Monk Paletti: Taming Ashley Sinatra Read online

“Cute?” Ashley asked. “Donny? Please.”

  “Oh, he’s cute. He’s not as cute as your brother Bobby Sinatra, nor is he cute like your brother Tony, no way,” Marina made clear. “He’s not even cute like your brother Brent. But I like his blonde hair and blue eyes. He’s cute enough. But tell me something: why doesn’t he ever ask me out like a regular guy?”

  “He likes spice too,” Ashley said.

  “I’m spice!” said Marina. “I’m a black woman here, are you kidding? It doesn’t get any more spicier than that. You ever tasted our food?”

  Ashley smiled. “You’re spice, alright, but you’re more like pepper. Pepper is hot, and you are hot, girl. You are beautiful. And pepper will do you no harm whatsoever. But salt, on the other hand, tastes really good, but it’s really bad for you too. It’ll do you plenty harm. But that’s the kind of spice we seem to like.”

  “Ashley and Donny,” said Marina, shaking her head. “Two of a kind!”

  “You got that right,” Ashley said with a laugh and Marina began heading out just as Donald Sinatra, Ashley’s brother, was coming in.

  “Hey, Don,” Marina said with a big smile.

  “Hey, Rina,” Donald said and kept on walking.

  Marina gave Ashley a see what I mean look, and then left the store.

  “Well?” Ashley asked as soon as Donald made his way behind the counter.

  “Any customers so far?” Donald asked her.

  “They’ve been trickling in,” said Ashley. “Not enough though. Well?” she asked again.

  “Well what?” Donald asked.

  “Did you talk to Daddy?”

  “I almost asked him,” Donald said, “but he wasn’t in a good enough mood.”

  “Oh, Donny, you never go through with it. I can’t count on you for anything!”

  “Then you ask him,” Donald fired back. “You know how he is when he’s in a bad mood. But if you ask we stand a better chance of getting a yes.”

  “I asked him the last time,” Ashley said as the bell clanged outside. “And the time before that,” she added as she and Donald looked out of the store’s window and saw a car pulling up at their gas pump.

  “Yes, you asked him both times,” Donald said. “But he helped us both of those times too.”

  “I don’t know, Donny,” Ashley said. “The way we’re going about this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. You’re still working part-time for Ma at the hotel, and I’m still working for Dad in his office. Every extra dime we get, we have to put it in the store just to keep the doors open. And we still have so many empty shelves in this store. And we still have to keep running to Daddy. It’s just not right. Maybe opening this place wasn’t such a grand idea after all.”

  “It’s just a bump in the road, Ash. That’s all! It’ll get better. If you ask Dad to help us out this time, I think it’ll finally get us over the hump.”

  “That’s what we said the last time he helped us,” Ashley said.

  Donald exhaled. “I know,” he said, as he glanced out at their customer pumping gas. “Oh, before I forget, guess who’s coming to dinner tonight?”

  “Carly’s in town. I know she’s coming, although I don’t think Trevor Reese is coming with her.”

  “He couldn’t make it. As usual. But Teddy’s coming.”

  Ashley looked at Donald. “Really?” She smiled. “Now that’s the kind of man I want! If he wasn’t my cousin, boy oh boy.”

  Donald frowned. “Oh, gross!” he said, and Ashley laughed.

  Their customer, a handsome white guy named Flint, finished pumping his gas and came into the store.

  “Hey, Flint, what’s up?” Donald said to him as he made his way over to the cash register.

  “What’s up, Donald,” Flint said. Then he looked over at Ashley. At her long, brown legs, her smoking hot slender frame, and then up to her pretty face. “Hey, Ash.”

  Ashley smiled at him coyly. He had been the quarterback at their senior high school while she was the co-captain of the cheerleading squad at that same school. Every girl in Jericho, at least in Ashley’s mind, had a crush on Flint.

  “Eighteen dollars and three cents,” Donald said to Flint.

  Flint handed Donald a twenty for the gas, but his eyes remained on Ashley’s body. “Say, Ash?” he asked.

  Ashley looked at him again. “Yes?”

  “Coming to my party next Friday night?”

