The winter of Frankie Machine

14

James “Jimmy the Kid” Giacamone walks into the bar of the Bloomfield Hills Country Club in suburban Detroit and looks for his father. He spots Vito William Giacamone, aka “Billy Jacks,” sitting at a banquette by the window, sadly contemplating the snow-covered eighteenth green.

Billy Jacks turns and looks at his son. The kid comes to the country club dressed in baggy pants and an old sweatshirt with the hood up. Like one of them rappers-what’s the white one’s name, the local kid?…Some kind of candy…M amp;M’s.

His son thinks he’s M amp;M’s.

Then again, Billy thinks, the kid just did a hard stint-five years for extortion. And the boy has done some other work that, thank Saint Anthony, the feds didn’t make him for. The boy may look like a clown, but he’s a good worker.

And he’s back with me, so let him look like what he wants. This life of ours, you never know how much time you have with your kids, so why bust balls?

Jimmy slips into the booth beside him and signals the bartender to bring him his usual.

“It’s gonna be months,” Billy says, “before we can get out there.”

Jimmy doesn’t care. Golf is for old guys.

A waiter sets a vodka and tonic in front of Jimmy and walks away.

“You heard from Vince?” Billy asks.

Jimmy shakes his head. “B Company ain’t comin’ back.”

Which is what happens, Jimmy thinks, when you send a guy like Vince against a legend like Frankie Machine.

Billy accepts the verdict. What choice does he have? If Vince was alive, he would have checked in. He hasn’t, and the silence can only mean one thing-Vince Vena better hope he was current with his Acts of Contrition.

Fuckin’ shame about Vince, though. After a life of service, the guy finally makes it to the ruling council of the Combination and then gets himself whacked just a few weeks later. Then again, it means there’s going to be a vacancy on the council.

Jimmy sits there listening to his father’s brain grinding away on overtime. He can see the old man working through the stages of grief. First there’s acceptance: Vince is dead. Then there’s anger: Fuck, Vince is dead! Then there’s ambition: Vince is dead and someone’s going to get his seat at the table.

They’re like hyenas, these old guys, thinks Jimmy, who watched a lot of shows on Animal Planet when he was in the joint. They run together, they hunt in packs, they share the kill, but one of them goes down, the rest will eat his bones and suck the marrow.

And Vince’s bones have some juicy marrow in them.

There’s only two street bosses, Jimmy thinks, my dad and old Tony Corrado, so one of them is going to move up. And if Dad can rescue this San Diego deal, it’s going to be him.

“They should have sentme, ” Jimmy says.

“You asked,” Billy says.

Jimmy shrugs. It’s true, he made a big play with Jack Tominello, but the head of the council, the real boss, agreed that it should be Vince. After all, San Diego was going to be Vince’s territory, so he should take care of his own business.

Except he couldn’t.

“Now what?” Billy asks.

He’s come to that age when he’s asking advice from his own kid. But youth must be served, and Jimmy the Kid is an up-and-comer, at only twenty-seven years of age the Combination’s biggest earner, and there’s a seat practically reserved for him at the council table.

In his turn, in his time. And the first step would be I move up to the council; then Jimmy gets my street-boss slot.

“Now what?” Jimmy asks. “I kill Frankie Machine, that’s what.”

Billy Jacks shakes his head.

“Dad,” Jimmy says, “we can’t let this guy kill a member of the ruling council and walk away. Besides, we promised certain people…”

“I know what we promised,” Billy says. He looks off again at the snow and then gets mad again about Vince.

“A bunch of California beach bums,” Jimmy says.

“Let me remind you,” Billy says, “one of those ‘beach bums’ killed Vince Vena.”

“You think I can’t handle the guy?”

Frank Machianno, Frankie fucking Machine, Jimmy thinks. The guy has to be on the wrong side of sixty. He might be a legend and all that, but a bunch of old war stories don’t make the man bulletproof.

Jimmy likes the fact that Frankie Machine is a legend.

Killing a legend makesyou a legend.

You ain’t the man until you beat the man whowas the man.

That’s what his uncle taught him.

Tony Jacks was aman. Uncle Tony made his bones the old way, chased the old Jewish Navy out of Detroit, then was a freaking warrior in the long war between the east and west sides that finally settled into the Combination. It was Tony Jacks who brought Hoffa into the fold, and Tony Jacks who finally, reluctantly, gave the word to have him clipped.

But now Uncle Tony is retired, ill, living out his last days in God’s Waiting Room in West Palm.

That’s the problem with this thing of ours these days, not enoughmen like Uncle Tony. Jimmy loves his father, but the old man is like most of the old men these days-worn out, tired, and reluctant to pull the trigger. It took generations to build this thing of ours, and now the old men are just giving it away to the moolies and the Jamaicans and the Russians.

Or beach bums out on the West Coast.

We’re just soft these days.

But Jimmy the Kid is a throwback. He’s old-school-he ain’t afraid to pull the trigger. He figures it’s time for the new generation to take over and restore their thing.

And the best way to move up and do that is tostep up, Jimmy thinks.

Take out a legend like Frankie Machine.

Let them know there’s a new kid in town.