Big Daddy Sinatra: Carly's Cry Read online

  But Kasper was still confused. “But what they got to do with anything? You own this house and I rent it from you. I’ve been renting this house from you for years. This is between you and me. What does any of it have to do with them?”

  “They have to follow up on the complaint, Kass,” Charles said. “They have to make sure your house is safe to live in. That’s all this is about.”

  But Kasper continued to stare at Charles. Charles exhaled. He wasn’t getting through to this man at all. So he stopped trying. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “The worse they can say is that it’s messy around the place and you need to clean it up. Clean it up before they get here. If there’s some repairs that need to be done, let me know. I’ll have maintenance out here to handle it. It’s nothing to worry about. Don’t let it rob your peace.”

  “And if my idea of cleaning don’t agree with their idea?” Kasper asked.

  Charles frowned. “Then fuck’em,” he said.

  Kasper laughed. That was the Big Daddy he liked. But as he laughed he looked away from Charles and saw where the Mercedes had stopped in front of his neighbor’s house some three doors down and across the street. Two African-American women got out of the car: one young, tall, and slender, and one older and slender, but easily more attractive than the younger one. “Speaking of fucking,” Kasper said with a toothless grin, “I wouldn’t mind a taste of those two black gals right there.”

  Charles knew Kasper was a vulgar man and dismissed his foolish talk. Kasper wasn’t known as a dirty old man for nothing. But when Charles turned and saw the Mercedes that looked a lot like the Mercedes he had purchased for his wife, and then saw that those two black gals Kasper referred to belonged to his wife and adopted daughter, he did a double take. Not because Kasper was disrespecting his lady: he was relatively certain Kasper had no idea who he was married to. But because he had no idea why Jenay and Ashley would have any business in a neighborhood like this.

  “Nicely packed those two,” Kasper said. “But I’ll take the shorter one, I think.” But then Kasper turned his attention back to his own problems. “I have a confession to make, Big Daddy,” he said. “A real big one.”

  Charles turned back toward his tenant. Was this confession related to his wife and daughter? “What is it?” he asked him.

  “I don’t know how to say this,” Kasper confessed, “but I may be in trouble. Serious trouble.”

  Charles was especially curious now. “Yeah? Why?”

  “The thing is, I don’t exactly have what you would consider the cleanest house in Jericho.”

  Charles smiled. And then laughed. And turned his attention back to the matter at hand: that city notice. “Nobody does, Kass,” he said.

  “But why are they singling out my house anyhow?” Kasper wanted to know. “I’m a simple man, Big Daddy. All I do is work my hands to the bone. That’s all I do. Work like a dog most every day. I don’t have time to be bothering with no city officials. I don’t have no fancy education like they have, or no big time job. But I pay my rent on time and I don’t be bothering none of them. Why all of a sudden they’re bothering me? Why all of a sudden they’re talking about showing up here to do all of this inspecting? You own damn near half of the houses in this whole town, but I ain’t never seen no city inspecting any of your other houses. But all of a sudden they’re dying to inspect mine?”

  While Charles attempted to explain the unfortunate prerogatives of city inspectors, Jenay and Ashley stood on the front porch of another house on Bronson Avenue. Only this house, if Robert was to be believed, was inhabited by Donald’s latest girlfriend. And Donald had been dropped off there a few nights ago. Jenay was there because Donald, her youngest stepson who helped manage the Bed and Breakfast Charles put her in charge of, wasn’t answering his cell phone and hadn’t been to work in three days. She was worried about him. Ashley, Donald’s best friend and adopted sister, was worried too. She knocked vigorously on the door.

  As they waited for a response to the knocks, Ashley looked across the street, three doors down, and saw first a big Ford F-150 pickup truck that looked very much like her adopted father’s. Then she looked further and saw her father standing on that porch in conversation with an older man. “Uh-oh,” she said to Jenay. “There’s Dad.”