  Inwardly, Ashley smiled. “Next Friday? Not this coming Friday? I thought it was this Friday.”

  Donald looked at her. She and everybody in Jericho always knew all about Flint’s parties and the exact date they were being held. Even Donald knew it was next Friday night.

  Flint knew Ashley knew, too, but he was used to girls playing games with him. “Yeah, I’m having a party next week. I hear you like to party. How about you come over, as my special guest?”

  Ashley was floored. “Really?”

  Donald rolled his eyes. Girls, he thought.

  “Really,” said Flint as Donald handed him his change. “Just tell them at the door that you’re with me, and they’ll let you in. You’re going to be there, right?”

  “I’ll certainly try,” said Ashley.

  “Cool,” said Flint. “I’ll see you there,” he added, glancing down at her body again, and then he headed out of the door.

  “The least he could have done is agree to pick you up, since you’re going to be his quote unquote, ‘special’ guest,” said Donald.

  But Ashley was over the moon. “He is so cute!” she said. “And he gives the best parties!”

  “How would you know? You ever been to any?”

  “I’ve been to several,” said Ashley.

  “Then why are you so excited?”

  “Because I’ve never had a personal invitation from Flint before! That’s why, silly. He invited me personally as his special guest!”

  Donald shook his head. “Poor Ash.”

  Ashley was offended. She looked him up and down. “What’s so poor about me?”

  “You like two kind of guys,” Donald said. “The kind that’s wrong for you. Or the kind that’s absolutely wrong for you.”

  Ashley laughed.

  But it was no laughing matter with Donald. “Either the guy’s too good, in which case you use him. Or the guy’s too bad, in which case he uses you. Flint is the latter hands down.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Ashley smilingly, “but he’s not boring!”

  Donald couldn’t help but smile too. He was too much like his sister to judge her too harshly. “Now that’s the truth,” he said, and they both high-fived.

  But then both of their smiles left, as they considered how their relationships always ended up.

  Donald looked at his younger sister, whom he loved dearly. “Just don’t fall for him,” he said.

  But Ashley, again, felt slighted. “Come on now. Why would I fall for a guy like Flint?”

  “Good question,” said Donald. “Just don’t fall for him,” he said again.

  Ashley exhaled. There was no point in denying her eternal string of bad luck when it came to the guys she picked. Losers every one of them. “I won’t fall for him,” she said. “Bet that.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  His break shot made a thunderous clap and the pool balls sailed across the table like eyeballs seeking shelter. Three went into corner pockets. The rest remained on the table, but strategically placed. Monk easily sized him up as the best pool player in the joint. Of that he had no doubt. But he wasn’t looking for a pool player. He was looking for a missing girl.

  Teddy Sinatra, his best friend, came back from the bar with two bottles of beer. He handed Monk one and sat on the stool beside him. They were in Gagnon’s Pool Hall, in Quebec, surrounded by dusty old men and unemployed young men trying to escape from the rest of their day. Although Teddy was dressed casually in jeans and a jacket, Monk was sitting up in that poolhall in a black suit and a small, black, fedora hat. Teddy had already joked that he looked li
ke somebody straight out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie. But then again, Teddy realized, Monk always looked like that.

  “Tell me again why I agreed to do this shit?” Teddy asked Monk as he twisted open his beer top with his teeth.

  Monk didn’t look at him. He was too busy surveying the room. “I’m helping my old man out. You’re helping me out.”

  “The question is why,” Teddy said. “Why did I leave my busy-ass schedule to come to Canada with your ass?”

  “Because you love me?” Monk said as a throwaway line.

  “Ha! Fuck that,” Teddy said.

  “Because you can’t bear it when I’m not around?”

  Teddy chuckled. “Yeah, right!”

  Monk got real, with his heavy Jersey accent coming to the fore. “Because I’m always helping out your ass at the drop of a hat,” he said as if it were a fact, not a question. “That’s why.” Then he looked at Teddy. “Is that a good enough reason for you?”

  Teddy hesitated. One thing nobody could ever take away from Monk: he was always there when you needed him. That was why Teddy couldn’t argue with his friend’s reasoning. “Probably,” he said, and sipped form his bottle of beer. Monk hadn’t even touched his.

