Big Daddy Sinatra: Carly's Cry (4 page)

But Cruikshank was feeding off of his
very supportive, very conservative crowd.
 
“You know what else I’ll do when I’m elected?” Cruikshank asked.
 
“I’ll end the stranglehold Big Daddy Sinatra
has had on our community once and forever more.
 
Vote for me,” Cruikshank said, “I’ll set you free!
 
I’ll get rid of Big Daddy’s influence in the
county once and for all!”
 
The crowd went
wild.
 
Tony grabbed the remote and turned
off the TV.
 
“That kind of slander, my
fellow Americans, is bad for your health.”

“But he can’t kick Brent out of his
job,” Ashley said.
 
“Can he?”

“If he wins the election, he can,”
Tony said.
 
“Brent was appointed chief by
the mayor and serves at the pleasure of the mayor.
 
If Cruikshank becomes mayor, he can fire
Brent.”

“But he can’t get rid of
Makayla.
 
She was elected DA.
 
He can’t change that.”

“They already have,” Tony said.
 
“The city council voted last year to place
the office of the DA under the mayor’s jurisdiction.
 
No more elections for DA.
 
The mayor gets to appoint that post now.”

“They can’t legally do that,” Robert
said, “but it’ll take a lawsuit to get them to back down.”

“Dad, you hear that?” Donald
asked.
 
“Cruikshank wants to fire Brent
and Makayla.”

“Speaking of firing,” Jenay said to
Donald.
 
“Your lame excuse that you
meant to call
your job, is
unacceptable.
 
You’re fired.”

Donald was shocked.
 
“Fired?
 
What did I do?”

“You have not shown up for work for
three straight days, Donald.
 
You would
not answer your cell phone, I had no clue where you were.
 
And we had emergency after emergency at the
Inn.
 
I didn’t hire you as my GM for your
health!”

“And you even removed any ability we
had to track you,” Ashley added.
 
“That’s
why I drove over to crazy lady house.”

“But you’re firing me?” Donald asked
his stepmother.
 
He was still reeling.

“Yes, I’m firing you,” Jenay
said.
 
“What did you think was going to
happen?
 
You wouldn’t pull that stunt on
anybody else’s job, but you think you can pull it on me because your father
owns the hotel?
 
I have a zero tolerance
policy at the Jericho Inn and you know it.
 
We’re looking to expand.
 
We’re
looking to become, not just the best in Jericho, but the best in Maine.
 
I need a reliable general manager.”

“I am reliable!
 
I work my butt off.
 
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking
about!”

Charles reached over and slapped
Donald hard across the face, causing Donald’s blond hair to sling from the
right side of his face to the left side.
 
“Say it again,” he prodded him.

Donald grabbed the side of his
face.
 
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he
insisted.

“Then don’t say it like that,”
Charles insisted.
 
“Jenay is not only
your stepmother, she’s your boss.
 
And
you will respect her in both roles.
 
You
understand?”

Donald, growing red with anger,
didn’t respond to his father.
 
Charles
began to move from beside Jenay and closer to Donald.

Donald winced at the thought of
another hit.
 
“I understand,” he said
quickly.
 
He looked at Jenay.
 
“Ma, I’m sorry,” he said.
 
“I should have phoned.”

“What you should have done was show
up for work,” Jenay said.

Robert grinned.
 
“You wouldn’t believe what he was doing while
he was away,” he said.

“Shut up,” Ashley said, defending
Donald as she usually did.
 
“You’re just
trying to make it worse.”

But Charles looked at Ashley.
 
“You already attempted that,” he said to her.

“I didn’t do anything to make that
woman jump on Ma,” said Ashley.
 
“I just
asked her if Donnie was there.
 
She was
the one who assumed I was his girlfriend.”

But Charles wasn’t buying it.
 
“The next time you fix it in your brain to go
to a place like that to look for somebody,” he said, “you take Tony or Robert
or even Brent.
 
But you do not take my
wife.
 
Do you understand me?”

Ashley swallowed hard.
 
She saw what Big Daddy did to Donald.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Your father is under a tremendous
amount of stress with all of this talk of the city invoking eminent domain and
taking over his properties,” Jenay said.
 
“That’s what Cruikshank is talking about, and he and that crooked city
council can conspire and do just what he’s saying.
 
We all need to keep it together.
 
He doesn’t need these side shows.”

All four children looked at their
father.
 
They knew the campaign rhetoric
was taking a toll on him.
 
But they
thought it was just talk.
 
They never
thought, not once, that it could actually become a reality.

“The last thing he needs is for you
guys to add to his stress,” Jenay added.

Charles looked at Jenay as if he
couldn’t believe her nerve.
 
“And you
think you haven’t added to my stress?” he asked her.

“Me?” Jenay asked, surprised he would
even suggest it.

“Yes, you,” he said, surprised she
wouldn’t understand it.
 
And then took
her hand and began leaving with her.
 
“You come with me.
 
We have unfinished
business,” he added, as he escorted her up the side stairs.

