“I was very grateful he stayed here with Ayden until we got here,” I say. “He didn’t have to do that. I know Bobby’s technically his boss and told him to get over here, but he could have sent one of his men. He came personally. I appreciate that.”
“He’d better have come personally,” Big Daddy says like what Brent did was no big deal. “His brother’s girlfriend is ambushed by some fool with a gun, and he sends one of his men to protect her son? He’d better not pull some shit like that. Family looks out for family. I taught my boys that from the day they were born. He knows better.” Then he stops walking. “I’m just glad Ayden wasn’t in that car, too,” he says, looking at Ayden.
Although everybody in Bobby’s family have been very kind to us, it’s Big Daddy who seems fond of us the most for some reason. It’s like the fact that we’re in his son’s life is just heartwarming to him. He’s even given Ayden a little job after school, to clean up around his office, and he brings him home afterwards too. He dropped him off just an hour before that shooting happened.
“What I don’t understand,” Mrs. Sinatra says, “is why in the world would somebody be shooting at you, Renita. Did you know anybody had that kind of grudge against you?”
“Only the guy she testified against in Boston,” Ayden says. “The guy who shot me when I was a baby. That’s why we left Boston. Ma found out he was out of prison. But he’s dead now.”
Big Daddy and his wife both look at me. “What man you testified against?” he asks me.
“Dance,” Bobby says before I can say anything.
His father looks surprised. “Dance? The guy you . . . The guy involved in that drive-by?”
Bobby nod. “Yup.”
“Shit, Bobby,” Big Daddy says. “Is there a connection?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Was he the only one on trial?” Big Daddy asks.
“There were others,” I say, “but I couldn’t identify any of them. I’d seen Dance before. He was the one I know was there that day.”
“That could be it then,” Big Daddy says. “Some guys in that gang may want your head because of what happened to Dance.”
“Could be,” I say, which kind of makes me even more nervous.
“And here I was thinking it was some jealous female looking to get back at Bobby,” Mrs. Sinatra says, and we smile. But there’s really very little to laugh about.
Bobby knows it too. That’s why, I think, he leans back on the couch, only in a slouch position like he’s just too tired to try to sit up straight. Ayden and me lean back too, slouched down just like Bobby.
But Mrs. Sinatra’s still smiling. “The three musketeers,” she says when Ayden and me do like Bobby did, and we have to laugh at that too. Bobby’s come into our life and taken it by storm. For once we have somebody else to turn to other than each other. Somebody who saved my life, again, by risking his own. I wrap my arm around his, to remind him how much I appreciate him.
Then there’s knocks on the door. We all figure it’s Brent with news so we all lean right back up again. Big Daddy hurries to the door and opens it.
But it’s not Brent. It’s another man. A big, imposing man in a long white coat. And as soon as he walks through that door, with his hands in the pockets of his black pants, and makes his way over to where we’re sitting, I know he’s got to be Bobby’s Uncle Mick. The mob boss of all mob bosses, Bobby said they claim he is. And boy does he look the part! I thought Big Daddy was intimidating. He’s got nothing on this guy.
Bobby stands to his feet when the guy walks toward us, and Ayden stands too. I take my cues from Mrs. Sinatra concerning this matter, and she’s not budging. So, I stay put too.
“Thanks for coming, Uncle Mick,” Bobby says. They don’t hug or shake hands or any of that stuff. Not because of Bobby. He’s a very affectionate person. But I get the feeling his uncle isn’t down like that. I can’t imagine that guy even smiling.
“I want you to meet my lady,” Bobby says, and then he taps me on my arm. “Stand up, honey,” he says like he’s surprised I wasn’t already standing. I realize right then and there that trying to do like Mrs. Sinatra does, who’s the matriarch of the whole Sinatra family, was a crazy-ass idea to begin with. I stand up quickly.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Sinatra,” I say to him.
“Nice to meet you, too,” he says to me, which surprises me. He didn’t smile when he said it, or anything normal like that, but he didn’t ignore me either. Maybe he, like Big Daddy, is pleased Bobby’s finally got somebody too.
