Big Daddy Sinatra: The Jenay Eruption

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The safe house was deep in a wooded area off of the main street in Jericho, not far from Charles’s office. He and Mick got out of Mick’s Escalade and made their way up to the front door as two of Mick’s capos, guarding the entrance, tossed their cigarettes as if they had done something wrong, said hey Boss , hey Big Daddy , and watched as the two big men walked inside.

When they got inside, there were two additional capos standing beside the man they had come to see: Parker Fourtaine. He sat in the middle of the room, tied to a chair, with Mick’s guys, with rifles, on either side of him.

“What am I doing here?” Parker wanted to know. “I’m serving my time. What you gotta break me out for? To lie on me? To get me killed? To rub it in?”

“Why didn’t you tell us about Aristotle?” Mick asked.

There was a hesitation they all noticed. “Isn’t he that philosopher?” Parker asked. “Like Socrates or some shit?” Then he got serious. “I don’t know any Aristotle,” he said. But as soon as he said it and to even Mick’s surprise, Charles lifted his dress shoe and shoved it in Parker’s mouth so hard that it flipped him and his chair all the way over. The capos quickly picked him and the chair back upright. Parker was bleeding from the mouth.

“Ask him again, Micky,” Charles said.

“It wasn’t no Aristotle,” Parker quickly said. “I’m hurtin’ here. It wasn’t no Aristotle.”

“Then who was it?”

“I need medical attention. At least untie my hands so I can tend to myself.”

Charles was about to kick him again, but he spoke up. “I don’t know any Aristotle! You’re killing me here!”

“Then who do you know, and why did you tell us the buck stopped with you?”

“Because I had to tell you that. He made me.”

Even Mick found that hard to believe. “He made you? Who made you?”

“If I tell,” Parker said, “my family’s dead. He had no problem recruiting me. I hate your guts for what you did to my old man.”

“He didn’t do shit to your old man,” said Charles. “Your old man did it to himself by associating with the likes of Vito Costantino.”

“Who made you shoot Jenay Sinatra?” Mick asked him.

“Deuce. That’s who. Deuce made me do it.”

Charles, shocked, looked at Mick. Mick didn’t believe he heard him right. “Deuce?” There was only one Deuce that he knew of.

Parker shook his head as the pain kept an anguished look on his fat face. “That’s who I answered to. Deuce McCurry. Your former right-hand man. And it wasn’t just about the money either.”

When Mick and Charles heard that full name, they both were blindsided. Mick even frowned. “What are you talking?”

“He’s the one that bankrolled the whole thing. He bankrolled me. The guys that did your baby mamas. The guy that tried to do your wife. He’s the one.”

“Why didn’t you say that when we confronted you in that theater?” a skeptical Charles asked. Deuce McCurry was Mick’s former driver and his best friend in this world. His only friend as far as Charles knew. “Why didn’t you ever mention Deuce’s name when we had you cornered?”

“Because he had my wife and children cornered!” Parker yelled out. “He held them at gunpoint while I did whatever he told me to do. He would kill them if I didn’t comply to everything he said.”

“Where are your wife and kids now?”

“Still with him. He won’t let’em go until I confess to crimes his people in jail committed, since I’m on Death Row anyway. But I won’t do it.”

“Why the hell not if you love your family so much?” asked Charles.

“Because I know he’s gonna kill them anyway. I knew it when I got arrested and he still didn’t let’em go. I knew it then.”

“Where does he have them?”

“I don’t know. That’s the other part. And he won’t let me ever talk to them on the phone. They may be dead already for all I know.”

Mick was floored.

“What do we do, Boss?” the tall capo asked. “Want me to bring Deuce in?”

Mick was offended when he looked at him. “That’s Mr. McCurry to you, and you don’t have shit to do with him.”

“Yes sir.”

“What about this guy, Boss?” asked the shorter capo.

“Untie him and cuff him to an unmovable object, and then get out of here. Law enforcement will track him down,” Mick added, and began leaving.

Charles looked angrily at Parker. Then he took his shoe and shoved it up his mouth again, flipping Parker and his chair over again. Then Charles left too.

Outside, Mick had already gotten in his Escalade. Charles hopped in on the front passenger seat.

“Who’s picking Fourtaine up?” Charles asked.

“Hammer’s men.”

“Are they going to break him back into prison? I don’t see how they could have concocted a plan to have him escape Death Row anyway. And by the way, you know what that means.”