When they were out of earshot, Ashley
looked angrily at Donald.
 
“See what
you’ve done?” she said.
 
“Now Dad’s going
to get on her case because of your stupidity.”

“I said I was sorry!” Donald
responded.
 
“I’m not the one telling him
to get on her case about it.”

But Tony was shaking his head.
 
“Dad is going to get on her alright,” he
said.
 
“But not like you mean.”

Donald looked at him with a frown on
his face. “Fucking at a time like this?” he asked.

They all looked at Donald.
 
“A time like what?” Ashley asked him.

“People get tired of that,” Donald
said.

“If I had it twenty-four-seven like
you were having it,” Robert said, “I’d be tired too.
 
But the rest of us don’t live on planet
Donald.
 
We live on planet Earth.
 
And on planet Earth, it is always a good time
to fuck.”

Even Tony, who eschewed vulgar
language, smiled at that.

Trevor Reese and Carly stood outside
the press room as Trevor fielded a last minute phone call from one of his
investigators.
 
Carly stared at the man with
the long, wavy hair and the gorgeous violet eyes.
 
He had the kind of rock hard body most women
would be glad to get to know.
 
Including
Carly.
 
But that was strictly between her
and her dreams.

When he finally ended the call, she
moved closer to the door. “Ready, sir?” she asked.

They were already late for the press
conference.
 
Ethan Campbell was waiting
in the press room, along with his dream team of lawyers.
 
But Trevor was the spokesman.
 
Trevor was the one they were waiting on.
 
Yet he lingered in the hall.
 
“What about you?” he responded.
 
“Are you ready?”

Carly always found him to be an odd
man.
 
He was flashy in the clothes he
wore and the cars he drove.
 
And his good
looks made him a female magnet even in her office.
 
But he never took the bait.
 
She’d never seen him with a lady on his arms-
nor a guy for that matter, and he never came on to her or anybody else in his
vast organization.
 
She knew this to be
true because the ladies complained about it endlessly, as if a man who looked
like him and dressed like him had to be a whore.
 
Why wasn’t he whoring around on them?
 
Even Carly had a secret crush on him when she
first started working for him.
 
But
Trevor Reese kept it professional up and down the line.
 
So professional that she began to feel guilty
for even thinking such a thing.
 
And she
woke up from her dreams of being with a great guy like him, and kept it
professional too.
 
“I’m ready,” she said.
 
“I’m ready to get it over with.”

“Then we shall,” he responded,
looking down her body and then back up to her face.
 
But the way Trevor looked at her always
seemed as if he was assessing, not her attractiveness as most men did, but her
sense of style.
 
As if he wanted to make
sure her clothes were on point before they went into the room.
 
He smiled when he looked back into her face,
as if she passed the test.
 
Then his
smile quickly faded.
 
“Let the disgust
begin,” he said with a flash of sadness in his eyes, eyes that were so blue
they were violet, and opened the press room doors.

Carly was taken aback by the way he
phrased what they were about to do.
 
But
no truer words could have been spoken.
 
They were public relations people whose job was to keep their client as
innocent as possible in the public eye.
 
No matter what evidence said otherwise.
 
No matter how disgusting that client truly was.
 
This was what they did.

Trevor stepped aside and allowed
Carly to walk in first, and they walked into the packed pressroom as if they
were bearers of great news and the media was going to eat it up.
 
Trevor walked up to the podium, while Carly
took her place beside Ethan Campbell and his attorneys.
  
They were all smiling because Carly, as PR
point person, told them to smile.
 
Smiling,
she said, would minimize the seriousness of the allegations.
 
As if they all had a secret, and that secret
involved Ethan’s innocence.
 
Ethan,
especially, had the grandest smile of all.

Trevor, however, wasn’t given to
anybody telling him what to do.
 
This was
nasty business and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
 
He remained stoic as he stood there.
 
He remained all-business as he presented the
public case of Ethan Campbell.

“My client did not, nor could he have
raped that young lady.
 
They went out
partying.
 
They went out drinking.
 
And it was all good to Ethan because she was
twenty-one years old.
 
Her ID said she
was twenty-one.
 
Her appearance said she
was twenty-one.
 
He had no reason
whatsoever to suspect otherwise.”

Then Trevor nodded to his computer
guy, a nod that alerted him to get ready.
  
“The picture the family is circulating to the media is this photograph.”

The screen in the room showed a big
picture of an innocent-looking thirteen-year-old.

“If that was the image that Amber
Schwartz portrayed the night in question, then I, too, would be outraged.
 
I, too, would recommend the harshest
punishment for Ethan Campbell.”

Ethan’s smile almost left his face,
but Carly moved closer to him, reminding him by her presence alone to keep up
appearances.
 
He continued to smile.

“But that wasn’t the image she
portrayed that night,” Trevor continued.

The screen showed a series of
photographs, of a much older looking Amber Schwartz in very suggestive
clothing.
 
The media snapped pictures of
the images vigorously.

“This is the image Amber Schwartz
portrayed the night Ethan met her,” Trevor said.
 
