Big Daddy Sinatra: Papa Don't Play Read online

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” Jenay responded. It was her contention that the incident was no accident. It was on purpose. That was why neither truck stayed around. And after Charles’s visit with Miller, he and Jenay were beginning to believe that it was staged to prevent her from attending this meeting and casting what could be a deciding vote. What kept them from outright accusing Cruikshank to his face was the reality of the hit. Whomever were driving those two trucks, they aimed to do more than just keep her from a meeting. They were trying to kill her. Was Cruikshank that evil? The jury, as far as Jenay was concerned, was still out.

  “Okay folks, why don’t we take a ten-minute break,” the mayor said, “and then we will have the roll call.”

  “Ten-minute break,” Brent whispered to his parents. “More like a chance for Cruikshank to regroup and make sure he has enough votes to win.”

  “As of right now,” Charles said, “it’ll be a tie. Which means the board will have to table the matter. Which means Cruikshank will bring it back up again as soon as he gets that additional vote.”

  Tony, who was sitting on the row behind his parents, leaned forward. “No word from Bobby?” he asked his father.

  “None,” Charles said.

  “He still might do the right thing, Pop,” Tony said.

  “Don’t count on it,” Brent said. “I talked to him earlier, after Jenay’s accident, and he didn’t want to talk about it. But I also spoke to him last night. He says the mayor is his boss. He’ll abstain and not vote at all, but he can’t go against his boss.”

  “Does he realize how asinine that sounds?” Jenay asked. “Charles is his father. He can go against his father’s wishes, but not his boss? I wish he would come in my face with that bullshit.”

  Charles took Jenay’s hand. He felt exactly as she did. Then she looked at Tony. “What about Sharon?” he asked. “As the head mistress of Saint Catherine’s, isn’t she a voting member?”

  “Nope,” Tony said. “The church can’t participate in such political matters. She’s not even on the board.”

  “Great,” Brent said. “We’re doomed.”

  “Everybody may not vote against us,” Jenay said. “I’ve spoken to many of them, and so have Charles.”

  “And so have I,” Brent said. “Let’s pray at least one of them vote their conscience and not their fear of Cruikshank.”

  “Hey, boss,” Pearl said as she came over to the family. “They tried to pull one over on you. I tried to stall as long as I could.”

  “We thank you, Pearl,” Jenay said with a smile.

  “Do they have enough votes with all of y’all here too?” Pearl asked.

  “A tie at this point,” Brent said, and then asked his father if he could have a word. “In private,” he added.

  But Charles wasn’t about to leave Jenay. He still held her hand. “Come here,” he said to his son, who sat on the opposite side of Jenay.

  Brent would have preferred a conversation out in the hall, but he knew arguing with his father would be a waste of time. He walked over and knelt beside Charles’s chair.

  “What’s going on?” Charles asked him.

  “What’s your read on what happened?” Brent asked him. “An accident?”

  “Hell no. Jenay believes it was set up by Cruikshank’s people, and I’m inclined to believe it too.”

  “Robert has a BOLO on the two trucks. He says he’s got every available man on the case too. I’ve got my contacts working overtime also. We’ll find out what’s going on.”

  Charles nodded.

  “I saw her car, Pop.” A hard look appeared in Brent’s green eyes. “I couldn’t believe she walked away from that.”

  Charles opened his suit coat and placed his hands on his hips. Brent could see the strain on his face. “Son, when I saw her Mercedes, and the condition it was in, I thought I was going to die where I stood. I think my heart stopped.” He shook his head, and hesitated. Then he looked at Brent. “You find that motherfucker, you hear me? If it’s Cruikshank’s people behind it, Robert isn’t going to see it.”

  “I understand.”

  Then Charles thought again. “There’s a guy in town. His name is Miller Franklin. He’s Jenay’s ex brother-in-law.”

  “Really?” Brent was surprised. He pulled out a pad and pen.

  “His daughter is having her wedding reception at the Inn. Run a background on him too. I don’t like the guy, and I need to know what he’s up to.”