  Jenay looked too, placing her hand over her forehead to shield the sun. When she saw Charles, she was astonished. “Goodness gracious,” she said. “Does he own property on this street too?”

  “Apparently,” Ashley said.

  Then Jenay exhaled. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t see us.”

  That didn’t make sense to Ashley. She looked at her mother. “Why not? What’s the big deal?”

  “This neighborhood, that’s what.”

  Ashley frowned, confused. And then she smiled. “Oh, I forgot,” she said with a grin. “You’re his queen. He doesn’t allow his fragile queen to go anywhere near anything that isn’t prime real estate. It’s not a bad neighborhood, Ma, I told you.”

  But when the biker chick flung open the door, and all they could see were dark tats on her pale white skin, and biceps to rival Charles’s, and an annoyed, angry face, they both saw the irrelevance of whether the neighborhood was bad: this woman didn’t look to be about anything good.

  “We’re looking for Donnie,” Ashley said as soon as the lady stepped out. She was average height, in her thirties, but was thick and solidly built. “Is he here?”

  “And who are you supposed to be?” the woman asked. Then she frowned. “Are you her?” she asked. “You’re that bitch?”

  Jenay immediately touched Ashley on the arm. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, turning to leave, certain she should have turned around in the first place when she saw where this house was located. This was a bad idea all around.

  But the woman’s singular focus was on Ashley. “You’re his bitch,” she said, as if it was a fact.

  “I am not his girlfriend, if that’s what you mean by bitch,” Ashley made clear. “I’m his sister.”

  But the woman wasn’t listening. “You’re the one,” she said. “You’re that bitch he’s been fooling around with. The one that works at the Tool and Dye.”

  Ashley frowned. “What?”

  “I didn’t believe it when they told me. But it’s true. You’re that bitch. And you have the nerve to come to my house? To my house?”

  “Girl bye,” Ashley said with great annoyance as she turned to leave too, holding her hand up in an obvious diss, but the woman grabbed her by her weave, pulling her backwards, and slammed her to the floor. Ashley screamed so loud that Kasper and Charles heard the scream and both looked in that direction. Jenay tried to pull the woman off of Ash, but the woman turned and put her free arm around Jenay’s neck, pulling her to the floor right along with Ash.

  “Get this fool,” Jenay began yelling. “Lord, get this fool!”

  When Charles saw that woman slam his wife onto that porch, his heart dropped through his shoe, his sunglasses dropped from his hand, and he took off running. Kasper was stunned. It was just a stupid cat fight for goodness sake. But nobody fought, cat or otherwise, with Charles Sinatra’s wife. He ran across that street so fast he was up on the porch within seconds. And it was his time to do the slamming.

  He grabbed that woman away from Jenay, which also got her away from Ashley, and flung her so forcefully that she nearly fell over the porch rail. Ashley was angry that the woman had messed up her two-hundred dollar hairdo, and was about get her revenge. Jenay didn’t wear weave, but she was gearing up for a confrontation too. They felt blindsided when that woman came at them so aggressively. Now they wanted to blindside her.

  But Charles shut it all down. As the woman moved to get back up, he held his arm around Jenay’s narrow waist while pulling Ashley back too. “But she hit me!” Ashley was angrily crying, ready to fight back. “I’m not going to let her get away with jumping on me like that!”

  Charles pushed her away. “Get in the car!” he orde
red her.

  “But she hit me, Daddy!”

  Charles looked at his daughter. He did not allow back talk, and every one of his children knew it. “What did I say to you?” he asked her.

  Ashley and her baby sister Carly were adopted by Charles and Jenay into the Sinatra family, but even they knew their father would knock them through a wall if they disobeyed him. They knew he was not the one to trifle with. But Ashley’s natural instinct wasn’t to cower and go along to get along. She pushed boundaries. “You told me to get in the car,” she admitted, “but what about the fact that she hit me, Dad? I can’t let this Dollar General hoe get away with that!”

  “Who are you calling a hoe, hoe?” the woman asked, and she and Ashley were about to go at it again.

