The Jaguar parked in the slanted driveway and Charles got out, placed his sunglasses on the top of his head, and made his way into the Jericho Police Department.

Brent was in his office upstairs, according to the desk sergeant, and Charles made his way in that direction.  Cops were hurrying down as Charles made his way up, all with their hey, Big Daddy greetings as if they knew him like that, and Charles waved and returned their greetings without concern.  His days of worrying about that stupid-ass nickname were long behind him.  Right now, he was worried about those stupid-ass thugs who attempted to handle him, and what progress was being made about who killed Lou Fontaine.

Brent was behind his desk with a stack of folders in front of him when Charles knocked once, and then walked on in.  Brent leaned back when he looked up, and saw who it was.  His green eyes looked tired.

“Your secretary isn’t at her desk,” Charles said as he headed toward his son.

“She’s out sick today.  Although I think it was more of a I need a day away from my boss sick day.”

Charles smiled.  “Best kind of sick there is.”

Brent smiled too.  “Sit down.  Where were you headed?”

“To the office, where else?  I was also thinking about dropping by the Inn and taking Jenay to lunch.”

Brent nodded.  “She’d like that, Pop,” Brent said.  “You should do it.”

“Speaking of a wife liking her husband to do nice things for her,” Charles said, “what have you done for Makayla lately?”

Brent just sat there, his tired eyes staring at his father.  “I bought her a car.”

Charles was impressed.  He even smiled.  “Really? I didn’t know she was in the market for a new car.  I hope you got a good deal.”

“I’m chief of police, Dad.  Nobody’s stiffing me.”

Charles laughed.  “What did you get her?”

“What I knew she wanted.  A Chrysler 300.  A red one.”

“Oh, that’s a beautiful car.  I am impressed.”  But it still didn’t add up for Charles.  “May I ask why you suddenly brought her a car?”

“For her commute,” Brent said.  “It began today.”

Charles was pleased.  He nodded.  “So you guys resolved it, then?”

But Brent wasn’t ready to go that far.  “Are we trying to make it work?  Yes.  Have we resolved it?  No.”

Charles appreciated his honesty.  That was one of Brent’s greatest attributes, Charles felt: his ability to admit the error of his ways.  “Talk to her, son.  You and Makayla have got to talk this out.”

“Brent couldn’t disagree.  “That’s true,” he said.

“Then what are you waiting on?  She’s working for the guy now.  Guess what, pal?  That part is over.  You’ve got to figure out how you can live with her decision.”

“I know that too.”

“But?”

Charles could tell it was weighing heavily on Brent, and he really didn’t want to go there with anyone, not even Charles.  But he eventually leaned forward in his chair, and exhaled.  “I’m not good enough for her, Pop,” he said.

Charles stared at Brent.  “What do you mean?”

“She should be with another high-powered lawyer or somebody like that.  Not some small-town hick like me.”

He exhaled.  “She might have lived in small towns, but she’s not really a small-town girl.  I knew it when I first married her.  I guess it’s a testament to our love that she’s stayed here in Jericho with me this long.  But this is not her thing.  Even when she was district attorney, there were days I used to think even that wasn’t enough.  When she resigned as DA, and started working for you, and you were her only client, I knew it wasn’t enough.  She wants what I can’t give her, Pop.”

Charles continued to study his son.  “And what’s that?” he asked him.

“She wants somebody to blow her mind,” Brent said.  “The way you did Jenay.  She wants somebody to give her the world, and love too.  I’ve only been able to give her love.  And that’s not enough for her.”

Charles nodded.  “You’re right,” he said.

Brent looked at his father.  It hurt him to his heart that his truth was confirmed, but he already knew it was true.  And his father, he knew, would never lie to him.

“I hate to admit it,” Charles went on, “but you hit the nail on the head, son.  Makayla needs more.  Just like Jenay did.  These are career-minded, independent women who’ve been hurt before after they depended on men.  They have to have their own thing going.  They have to.”

“But if your wife is a lot like mine, then why did Jenay stay with you all of these years, and Makayla’s already looking to bail on me?”

“Because the difference between you and me is that I recognized it in Jenay early on,” Charles said.  “I told you that.  And I did something about it.  I gave her Jericho Inn as soon as I married her.  I told her here it is, baby.  It’s yours.  Do whatever you can do with it.  And she took it and ran.  It gave her purpose.  It gave her meaning.  Because she built that hotel into what it is today: the finest in Jericho.  Jenay did that.  And everybody in this town knows it.”

“I don’t have a hotel to give to Makayla,” Brent said.  “I don’t have a fancy law firm with A-list clients or anything anywhere near any of that.”