Although I might have brought some dangerous baggage I didn’t know I had into his nephew’s life.
“And this is her son, Ayden,” Bobby says. He always makes sure everybody around us respects Ayden and me.
“Hello, sir,” Ayden says. I can hear the terror in his voice. This man is scaring the shit out of him.
Mrs. Sinatra seems to know it, too, because she, thankfully, turns his attention away from us, and to her. “Roz and the family doing okay, Mick?” she asks him.
“They’re good,” he says as he turns to her. “And how are you, Jenay?” He walks over to her.
“You know my ass alright,” Mrs. Sinatra says with a smile as he surprises me even more when he bends down and gives her a hug. It’s quick. He’s standing back up in no time flat. But it still was a hug.
“We all need to get together soon,” Mrs. Sinatra says when they stop hugging.
“You sound like Rosalyn,” Bobby’s uncle says to her, and they actually hold a brief conversation.
But Big Daddy is another story. He’s all about the business. No small talk. No greetings. “Heard anything at all, Mick?” he asks the man Bobby once told me is his dad’s younger brother, although they look about the same age to me. “Brent and his officers are pouring through any cameras in the area to see if they can get a usable image of the shooter, but we haven’t heard anything yet. I know it’s early, but what about on your end? Got any news at all?”
“I have him,” Mick Sinatra says in that calm way he speaks, and he shocks the shit out of all of us.
Bobby most of all. “You have him?” he asks him. “What do you mean you have him?”
His uncle looks at him like he’s offended. Did I stutter, I expect him to say. But he doesn’t have to say a word. His chilling eyes, although one of his eyes have that sexy droopiness going on, says it for him.
“Where?” Big Daddy asks.
“He’s being driven to a certain location.” This man isn’t about to say any more than that, I can tell, in front of me and Ayden.
Bobby’s grabbing his suitcoat off of the back of the couch, like he can’t wait to go with his uncle and get his hands on that shooter. But as he’s putting on his coat, he seems to remember something. Me and Ayden, I think, because he looks at his father.
“Don’t worry,” Big Daddy says to him. “We aren’t leaving until you get back.”
I’m relieved to know we won’t be there by ourselves. At least not until they catch the shooter, and I can tell my son’s relieved too.
“Thanks, Pop,” Bobby says, he gives me a kiss and Ayden an arm squeeze, and he and his uncle take off.
But not before Big Daddy grabs his younger brother by his own arm. “Your ass better make sure my son gets back here,” he says to him.
Uncle Mick looks at Big Daddy’s hand on his arm, and then he looks at Big Daddy. And I’m expecting him to clock him.
But he doesn’t. “He’ll be back,” he says to him, like he respects the hell out of Bobby’s dad.
I already do. I’ve never met a father more devoted to his family than Big Daddy Sinatra.
But as me and Ayden sit back down, and I place my arm around him, it’s Bobby’s devotion to me and my son that I’m thinking about. And the fact that he may be, once again, putting his life on the line for us.
Because Big Daddy’s concern for Bobby’s safe return, has me concerned too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
U
ncle Mick’s driver pulls his Cadillac alongside an old Ford Granada on some dark, deserted street I’d never even heard of, and we get out of the Cadillac and get into the Ford. I sit in the backseat on one side of our suspect, and Uncle Mick sits on the other side, sandwiching him in. I want to kill his ass as soon as I see him. That’s how angry I am. But I know I need answers.
Uncle Mick leaves it up to me to get those answers.
“Why did you try to kill Renita Hopson?” I ask him.
“You got the wrong guy,” he says.
I pull out my gun and put it to his head. “Let me rephrase that,” I say to him. “Why did you try to kill Renita Hopson?”
I got his attention now. He apparently didn’t think I had it in me. He apparently didn’t know me back in the day. But he still doesn’t answer my question.
That’s when Uncle Mick snatches my gun from me and shoots him in the foot.
Gotdamn, I’m thinking, as the man screams out in pain, grabbing his foot, and as the driver of the Ford looks through his rearview like he’s not used to this shit either. And Uncle Mick just nonchalantly hands me back my gun like it’s a walk in the park for him. “Now see if he’ll talk,” he says to me.
