BIG DADDY SINATRA 2: IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, Book 2 Page 2

  The cops, instead, would often phone Charles’s assistants, or even Charles himself and try to get him to show some mercy and compromise. His son, Charles Brenton “Brent” Sinatra, Jr., a young man who had only become a cop a couple years earlier, had already called him on this case. He, too, wanted Charles to show mercy and compromise. But his call angered Charles even more than the fact that his oldest child had decided to become a cop in the first place, rather than helping him run his numerous businesses.

  But Brent kept trying anyway. “If you’d only give Mr. Puck thirty more days to vacate,” Brent had said on the phone to his father, “then I’m sure we’ll be able to get him to leave on his own by then.”

  But Charles knew better than that. Give a Jericho moocher thirty days, he’d want thirty more. And then thirty more after that. He told Brent no. “Either you and your police department move that moocher out,” Charles had said to his son, “or I will.”

  That was four days ago. Now today, Obadiah Puck was still on his land, still talking noise with a rifle in his hand as if he was the one in charge, and Charles was tired of the back and forth. He knew then that he would have to come himself, the way he was coming now, to shut the whole thing down.

  Charles stopped his truck behind the action, to assess the situation that he was about to thrust himself upon. He saw Brent standing behind his patrol car, trying to reason with the man. Along with his partner, Marty Martin, they seemed to be asking, demanding, and even begging Obadiah Puck to put his rifle down.

  But Puck wasn’t listening. He was sitting in his rocker on that porch, his rifle pointed at the cops, telling them that they weren’t forcing him off his land. His land, Charles thought angrily, when Puck didn’t own shit and hadn’t paid the rent on that land in months on end. Where do these people get the nerve?

  And when Brent tried to come from behind the patrol car to show Puck the judge’s order, Puck pointed his rifle and warned him not to take another step. He didn’t care what papers they presented, or which judge signed them. He wasn’t leaving. That was all there was to it. He sat on that porch like a man on a mission. He was a foot soldier in the army of the constitution, he said, fighting the government against government intrusion and any other cause he could think up. Nobody was taking his land.

  That sanctimonious babble was enough for Charles. He floored the gas and drove his truck until it stopped alongside the patrol car. Twenty-five year old Brent Sinatra looked over when he saw his father arrive. Brent was no little kid anymore. He was, in fact, the newly promoted sergeant with the Jericho Police Department. But he was relieved that his father had come. It was his father’s property after all. It was his father who had filed this force-removal request after all.

  But he also knew how his father could be. But this was Jericho, not some big city metropolis where the cops gave you five seconds to put your weapon down, and then shot you dead. Nobody was getting shot over land. Not even his own father’s land. Brent was going to see to that.

  But when Charles got out of that truck with that stern, uncompromising look on his face, even Brent knew it wasn’t up to him anymore. His father didn’t take a backseat to anyone, especially not his own son. That was why Brent wasn’t the least bit surprised when his father, without speaking niceties to Brent or Marty, walked around to the back of his truck, pulled out a loaded rifle of his own, and began to walk toward his contrary tenant.

  But Brent was an officer of the law now. He couldn’t allow his father to just dismiss their authority that easily. They didn’t live in a society of vigilantism. They lived in a society of laws.

  “Not necessary, Dad,” he said to his father as soon as he saw that rife. “We’ve got this under control, and I want to keep it that way.”

  But just like Obadiah Puck, his father wasn’t listening either. He immediately headed straight for the porch.

  “Dad!” Brent yelled. “Dad!”

  But Charles kept walking. Puck, seeing his advance, stood up from his rocking chair. “Stop right there, Big Daddy,” Puck said as he cocked the hammer of his rifle. “Come one more step and I’ll blow your gotdamn head off!”

  “And while you’re blowing mine off,” Charles said as he cocked his own rifle and didn’t stop his advance one inch, “I’ll blow yours off. We’ll be two headless motherfuckers on this property today.”