  Charles pulled Ashley back again, but this time he slung her down those steps so hard she fell onto the sidewalk. “Get your ass in that car, and get in there now!” he ordered her. Ashley, seeing the anger in his big, green eyes, got up and ran to the car.

  Then Charles turned his attention to the combative woman. She moved back when she saw that she was no match for him too, and hurried toward her front door.

  “Is Donald in there?” Jenay asked as the woman hurried past her.

  “No, he ain’t here, and you know it!” the woman decried. “Y’all just came here to start something!” she added, as she hurried into her house.

  Charles grabbed Jenay by her elbow and pulled, all but dragged her off of the porch and down to the curb where her Mercedes was parked. Ashley was behind the wheel. She pressed down the passenger side window as they walked up.

  “Take the car and go home,” Charles ordered her. And then, realizing which child he was dealing with, added: “Go straight home or I’ll kick your ass, Ashley!”

  Jenay moved to get into the car too, since she and Ashley rode over there together, but Charles held her back. “You’re coming with me,” he said.

  And as Ashley cranked up and drove away, to go straight home as he had ordered, rubbing her hair down as she drove, she was fuming at that woman. She was fuming at Donald for forcing her to have to look for his ass. She hit the steering wheel as she drove.

  Charles pressed his hand hard against the small of his wife’s back and walked her across the street, three doors down, to his truck in Kasper’s driveway.

  Kasper was still standing at his front door as Charles placed Jenay on the passenger seat of his truck, walked around, and got in too. Kasper had heard how Big Daddy married himself a black woman, but he had no idea she would be the one. Not such a sweet, kind-looking woman like that. She didn’t look mean and hateful at all. Kasper always assumed the woman who would become Charles’s second wife had to be a little like his first one: mean and hateful too. But he didn’t see that in this one at all.

  What he also didn’t see was Charles again. Charles left Kasper, and his sunglasses on Kasper’s porch, backed out of the driveway and, without giving his tenant a second glance, sped away.

  Charles kept glancing at Jenay as he drove, as if he was trying to decide if he even wanted to address what had just transpired. Jenay certainly didn’t want to. She reached into his glove compartment, grabbed the comb she knew he kept inside, and combed her messy hair. Her hair was medium length, brown, and bouncy, and with the kind of layered cut that allowed her to comb it back, and then push it into a fluff-up that automatically settled into a reasonable style. Charles couldn’t help but notice how gorgeous she looked when she fluffed it back up. He also noticed debris on the pants of her pantsuit, apparently acquired when she fell on that porch. When he stopped at a red light, he brushed it off of her. Then looked at her. “What the hell was that about, Jenay?” he asked.

  “I was looking for Donald,” she responded.

  “You don’t come down in this hellhole looking for anybody! If you need to find Donald you contact me, or Brent, or even Anthony or Robert. But what you don’t do, and you’d better not do again, is get in a car with Ashley of all people and drive to this side of town. I nearly died when I saw that woman knock you down!”

  Jenay looked at him. The tenor of his voice had changed.

  “What if I hadn’t been on that street, Jenay? What if I didn’t hear your cry?”

  “Stop worrying about me like that,” Jenay said with a frown. “I would have been alright.”

  “Yeah, sure. That big-ass woman would have beat the shit out of you and Ashley both!”

  “That’s what you say,” Jenay said. “But I would have handled my business.”

  The light turned green. Charles looked at her. “When we get home,” he said, as he drove under the light, “I’m going to handle mine.”

  Jenay looked at him as he continued to drive. She knew what he was capable of. “What do you mean, Charlie?” she asked a husband who now seemed bound and determined to let his actions speak for him. And that determination was what was worrying her. “Charlie,” she asked again, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “But things have changed,” Donald Sinatra said to Tony and Robert, his two brothers, as they sat around the center island of their parents’ kitchen, and he stood on the opposite side. The television on the kitchen wall was still on, showing a Judge Judy repeat, forcing him to speak a little louder than his usual voice. “We are a far cry from the way things used to be. I mean come on, man. We twice-elected the first black president of the United States. If that isn’t progress, what is?”