First, I have to get over the shock. I know my uncle is hard, but damn! He just shot the guy! But he’s right. We need to handle the business.
“Why did you try to kill Renita Hopson?” I ask him for the third time. “Who do you work for?”
“I work for the sky,” he says between his fits of rage that he’s in all this pain.
“Who’s the sky?” I ask him.
“Not the sky,” he says. “I work for the moon. No, the sun. No, the stars motherfucker.”
Why he wanna get smart like that? Now my anger unleashes and I grab the butt of that gun and pistol-whip his ass. I grab him by his collar and hit him upside his head over and over, on that same side, until he’s bleeding like a slaughterhouse. And I’m thinking about Rain as I’m beating his ass. I’m thinking about how close he came to taking her away from me, and away from her own child. And I’m mad as hell. I’m about to kill this motherfucker.
But I don’t. I stop myself. Uncle Mick wasn’t stopping me. He probably figured that asshole deserves to die. But I stop myself. He deserves it, but my life’s not in danger, and I’m not playing God. I’ll turn him over to Brent and let the authorities handle him. And maybe then he’ll tell what I need to know.
But as soon as I let up on him, he starts talking. “I tell you and then what?” Blood’s all on his teeth. “You gonna let me go? That the deal?”
“Tell me and find out,” I say to him.
“You full of shit. You and Mick the Tick. Full of shit! I’m dead if I do. I’m dead if I don’t. Why the fuck I want to help you? All you Sinatras think y’all rule the world. Fuck y’all. Fuck you!” Then he spits in my face.
When I reach for him, to rain down more pain on his ass for spitting on me, he grabs my gun and tries to turn it on me. On me!
Now I’m done with this shit. I tried to give him a fighting chance. I tried to not let the animal come out of me completely. But he’s tried me one time too many.
When he flips the script and turn that gun on me, I fight him for it. I know I’ll win cause I’m angry now. And when I get angry enough, I can go ballistic.
I take that gun away from him easily, and then I go ballistic on his ass. Fuck finding out anything from this asshole who almost killed my woman. Who just tried to kill me. I take that same gun and beat him and beat him. I beat him until his face sounds like I’m beating on mud. I beat him until his blood is splattering all over me, and the tinted windows of that Ford Granada.
I beat him until I’m not beating him anymore, but it. And that’s when I finally stop.
When we get out of that car, Uncle Mick looks at me. “You’re just like your father,” he says to me. “You won’t do shit like you should do when shit goes down. But when you decide to do it, you over do it. Just like my brother. Just like your old man.”
His look turns even harder. “A man tries to kill you and your woman, and puts damn near fifty bullets in the car you’re trapped in, and then he has no intentions of answering your questions, what the fuck is there to talk about? You’d better ice that motherfucker before he ices you. You hear me, Bobby?”
I’m breathing heavy now. He lives for this shit. I hate this shit. “Yes, sir,” I say to him.
I guess I look some kind of pitiful way to him because he lets out an exhale. “What do you plan to do now?” he asks me.
I think about that. “I go where I know,” I say to him.
“Boston?” he asks me.
“Boston.”
“You think that’s the connection? That gang you used to run with?”
“That’s what I’m thinking, yes.”
“I think you’re right,” Uncle Mick says and get back in his Cadillac. The Ford Granada takes off, with the remains of the man who wouldn’t tell me shit, and I get in my uncle’s car. I’m shaking now. My hands are literally shaking. I hate where I went.
I pull out my cell phone, to let Rain know I’m okay, but Unc has a problem with that too. “Handle your business first,” he says to me. “Call her later.”
But I’m not him, and don’t want to be. He can handle his business, and his woman, however he pleases. But I’m calling mine.
“I’m okay,” I say, to her relief, when I hear her sweet voice.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The club in Boston is loud and sweaty when I walk in. It looks so different, like a hole in the wall now, than it looked a decade ago. But it’s still got the same vibe: raw and raunchy. And everybody in it is having the time of their lives.
