The winter of Frankie Machine

22

Frank stands across the street from Callahan’s, waiting for it to close.

It’s a long, cold wait at two in the morning.

Finally, the trendy young crowd starts to pour out and, a few minutes later, the bouncer goes to lock the door.

That’s when Frank steps in.

The bouncer takes a swing at him.

Frank ducks underneath the punch, pulls the softball bat from under his coat and Tony Gwynns the bouncer’s shin bones. The resultingcrack, and the bouncer toppling to the sidewalk, gets some attention from the after-hours crowd inside the bar.

One of the boys rushes Frank.

Frank butts him in the solar plexus with the blunt end of the bat, then swings the handle up in an arc and catches the man under the chin. He takes a step back to let the guy fall, then sees the next man reach in his jacket into shoulder-holster territory. Frank swings the bat and breaks the guy’s wrist against the gun butt.

The bartender vaults the bar with a nightstick in his hand and swings it down toward the back of Frank’s head. Frank turns, raises the bat horizontally to block the nightstick, pulls his arms back in, and then thrusts the bat back into the bartender’s nose, which breaks with a splatter of blood. Then Frank crosses his right foot over his left, whirls, and delivers a home-run swing into the bartender’s floating ribs.

Three guys down.

Teddy Migliore stands there like his feet are rooted to the spot.

Then he turns and runs.

Frank lofts the bat low across the floor. It bounces and catches Teddy in the back of the knees, sending him sprawling to the floor. Frank’s on top of him before he canstart to get up. He puts his right knee into the small of Teddy’s back, grabs him by the back of the collar, and smashes his face into the expensive tile until he can see blood trickle into the grouting.

“What,” Frank yells, “did I ever do to you? Huh? What did I ever do to you? ”

Frank leans down, slips one hand under Teddy’s chin, and lifts as his other arm forms a bar across the top of Teddy’s neck. He can either snap Teddy’s spinal cord or choke him out, or both.

“Nothing,” Teddy gasps. “I just got the word is all.”

“Whogave the word?” Frank asked.

Frank hears police sirens start to wail. Some citizen must have spotted the bartender writhing on the sidewalk and called the cops. Frank puts more pressure on Teddy’s neck.

“Vince,” Teddy says.

“Why? Why did Vince want me clipped?”

“I don’t know,” Teddy groans. “I swear, Frankie, I don’t know. He just told me to deliver you.”

Deliver me, Frank thinks. Like a pizza. And Teddy’s lying. He knows exactly why Vince wanted to kill me, or else he’s just laying it all on a dead man.

“Police! Come out with your hands where we can see them!”

Frank lets go of Teddy, steps over him into the office, and lets himself out the back door. As he’s leaving, he hears a voice on the answering machine.“Teddy? It’s me, John…”

Frank steps out in the alley and runs.

Teddy Migliore sits in his office and rubs his throat. He looks up at the uniformed cops and says, “You sure took your time…the fucking money we pay…”

The cops don’t look too eaten up with sympathy. They’ve stopped taking the money anyway. You’d have to be a fucking idiot to take an envelope from Teddy Migliore these days, what with everything going on.

Operation G-Sting.

“Do you know who did this?” one of the cops asks.

“Do you want to file a report?” asks the other.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Teddy tells them.

He’s going to file a report all right, but not with these two losers. He waits until they’ve left, though, to pick up the phone.

Frank jogs out of the alley and back onto the street.

You had it exactly backward, dummy, he tells himself. It wasn’t L.A. who contracted with Vince to take you out; it was Vince who used L.A., or at least Mouse Junior, to set you up.

But why?

He can’t think of a thing he ever did to Vince Vena or the Migliores. He can only think of something he didfor them.