Big Daddy Sinatra: Carly's Cry (18 page)

“It was okay,” Trevor responded.

That was the Trevor that Carly
remembered.
 
Every time anybody at work
would ask him something about his life, he would blow it off.
 
It was
okay.
 
It’s alright.
 
It’s fine
.
 
Never anything more than that.
 
But unlike when she worked for him, it was
her job tonight to sift him out.
 
It was
her job to get personal with him.
 
“Did
you get the result you were looking for?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” Trevor responded.

Carly smiled.
 
“In other words, mind my own business.
 
Right?”

Trevor smiled.
 
“What about you?” he asked.

Carly was impressed with how smoothly
he changed the subject.
 
“Me?” she asked.

“Still enjoying your teaching job?”

“Oh.
 
Why, yes.
 
I’m enjoying it.”

“It’s a far cry from the job you did
for me in Boston.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I was hoping that was what this
meeting was about.”

Carly gave him a puzzled look.
 
“Excuse me?”

“I was hoping you wanted to meet with
me so that you could ask to come back to work for me.”

Carly’s heart began to swell.
 
He came, not because he wanted to feel her
out and get her to confess to Ethan’s killing.
 
He came because he wanted her back.
 
She suspected he didn’t know a thing about that night in Boston!
 
At least that was her hope.
 
But she knew she had to tread cautiously.
   
She could just be blinded by her affection
for him.
 
“I see,” she said.

“I always go hard for talent,” Trevor
said.
 
“You know that.
 
Talent is the name of the game for me.
 
You have it in bucket loads, Carly,” he
added.

Carly smiled.
 
“Thank you, Mr. Reese.”

“Mr. Reese?
 
While having drinks together?
 
It’s Trevor to you, missy.”

Carly laughed.
 
And she suddenly realized that he was the
only person, since her world tilted that night in Boston, who had been able to
make her laugh.
 
“Trevor,” she said.

“So am I correct to assume that is
why you phoned?” he asked.
 
“To get back
into my good graces?”

“Well yes and no,” Carly responded,
careful not to tell an outright lie.
 
“I’ve been thinking about going back to Boston and resuming my career,
yes, I have.
 
But I don’t know if I want
to leave my family just yet.”

“The emergency that caused you to
quit your job in the first place is still problematic?” Trevor asked.

Carly wondered if he knew
something.
 
“Excuse me?”

“The reason you cited for leaving my firm.
 
You mentioned a family emergency.
 
Is that still the reason that keeps you
here?”

“Oh! No.
 
That’s been resolved.
 
But I’m back in the habit of being with my
family every day.
 
It’s a tough habit to
break.”

“Then you must look on the bright
side,” Trevor said.
 
“Is it better that
you eyeball your family every day, or get back on track with your real
career?
 
A career, by the by, that was
taking you straight to the top.”

Carly knew it too.
 
But she had to push the envelope.
 
Her father told her so.
 
If he was up to something, it would be
revealed.
 
“You ever wondered about why I
left it all behind like that?” She stared at him after she asked it.
 
If he knew what happened to Ethan that night
and her role in Ethan’s death, and he wanted a confession as her father and
uncle believed, despite what he had just told her, then she’d just given him
the opening he needed to try it.
 
She’d
just given him the hammer to hammer her with.

But Trevor punted again.
 
“I didn’t have to wonder,” he said.
 
“Your family comes first.
 
Someone in your family needed you, so you
forgot about yourself and aided them.
 
It
is an admirable quality.
 
One I wish I
had.”

There was a pause, and Carly could
see a look that could have passed for regret in his eyes.

“So no,” he added, “I never wonder
why you left your career behind.
 
With
your talent, it’s just a matter of picking it back up someday.”
 
Then he smiled.
 
“I was hoping today would be that day.
 
But I can wait.”
 
He stared into Carly’s eyes.
 
“You’re worth it.”

“So that we’re clear,” Carly
said.
 
“If I decide to return to Boston,
you’ll take me back?”

Trevor stared at her.
 
He thought he’d already made that clear.
 
“In a heartbeat,” he said, to be clearer.

Carly smiled and sipped her
drink.
 
He didn’t know a thing.
 
He wasn’t trying to pick her brain.
 
It was early still, but at least for right
now she could not have been more pleased.
   

The SUV pulled up four doors down
from the small block house.
 
Charles was
seated in the front seat, and Mick was in the back.
 
Mick checked his gun, to make sure it was
fully loaded, and then placed it in the back of his pants along the small of
his back.
 
“There’s a 7-Eleven around the
block,” he said to his driver.
 
“Wait for
us there.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver responded as
Mick and Charles got out of the vehicle, walked onto the sidewalk of the
suburban neighborhood, and made their way to the house.
 
They were back in Boston, after a quick ride
on Mick’s plane, after word came that Anzino had been spotted.
 
They couldn’t get to Boston fast enough.

But now they were walking leisurely,
as if they were two businessmen on a neighborhood stroll, or Jehovah’s
Witnesses ready to hand out literature.
 
They didn’t exactly fit in, but they didn’t stand out either.

