Donald grinned. “Then you must not turn around much.”
“So what are you doing here?” Charles asked him.
“Brent and I were supposed to go fishing today, he was off too, but something came up and he got called into work. So he canceled on me.”
“So you decided to come bug us instead?” Jenay asked and Charles laughed.
“Ha ha, Ma,” Donald responded, smiling too. “Very funny.”
“Anyway, I’ve got to go,” Jenay said, kissed Charles on the lips, and air-kissed her stepson. “Be good, Donnie,” she said to him. “And don’t be late, Charles,” she added, to her husband.
“I won’t be late,” Charles said. “I’m never late.”
Jenay gave her husband one of her are you for real looks that made him laugh again, and then she got into her car, and drove off.
Donald watched her leave, shaking his head. “Food for thought,” he said.
Charles continued to watch his wife drive away. He always felt a little twinge of dread whenever she left his side. “What’s food for thought?” he asked his son.
“You aren’t afraid she’s going to get tired of it?”
Charles looked at Donald. “Tired of what?”
“Sex with you all the time like that. You never give her a moment’s rest.”
Charles wondered if his fly was open. He frowned. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “What makes you so certain we had sex?”
“Give me a break! Why else would Ma be here at the house eleven o’ clock in the morning on her workday? And you have that look on your face again.”
“What look?”
That I just got some look,” Donald said. “You can’t hide it.”
Charles laughed.
“And,” Donald added, “you didn’t have an erection around her.”
Charles’s smile left. Donald was always an oddball, but this was going too far. “I didn’t what?”
“Whenever you haven’t had any from Ma within, say, the last few hours, you always get an erection as soon as she comes into a room. If she already gave you some, you don’t get an erection when she walks in. And it happens every time. Other pretty ladies can come into a room and nothing happens with you. But as soon as Ma shows up? Wham. I can bet a million dollars that if you hadn’t just finished banging her, your pride and joy is going to be standing at attention.”
Charles shook his head and began walking toward his own car. He wanted to smile, but abstained. “You’re paying far too much attention to my love life,” he said as he walked. “You need to get your own.”
“I have a life,” Donald said. “A very nice life right now, thank-you. I just need some gas money.”
“Gas money? You have a job.”
“I know that. But I’m between pay checks right now.”
Charles opened his car door.
“Come on, Dad, please,” Donald said, grabbing hold of his father’s car door to keep it open. “I want to drive over to Boston.”
“For what? Don’t go disturbing Carly. She works too hard.”
“I’m not going to see any Carly and her snobbish self. Give me more credit than that! It’s my day off and since Brent canceled on me, Ash said she and I can do a few things. So I’m going to go there and hang out with Ashley.”
“That’s her problem,” Charles said. “She hangs out too much. She has classes to attend and tests to study for. She’ll be graduating after this term and I don’t want her mucking that up.”
“She won’t,” Donald assured him. “I mean, she’ll need to study and all, but she doesn’t have any classes on Mondays this term. She’s thrilled I’m coming. Besides, since you won’t buy either of them a car until after they graduate, they’ll ride back with me tonight for the family dinner. They won’t have to take the train. So please. It’s my day off. I’ll pay you back.”
Charles looked at Donald. Although he was improving, he still frustrated Charles with his slow rate of maturity. But he was doing better. Charles pulled out his wallet.
Donald smiled. “Thanks Dad!”
“Not so fast. I want you to go around back and clean the pool before you leave.”
Donald frowned. “Clean the pool? Ah, come on!”
“Okay,” Charles said, and was about to place his wallet back into his back pocket.
“Okay,” Donald said quickly. “I’ll clean the pool. Although I don’t know why you haven’t hired a pool boy yet.”
“With four grown sons constantly asking for money or whatever else they need? I have four pool boys.” Charles then pulled out a hundred dollar bill.
Donald still was not satisfied. “A hundred? But I need more than a hundred.”
“That’ll get you there and back,” Charles reminded him.
“But what are we supposed to do when I get there?”
Charles looked at his son. “What?”
“I mean, we want to go out and do things. If all I have is gas money, what are we supposed to do when I get there?”
“Look at each other,” Charles responded. “Cook, clean. Hell if I know. You need to learn to save your money and stop spending every dime you make.” Charles got into his month-old Jaguar. “And you’d better be to work on time tomorrow. Jenay gave you a second chance by giving you that job at the Inn after I fired your ass. You’d better not blow it.”
“Do I ever blow anything?” Donald asked. When Charles gave him that sidelong look, Donald smiled. “Other than everything?” he asked instead.
CHAPTER TWO
Brent Sinatra balanced a cup of McDonald’s steaming hot coffee as he entered the Jericho County Police Department and grunted a general good morning to his officers in the squad room. He headed toward the side stairwell that led to his third-floor office and pulled open the heavy metal door. It was Monday morning, it was supposed to be his day off, but he was saddled with a staff that felt they couldn’t shit without calling him first.
