Page 38 of Teddy Sinatra: Go Your Own Way
“The Bengino crime family is what I heard.”
They were all shocked. “Bengino?” Nikki asked.
“But for which Bengino?” Teddy said. “For the old man? For Denny? Or for Potter Rarsi?”
Marco shook his head. “I don’t know the dynamics like that. I just know he went to work for the Bengino family. That’s all I know.”
Teddy and Nikki looked at each other. Then they looked at Mick.
“What am I missing?” Marco asked as he looked at all three.
“Potter Rarsi has been recruiting your father,” Nikki said.
“Recruiting him? To do what?”
“To head the Bengino crime family.”
Marco frowned. “Shit! I heard about the explosions and the suicides. I knew shit was going down. But Pop, why would you wanna leave the family?”
“And leave the family,” Nikki added, “to work with a guy like Potter Rarsi that Bugs Cartelli said was behind those suicides from jump. But we didn’t believe him.”
“Bugs is a despicable human being,” Marco pointed out. “But he gives good intel. Why wouldn’t you believe him, Pop?”
“Because he trusts Potter Rarsi,” said Nikki.
Marco smiled. “Youtrusthim? Since when do you trust anybody but Nikki?”
“It’s more than that,” said Teddy.
Nikki and Marco looked at him, waiting for an explanation. But Roz jumped up angrily. “Who gives a shit? My son could be dying on that operating table and you’re worrying about who’s behind it? Worry about my son!” she yelled out.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” Jackie said, and Roz went over by the window and turned her back to everyone. It was obvious that she was quietly crying.
But to everybody’s shock, it was Mick who got up, went over to Roz, turned her around and pulled her into his arms. She sobbed in his arms.
Teddy ran his hands through his hair. He knew none of this would have happened had he done his job at the level it demanded. It was all his fault, and he was having a hard time coming to grips with that hard, cold truth.
Nikki went to him, and stood beside him, but there was no comforting him on that front. To her credit and Teddy’s relief, she didn’t try.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
But despite Roz’s understandable emotional outburst, Marco still didn’t understand his father. It made no sense.
“Pops, I don’t get it,” he said. “Why would you,Mister Cautious, trust a mobster like Potter Rarsi? That don’t sit right with me.”
“Me either,” Nikki admitted.
“Why this blind faith in a character like that?” Marco added.
Teddy didn’t respond. He didn’t have the energy. But Big Daddy finally spoke up. “A long time ago, your father and grandfather were in a turf war with the Bengino family. They were in a shootout inside some old building on the top floor, which was three floors high. Well the floor collapsed beneath their feet and everybody from both gangs dropped three flights and pancaked down to the bottom floor. Most of them died instantly, but Potter Rarsi was able to get himself out from beneath the rubble. But Mick and Teddy had bricks that had them unable to move at all. They were stuck and bricks were steadily piling on them threatening to bury them alive.”
“Damn,” said Marco. Nikki was in disbelief too.
“Everybody that was able to get out, which was only a few guys from the Bengino gang because they had been running up to the third floor when the collapse happened, ran out of that building because it was still unstable. And like I said, big bricks were still falling. And Potter Rarsi, once he got from out of the rubble, ran too. But then he came back.”
Roz looked over at Big Daddy when he said Rarsi came back.
“Mick was too proud to ask for help,” Big Daddy continued, “but that’s your grandfather. But Rarsi still came back and pulled Mick out of the rubble. And then he helped Mick pull Teddy, who was even deeper buried, out too. They looked at each other, and didn’t say a word. And then Rarsi left.”
