, removed his condom and tossed it in, and then began peeing. “Dinner’s still on for tonight?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” Gloria said as she checked the water to see if it had heated enough.

  “I get to meet the great man tonight,” Shaun said. “I would have never guessed you were his daughter. I didn’t know Mick the Tick was into black women.”

  Gloria looked at him. “Why would he have to be into black women to have a biracial daughter? Maybe he’s just into women, period, regardless of race.”

  “Maybe.” Then Shaun smiled and glanced back at her. “Or maybe he’s just into black women.”

  Gloria rolled her eyes. That was one of the reasons why she didn’t prefer to date guys her age. Sometimes they could be so immature! “Let’s just hope he likes you,” she said, as she put on her shower cap.

  “And if he doesn’t like me?” Shaun asked.

  Gloria didn’t respond. She, instead, began to get into the shower. But Shaun reached over and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back. “What if he doesn’t like me, Glo?” he asked again.

  Gloria wasn’t going to play with him. “The last time I was with a man my father didn’t like? That didn’t end well for him, or me.”

  Gloria still felt the sting of that ass whipping Mick put on her, and the sight of that window toss Mick put on her man. Not that the fool didn’t deserve to be tossed. He did. He had embezzled huge sums of money from her father’s corporation and was trying to set her up to go against Mick, too. She wasn’t having any relationship with any man her father didn’t approve of ever again. That was why she was taking Shaun to the family dinner tonight. He was in the music industry, which might or might not help his cause, but he was her age. Maybe that would be a plus. And he didn’t work for her father. She knew that was a plus.