And when they neared the house Anzino
had been spotted entering, they walked up to the front door as any good visitor
would, and knocked on the door.
 
Even
Charles found it odd.
 
“I thought the bad
guys never knocked,” he said.
 
“I thought
they always launched a sneak attack out back.”

“And the bad guy they’re searching
for always gets away.
 
You know why?”

“I’m sure you’re enlighten me.”

“The bad guys are always on to that
shit, that’s why,” Mick responded.
 
“If
they’re hiding out, they expect the sneak attack.
 
They look for it.
 
They listen for it.
 
They never expect the enemy to boldly knock
like some regular Joe.
 
But that’s what I
rely on.
 
I count on that lack of
expectation.”
 
He knocked again.

But as soon as he knocked this time,
a gunshot could be heard.
 
As soon as
they heard it, both men pulled out their loaded weapons.
 
Charles, the bigger of the two men, leaned
back and kicked the door open with the leather sole of his leather shoes, and
Mick hurried inside, pointing his weapon as he did. Charles, his weapon aimed
too, entered behind him.
 
It was a small
house, so they were able to see from one end of it to the other end, and they
saw the feet of a body hanging out of one of the bedrooms.
 
Then they saw that the backdoor was open.

Mick ran toward the open backdoor,
while Charles made his way toward the backroom where the body was lying.
 
As soon as Mick ran out of the backdoor, he
saw a figure jump a fence and take off running across a backyard.

Mick ran after him, jumping the fence
too.
 
When he landed on his feet, he continued
to give chase.
 
But by the time he made
it to the next street over, the apparent gunman was jumping into a waiting
vehicle, and the vehicle sped away.
 
Mick
wasn’t close enough to get a license plate, or even to see the make or model of
the car, or who the driver was.
 
All he
saw was that it was a black boxy car.
 
It
could have been a Kia.
 
It could have
been a Honda.
 
It could have been a
fucking Toyota.
 
He wasn’t close enough
to say.
 
Dammit!

Then he thought about his brother,
who wasn’t exactly versed in the ways of the dark side, and hurried back to the
yellow house.

Charles made his way down the hall to
the room where the feet could be seen.
 
When he saw what he had suspected would be a dead body, undoubtedly the
body of Mick’s man Anzino, he immediately twirled around, to make sure this was
no ambush.
 
Then he checked the other
rooms, whipping his gun in first before he stepped in himself.
 
When he saw that the coast was clear, he made
his way back to the victim.
 
One gunshot
through the forehead.
 
Another life
stopped as it appeared to be running into the bedroom for cover.
 
He crossed his chest, said a prayer for the
man’s soul, and then stepped over his body and entered the room.

He didn’t see where the guy was going
to find much cover in there, unless he had planned to jump out of the
window.
 
Because all he could see was a
small bedroom, with a bed, a nightstand, and a chest of drawers.
 
The room was too small for a dresser.

“You okay?”

Charles turned to the sound of Mick’s
voice.
 
Mick was back, and was staring at
the dead man.

“Anzino, I take it?” Charles asked.

“That’s that motherfucker,” Mick
said.

“You think his assailant followed us
here?”

Mick nodded and looked at his
brother.
 
“That’s what I’m thinking,
yeah.
 
We went in through the front.
 
He went in through the back.”

“And that poor guy,” Charles said,
“didn’t see any of us coming.”

“That’s what he gets for two-timing
his boss,” Mick said.
 
“Poor guy my
ass.
 
But fuck it.
 
Let’s get out of here.
 
He’s no help to us now.”

“Why do you think he did it?” Charles
asked as he began walking back across the room.

“Money,” Mick said, glancing back at
Charles.
 
“What the fuck else?”

Charles knew Mick had the hardest
edge of any man he’d ever met hands down.
 
Even when he was a kid there was something unfeeling about Mick.
 
But it still unnerved him when he saw
it.
 
Was he this way with his
children?
 
With his
wife
?

And it was then, as Charles was
leaving, did he glance at the pictures on the wall of the bedroom.
 
It looked like family pictures.
 
Pictures of ladies, of children, of a
dog.
 
But it was one picture that caught
Charles’s eye.
 
A familiar looking face.

Mick saw his sudden shift in
interest.
 
“What?” he asked him.

Charles moved up to the picture, and
when he saw it closer, he knew he was right.
 
“
Got
damn,” he said.

“What?” Mick asked, walking over to
the picture too.
 
All Mick saw was a
picture of some short, stocky man with blotchy pink skin.

“Do you know this guy?” Charles
asked.

Mick looked closer.
 
“No.
 
Why?”

Charles grabbed the picture off of
the wall and turned it over.
 
Gooch DeCarlo
was written on the
back.
 
August 3, 2010
.

“What of it, Charles?” Mick
asked.
 
“What does that ugly fuck have to
do with anything?”

“He was younger here.
 
But he’s the guy.”

“What guy?”

 
“This ugly fuck is the political agitator who
called himself Abe Norris.
 
This ugly
fuck is the fucker who shot my wife.”