I spot Moby almost right away. He’s in the back of the club, nodding to the beat, and seems to be snorting cocaine. But he’s not so high that when he looks up and see me heading his way, he does what I didn’t expect him to do. I expected him to deny everything. That’s his style anyway. Don’t admit to shit, he used to tell me. But instead of staying there, and facing the music like a man, his ass turn tail and run.
I have to fight through the press of bodies to catch up to him, but at least he’s heading out back. Reason that’s good is because my uncle’s back there. And he won’t be outrunning Mick the Tick.
He doesn’t outrun him, but he outsmarts us both. Instead of running through the backdoor, where Uncle Mick is waiting, he runs through the side door, where his car is waiting. And he jumps in and cranks up and takes off just as I’m running out of that door.
I’m about to run around back, to tell Uncle Mick he’s getting away, but to my shock Uncle Mick’s Cadillac is turning that corner and heading my way, as if he’d already figured Mobe might come out a different way.
I jump in the backseat of Unc’s Caddy, beside him, and he orders his driver to follow that car.
It takes a minute for us to catch up with Moby, but we spot him going around a corner a few blocks from the club, and we take off in that direction too.
I’d rather be driving. I have skills in that department. But Uncle Mick seems to trust his own driver for this mission, so I sit back too. But the speeds are getting outrageous. I look up and Unc’s driver is clocking a hundred trying to keep up with Moby. And we’re turning corners too, going that fast? This is not going to end well, I’m thinking.
And it doesn’t. Moby turns one more corner, in speeds beyond a hundred, and easily loses control. He swerves off of the main road, flies across the side of the road, and ends up going down a steep gravel path that leads to the bay. He hits a tree before he hits the bay, and the smoke billows up from the wrecked hood of his car.
Unc’s driver pulls up to the side of the road and me and Unc jumps out. We hurry down that gravel path, kicking up all kinds of rocks as we run down, Unc’s big white coat flowing around him like a coat of arms, until we make it to Moby’s disabled car.
To our surprise, Moby’s alive, and is trying to crawl out of the wreckage.
We grab him by his suitcoat and help him out. We want real answers this time, no bullshit, and the fact he ran as soon as he saw me let me know he has those answers. But it doesn’t look good. He’s been badly injured, and is bleeding. Me and Unc look at each other. He doesn’t have long on this earth. If there’s answers to be gotten, Unc’s look is saying, I’d better get them now.
I get down to eye level with Moby, whose stretched out on the ground. And I know I have to begin as if I already figured it out. “Why, Mobe?” I ask him. “Why did you hire him to take out my woman?”
It works. Moby doesn’t try to deny shit. “You and her,” he says to me, although his voice is really weak.
“He was trying to get us both?”
“Both,” he says. “I told him how to do it. I told him to point the gun at her, and you’d run to her. Then he can take out both of y’all.”
Some truce, I’m thinking. “Why, Mobe? Who wanted to take us out? You?”
He actually smiles. “I told you I wasn’t going out like that.”
“Then who?”
He starts coughing. “Who, Mobe?” I ask him again.
“Barry,” he says.
“Barry?” Then I remember. “Barry Clayton?”
But he’s coughing again.
“Mobe? What beef Barry’s got with me?”
But then it’s over. Moby tries to speak up one more time, but he can’t. He’s dead. I stand back up.
“Who’s Barry Clayton?” Uncle Mick asks me.
“A guy we used to run with.”
“He was in the same gang?”
I shake my head. “No. He was just somebody we knew.”
“Why would he want to take you out, and Rain too?”
I couldn’t tell him. I hadn’t seen that guy in years.
Then Uncle Mick exhales. “Come on,” he says, looking around. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll get my guys to find your Mr. Clayton. Don’t worry about that. If he can be found,” he’s saying as we’re walking back up, “they’ll find him.”
And coming from a man like Uncle Mick, that’s one easy promise to believe.
Bobby Sinatra: In All the Wrong Places (The Rags to Romance Series Book 1) Page 21