Mick looked at Charles. “What does it mean?”

“Once it’s revealed that Jenay is alive, his Death sentence will have to be commuted to Life in prison or some even lesser punishment.”

Mick stared at Charles a moment longer. “We already discussed that.”

“We?Who’s we?”

“Hammer and me.”

“And?”

“And he’ll be killed by FBI agents who saw their prison escapee and took him out. They’ll be no questions asked that way. That’s why we’re here.”

He could tell Charles was uncomfortable with that wild-west, the law be damned strategy that was Mick’s life. “Jenay’s alive,” he said to Charles. “You’ll always be looking over your shoulder if that fucker lives too.”

Charles hated taking the law into his own hands, especially in a deadly way. But he couldn’t argue with Mick’s truth. He just got Jenay back. He wasn’t allowing her to live in fear ever again. He remained silent. And his silence, he knew, spoke volumes.

But the elephant in that SUV wasn’t Parker Fourtaine. It was Deuce McCurry. “I’m sure it’s bullshit what that guy said about Deuce.” Then he looked at Mick. “But we still need to find him.”

Mick pressed his vehicle’s Start button as his two capos came out of the house where the other two were standing guard. “I’ll track him down. See if he knows anything, which he won’t.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

Mick hesitated. “No. He told me he would be off the grid for a few weeks.”

“Off the grid? And that didn’t sound suspicious to you?”

“Why should it? His vacations are always off the grid.”

“And as usual your noncommunicative ass didn’t bother to ask him where he was going.”

“That was none of my business.”

“Now it is your business and you don’t know where the hell he is.”

Mick exhaled. “Right,” he said as he saw one of the capos running to his SUV.

He pressed down the window.

“Boss, look!”

Mick and Charles looked at a gap between the thick woods and saw what looked like a small army of military vehicles or SWAT, they couldn’t tell which, heading their way.

“Get out of here now!” Mick ordered as he began backing out. The capos ran to their own SUV, hopped in, and followed the boss.

Mick sped in the opposite direction of the oncoming government vehicles, which meant he was driving deeper into the already dense woods, and his capos were right on his tail following him.

But it was a treacherous drive from the beginning as it was dark, they were going so deep in that it didn’t look like they even had a pathway through, and Mick, being Mick, Charles thought as he looked over at his younger brother, was flying like there was no tomorrow.

“Slow your ass down, Mick,” he decried. “You’re gonna kill us!”

But Mick seemed to pick up speed. The unthinkable for him was never death because death for him would finally give him some rest and peace. The unthinkable for him was being caught by the Feds. Because as he’d gotten older and his legend more legendary, he became even more convinced that if they ever locked his ass up, he would never see the light of day again. That was why he flew.

But even Mick knew he was flying blind through those woods so thick that the tree limps were like deadly objects. They were whipping against the side of his windshield with such force that his windshield could not withstand the force and eventually shattered.

“ Got damn!” said Charles, stunned by the sight of it. “Slow down Mick!”

But Mick kept speeding through those woods, and his SUV kept bouncing over every hole and crevice and tree limb on what could only arguably be called a road.

Charles held on for dear life. He’d never met a man more reckless than Mick, nor a man more capable of getting out of the unimaginable like Mick could. Experience taught him to trust his kid brother. But that trust wasn’t doing anything for his hammering heart.

And when they realized some of those government vehicles were speeding after them, trying to catch up to them, Mick floored it and so did his capos. Then Mick did the unthinkable and suddenly flung his big fat Escalade around a corner that didn’t exist and plunged them into even further darkness and denseness.

“Lord have mercy!” Charles cried out as he held on tighter. “He done lost his mind!”

But Mick kept speeding and driving as if he knew where he was going. He didn’t know where, but he knew he was getting out of there. The Feds weren’t catching up to him!

When he looked out of his rearview mirror after making that dramatic turn and saw that his capos were behind him but no one else, he relaxed. But the drive didn’t get any easier.

One huge tree limb swiped their SUV so hard that it went through the shattered windshield and scratched Mick’s hand while he was steering, which terrified Charles all the more.

But then, as if God Himself had mercy, they saw an opening. It appeared suddenly and was right in front of them. Mick slammed on brakes, causing his capos behind him to slam on brakes too. And then Mick drove slowly out. And that was when they saw a real road, not one created by Mick’s flying SUV.