“And as you can see, she looks nothing like
those photographs of an innocent thirteen-year-old the public has been
inundated with.
 
Amber Schwartz looks as
if she is thirty, not thirteen.”

Trevor began to describe the various
photos.
 
“There she is in yet another
club,” he said as a picture of her dancing in a nightclub came on screen.
 
“There she is drinking with much older women.
 
And men, by the way.
 
And here she is showing off an ID that puts
her age at twenty-one.
 
An ID that looks
completely real, folks.”

Then he stopped looking at the
photographs and turned his full attention back to the assembled media.
 
“What in the world, I ask you, was Ethan
supposed to do?
 
What more, I ask you,
could Ethan have done?
 
And as to her rape
charge?
 
Give me a break!
 
You don’t party with a girl.
 
Drink all night with a girl.
 
And then, when the girl begs you to take her
home with you, you take her home and rape her?
 
She begged for it, and we have plenty of witnesses willing to make it
clear that she begged for it.
 
She begged
for him to get it, but then he had to take it?
 
Give me a break!
 
He didn’t rape
anybody.
 
He doesn’t have a violent bone
in his body.
 
This woman, and I call her
that because that is how she presented herself, is out for blood.
 
Blood money.
 
Pure and simple.
 
Ethan Campbell
is the real innocent in all of this.”

Ethan’s smile went into
overdrive.
 
He looked at Carly, pleased
with the strategy she came up with.
 
Decimate the girl, Carly had suggested, and that was exactly what they
were doing.
 
Carly was smiling too, and
even returned Ethan’s look with an even grander smile of her own.
 
But it was all for the cameras.
 
It was all for show.
 
She was dying inside.
 

The knocks on her door later that
night didn’t make her feel any better.
 
Especially when she opened the door quickly, certain it was her
assistant Muriel.
 
Muriel had just left
her home a few minutes ago, and she thought she had forgotten something and had
come back.
 
She always forgot to mention
something, or forgot something outright.

“What is it this time?” Carly asked
cheerfully when she opened the door.
 
When she saw that it was Ethan Campbell, she was stunned.
 
But not so thrown that she couldn’t move to quickly
close the door she had just so casually opened.
 
But his shoe blocked the way.

“What do you want?” she asked him.

“I just want to thank you,” he said,
that same fake smile she coached him to display on full display tonight, as he
stepped into her home.

“There’s no need to thank me,” Carly
said, folding her arms.
 
“Step back out
please.”

But he closed the door instead.
 
“Come on, now, Carly.
 
You had a great strategy.
 
And it worked!
 
The least I can do is thank you.
 
You came through for me.
 
And you know why, right?
 
Because you saw it too.
 
That girl was no kid!
 
You saw how quickly the DA dropped those
charges.
 
You saw how quickly he threw it
all out.
 
That’s because of you.
  
He saw right through that girl and her lies
just like you did.”

“I was only doing my job,” Carly made
clear.
 
“I didn’t see through anybody.”

“Yes, you did,” Ethan said with a
grin.
 
“You know you did.
 
Because you know what it’s like to have men
wanting you, and lusting after you.”
 
He
looked down her body.
 
“Don’t you?”

Carly’s heart began to pound.

“I was driving by this area,” Ethan
continued, “and decided to drop by and see you.
 
On the spur of the moment like.
 
You know why?
 
To thank you, yes.
 
But you know my real reason?”

“I need you to leave.
 
I’m not interested in knowing your real
reason.”

“My real reason for dropping by like
this is because I know you,” Ethan said, disregarding her request.
 
“I know a hoe when I see one.
 
And you’re one.
 
You may fool Trevor and all of those other
people in his office, but you don’t fool me.
 
It takes a hoe to know a hoe.
 
I
know you.”

Carly’s discomfort level shot through
the roof.
 
She unfolded her arms.
 
“Leave my house at once,” she said.
 
“I’m not playing with you, Mr. Campbell!”

“Mr. Campbell,” Ethan said with
another grin.
 
“I like that.
 
You love to play the role of Miss Prim and
Proper, don’t you?
 
But I know better.”
He placed his hand on her chin.
 
“You
like to fuck, don’t you?”

She slapped his hand away.
 
“Okay, that’s it,” she said, reopening the
door.
 
“Get out and get out now!”

But Ethan slammed the door back shut just
as forcefully as she had opened it.
 
“I’m
not ready to leave.
 
I’m not ready to get
out now.
 
How about that, Miss Proper?”

“Then fine,” Carly said, heading for
her cell phone on her coffee table.
 
“We’ll let the police handle it.”

But before Carly could turn again,
Ethan was upon her and violently knocked the phone out of her hand.
 
Then he knocked her down with even more
force.
 
“The police ain’t handling shit,
bitch!” he said.
 
And he said it with the
kind of anger and bitterness that the public never saw.
 
He said it with clenched teeth.
 
And all of the smiling and charm he had laid
on thick at that press conference, every ounce of it, was gone.