  Brent finished writing down the name. “I’ll see what I can find out,” he said.

  Charles squeezed Brent’s arm. “Thanks, son. I know I can depend on you. But don’t tell Ash and Carly about Miller yet. We need to know more about him first.”

  As soon as he said that, Robert entered the hall and made his way toward the front of the room. When he saw his family, he went to them. Brent stood up.

  “Hey, Ma,” Robert said, and gave Jenay a hug. “You okay?”

  “Yes, thank God,” Jenay said. “I’m good.”

  “I thought you were going to abstain,” Brent said to his younger brother.

  “I was. But the mayor just called. Not voting is not an option, he made clear to me.”

  “What does that mean?” Tony asked, but then the mayor came back out, and waved for Robert to come to the table up front. Robert was reluctant, but Cruikshank was his boss. He went onstage.

  Jenay, Brent, Tony, and Pearl all looked at Charles. Charles was staring at Robert.

  After every one settled back down, Mayor Cruikshank gaveled the meeting back to order, and immediately opened the floor for a roll call vote.

  To Jenay’s dismay, the mayor called on voters in such a way that the tie happened, with Robert as the final vote. She shook her head.

  “What an ass,” Charles, his hand across Jenay’s chair, whispered to her.

  Then Robert cast his vote. But he voted not to invoke eminent domain. He voted against his boss!

  The Sinatra family cheered. The other community leaders jeered.

  And Charles and Robert locked eyes. And then Charles looked away.

  After the vote, when they all were on the sidewalk outside of City Hall, Robert could be seen on the far side of the building in a heated conversation with the mayor. At least the mayor was heated. Robert just stood there and took it.

  Charles and Jenay, along with Brent and Tony, watched the exchange. And when the mayor got into his limo and the limo sped away, no doubt off to another “plotting” session, Robert began walking toward his family. He looked defeated, Charles thought. But it was his own damn fault.

  But Jenay saw the agony in Robert’s big, blue eyes. As he approached, she moved toward him and opened her arms to him. He quickly moved into them, and hugged her tightly. Tony rubbed his back too. They appreciated what he had done. But Brent remained at his father’s side. Not because he didn’t appreciate Robert’s vote, but because he knew that vote was beside the point to Charles.

  After all of the hugging and congratulations for, in essence, saving the family business from ruin, Robert looked at his father and then walked over to him. They all walked over to Charles. But if Robert thought is father was going to be appreciative too, Charles quickly made it clear that he wasn’t.

  “I’m not going to congratulate you,” Charles said, “for doing what you should have done all along. It should have never been an issue. You’ll probably lose your job behind it, and that sucks, but it was a job you should have never taken to begin with.”

  “Damn, Dad,” Robert said frustratingly, “I’m trying to do the right thing. Why don’t you ever give me credit? Why do you always have to be such an asshole?”

  Big Daddy slapped Robert so hard across his face that he fell down. He stood back up, quickly and angrily, as if he was about to go toe-to-toe with his own father. Brent moved closer, and so did Tony. They didn’t want their kid brother to die today. But Robert had enough sense to know not to even pretend to go there. He backed down too.

 
But Charles didn’t. He got in Robert’s face. “I will not hold you to a lower standard than I hold the rest of my children,” he said to him. “If that’s what you need, you’ll never get it from me. I would have respected you more if you would have voted against me.”

  Everybody looked at Charles, stunned, when he made that declaration.

  “At least then,” Charles continued, “you would have been committed to the road you chose to travel. You accepted that police chief job when Cruikshank offered it to you. Nobody put a gun to your head. You took that on. Now, when he needed you, what do you do? You turn tail on him and come running back to me.” Charles pointed his finger at his son. “That’s not how I raised you, boy. I didn’t raise a yellow belly! I didn’t raise a turn tail. I raised a man. And a man stands on the ground he decided to take no matter what the consequences, because I also taught you to weigh those consequences before you stand on that ground. Your ass didn’t do either. And you expect me to congratulate you?”