As he headed up the stairwell, a bevy of police officers were heading down. Like his father, he was not a morning person, especially not today, but he managed to respond to the cheerful greetings of his subordinate officers with grunts and nods and muted hellos.
One of his officers, a two-year newbie, got bold. “I thought you were off today, Chief,” he said as he headed down the stairwell Brent was walking up.
“I thought so too,” Brent responded in a voice that was unable to shield his irritation.
His officer smiled. “Since you decided to come in, sir,” he said, “maybe I can take the day off?”
“And you can take off every day after that.” Brent looked at him. “How about that?”
The officer’s heart dropped. “Just kidding, sir,” he quickly responded.
“Thought so,” Brent said, and pulled open the heavy metal door that led to the top floor.
His office was at the end of the hall and his secretary, Belma Finch, was typing at her desk just outside his office door.
“He in there?” Brent asked without breaking his stride.
“He’s in there,” Belma replied without breaking her keystrokes.
“His wife?”
“She’s in there too. The bitch.”
Brent stopped at his office door and looked at his older secretary. “Didn’t I tell you I wanted you to comport yourself with more professionalism if you expect to keep your job.”
“I am professional,” Belma made clear. “And I have every intention of keeping my job. I just call it as I see it. Now get in there and handle the bitch.”
Any other person and they would have been fired on the spot. Brent Sinatra did not tolerate insubordination and every single soul in that department knew it. But Belma was old enough to be his mother, was one of his family’s oldest friends, and she knew he adored her. She was not going anywhere.
But he still had to keep her in check. “Watch your mouth, Belle,” he ordered, and then entered his office. Except he entered with the look of a man sick and tired of foolishn
ess. Day in and day out it was something else. If it wasn’t his officers, it was the criminals. If it wasn’t the criminals, it was the law-abiding citizens who felt his entire purpose for being was to figure out ways to help them disobey the very law he was appointed to uphold. He had only been chief of the Jericho Police Department two months and counting, but already this job, a job he thought he would love, was becoming a pain in the ass.
Now he was being dragged into the office on a Monday morning, on a day that was supposed to be his first day off in nearly a year, and it was not even ironic to him anymore. But things had gotten heated. There had been an altercation. His people felt they had no choice but to call him in.
Detective Clem Michaels and his wife Jo stood from their chairs when he walked into the office. “Eddie was out of line, Brent,” Clem immediately said, “and I had a right to tell him so.”
“Good morning to you too, Clem,” Brent said as he tossed his hat onto the hat rack and walked behind his desk.
Clem exhaled. “Good morning.”
Brent looked at the wife. She was a nice looking redhead who, just a week ago, was trying to get him in her bed. She was a woman he wouldn’t trust as far as he could spit.
“Hey, Brent,” she said, rolling her hair with her finger and smiling a seductive smile even with her husband by her side.
“And don’t ask us to sit down either,” Clem said as if he was the man in charge.
Brent gave him a look that could melt steel. “And you run what again?” Brent asked him.
“What I’m saying,” Clem said less confidently, “is that this don’t require a whole bunch of words. I’m thinking Eddie should apologize to my wife, and because of his behavior, I’m thinking she should be hired on the spot and he should be fired.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Brent said, as he sat his cup of coffee on his desk, and then sat his body behind his desk.
“He ought to be fired,” Jo said. “Clem is right. That boy had no call treating me the way he treated me!”
Brent looked at her with nothing but contempt in his big, green eyes. “Eddie Rivers, my second in command, is forty years old. What boy are you referring to?”
Jo saw that look in Brent’s eyes and decided against a response.
Her husband, however, was full of responses. “He could have given her an interview,” Clem said. “He wouldn’t give her an interview, Brent. Not even an interview! I’ve been with this department for damn near a decade, and his ass just got here, but he couldn’t give my wife that little consideration?”
“He was following orders.”
Clem frowned. “Whose orders?”
“Mine,” Brent said firmly. “No nepotism. No favoritism. No good old boys looking out for good old boys in this department. That’s over. Those days are done.”
“But it’s nothing like that!” Clem insisted. “She deserves the job. She can be a great dispatcher. She’s qualified to do it.”
Brent knew exactly what she was qualified to do. “She’s not working here.”
“But why the hell not? Just because she’s my wife? That’s not fair, Brent!”
But Brent was beyond that. She was not going to work there, and that, as far as he was concerned, was that. “Why did you wait until Monday morning for all of this outrage? She was denied an interview on Friday.”
“My uncle died,” Clem responded. “I was in Indiana all weekend. When I returned late last night, that’s when Jo decided to tell me what happened.”
“And you decided to come down here to the police station this morning and get into an altercation with your commanding officer?”
“It was not any altercation,” Clem made clear. “Eddie and I had a fight, that’s all. And I won that fight!”
“Captain Rivers is second in command in this department. He is your supervisor’s supervisor. You do not fight the number two. If you have a beef with anybody who works here you either quit, or you come see me.”
“So you can tell me the same thing?” Clem asked. “You’re gonna back up that Negro no matter what I say! He can do no wrong in your eyes. But me, one of your own kind, a man you’ve known since childhood, is treated like this? You brought him here, promoted him over all the rest of us, and you expect me to respect that . . . token? And the way he treated my wife? I’ll never respect that coon!”