“That’s why you have got to compromise, Brenton.  If you want that woman, and you’ll be a fool if you don’t, then you’d better reach an agreement with her.  And she doesn’t come cheap so don’t play her like that.  Just like you said, it’s a testament to how much she loves you that she lasted as long as she has.  But don’t kid yourself.  That fever, that need to have her own thing going in a major way, is on her again whether you want it to be or not.”

“So I’m a doctor now?” Brent asked.  “What am I supposed to do about a fever?”

“You have got to nurse that baby until it breaks,” Charles said.  “And it’ll break soon enough.  Once she realizes what matters most, and that she’d be crazy to lose you.”

The door suddenly opened, and Eddie Rivers hurried in.  “We’ve got a suspect, Boss.”

“Which case?” Brent asked.  He was working on several.

“The biggest one we’ve got.  That Fontaine shooting.” 

Both Brent and Charles rose to their feet.  “Who?” Brent asked.

“You said you believed you hit the truck’s cab several times when you were shooting at it, right?” Eddie asked.

“That’s right,” Brent responded.

“A truck, riddled with bullet holes, was spotted out in the woods over at Oscar’s Body Shop.”

“I thought we shut that place down,” Brent said as he grabbed his sports jacket off of the back of his chair.

“We did shut it down,” Eddie said.  “But what does that mean to these meth heads around here?  He opened it right back up apparently.  He’s still doing body work on cars.  But he’s still cooking that meth, too, I’m willing to bet.”

Brent began hurrying for the exit.

“I’m going with you,” Charles insisted, hurrying behind him.

But Brent would have none of that.  “A civilian cannot accompany us on a call, Pop.  You know that.”

Fuck that shit, Charles thought.  “I’m going with you,” he said again, as if his oldest son had not said a word.

But Brent held his ground.  Another trait Charles loved-and hated-about his son.  “A civilian cannot accompany officers on a call, Pop.  You’ll have to wait here.  I’ll be back.”  He said this firmly, looking his father dead in the eyes.

Eddie expected Big Daddy to raise hell.  He was a man used to having his own way around this town, and everybody knew it.  But Brent’s father had what Eddie could only describe as an outsized respect for his oldest son.  And he obeyed him.

“Get that sonafabitch,” Charles said.  “And be careful doing it.”

Brent and Eddie hurried out.

 

But while Brent was gone, Charles wasn’t about to sit around twiddling his thumbs.  He, instead, made his way downstairs, to the jail, to see if he was able to get more info from those two prisoners.  It was highly unusual and wrong as hell.  But who was going to stop him?  Brent stood the best chance, as he had just moments ago, but he was gone now.  Charles suspected, given his clout in their community, that he could have a free run of the place.

And he was right.  The police officers, all of whom were afraid of Chief Sinatra, were mortified of Big Daddy Sinatra.  One wrong move on their parts and they truly believed he would have them fired, or blackballed, or both.  They not only allowed him to visit the two prisoners, but the officer on guard unlocked the cell of one of the prisoners, and allowed Big Daddy to go inside.

Charles looked back at the guard.  “Give us a few minutes,” he said.

The guard, a young cop just two years out of the Academy, knew this was highly unorthodox, and he knew he had already gone too far by unlocking the cell to begin with.  But Jericho was a strange town.  Once you were in bed with Big Daddy, you were in bed with him.  He was going to screw the shit out of you, was the way the ladies around town loved to put it.   And, they added, you weren’t getting out unscathed.

The young cop walked back down the hall, and stood at the door that segregated the jail section, waiting nervously for Big Daddy to give him permission to return.

The thug Charles had chosen was the one he had beaten up the worse.  He chose him mainly because he’d already gotten a taste of Charles’s medicine, but also because he appeared to be the leader.

He was lying on his cot when Charles first walked in.  He was still nursing his wounds.  But he sat up as soon as he saw that bastard.

“What do you want?” he asked Charles.  “I have a lawyer now.  I don’t have to say shit about shit!”

“A name,” Charles responded.

“What?  I already gave you a name.”

“Well unfortunately for you, pal,” Charles said as he slowly paced his way toward the prisoner, “Lou Fontaine is dead.”

This appeared to be news to the prisoner.  “Dead?”

“That’s right.  She’s dead.  Now tell me who could have possibly killed her because, as of right now, you’re facing a murder rap.”

The prisoner frowned.  “But I was in jail when that shit happened!  I was right here!”

“Who killed her?” Charles asked.

“How am I supposed to know who killed her?  I do yard work for her.  She hired me and my partner to rough you up.  That’s all I know.”