  “Perhaps there’s another side to this, Dad,” Tony said, offering Robert a lifeline.

  “Like what?” Brent asked. He agreed with everything his father had just said.

  “Like maybe Bobby accepted that police chief position,” Tony said, “not to help Cruikshank, but to help you, Dad. Maybe he knew, if he became chief, he would automatically have a vote on the oversight board too. And that he would be, and actually was, that one final vote you needed.”

  Everybody looked at Robert with hope in their eyes. Could it be possible? Could Robert ever be that clever? But Charles’s intense green eyes held no such hope. Because he knew his children and he knew it wasn’t possible. Robert was not that clever. Everybody was staring at Robert, and so was Charles. But unlike the others, Charles wasn’t staring to hope against reality, but to see if his own son would sink so low as to lie and say Tony was right. Would his own son prove just how weak and ineffectual he truly was?

  Robert knew what Tony suggested wasn’t true. He knew he accepted that job because it gave him the power he craved and the opportunity to advance right along with the mayor, and without his father’s help or blessing. He voted in his father’s favor, not because of some preplanned scheme he had masterfully concocted as Tony suggested, but because he cowered. He couldn’t vote against his father. He couldn’t go all the way down the road he chose to travel. His father was right.

  But he needed an out, and Tony had just given it to him. “Yes,” Robert said with his head held high. “I took this job just in case the family needed my vote.”

  But Charles lowered Robert’s high head when he wallowed him with a left, and then he hit him again with a right. He was about to jump on his son and continue to beat the snot out of him, but Brent and Tony held him back. It took all the strength they had, but they held their father back.

  Jenay was upset. She’d seen Charles’s temper unleashed before, but never to this degree. The townspeople walking past were upset too, but only because they couldn’t stand Big Daddy anyway. They looked at him as if his antics, as if abusing his son, was proving to them just what a junkyard dog he truly was. But Jenay harbored no such feelings. Because she knew Charles was right. Robert was lying through his teeth. And Charles, she also knew, was more disappointed in his son than angry with him, although he was extremely pissed too.

  But just as Charles snatched away from his sons, a familiar SUV drove up and stopped at the curb. They all looked when Carly got out. She looked ghostly.

  “What is it, Carly?” Jenay asked nervously, as she moved toward her ahead of the rest. Could this day get any more dramatic?

  “What are you doing here?” Brent asked. “Because of what happened to Ma?”

  Carly frowned. “Ma?” She looked at Jenay. “What happened to Ma?”

  “What’s wrong, Carly?” Charles asked her. “Did something happen?”

  “Yes,” Carly said as she anxiously pulled out her phone, swiped it open, and pressed the Camera icon. “And I don’t know what to do!” She handed Charles her phone.

  Jenay and Brent looked over Charles’s shoulders as he took the phone and looked at the sheet of paper Carly had snapshot. He looked at both pictures, front and back. The expression on his face became graver the more he saw. “Where did you get this?” he asked Carly as he read.

  “From out of Trevor’s wallet,” Carly responded.

  Brent looked at Carly. “Trevor?” he asked. “Good Lord.”

  But Charles continued to read. As he did, Robert got back on his feet, with an assist from Tony, but Robert’s anger was still palpable. And instead of more confrontations he knew he couldn’t win, and because he felt awful for being such a coward, he began walking toward his car. But nobody was watching. They all were watching Big Daddy.

  “What is it, Charles?” Jenay asked anxiously.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Brent asked too.

  Charles stopped reading and began to think. He was in deep contemplation. They all knew he was not going to answer their questions when he was in that state. But his mood shifted almost within seconds, and he made a decision. “Everybody to the house,” he said, as he took Jenay by the hand and began moving with her toward his Jaguar parked at the curb. When his children were still lingering, as if they didn’t understand the directive, he yelled. “Now!”

  Brent and Tony and Carly, got in a hurry then.

  But Robert continued to walk toward his car, as if he didn’t hear his father’s order at all. “Robert?” Charles yelled. “That means you too.”

  “Go to hell!” Robert yelled back with an almost uncontrollable rage, got into his car, and sped away.

