CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I wanna be just like Daddy when I grow up,” Duke said jokingly as he sat at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal.
His twin sister Jackie, along with Marco, who was actually their nephew although he was older than them, were seated at the table too.
Marco was drinking a cup of coffee, with his legs crossed, and strolling through messages on his phone. Jackie was eating cereal, too, and answering messages on her phone. Neither looked at Duke.
Mick was already downstairs and had just entered the kitchen area as Duke was speaking. He saw the twins and Marco seated at the table. None of them noticed him. He leaned against the arched doorway that led into the kitchen, folded his arms, and watched and listened.
“Y’all heard me?” Duke asked them again. “I said I wanna be just like Daddy when I grow up.”
Mick stood still. Duke thought the gangster life was still the cool life, even after what he endured in Fangen.
Roz was once again trying frantically to disabuse him of any such thoughts.
She even asked Tony Sinatra, Big Daddy’s second-oldest son and a trained clinical psychologist, to intervene with therapy. Was it working?
Mick saw when Jackie finally looked up from her phone and gave her brother the attention he apparently craved. “Why do you wanna be just like Daddy? I’m sure there’s a perfectly ridiculous reason why or you wouldn’t have repeated it.”
Jackie went through more phases in her life than any of his other children ever did. Now she was going through her educated girl phase. The only phase she’d ever been through that pleased Mick.
But when Duke didn’t answer his sister, probably because it was such a nice-nasty response, Mick thought, then Marco asked the question himself. “Duke, why do you wanna be like Big Pop when you grow up?”
“Because.”
“See what I mean?” Jackie said to Marco. “He always starts something and then plays a game to get you more engaged than you ever wanted to be.” Then she looked at her brother. He was annoying to her, but they were still thick as thieves. “Because why, Duke?”
“Because I wanna get shot six times and still be able to put it on my wife the way Daddy’s been putting on Mommy all month long.”
Mick was stunned that Duke would even know what he and Roz were doing in the privacy of their own wing.
But Marco laughed out loud, not expecting that answer, and then he leaned over and fist-bumped Duke. Jackie shook her head. “Both of you are disgusting!” she said.
“Disgusting how? He’s just stating a natural fact, Jacqueline,” Marco said as he plopped back down in his chair. “Big Pop knows how to make all them bitches lay it low and spread it wide. I wanna be just like him when I grow up too.”
“I thought you wanted to be like Teddy,” Jackie remembered.
“Pop too,” said Marco. “I’m proud to be Teddy T’s son. He’s a workhorse who puts respect on that name. I ain’t mad at him. But Big Pop? Now he’s the man. Ain’t nobody like him. He got what it takes coming and going.”
“Whatever that means,” Jackie said.
“Oh hey Daddy,” Duke said nervously when he realized his father was in the room. “We didn’t see you over there.”
They all looked. Marco was as nervous as Duke when he realized Mick had heard them. It was Jackie’s time to laugh out loud. “Now tell me again, Duke, tell me again, Marco, why y’all wanna be just like Daddy when y’all grow up?”
Duke gave his sister one of those that is so not funny looks. But Mick agreed with Jackie’s assessment: They were being ridiculous. He pushed away from the doorjamb and made his way to the table. “Where’s Gloria?” he asked them.
“She’s in the family room with the babies,” Marco said. “Where’s Ma?”
“In the shower.”
“Since you’re about to reenter the world again,” Marco said, “can I at least get off of lockdown now?”
“No,” Mick said in his patented blunt way. Then he looked at his youngest son. “Duke?”
“Sir?”
“Come with me.” Then Mick began heading out of the kitchen.
Jackie and Marco looked at Duke. “Uh-oh,” Marco said. “You know how territorial Big Pop is about his woman. You stepped over a line.”
“But what did I do?”
“Go see what he wants,” Jackie said. And suddenly she was concerned for her brother. “Just tell him you were kidding around,” she advised him. “Don’t try to justify it.”