  “What’s all this talk I’ve been hearing?” Monk asked as he continued to check out every human being in that poolhall. Although both men were in their thirties, Monk was slightly older, in his late thirties, and sometimes came across as Teddy’s father-confessor rather than just his friend.

  “What kind of talk are you talking about?” Teddy asked him.

  “I been hearing things, that’s all. Things that don’t make no sense to me. Like you’re, whatta you call it? Leaving Mick the Tick?” Monk then looked at Teddy. “What I’ve been hearing is a pack of lies, right? It ain’t the truth, right?”

  Teddy didn’t look at his friend. He sipped more beer. “And what if it is?” he asked.

  Monk smirked. “Yeah, okay. I’ll wear this same suit to your funeral.”

  Teddy frowned. “What funeral? I’m not going to be my old man’s underboss forever. He knows that.”

  “You take over when he retires, Teddy. That’s the plan, remember?”

  “Yeah, that was the plan alright. But my old man? He’s never gonna retire. And I mean never. He’ll be on his dying bed, older than old man Bonaducci, still running that shit.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not how it works,” Monk said. “In our game, death can come at any time.”

  “It’s not coming to my old man,” Teddy said. “His ass too mean to die.”

  Monk laughed. “Yeah, he’s a mean fucker alright. But that’s how he stays at the top of the food chain. And one thing about a man like Mick the Tick? He’s not ever letting go of the best number two he’s ever had.”

  “Glo did it. She went and did her own thing. He complained about it, slapped the shit out of her a time or two when she gave him back lip about it, but he let her go.”

  “But he ain’t letting your ass go. You can forget that, Teddy.”

  “It’ll be a battle,” Teddy admitted. “But once I get my ducks in a row,” he added, about to drain down more beer, “I’m going.” He took a big gulp of beer.

  Then he exhaled. “Anyway,” he said, “on our way heading back, I need to stop by my uncle’s house in Maine.”

  “Big Daddy’s house?”

  “Yup. We’ve been invited to dinner.”

  Monk looked at him. Everybody knew how much Big Daddy detested that gangster life, although he was a closet gangster himself. “Why?” he asked Teddy.

  “What do you mean why?”

  “Why would Big Daddy Sinatra want me at his dinner table?”

  “It’s not about you, Monk, alright? Sometimes, it’s not about you. He says he wants to talk to me.”

  “About leaving your old man?”

  “How should I know,” Teddy said. “I don’t know.”

  Monk smiled again. “Ah shit, that’s what it’s gonna be about. Big Daddy’s always backing up Mick. That’s his kid brother. He’s always gonna look out for Mick the Tick.”

  But before Teddy could respond to his comment, Monk saw what he was trying to see all along. “There he is,” he said, looking across the room.

  Teddy looked where he thought Monk was looking. “There who is?” he asked. “The kidnapper?”

  “The man who knows. The guy in the red baseball cap.”

  When he described the cap, Teddy saw the guy too. “How do you know that’s him?”

  “We’ve been in this joint twenty, thirty minutes,” Monk said. “Everybody’s looked at us at least five or six times because we stand out like sore thumbs. Except that guy. He hasn’t looked at us once.” Monk rose to his feet. “You take the left. I’ll take the right.”

  Teddy drained down the final gulp of his beer, sat the bottle on the table, and then rose and headed on the left side of the poolhall while Monk made his way on the right side. They converged toward the man in the red baseball cap, who was chatting up a pretty girl.

  When Red Cap saw them coming his way from both sides, he pushed the pretty girl in the path of both men. Then he took off down a dark hall.

  Monk and Teddy both slung the girl out of their way and ran down that same dark hall behind red cap, with both men pulling out their hardware as they ran.

  They heard before they saw the door at the end of the hall sling open and nearly bounce back closed. Teddy was the first to get to that door. He opened it all the way, and both men ran down the dark steps that led to another door. When Teddy opened that door, they realized it led outside, and they ran out.

  And that was when they saw Red Cap again. He was running across the back side of the poolhall, running much faster than both men could possibly run. And although Teddy was in better shape than Monk, Monk’s will to catch that fucker caused him to keep pace with his friend. And both of them were able to keep Red Cap in eyesight.