  Charles was about to get in his own car and go after his son, but Tony intervened. “I’ll go get him, Dad,” he said. “We’ll come over together.”

  Charles didn’t respond, but he knew Tony’s suggestion was the best one yet. He got into his Jaguar, with Jenay by his side, and drove away.

  He anxiously called his brother Mick, as he drove.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The body, curled in a fetal position, was far too big for the trunk of that Toyota, but that was beside the point. The body was there, and verified dead. That was all they wanted to see. But Trevor Reese didn’t play. He closed the trunk. He did his job. Time for them to do theirs.

  The leader, in his flannel coat, smiled at Trevor. “It’s always about the money with you,” he said, as he handed Trevor the briefcase.

  Trevor ignored him and opened the case. He had a system for counting his money. He never counted the top. Nor the bottom. Only the middle. If the middle was right, the entire stash was right. It took time, and the head guy looked at his watch a time or two, but Trevor didn’t give a fuck. He counted his money.

  When he was satisfied that it was all there, he closed the briefcase and tossed the leader the keys to the Toyota. “Call me if you need me again,” Trevor said, and began walking away. He knew they wanted to ice him and snatch back the money, but they weren’t fools. They watched him leave. He took care of a major problem for them, he was the best at it, and they might need him again.

  They, instead, opened the trunk once more, checked to make sure that fucker was dead, and then threw the dead body out of the trunk and onto the pavement. Then they piled into the Toyota, since it had to be destroyed next, and cranked up. Trevor had just walked out of the warehouse, when the whole thing, the Toyota, the leader, and all of the leader’s men, blew up.

  Trevor kept walking, without looking back, as a limousine drove up to collect him. He got in and sat on the front passenger seat, closed the door, and the limo drove away.

  “Got it?” the voice on the backseat said to him.

  “Every dime,” Trevor responded.

  “Got them?” another voice on the backseat asked.

  “Every one,” Trevor responded.

  “Good,” the first voice said. He was the boss, but there were two others sitting back there with him: his flunkies. “Next up the Gabrinis. And that fucker
Mick Sinatra.”

  Trevor’s jaw tightened, as Carly’s face flashed across his mind. But he nodded. “They got next. Hell yeah.”

  Donald and Ashley sat on the floor of the family room, playing cards, when they heard the sound of an automobile.

  “I’ll check,” Donald said, and got up and went to the window.

  “Good move, Ash,” Ashley said aloud as she threw down a card. “I’m beating your butt, Donnie!”

  “Brent just drove up,” Donald said. “Oh, and Carly.”

  Ashley looked at him. “Carly?”

  He looked at Ashley. “I didn’t know she was in town. Did you?”

  “No,” Ashley said. “She usually tells me when she’s coming home.”

  “Mom and Dad just drove up too,” Donald said. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh what?” Ashley asked.

  “They lost the vote,” Donald said. “They must have lost the vote.” He looked at Ashley. “They must have lost, Ash!”

  Ashley’s heart began to pound as she stood up too. Donald was already hurrying up front, and she began following him.

  Donald was at the front door by the time Ashley made it into the front room. He opened the door as Carly, Brent and then Jenay walked in.

  “Where’s Bonita?” Carly asked as she entered.

  “In Arizona with Makayla and Little Brent,” Donald said.

  “Arizona?” Carly asked. “Doesn’t she have school Monday?”

  “They’re supposed to be back late Sunday night,” Donald said. “But what happened? Did we lose?”

  “We won,” Jenay said, and Donald and Ashley smiled and high-fived. But they appeared to be the only ones upbeat.

  “Okay, what’s wrong?” Ashley asked. “We won the vote, then why aren’t y’all happy?”

  “And why isn’t Dad coming in?” Donald asked, closing the door. “What’s he doing outside?”

  “He’s on the phone,” Jenay said as she sat on the sofa. “He’ll be in.”

  “On the phone with whom?” Donald asked.

  “Uncle Mick,” Carly said, heading for the sofa too.