Big Daddy Sinatra: There Was a Ruthless Man (The Sinatras of Jericho County Book 1) (2 page)

Not
that she hadn’t played the fool already.
 
Because Quince not only wasn’t different, he was more predictable than
any man she had ever fallen for.
 
Within
weeks of the finalization of their divorce, a divorce that specified she was to
have no contact with his children ever again, he was married to Miss
Vernita.
 
And driving her sports
car.
 
And well on his way to driving it
all the way to that law degree and success Jenay so faithfully helped him
achieve.

She
was devastated.
 
His betrayal staggered
her for years on end.
 
But then she got
up, got busy, and got on with it.
 
And
vowed to herself that she wasn’t looking back, and that she wasn’t allowing
Quince, or any of those other men who broke her heart, to break her spirit too.

CHAPTER ONE

Three Years
Later

“We’re
simple people, Big Daddy.”
 
He kept
twisting the baseball cap he held in his hands.
 
He felt foolish, calling a man who wasn’t even forty yet
Big Daddy
, a man younger than he was,
but that was what the people called him.
 
“We don’t try to be anything but who we are.
 
Simple, decent folk.
 
All we ever had was that land my granddaddy
left us.”

His
wife was by his side: skinny as a reed, tight-lipped, pinched face.
 
She knew what brought them to this lowest
point of their lives, but she had to play the role.

Charles
Sinatra leaned back in the chair behind his desk and looked from her, back to
her husband.
 
He was playing a role
too.
 
The role of a patient man, a man
every soul in town knew he most definitely was not.
 
He even looked at his watch.
 
Not out of disrespect to his visitors, but
out of expediency.
 
He had a wedding to
attend in Boston this afternoon: his youngest son’s wedding.
 
He didn’t have time for this.

But
his visitors, Russ and Trish Ferraway, had their own problem.
 
And in their view, he was it.
 

“If
your bank takes our land,” Russ went on, “we’ll have nothing left.
 
Nothing!
 
What will we have left?”

He
was tall like his wife, Charles noted, but unlike her, he was fat as a hog at
the county fair.
 
This man hadn’t missed
any meals, or any chance to squander that supposedly cherished land his
granddaddy left him.
 

“What
will we have to sustain us?” Russ asked.
 
“We aren’t young anymore.
 
All we
have is that land my granddaddy worked day and night to maintain.
 
And when he died, he handed it to me.
 
I can’t lose it like this!
 
What will my granddaddy think?
 
He’ll turn over in his grave!
 
You’re a man with property.
 
I’m sure you were given possessions to look
after too when your daddy died.
 
Look at
all of the varied and sundry businesses you own around town; all of these grand
businesses your daddy left you.”

“My
daddy was a drunkard and a thief,” Charles said unapologetically.
 
“All he left me was a bad name, loads of bad debt,
and alone.”

The
husband didn’t expect that response.
 
He
swallowed hard.
 
“What about your
grandpappy?
 
What did he leave you?”

“Absolutely
nothing,” Charles responded.

The
husband glanced at his wife.
 
This wasn’t
going the way they had planned.
 
They
were supposed to appeal to his better angels.
 
They were supposed to get him to reason with them.
 
They were in the storefront office of the
most powerful man in Jericho.
 
And they
didn’t come to say hello or to talk about the weather or even to kiss his
ass.
 
It went deeper than that.
 
They came to beg.

Trish,
the wife, moved in front of her husband.
 
Russ, it seemed to Charles, seemed relieved.
 
“We’ve got children, Big Daddy,” Trish
said.
 
“What about them?
 
If we lose that land, it affects them too.
 
It will affect them something awful.
 
What if it were you and your children in this
same situation?”

“My
children wouldn’t be in this situation,” Charles said firmly.

Russ
couldn’t believe it.
 
“That’s
presumptuous of you, sir,” he said.
 
“But
for the grace of God your children could very well be in this same
situation.
  
What on this green earth
makes you so certain they couldn’t find themselves exactly where we find
ourselves today?”

 
“Because my actions would never cause my
children to be placed in a spot like this,” Charles responded.
 
“Because instead of getting greedy and
getting a second mortgage to begin with, I would have kept my granddaddy’s land
free and clear the way he gave it to me.”

“I
needed that money!” Russ shot back.
 
“That’s why I got that loan.
 
I
needed it!”

“Instead
of buying a brand new Cadillac,” Charles went on, “I would have paid that
second mortgage.”

“I
needed transportation,” the husband explained.
 
“What are you talking about?
 
I
was tired of driving a truck everywhere I went.
 
Is it wrong for a man to want a nice car?”

“Instead
of going on riverboat cruises and gambling away that loan money you supposedly
needed so desperately, I would have made sure my shit was tight and every bill
I owed was paid.
 
Then my children would
not be in any precarious situations whatsoever, and my wife, if I had one,
would not be dragged into somebody’s office to beg for mercy that should have
never been required in the first place!”

Charles
then stood up.
 
He hated when people took
him down these roads to perdition.
 
He
hated it when people tried to blame him for their own bad decisions and even
worse behavior.
 
“It’s quite late,” he
said, “and I have an engagement.
 
I’m
going to have to ask you to leave.”

Russ
could not believe the coldness, the callousness of this man.
 
He moved back in front of his wife, literally
pushing her aside as he did.
 
“You’re a
mean, hateful man, Charles Sinatra,” he proclaimed.
 