Charles was now right in front of the prisoner, and he didn’t hesitate.  He grabbed the young man by the catch of his shirt, pulled out the gun he was carrying with him (a gun the officer dared not even inquire if he had), and put it to the prisoner’s head.  “Let’s do this again,” he said.  “Tell me everything you know.  And I mean everything.”

“But I don’t know nothing!”

“Go back to the day she hired you.  You got there that morning.”

“We got there early that morning.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing happened!  Like I already told these cops, it was a regular day.  There was nothing different about it.  We worked until noon.  She entertained people from around town who always was coming to her house to discuss business with her, and we didn’t pay that no attention.  Around lunch time, when we were just sitting down to eat our lunch, she asked us to come into the big house.  So we went inside.  And that’s when she hired us.  That’s all that happened.  That’s everything.”

But it couldn’t be.  It just couldn’t be!   “You said it was a regular day,” Charles said.

“Yes!” The prisoner was getting tired with the same questions.

“And people were coming and going from the house?”

“Like always.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know those people names, man!  Most of’em were big shots like her.”

“What were you doing while these people were coming and going?”

“We were putting down sod near the edge of the grass where somebody had sprayed the wrong pesticide and killed the roots.  It’s a lot of acreage, so it was going to take damn-near all day.  So we took a lunch break.  And that’s when she called us in.  I told the cops this over and over and over.”

“What had she done just before she called you guys in?” Charles asked.

The prisoner shook his head.  “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Had somebody just left?  Or had they been gone a while when she called you guys in?”

“No, she had just said goodbye to the handyman.  He was doing some work inside the house.  But this time after he left, she called for me and Ben to come inside.  So we went inside.  That’s not unusual.  Sometimes she has problems with the way we do things, and she calls us in and corrects us.  So we went inside.  And that’s when she hired us.”

But Charles was still curious about what he had said earlier.  “You said she called you inside after the handyman left.”

“I say her handyman,” the prisoner said.  “Some say her lover.”

Charles stared at him.  “Her lover?”

“Maybe he’s not her lover, I don’t know!  But that’s what everybody who works around there says he is.  But he’s officially her handyman.”

“Who is he?”

“Some arrogant nobody.  Think he’s better than the rest of us.  She calls him Jesse.”

Charles paused.  “Jesse?  What’s his last name?”

“I don’t know!  Why should I know his last name?”

Charles pressed the gun harder against his skull.  “What is his last name?” he asked again between clenched teeth.

And suddenly the prisoner remembered.  “Cooper or Copper or something like that,” he said.

“Is it Colbert?” Charles asked.

The prisoner nodded.  “Yeah.  That’s it!  Jesse Colbert.  That’s the one.  But what difference does that make?  He comes there all the time.  He’s nobody special.  And he didn’t tell us what to do to you.  Lou Fontaine told us what to do.”

Yeah, Charles thought, but Jesse might have told Lou what to tell them!

He removed his gun and hurried out of the cell, closing it back as he did.  “Guard!” he yelled.

The guard hurried back down the hall to lock the cell, and Charles took off.  Jesse Colbert, he thought as he made his way downstairs. If he was the one who killed Lou Fontaine, Charles had no doubt in his mind, given the anger Jesse had to feel toward the Sinatra family, that he would have been more than happy to take out Charles and his wife, too, while he was at it.

Charles hurried out of that police station, jumped into his Jaguar, and sped away.  He called Brent as he drove.

“Was the truck still at Oscar’s?” he asked him.

“No, unfortunately.  He was already gone.  But Oscar gave us a name.”

“Jesse Colbert?” Charles asked.

Brent was surprised.  “Yeah.  How did you know that?”

“I interrogated your prisoner.”

“You what?  Pop, you know better than that!  He has a lawyer now.  Besides, my men interrogated him numerous times already.  He never mentioned anything about Jesse Colbert.”

“Put a gun to a man’s head,” Charles said, “and they suddenly get vivid memories.”

“Put a gun to his . . .  Pop, please don’t tell me you were at my jail doing crazy shit like that!  Please don’t tell me that.”

“Where are you now?” Charles asked.

“I’m on my way to Jesse’s place.  We had him in custody just yesterday.  If he wouldn’t have made bail, we could have prevented that murder.  But he made bail.  I guess Lou Fontaine got him out.  Then he killed her ass.  Where are you?”

“On my way to Jesse’s place, too,” Charles said.  “I’ll meet you there.”

“No way, Pop.  Let me handle this.”

“See you there,” Charles said, and ended the call.  He let Brent and his cops handle it before, and it got them nowhere.  He was taking over now.