When he didn’t see any vehicles on that road, Mick sped on out of those woods and didn’t stop speeding until he was clean on the other side of town.

He pulled his SUV over to the side of the road, grabbed his cellphone, and got out of the vehicle.

The capos, who had pulled over behind him, looked at their boss. “What’s he doing?” asked one of them.

“You mean other than trying to kill us?” the driver responded. Their windshield had shattered too. “I’ve never been more scared in my life!”

“That’s why we make more money working for him than we’d ever make working for any other family. It’s this life and death shit with him all the time.”

“All the time,” agreed another capo in their SUV.

When they realized Mick was on the phone, the capo on the front passenger seat told the driver to press down the window so they could hear who he was talking to.

Mick was livid. That was why he had to pull over and get out just to release some of that steam. And as soon as Hammer came on the other end of the phone, he let him have it. “What the fuck you think you’re doing? We were still there!”

“How was I to know that, Mick? I told you to get in and get out!”

“And that’s what I did, motherfucker! If one of my guys hadn’t seen them, they would have cornered our asses.”

“You’d better be glad I let you do this. Do you realize how far I had to stick my neck out to get it done?!”

“Fuck you and fuck your fucking neck! Your ass the one got us in this situation. Your ass the one who knew we could have protected Jenay without you putting our family through all this shit!”

“So that’s what this is about? Jenay again? I was looking out for the family.”

“Bullshit! You were looking out for your own ass and those billionaires that can kick the president’s ass out of office. So don’t even try that shit with me, Hammer Reese!”

Both men knew they had to calm down. They were getting nowhere. “What did he say that he hadn’t already said?” Hammer asked him. “Did he name Aristotle?”

“No.”

“Who did he name?”

Mick hated to even say his name to Hammer. “Deuce McCurry.”

“ Your driver ? I thought he retired.”

“He is retired. And he’s my friend. So hands off, Hammer. I’ll bring him in. I’ll check it out.”

“Bring him in? Where is he?”

“On vacation in Africa.”

“You do realize Africa is an entire continent filled with fifty-four countries, the most countries on any continent? Where in Africa, Mick?”

“I don’t know where.”

“Then how the hell are you going to bring him in?”

Mick frowned. “Who the fuck you think I am? I’m Mick Sinatra motherfucker. And your ass better stop forgetting that!” Then he angrily ended the call. Still enraged, he threw his cellphone across the street.

As he was walking back to his battered Escalade, one of his capos had already hopped out of the second SUV, retrieved the phone from across the street, and ran back to Mick’s Escalade. Only he didn’t hand it to the boss. Not with the boss in that enraged state. He hurried over to the passenger side and handed the phone to Big Daddy Sinatra, the only man they knew Mick feared. Charles accepted the phone, and the capo went and got back into the second SUV.

“Why would Hammer let his men show up when he had to know we would still be there?” Charles asked Mick.

“I told you not to trust that motherfucker,” Mick said in a much calmer voice, although Charles could tell he was still fired up.

“He’s married to our baby sister. She wouldn’t marry somebody you can’t trust, Mick, and you know it. You just don’t like cops. Hammer hasn’t been a cop in decades, but you don’t like him.”

“What you mean he’s not a cop? What you think all that CIA and special ops shit is? Once a cop, always a cop.”

“That’s how you view the world,” Charles said. Then he added sharply: “It’s a fucked-up world view.”

Mick drove off. It was the only way he could release the steam still burning him. As he drove he phoned his pilot and ordered him to get his plane ready for a flight out early morning.

Charles frowned. “Where are we going in the morning?”

“We?”

“Yes we!”

Mick settled back down. “To Deuce’s house.”

“His house? I thought you said he was in Africa.”

“I don’t know if that was his last vacation or his latest vacation when he called me the other day. I was doing two other things when we spoke.”

“Damn Mick. You got too much on your plate. I thought you turned over the running of that syndicate to Ted and Nikki.”

“I have. But that don’t mean I’m going to let them run it in the ground. I have to make sure they’re on top of everything they’re supposed to be on top of too. I still have an international corporation to run, which leaves a thousand other matters on my desk I have to take care of. Being me is some hard-ass work.”

Charles stared at his younger brother. He’d been working and running and ducking and dodging his whole life. Even when he was a kid. Charles reached over and squeezed his brother’s broad shoulder. “Yeah I know,” he said, squeezing him a few more times. “Yeah I know.”