  They all ran along the side streets of Quebec, until they both were running through the dilapidated gate of a dilapidated old, two-story, abandoned four-unit apartment building. Teddy and Monk ran through that gate too, determined to catch that fast asshole.

  But as soon as they entered that building, Monk stopped in his tracks, pulling Teddy back too. Teddy was already stopping anyway. It was as if both of them saw the scene, saw that it was perfect for an ambush, and reached the same conclusion all at once.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Teddy asked.

  Monk nodded. “Yeah. It’s a trap. It’s a motherfucking trap!”

  And as soon as they dived to take cover, they realized it was in the nick of time. Because as soon as they were diving, gunfire erupted from the top of the stairs. Two men with what looked like machine guns, both standing at the second floor railing, were firing down at Monk and Teddy and piercing everything in sight with bullet holes. But both Teddy and Monk managed to get beneath the stairs where they could regroup and be out of harm’s way, as the hail of bullets kept coming.

  But they knew it was temporary. They knew they had to come up with a plan and come up with one right quick. Because within seconds, both gunmen began running down those stairs to find out if they had taken out their targets.

  Teddy positioned himself just beneath the staircase so that he could reach through the cracks at one of the steps, which was about seven stairs up. Monk, instead, moved toward the side of the stairs, still out of view of the two gunmen running down, but ready to strike as soon as Teddy did his thing.

  Teddy did his thing as soon as he saw the shoes of both gunmen step onto the seventh stair. He reached through the gaps in the stairs, grabbed both men by their ankles, and with his own brute force tripped them both.

  When both gunmen stumbled and fell down the stairs, Monk immediately ran in front of the stairs and pointed his gun at them. But they were still falling down and their machine guns had already fallen to the bottom step where Monk stood. Teddy ran out with his gun drawn too.

 
; “Get up!” Monk yelled at both men. “Get your asses up!”

  Teddy picked up one of their machine guns. “This old shit,” he said, and grabbed up the second gun.

  As both gunmen stood on their feet with their hands in the air, Red Cap, the man who led Monk and Teddy to the ambush and who was positioned in a dark corner, attempted to hurry out of a side door and make his escape. But Monk saw him in his peripheral vision and shot him in the leg without taking his eyes off of the two gunmen. “Your ass ain’t going nowhere,” Monk said to him as Red Cap dropped to the floor and held onto his leg, crying out in pain.

  “Let’s go,” Monk said as he motioned for the two gunmen to head back upstairs.

  “You too, Whining Boy,” Teddy said to Red Cap and waited for him to get up and hop his way toward him. Teddy pushed him toward the stairs. “Get up those stairs. Tried to ambush us? It’s your ass that’s going to be ambushed!” And he and Red Cap made their way up the stairs, too, and through the opened apartment door at the top of the stairs.

  Once inside, Teddy shoved Red Cap onto the floor and began looking around the rest of the apartment to make certain nobody was hiding out. Monk remained up front with the two gunmen, who sat on the sofa, and he kept his weapon pointed directly at them. But he did look around. All he saw were empty beer bottles and crack pipes and some pot. A fucking party, Monk thought. They had been having a fucking party. “You know who I am?” he asked them.

  Gunman number one was angry, but he nodded. “We know who your ass is,” he said.

  “Who am I?” Monk asked.

  “What the fuck difference does that make?” Gunman number one had a frown on his face. “Who cares?”

  But Monk frowned, leaned over the coffee table, and pointed his gun directly at number one’s face. “Is this a good enough difference for you? Does this make you care, motherfucker?”

  “You’re The Monk,” gunman number two quickly said. “You’re Frankie Paletti. Everybody knows you. Your old man runs the Bonaducci crime family. We know you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Monk said, and then stood back up straight. “Funny, I don’t know either one of you pricks. But I wasn’t trying to ambush anybody. Maybe that’s why. Because you know one thing I always figure? You should always know the people you’re trying to kill. That’s only right. Why would you kill a man you don’t know? That’s pathetic. Because that’s what this was, right? A hit job? A pathetic attempt at a hit?”