“We just handed you our hearts on a platter
and you cut them up and ate them as if we were nothing more to you than a side
of beef!
 
Everybody told us what kind of
man you were.
 
Everybody told us to never
deal with Big Daddy Sinatra.
 
He wasn’t
fair, they said.
 
He is not a fair man!”

The
husband calmed back down.
 
“But against
all of that advice,” he said, “I decided to come to your bank for that
loan.
 
I decided to try you out for
myself.
 
I figured how bad could you
be?
 
They call a young man like you, a
man not even forty yet,
Big Daddy
.
 
That’s a very affectionate term.”

Charles
almost laughed out loud.
 
Affectionate
his ass!
 
It was a mocking term the
townspeople took to calling him as soon as they realized he was not falling for
their con games and lame excuses; that he was not going along to get along;
that he was not the man to trifle with.
 

“So I
tried you on for size,” Russ continued.
 
“I walked past two other banks, two other banks, and gave yours a
chance.”

Charles
knew better than that too.
 
He knew the
real story was that his bank gave Russ a chance when those two other banks he
so dramatically walked past told him no.
 
But these were supposedly salt of the earth people.
 
These were supposedly
real
Americans.
 
Simple folk,
as Russ called himself.
 
And Charles knew
better than that too.
 
He knew he was
living around a bunch of salt-of-the-earth-real-American hypocrites.
 
And because he lived among them, he was just
as bad as they were.
 
If not worse
, he mused.

“Despite
all of the warnings I had about you,” Russ continued, “I gave your
establishment a chance.
 
I ignored the
naysayers, and gave you a chance.
 
But
guess what?
 
Those naysayers were
right.
 
I am sad to say, those folks were
right on!”

But
Charles was not moved.
 
He had to
leave.
 
“Say it sadly on the sidewalk
outside, will you please?” he asked Russ.

Russ,
again, was aghast by the coldness.
 
“You
are a heartless, merciless, awful man,” he said.

“And
so much more,” Charles said, “I’m sure you will agree.
  
But agree outside, if you will.
 
Good day.”

Russ
puffed up with even more umbrage.
 
“Okay
fine,” he said, nodding his head.
 
“Don’t
help us then.
 
We don’t want help from
your kind anyway!”

“Come
on, Russell.”
 
Trish tugged on his
elbow.
 
“We don’t want his help.”

“Kiss
my ass!” Russ yelled at Charles.
 
“That’s
what you can do for me, Mister Arrogant Hot Shot.
 
You can kiss my ever-loving ass!”

“I’m
sure that is an activity your wife may enjoy,” Charles responded, “but I doubt
if I would find it nearly as gratifying.
 
No thank-you.”

Russ
was dumbstruck.
 
Charles wasn’t even
taking his insults the right way.
 
“Kiss
my a-s-s ass!” Russ yelled again.

“I’ve
smelled your farts,” Charles replied.
 
“No thank-you.”

Russ
was practically hyperventilating with anger and confusion, as he stared at this
oddball man.
 
But despite his emotions,
he had enough sense to know he was wasting his time.
 
Big Daddy Sinatra was everything and more
everybody had ever told him.
 
There was
no help here.

So
with his wife’s urgings, and with Charles’s refusal to so much as entertain the
thought of rewarding Russ’s excesses by withdrawing that foreclosure petition,
they left.

Charles
sat back down behind his desk, and closed his eyes.
 
Though no one would believe him, he had a
burden for people, an ache in his heart.
 
And he hated to always have to play the bad guy.
 

But
he knew his fellowman too well.
 
He knew
that people almost never changed.
 
Russ
Ferraway was destined to lose his granddaddy’s land just as surely as he was
destined to squeeze every dime he could out of that land.
 
And just like everybody else in that forsaken
town, they were going to blame the man they mockingly called Big Daddy
Sinatra.
 
It was always his fault.

Big Government and Big Daddy
, he once overheard a woman tell a
small child,
are the enemy
.
 
Never
forget it
.
 
Never
.

Charles
opened his big, green eyes.
 
He
remembered how emphatically she had said
never
.
 
And she said it to someone so young.
 
It broke his heart.
 
And broke any delusions he might have ever
had of being acceptable in the sight of the citizens of Jericho.
 
He was their boogeyman.
 
He was their scapegoat.
 
He was, in their eyes and their children’s
eyes, the enemy.

Then
he dismissed such thoughts, stood up, grabbed his briefcase, and headed out of
his storefront office, an office in the heart of downtown Jericho.

“Will
you be back in later today, sir?” Mary Stalworth, his longtime secretary,
yelled as he headed out.
 

“No,”
he replied, and kept going.

Once
outside, he walked across the sidewalk to his waiting black Jaguar.
 
Paige Springer, one of the locals, was
walking on the sidewalk in his direction.
 
When Charles saw her, he wanted to turn back around and go inside.
 
He wasn’t getting any breaks today.

“Hello,
Charles.”
 

“Hello,
Paige.”

“It’s
going to be a very nice day today.”
 
She
looked him up and down approvingly.
 
He
was dressed magnificently as usual, in a dark blue suit.
 
And he was a big man, not just in prominence,
but in physical stature as well.
 
From
his muscular arms and biceps, to his thick thighs and firm chest, he struck a
powerful pose.
 
His bright green eyes and
jet black hair, slicked back, blazed in the sunlight.
 
If there was a better looking man in town,
Paige never ran into him.
 
And she was
born and raised in Jericho.
 
“I said it’s
going to be a very nice day today.”