  “I’m not playing now!” Obadiah said, flustered that he was still coming.

  “I’m not playing either,” Charles responded, still coming, still pointing his rifle too. “You’re getting off of my land, Obadiah. And you’re getting off right now.”

  Puck looked over at Brent and Marty, as if he expected them to do something all of a sudden, but they didn’t make a move. It was too late. When he had his chance to settle this peacefully, he refused outright. Now, because of who Big Daddy Sinatra was, it was out of their hands.

  Puck looked back at Big Daddy. “I said stop now,” he said to Charles. “I’ve got this rifle and I tell you I’m going to use it!”

  “Then use it,” Charles said, his big green eyes now staring directly into Puck’s small brown ones. “You can use it. Or you can put that rifle down and we can talk like men. And I’ll put mine down too. But at the end of that conversation, you will be leaving this property.”

  “And go where?” Puck asked, with desperation, rather than defiance, now in his voice.

  “I don’t know,” Charles replied honestly, as he made it to the steps of that home. “That’s not my problem.”

  Puck stared at Charles. Everybody said he was a cold sonafabitch. But nobody could be that cold. “I don’t have anywhere to go,” he said. And just like that he looked like a very broken man. All of the arrogance and pride and strong-arming he used on Brent and Marty, he didn’t bother to try on Charles.

  But Charles, true to his reputation, showed no sympathy. “You should have thought about that when you decided not to pay rent for months on end,” he said. “I’ve given you every chance you’re going to get. It’s done. It’s over. You’re getting off of my property today.”

  Puck frowned and started scratching his head. It was as if he had forgotten all about the rifle he once brandished so arrogantly. Now it was at his side. He wasn’t about to get in a gun battle with Big Daddy Sinatra. Not with a man that mean.

  Charles saw Puck’s defeat, and glanced back at Brent and Marty. It was only then did they seem to remember that they were young cops, rather than young spectators, and sprang into action. They hurried to the porch with their guns drawn, grabbing Puck’s rifle, kneeing him to the ground, and then frisking and handcuffing him.

  When they finished, and stood him back up, Puck looked at Charles. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “No,” Charles said. Enjoyment was the last thing this was giving him.

  But Puck didn’t believe him. “Yes, you are,” he said. “You have to be. Because you’re a dirty sonafabitch!”

  Charles didn’t wince. It wasn’t a revelation to him. “You’re right about that,” he said.

  “You’re a man who’s going to beg for mercy one day, and nobody’s going to give it to you!”

  Charles felt an ache deep within his soul. “You’re right about that too.”

  Puck considered him. “And you don’t care, do you?”

  Charles looked at Puck. He wasn’t about to get sucked into some side issue. “If you would have paid your rent as you contractually agreed to pay it, we wouldn’t be here. You can twist it and turn it and blame it on me until the cows come home. But this is your doing.”

  “I said you didn’t care, so you’re giving me a lecture?”

  “I have no sympathy for a man who refuses to take responsibility for his own doing,” Charles continued. “So yeah, you’re right. I don’t care. I don’t care one damn bit.”

  Brent glanced back at his father, and saw that hardness in his eyes, but he knew he cared. He knew he cared more than most.

  But Charles wasn’t
looking for his son’s understanding or anybody else’s. He went back to his truck, tossed his rifle inside the bed, and got in and took off.

  Brent exhaled. He’d never met a man like his father, a man who thought he knew himself so well, but didn’t know himself at all. But then Brent turned his attention back to Puck, his prisoner, as he and Marty began walking him to their patrol car.

  “What do you have to cuff me for?” Puck suddenly wanted to know. “This is America! I didn’t break any laws!”

  “You pointed a rifle at law enforcement officers,” Brent said. “Even in America that’s against the law.”

  “Your pappy pointed his rifle at me! Ain’t that against the law too? Why didn’t you arrest him?”

