“Where?” Mick asked.
“Rome. Those fuckers raiding there too.”
Mick, stunned, stood to his feet. Belarus was one thing, but Rome was something altogether different. Rome was his staging ground. Whereas he had five facilities in Belarus, he had damn-near thirty in Rome. “What did they find?” he asked nervously.
“Everything,” Teddy said. “They emptied the main facility and arrested everybody onsite. So far nothing’s coming back on you, and our people know it’s their death sentence if they so much as breathe your name to those assholes. But they got the goods.”
“Every facility?” Mick asked.
“Just the main one.”
“Shut the other ones down now.”
“I already have,” said Teddy. “I told them to shut down production until further notice and take their asses home.”
“Good,” Mick said. Teddy was the most competent number one he’d ever had. “Get the plane ready,” Mick added as he began hurrying toward the exit, removing his gloves completely as he walked.
Ted and Lewdy hurried behind him. But Teddy was concerned. “Pop, we got it,” he said. “Lewdy can handle Belarus and I’ll go to Rome and find out who gave us up. We got it.”
Although Mick didn’t break his stride, Teddy didn’t back down. He and Roz had been talking lately, and she confided in him. They both saw the writing on the wall. His father was beginning to treat Roz the way he treated Teddy and Teddy’s siblings: like she was an afterthought. Like his business came first.
Teddy loved his father more than life itself, but he didn’t want his frequent absences to cause him to lose that good, caring woman who changed his life. And whether he knew it or not, he was on the verge of losing her. “Pop?” he said again. “We got it. You don’t need to go. You can’t go.”
When Mick heard his son say what he couldn’t do, he stopped in his tracks. He looked at Teddy with those cold, green eyes. “Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?”
“For Roz sake,” Teddy said. “You just got back from Argentina. Two weeks ago you were in Berlin. She’s been going through a lot lately. A rough patch. You need to stay here for her, that’s all I’m saying. It could take weeks before we get any answers overseas.”
Teddy and Roz were closer in age than Roz was to Mick, which made Teddy and Roz more like friends rather than stepson and stepmother. Roz confided in Teddy when Mick wasn’t around, and Mick didn’t like it. “Get the plane ready,” he ordered his son. “Nobody handles my business but me. And my business includes my wife. Is that clear enough for you?”
Teddy could feel his father’s wrath. There was no bringing Mick back from the ledge whenever he decided to perch on it, and Teddy knew that too. “Yes, sir,” he said.
Mick continued to give Teddy a hard look, but then he knew he was wasting time. He began hurrying out of the gym.
Teddy looked at Lewdy. “Call the lawyers,” he ordered as they began following his father. He could only pray his father didn’t need divorce lawyers before it was all said and done. “Tell them to get to every facility under raid.”
“One lawyer per facility? Or every one that’s available?” Lewdy asked.
“Available?” Teddy asked, glancing back at the security chief. “You tell those jokers they’re handling Mick Sinatra’s business. They’d better be available!”
Lewdy, knowing it too, was already pulling out his cell phone. “Yes, sir,” he said as he ran to keep pace.
CHAPTER SIX
The choreographer clapped his hand to keep the beat, and the young dancers tried to respond. “One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Step higher. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. And again. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Dreadful. Just dreadful. My grandmother can do better that this!”
They were onstage at the Shubert Theater on Broadway conducting auditions for the chorus line of an upcoming new play. Roz had completed her audition for the lead in the big production, and had just come from backstage to hear the verdict from the casting director. Not all that long ago she thought her auditioning days were over. She thought she’d earned the right to be considered on her own merits based on her enormous body of work. But those days were gone. Now she was going through the meat grinder just like everybody else, as if that body of work amounted to nothingness.
And she knew why. They’d deny it up and down the line, but she knew the truth. It was all because of that thing called age. Roz was no old lady, but they only wanted to hire the young ones now. And every year, it seemed to Roz, their definition of young was getting even younger.
She walked down the sidesteps of the stage watching the group of teenagers and twenty-somethings try their best to stay in step with the choreographer. She remembered those struggling days when all she could get was chorus line gigs too.
Evan, the casting director, sat on the second row watching the young dancers intensely. Roz didn’t even see him blink. Evan’s five assistants sat on the front row, taking notes of each performer on stage. They had taken notes on Roz earlier, when she was on that same stage giving all she had to be selected as the female lead. They had given their notes on Roz to Evan. But by the way he was checking out the chorus line, he had already moved on.
Roz sat on the seat next to him. They went back a long way too. And for a long few seconds, they both were content to just stare at the stage.
Then Evan exhaled, as if he had made up his mind. “They’re pretty awful, aren’t they?” he said.
Roz agreed, to a point. “Not all of them.”
“All of them,” said Evan. “Julliard scholarships. Classically trained. Have every advantage any young upstart should have. The cream of the crop they tell me. But I don’t see cream. I see technique with no talent. Talent is gone, Roz.”
Roz crossed her legs. She knew Evan well enough to know he was beating around the bush. “Don’t tell a lady who owns a talent agency talent is gone,” she said. “It’s malpractice.”
Evan grinned. Then looked at her. “How you been, Roz? It’s good to see you again.”
“You too. And congrats on your Tony win. I sent you an email.”
“Thanks. I got so many I couldn’t respond to them all.”
“I understand,” Roz said breezily.
“You do, don’t you, Roz? You know how it goes in this brutal business. It’s what have you done for me lately, not what are you doing for me now. You know that.”
Roz nodded. She knew.
“You’re still looking good, though, after all these years. And it’s been some years.”
“Yes, it has. I started out in the business when I was barely twenty. Now I’m about to turn forty.”
“Damn, it’s been that long?”
Roz felt a kind of depression come over her. “It’s been a minute,” she said.
“But at least you’ve got a talent agency to fall back on.”
“Barely,” said Roz.
“I know, right? Everybody’s moving their agencies either here to New York,” Evan said, “or to L.A.. I’m surprised you haven’t moved too. Nobody wants their rep in Philly. What the fuck’s in Philly?”