“One thing about that coon, as you call him,” Brent said, standing up, “he’s still employed. But you, the anti-coon, is not.”
Clem didn’t understand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Hand in your shield and your gun. You’re fired.”
Clem couldn’t believe it. “I’m fired? You’re firing me? Why? Because I’m standing up for my wife against that. . .? Because he wouldn’t give her an interview when I know my wife is qualified and I’m man enough to stand up for her?”
“The only thing your wife is qualified to do,” Brent shot back, “doesn’t require qualifications. Just a good, strong back.” Fighting words, and Brent knew it.
Jo knew it too. “You asshole!” she yelled.
Clem was stunned. “Are you calling my wife a whore?” he asked.
“To her core,” Brent said.
Clem angrily jumped across Brent’s desk, ready to fight his commander-in-chief. But Clem was no match for his far more muscular boss. Brent grabbed Clem and pulled him all the way across the desk, just missing his cup of coffee, as if he had been hoping for this fight. Clem was able to stand, and both men were now face to face. Brent was going to love kicking his ass, and was about to commence the kicking. But Clem knew he was outmatched. He quickly lifted his hands in surrender.
“I was just venting,” Clem suddenly declared. “I was just venting!”
Jo looked at her husband with anger in her eyes. “You were venting? What do you mean you were venting? He called me a whore, Clem!”
“Hand in your gun and shield,” Brent said to Clem.
“He called me a whore, Clem!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Clem yelled at his wife, turning toward her. It was stressful enough.
“Hand them over,” Brent said again.
Clem looked at him. “Brent, look, I said some things---”
“Your gun and shield, Clem.”
Clem couldn’t believe it had come to this. He stared at his old friend. “I knew you when you were knee-high to a grasshopper, when we were all friends together, and you’re firing me? They make you the chief of police and now you’re better than me?”
Brent was accustomed to that line now. Every one of his previous good friends now felt they were entitled to special treatment just because, before his promotion, he was one of them. They could kiss his ass if they thought he was going to skirt his responsibilities to stay in their good graces. He had a job to do, and he was going to see it through.
“Give me your gun and shield,” Brent ordered for the final time.
And Clem saw his boss’s resolve. He pulled his gun from his holster and sat it on Brent’s desk. Then he pulled his wallet from his back pocket, tore out his badge, and threw it onto the desk. “You can take that badge and shove it!” he said. “I didn’t appreciate working under your kind anyway.” He walked over to his wife, placing his hand against her lower back. Although he spoke triumphantly, it was fear, not triumph, Brent saw in his eyes.
“Come on, babe,” Clem said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Although Jo began to leave, Brent could tell she wasn’t all that enthused about the prospect of suddenly being tied to an unemployed man. He was not as appealing to her now. She even looked back at Brent, as if he might be interested in giving her a whirl. He looked away from her.
She frowned, and followed her husband.
Outside of the station, two uniformed officers were chatting it up at the flag pole near the front entrance door. When a new model Acura drove up, and a curvaceous black woman stepped out, they elbowed each other.
“You see that?”
<
br /> “I see it. I’m not blind.”
“Who is she?”
“How should I know who she is? She just drove up.”
Talk about curves, they thought, as they stood there watching her. Very tall, very busty, very much what they assumed was meant by a full-figured gal. Their wives were skinny, their friends’ wives were skinny. They were used to small women. There was nothing small, they felt, about this woman.
She grabbed her briefcase off the seat of her car, slung her long hair back, and began heading up the steps toward the entrance. “Good morning,” she said jovially as she looked over at the officers.
“Ma’am,” said one, smiling too.
“Good morning,” said the other one with a nod of his head.
Then just as she was about to pull open the building’s entrance door, Clem and Jo came hurrying out and forced her, by their quick movement alone, to step aside.
Clem became angrier than he already was. “You better watch where you’re going!” he admonished her.
“You’d better watch where you’re going!” she admonished him right back.
Clem sneered at her, what was with all of these black people in his face all of a sudden? But he had too many problems already. He and Jo kept walking.
The woman regained her composure, smoothed down her skirt and her hair, and headed on in.
Brent, in his office, had his chair leaned back on its hind legs and his head leaned back too. He hadn’t been the chief of police a good two months and already he had to fire one of his detectives. He hated that he had to go there, but Clem and his insubordination left him no choice. He was appointed chief because of his toughness, and he had every intention of doing his job and doing it right. Nobody was running over him, or disrespecting anybody in his chain of command, he didn’t care who they were. And although he was considered a relatively young chief at thirty-two, when it came to his job, no man alive could be more serious.
Eddie Rivers, a tall, handsome black man, his second in command, came into the office. “Knock, knock,” he said as he entered. “Busy?”
“Come on,” Brent said, and leaned back down in his chair.
Big Daddy Sinatra 3: The Best of My Love (The Sinatras of Jericho County) Page 3