  “Because I want to live,” Brent said, only half-jokingly.

  Marty laughed, knowing how Big Daddy Sinatra was too, as they pushed down Puck’s head, and sat him inside the patrol car.

  Mary Stalworth got out of her car and hurried across the sidewalk to the entrance of the storefront office. Sinatra, Inc. was written across the plate-glass window. Considering that Sinatra, Incorporated owned nearly half of the entire town, it was an unpretentious office to be sure. Unpretentious office for an unpretentious man, Mary thought smartly as she entered what was, not just any old office, but her job. She was Charles Sinatra’s longtime secretary, the backbone of his business she would say. But even she knew not to cross the line with him.

  Faye McKinley, one of the three assistants in the office, was coming out of the file room side door when a flustered-looking Mary entered the building. Faye looked up, at the clock on the wall, and then back at Mary.

  “Don’t ask,” Mary responded as she hurried toward her desk.

  “What happened?” Faye asked anyway.

  Mary tossed her shoulder bag on the desk and glanced back at the assistant as she began hurrying down the hall. “Is he mad?”

  “He’s mad,” Faye responded. “He asked for you twice already.”

  Mary let out a sigh of frustration as she stood outside of his office door, smoothed down her skirt, and then knocked once and entered.

  Charles was sitting behind his desk with a cup of coffee in one hand and yet another vacate order in his other hand. Sometimes he felt as if all he did was serve notices to vacate, when real estate was only a small fraction of his business interests. From a bank and a Bed and Breakfast, to a car dealership and out-of-state businesses that he flipped with his investment partners, his plate was overrunning. His goal had been to turn over his rent collecting business to one of his sons so that he could focus on weightier matters. But the two sons he believed were more than capable of handling it, Brent and Tony, viewed him more as a vicious slumlord who wouldn’t hesitate to put poor old ladies out in the cold, and they both refused to participate. His two younger sons, Robert and Donald, wanted desperately to run that sector of his business enterprise, but were still too immature in Charles’s eyes for him to hoist that level of responsibility onto either one of them.

  “Good morning, sir,” Mary said as she began walking toward his desk.

  “You’re late,” Charles responded, without looking up.

  “I was having sex with my boy toy and time got away from us.”

  “Try again.”

  “I was having sex with you and time got away from us.”

  Charles inwardly smiled. He loved this woman. “See that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

  “See that what doesn’t happen again?” Mary asked. “Sex with my boy toy, sex with you, or coming to work late?”

  Charles smiled. “All three,” he said, and then looked up at her. Mary Stalworth was a tall, pretty, slim-hipped white woman who had been his secretary for over a decade. And although they were right around the same age, she was far feistier than he could ever be. Whereas his toughness was cold and calculating, hers was smooth and disarming. They made, he felt, an excellent pair. “Pull Obadiah Puck’s file,” he said.

  “Oh wild. You finally got that scoundrel out?”

  “He’s out,” Charles responded, “but I need his personal belongings out. Get a crew over there today. But I don’t want them to place any of his things on the side of any road. Tell them to put everything in one of my storage sheds, furniture and all, and then notify Puck where he can find it. And tell that clean-up crew that they will be responsible for anything lost, stolen or broken. The man is down and out by his own doing, that’s the truth, but we aren’t going to kick him while he’s down.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it.”

  “And go on and place an ad in the local paper.”

  This surprised Mary. “Even before there’s been a damage assessment inside the place, sir?”

  “Place the ad,” Charles responded. “Whatever damage that’s been done will be repaired. But I want a tenant ready to go. An empty property is wasted money, and I don’t waste money.”

  “My salary can attest to that. Anything else, sir?”

  “That’s all. Oh, and tell Faye her coffee is improving.”

  Mary smiled. “She’ll appreciate that. She has a world-size crush on you. She’s terrified of you, but she has a crush on you. Crazy girl. So she’ll really appreciate your compliment.”