“Marco was joking about it too.” Then he looked at Marco. “Why didn’t he make you come with me?”
“Because you started it,” Marco said. “I just joined in.” Then he added the word uncle, since the younger Duke was actually his uncle, and then he laughed.
Duke rolled his eyes. “I can’t do anything right!” he said as he pushed back from the table and stood up.
In the living room, Big Daddy Charles Sinatra was standing at the front window looking out.
Mick walked up and stood beside him. “Don’t you have a home and business, not to mention a wife you need to get back to?
Everybody else left a few days after my surgery when they were certain I was going to be okay. ”
“I’m not everybody,” Big Daddy said.
That was for damn sure, Mick thought proudly. “I’m sure Jenay misses you.”
“I doubt that. She’s in New Jersey with Ashley and Monk. Monk and his men have her and Ash under tight security. Every time we talk on the phone it’s all about how much she’s enjoying being with our daughter. Ash has her feeling like a teenager again.”
Then Big Daddy looked at Mick and noticed the all-black outfit he was wearing. “You’re suited up.”
“That’s right.”
“Already?”
“That’s right.”
Big Daddy nodded. “It’s about time,” he said, and Mick looked at him and laughed. He was the only one who felt Mick was moving too slow.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold remember?” Mick reminded him.
“Cold yes,” Big Daddy said. “But your dish is frozen.” Mick laughed again. “Your dish is in danger of breaking it’s so gotdamn frozen.”
“You wanted to see me, Dad?”
Both men turned around when they heard Duke’s voice. Big Daddy was always shocked to see how big Duke had gotten as he walked up to his father and uncle.
“Yes, I wanted to see you,” Mick answered his question.
Duke steeled himself.
“I wanted to personally thank you for saving your mother’s life,” Mick said, “and mine, too, while you were at it. You were excellent, son.”
Big Daddy was pleased that Mick would finally give Duke his props, and Duke was so pleasantly surprised that he smiled the smile of a man in the catbird seat. “Excellent? For real?”
“For real,” said Mick. “I would not be here today had it not been for you. I could not have handled that situation any better.”
“Oh Daddy!” Duke said happily as he hurried to his father.
“Coming from you that’s everything!” He threw his arms around Mick so hard that Mick staggered backwards.
He wasn’t a man given to shows of affection and Big Daddy could see the awkwardness.
Mick was coming along, but he had a long way to go in Big Daddy’s view.
“But that being said,” Big Daddy said and looked at Mick when father and son stopped embracing, “that entire situation proved why the gangster life is not the life for you, Duke. Right?”
Duke looked at his father. Everybody kept telling him what kind of life they didn’t want him to live and he was tired of it.
They knew what kind of dude he was, and how well-suited he was for that life, but they lied anyway.
Would his father lie to his face, too, even after the way he handled himself in that crazy town?
Mick was looking Duke dead in his eyes. He was looking dead at himself. Big Daddy might not like it, and Roz would surely hate it, but Duke wasn’t going to be anything else but who he was. “Be who you are,” he said to him. “That’s all you can do.”
Duke smiled another huge, bright white smile. “Thanks, Daddy,” he said.
Big Daddy was disappointed, but he didn’t let Duke see it. “Now get lost,” he said to his nephew.
Duke smiled again and then began to run back into the kitchen to tell Jackie and Marco that his old man said he did excellently.
But Mick stopped him. “And Duke?”
Duke turned around. Did he want him to go with him on another case? “Sir?” he asked anxiously.
“If you ever again discuss what goes on in my bedroom, on my wing of my house, I’m going to slam you against a wall and break your neck. Capeesh?”
Duke’s heart fell to this shoe. He suddenly remembered he was scared of this man.
“Capeesh,” he said, and then he walked soberly out of that living room.
Reality set back. He realized that his father was still Mick the Tick, no matter what praise he may dish out, and he’d be wise to never forget that.
But that reality only made him even more determined to be just like his daddy.