Page 1 of Teddy Sinatra: Go Your Own Way
CHAPTER ONE
It didn’t take long for Teddy Sinatra to find the person he came to see in the sea of people inside the midtown bar. For one thing he wore an old-fashioned three-piece suit in the mostly hip, thirtysomething crowd, and for another thing he was smoking some Cuban shit most in that joint would have viewed as beneath their more urbane tastes. But mainly, Teddy noticed as he made his way to the table, the guy he was there to see looked as if he was going to piss in his pants.
“Hey good looking.”
Teddy glanced back at the woman as she walked by, and she gave him thatI’m interested if you’re interestedgrin, but he didn’t return her smile. The last thing on his mind was some random female. He was in a bar, but he was in that bar to handle business.
Jerry “Bugs” Cartelli was there for business, too, as he straightened his coat lapel on his three-piece polyester suit and kept squirming in his chair. He hated meetings like these. Especially with an asshole like Teddy T, which supposedly meantTower of Strength, as if Teddy was this towering figure while Bugs, who hated his own nickname, was a bug on that tower.
But Teddy T was nothing more than a showoff if you asked Bugs, as he rode around town in a Bugatti like he was Sal fucking Gabrini. Whose muscles always strained the suits he wore and whose good looks he went out of his way to make sure got the attention of every woman in the room, including Bugs’ old lady once upon a time. And he had the nerve to be rich and powerful too? And flaunted it every chance he could? Bugs couldn’t stand the sight of the man.
But he was nobody’s fool. He knew Teddy hated everything about him, too, from the fact that he was a former cop kicked off the force years ago, to how he had to make his living now. Wiseguys like Teddy used to be his pleasure to take down. Now he needed him, and needed to keep propping him up.
“If it ain’t Teddy T in the flesh.” Teddy had arrived at the table. “How you doing? You looking more and more like your old man every day. Anybody ever tell you that? Have a seat, my friend. Have a seat.”
They weren’t friends and never would be. Teddy despised snitches. Especially ex-cop snitches like Bugs Cartelli. But he needed intel. He sat down. “What you got for me, Bugs?”
Bugs knew it was coming, but still hated it. “Why you keep calling me that, Teddy? How many times I got to tell you I don’t like that name?”
“When did I care what you like? You’re a fucking snitch, who gives a shit? Just tell me what you got.”
“I’m an informant, not a snitch,” Bugs corrected him as he took a drag on his cigar. “There’s a difference. I’m trying to help your organization over here, not hurt it. Don’t I deserve some respect for that?” Then he glanced over at the two bodyguards that had entered the bar with Teddy. Although they sat at different tables nearby, as if they weren’t with Teddy at all, Bugs had been around that mob life long enough to know security when he saw it. He also knew Teddy T never went anywhere with bodyguards unless problems and situations were going on. “And from what I’m seeing,” Bugs added, “you need the help I’m here to give or you’d be flying solo.”
Teddy hated bodyguards. He hated that two of hiscaposhad to follow him around like he was some fucking starlet. But it was on his old man’s orders and nobody disobeyed the old man’s orders. Teddy ran the Sinatra crime family with ironclad rule, and everybody respected that. But his old man ran him.
But Bugs wasn’t wrong. Teddy needed his help. He needed more intel before he gave the final go to his men. They had a target already, and was planning a strike, but his gut kept telling him it might not be the right target, or the right strike, or both. And nine times out of ten Bugs Cartelli, as despicable a human being as he absolutely was, always gave good intel. “What you got for me? Don’t waste my time.”
Bugs hesitated as if he was regretting his decision to snitch on Sinatra’s behalf already. But he needed the money. And nobody paid better than Teddy T. “It’s not who you think it is,” he said.
Teddy stared at Bugs. “How do you know what I think?”
Bugs didn’t respond. He could tell by the changed look on Teddy’s tortured face that he had struck a chord.
And he had. He hit the nail on the head. Teddy needed to know he had the right target. Bugs was telling him he didn’t. Bugs was telling him more than the normal street chatter he expected to hear from him.
But before he could respond, the waiter came to their table and placed two whiskey mugs in front of them. Bugs, being the asshole Teddy knew him to be, had already ordered before Teddy arrived, and had ordered for Teddy too.
“Anything else?” the waiter asked them.
“No, we’re good,” said Bugs with a smile, and the waiter left.
“If I’m on the wrong track, who’s the right track?” Teddy tried to sound as if it was a throwaway question, although it was the million dollar question, as he picked up his mug and smelled the whiskey.
Bugs was unbothered by Teddy’s sudden casualness. He knew he had that bastard exactly where he wanted him. “It’s Potter Rarsi,” he said.
Teddy, who was about to take a swig of his whiskey, stopped his mug at the tip of his bottom lip when he heard that name. Then he sat the mug back on the table altogether.
Bugs knew it was going to be a hard sell. He knew the relationship Rarsi had with the Sinatra family. “I know you don’t wanna hear that, but I’m not fucking with you. I’m telling you it’s Rarsi.”
“Potter Rarsi? Bullshit!”
“Why would I lie, Teddy? Think about it. You got three capos dead. One after the other one: bam, bam, bam. All three were made men. All three supposedly died by suicide, according to the cops, which we both know is the real bullshit. But all three got one thing in common. You know what that is?”
“Hell yeah I know what it is. They all worked for me.”
“And Rarsi,” said Bugs.
Teddy didn’t expect to hear that. “Theywhat?”