  “Then never mind,” Charles responded. “An appreciative employee is a good employee, but a terrified employee is a better one.”

  “Then I must be a lousy employee,” Mary said, “because you don’t scare me a twit.”

  Charles laughed. “Just get to work,” he ordered.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” Mary said with a smile of her own. “Oh, and how’s Mrs. Sinatra? Is she okay?”

  Charles found the question itself odd. “She’s fine,” he said. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “So she wasn’t hurt at all?”

  Charles frowned. “Mary, what are you talking about?”

  “The accident. She was in that car accident.”

  Charles jumped from his seat, spilling his coffee as he did. “What car accident?” he asked her anxiously. “My wife was in a car accident?”

  “Yes, sir. I thought you knew!”

  Charles sat upright his overturned coffee cup, threw down the vacate order he was reviewing, and grabbed his suit coat from the back of his chair. “Where?” he asked as he grabbed.

  “On Cromartie,” Mary said. “Across from the Family Dollar. Her car and another car were on the side of the road, and I saw where her back bumper had been hit. It didn’t look serious though. I would have said something sooner, but I assumed she had phoned you. I assumed you knew.”

  But he didn’t know a damn thing, Charles thought as he hurried out of the office. His wife didn’t bother to call and tell him a thing. Not that it was unusual. She rarely included him in what she considered to be any of the small stuff in her life, although he wanted to be included in every aspect of her life. But if she didn’t see it as major, she wasn’t going to phone him. That was why he was pulling out his cell phone calling her. It rang and rang. By the time he made it out of his storefront building and into his Jaguar parked at the curb, his call had gone to her Voice Mail. He tossed his phone onto his passenger seat angrily, and took off.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jenay Sinatra heard her cell phone ringing but it had slipped from her hand after she called her stepson and then Triple A, and it wedged between her seats. Now she couldn’t reach it. Which was typical of the way her morning had been going. She, instead, looked down at the baby she held in her arms. She looked down at her baby daughter with trepidation in her eyes. They were in her broken down Ford on the side of the road, on one of Jericho’s busiest main arteries, and she knew if Charles found out he would have a fit. Not just because she had resisted his desire to get rid of her car in favor of a brand new one, but mainly because this was her third breakdown in as many months. Although it wasn’t the car’s fault this time, they had been rear-ended after all, but even she knew Charles wouldn’t care about that nuisance. A good worki
ng car, he would conclude, wouldn’t completely break down over a simple fender bender unless it was in bad shape to begin with. He tried it her way, she could just hear him saying. Now he was going to do it his way.

  The problem for Jenay was that whenever Charles took over any aspect of her life was how completely he took it over. As if she was another one of his grown children and, like his children, he expected her to understand that father knew best. Forget that she purchased this car before they got married as her statement of independence to begin with. Forget that it was a good car overall, but wasn’t brand new and therefore had hiccups. But Charles was in charge in their household, and, if she wasn’t careful, he was going to take charge of her car situation too.

  She continued to stare at little Bonita, her bouncing baby girl. After she had been rear-ended, she quickly took her baby out of her car seat and placed her in her arms. She had been asleep, but the sound of the hit had awoken her. Now she was trying to eat the knuckle on her thumb, as she stared at Jenay too.

  Although she had Jenay’s darker coloring that made it clear she had at least one black parent, everything else about this little girl made her the spitting image of her father. From her green eyes and wavy jet black hair, to her straight nose and even the way she puckered her lips just like he did, nobody would ever question this child’s paternity. And although she still a little baby, she was already the center of the Sinatra universe. From Charles all the way down to his four grown sons, Bonita was the most loved and cherished baby on the face of this earth. A fact that warmed Jenay’s heart. If something were to happen to her or Charles or both of them, she would rest in peace knowing that any one of her stepsons would look out for baby Bonita as if their life depended on it. Because given who their father was, and the reach even from the grave they would still believe he had, it would be.