Roz was floored. What? This was Barry. Mick’s friend! “Excuse me?” she asked, with high offense in her voice.
“I want to go inside of you exactly the way Mick goes inside of you. Because I know he’s hitting it. I know that Mandingo dick of his is hitting you real good. I want to feel what he feels when your * melts in his mouth.”
“You perverted asshole!” Roz yelled. “What’s wrong with you? I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last man alive! You think I’m going to do something that vile just to get a part? Are you out of your mind? Let me get the hell out of here!”
Roz began hurrying out of the room. Barry, stunned by her response, hurried behind her. If Mick found out he was dead. He knew it. He had to make amends. He had to make sure that bitch didn’t tell!
Roz managed to make it out of the room and was heading down the stairs by the time Barry was able to catch her and grab her arm. They began tussling on the stairs.
“You can’t tell, Mick,” Barry was insisting. “If you tell Mick I’ll kill you, Roz! I swear I will!”
But Roz wasn’t thinking about that awful man. She was fighting to break free.
But it was all about Mick with Barry. “Mick can never know,” he said anxiously. “You was supposed to say yes. What bed action whore like you wouldn’t say yes? Since when did you get morals?”
“Since my parents birth me, you moronic creep. Let me go!”
But Barry wouldn’t. Roz had nearly lost her balance twice on those stairs, so she became more anxious. And then she was able to thrust herself out of his grasp. But when she did, Barry was the one to lose his balance. Only he didn’t correct, but overcorrected and fell.
Roz was horrified as he fell down that long flight of stairs. His thumps, as he hit stair after stair after stair, were so loud that a few of the actors on stage hurried back stage to see what was going on.
By the time they arrived, Barry was just making it to the bottom. One actor quickly checked his pulse, praying for a reading. But then, after the check, he looked at the other actors. “He’s dead,” he said, unable to believe it himself.
And then the actors, every one of them, looked up at Roz.
Roz was too stunned to speak.
Mick motioned for Deuce to drive. He was in the backseat of his limousine, with the three Dons seated with him, as Deuce drove them the two blocks to Stanislav Provensano’s house. Teddy Stefani was on board. He trusted Mick’s judgment. Carp Bianchi had his doubts, but after what Mick did to him previously, he wasn’t about to verbalize those concerns. Vito DeLuca was lukewarm. He trusted Mick’s judgment, but he also knew Provensano. He didn’t honestly see how this could work.
But when the limousine stopped outside of Provensano’s gate, DeLuca could hold his peace no longer.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this Micky,” he said. “A real bad feeling.”
Mick looked at him. “What’s your concern?”
“My life, that’s my concern! How are we going to approach this man? He knows what’s going down at the docks. His men are supposed to be seizing our cargo. And now all of sudden we’re paying him a visit? He’ll see us coming a mile away.”
“Good,” Mick said. “I want him to.” And then Mick got out of the limousine. He wore black trousers, a black turtleneck, and his long flowing white ankle-length coat. Hardly attire for a killing, the Dons thought, but Mick was odd that way. He never came the way they expected.
But going into enemy territory with just good looks and charm was too odd for DeLuca. “What the fuck is his problem?” he asked his fellow Dons. But Teddy was already getting out of the limo, and Carp, after that run-in with Mick, wasn’t trying to rebel right now. He got out too.
By the time DeLuca shook his head and said a few more expletives, he got out too, and then Mick and his associates walked up to the gate.
“How are we getting in?” DeLuca asked Mick. “Tell me that.”
And as soon as he asked it, a security force that was four men strong, opened the gate and met them with drawn weapons. DeLuca almost lost his lunch. He looked at Mick, who looked calm as a cucumber.
The men, all four of them, realized who it was and pulled their weapons down to their sides. To even Teddy’s shock, the four men stepped aside and allowed them unimpeded passage through.
DeLuca and Carp were beyond shock. Now it was Teddy’s time to look at Mick. “Why would Provensano’s men let us through this easily?” he asked him.
“Because they are not Provensano’s men,” Mick responded. “They’re mine.”