  “There’s progress,” Tony said, “but there’s still racism too. Both can be true. I know this for a fact. I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology, remember? I have a syndicated radio therapy show, remember? I listen to that racist bull crap all day long. You should hear some of the nonsense people call into my show and proclaim. Some people still harbor those kind of views. And some of those people, I am sorry to say, are right here in Jericho.”

  “Yeah,” Robert said, scrolling through his cell phone messages, his mouth cocked into a half smile, “like that biker chick Donnie’s been fooling around with. What’s her name?”

  “Gilda,” Donald said. “Gilda Lane.”

  “Yeah, her.”

  Donald looked at Robert. They were very close in age, but Robert acted as if he was as old as their oldest brother Brent. He sometimes came across to Donald as if he thought he was superior. “For your information, Mister Know-it-all,” he said to him, “Gilda is not like that. You’re just stereotyping. Just because she’s a white woman with tats on her arms and who happens to enjoy riding a Harley every once in a while doesn’t make her a racist, okay?”

  Robert knew there was more to his belief than the fact that Gilda had tattoos and rode a Harley, but he wasn’t going to argue with Donald about any of his females. He never listened to reason, Robert never listened to him, their arguments always went nowhere. Robert continued to scroll his messages.

  “But why Gilda?” Tony asked Donald. “That is what I don’t understand. You and Bobby are the blonds in the family. Both of you took after our mother. And both of you have the worse luck when it comes to women. I thought blonds had more fun?”

  Robert grinned. “They do,” he said with a raise of his eyebrows.

  “And why wouldn’t I like Gilda?” Donald asked. “She’s good people. And who are you to talk anyway, Tony? She looks way better than those ugly barfs you always go for.”

  Robert laughed.

  Before Tony could respond, the front door opened on the opposite end of the great room, and Ashley walked in. This was their new home that was built after a fire took out their old home, and everybody was still adjusting to the difference. Everybody was also adjusting to Ashley’s appearance. “You look like Don King’s sister,” Tony said to her.

  Ashley, however, gave Tony the hand and continued to stare at Donald.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Donald asked as she approached him. He and Ashley were best friends. “What happened to you?”

  “Like really, Donnie?” Ashley
asked as she stood beside him. “You’re here?”

  Donald was puzzled. “Where was I supposed to be?”

  “Bobby said he dropped you off at crazy lady’s house three days ago.”

  “And I did,” Robert said.

  “Stop calling her that,” Donald said. “She’s not crazy.”

  “She’d better be glad that’s all I call her,” Ashley said, “when I get through with her.”

  “I take it crazy lady is responsible for your new hairdo?” Tony asked.

  “What happened?” Donald asked, looking at her disheveled hair.

  But Ashley pushed him on his arm. “Where were you? We’ve been all over this town looking for you. Nobody heard from you for three days. You have Ma worried about you!”

  “Perhaps you could have phoned him on his cell phone,” Tony suggested.

  “Duh,” Ashley said. “That was the first thing we did, Genius. He wasn’t answering his cell phone.”

  “Don’t pay Tony and Bobby any mind,” Donald said. “They think they’re smart because they have book knowledge, when neither one of them have any common sense. They’re just a couple of---”

  “Educated fools,” Donald and Ashley said together, and then high-fived. “So don’t even give them a response to their foolish suggestions,” Donald added.

  “But where were you?” Ashley asked. “We went to your girlfriend’s house on Bronson and she tried to beat me and Ma’s ass.”

  Everybody was astounded. “She what?” Tony asked. “She put her hands on Jenay?”

  “You’re lying, Ash,” Donald said.

  “For real though,” Ashley said. “Look at my hair, if you don’t believe me. She dragged me across her little front porch and knocked down Ma and tried to drag her too.”