The winter of Frankie Machine

25

Nicky Locicero died in the fall of ’74. His funeral was pathetic, just immediate family-none of the guys showed up because they didn’t want to give the feds any ammo.

The feds werepounding the L.A. family. It was like the FBI was living inside the guys’ heads, the prosecutors seemed to know everything, and the feds’ Xerox machines were breaking down, they were cranking out so many indictments.

And the indictments were rock-solid. Even Sherm Simon advised the guys to plead out, which they did. Peter Martini got popped for four years, Jimmy Regace, who had just taken over as boss, for two. He named old Paul Drina as acting boss.

Bap thought it should have been him. He was very pissed off.

“Tom is a lawyer who’s never got his hands wet,” Bap said to Frank. “What’s he ever done other than be Jack’s brother? And they jump him over me? After all I’ve done for them?”

This was Bap’s constant refrain back in the seventies, the “after all I’ve done for them” mantra. The fact that it was justified didn’t make it any less tedious or futile, though. Fact was, Frank was sick of hearing it.

There comes a time in a man’s life, he figured, the infamous midlife crisis, when a guy has to face the reality that what he has is all he’s going to get, and he needs to find his peace and his happiness in his life as it is. Most guys managed to get that done, but not Bap-he was always griping about how he’d been screwed, how this guy or that guy had done him dirt in a deal, how there were guys who were “dead wood” and he was sick of carrying them, how L.A. never cut him in for his fair piece of the pie.

Whatpie? Frank thought as he heard this litany for maybe the thousandth time. There’s practically no pie to cut up, what with half the guys in the can and New York and Chicago picking the bones like vultures.

Which was why Frank had taken his meager savings and gone into the fish business. Mike could laugh at him all he wanted, and make jokes about how Frank smelled like a mackerel (which wasn’t true-(a) Frank showered meticulously after work, and (b) there were no mackerel in the Pacific Ocean), but the money was clean and safe. And while he wasn’t raking it in like you could with the rackets when everything was good, everythingwasn’t good.

And they couldn’t expect any help from on high, either, because the guy in the White House had his own problems, and he wasn’t about to reach a hand out to a bunch of mobsters.

So it was a bad time for things to go haywire at the Sur.

But they did.

June, the summer of ’75, Frank got a call from Bap’s phone booth office. “You and Mike, get your asses here quick.”

Frank heard the urgency in his voice and told him they could be in Pacific Beach in half an hour.

“Not Pacific Beach,” Bap said. “The Sur. And come heavy.”

It was Fort Sur Mer.

Driving up to the main building, Frank spotted half a dozen wise guys, all dressed casually, like guests, but posted to control the avenues of access. And Frank knew that under the polo shirts and the gabardine trousers, or tucked in golf bags or tennis frames, the guys were carrying serious hardware.

Frank parked in a slot across from Dorner’s condo. Bap must have seen them pull up, because he was walking toward them before Frank even turned the motor off.

“Come on, come on,” Bap said, opening Frank’s door.

“What’s up?”

“Hoffa’s making his play,” Bap said. “He might be putting a hit out on Dorner.”

Frank had never seen Bap this worked up. When they got into Dorner’s condo, Frank could see why.

The heavy drapes were pulled closed against the big glass slider that normally looked out on the golf course. Jimmy Forliano stood at the edge of the curtain, peeking out, a holster with a. 45 strapped on his shoulder. Joey Lombardo was in the kitchen, getting a beer out of the fridge.

Carmine Antonucci sat on the sofa, sipping coffee. Dorner sat next to him, a gin and tonic sweating on the glass-top coffee table at his knees. In a big chair across from them sat Tony Jacks, looking cool and collected in a white linen suit and a royal blue tie.

Dorner looked up at them as if he’d never seen them before, even though they had hauled him back and forth from his private jet at least a few dozen times. He didn’t look good. He looked pale and tired.

“Hi, guys,” he said.

His voice was weak.

“You stay tighter on Dorner than his own asshole,” Tony Jacks said. “He don’t shit, shave, or shower, he don’t look over his shoulder and not see one of you there. Anything happens to him, it happens to you next.”

The siege went on for three weeks.

“Hey,” Mike said about a week in. “If you’re going to go to the mattresses, there are worse places to do it than the Sur.”

MoreGodfather jive, Frank thought. If anybody had ever “gone to the mattresses” in San Diego before this, they were air mattresses in swimming pools.

Dorner started to get cabin fever.

“I want to get out,” he said. “Play a little golf, just take a fucking walk. Get a little sun.”

Frank shook his head. “No can do, Mr. Dorner.”

He had strict orders.

“I feel like a prisoner in my own home,” Dorner said.

It’s not far from the truth, Frank thought, beginning to wonder if they were protecting Dornerfrom Hoffa orfor him. He expressed this to Bap one day as he was walking him out of the condo.

Bap looked at him for a long moment.

“You’re a smart boy, Frankie,” Bap said. “You’re going to go places.”

It could go either way, Bap explained. Chicago and Detroit were working it out; all they could do was wait.

Basically, Tony Jacks was fighting for his boy Hoffa, while the Chicago boys were taking up for Fitzsimmons and Dorner. Bap was betting on Fitzsimmons and Dorner, because they were the better earners, but then again, Hoffa’s Detroit connections were long and strong.

And Tony Jacks was lobbying hard for both Dorner and Fitzsimmons to get the chop.

“Don’t let yourself get too close to the guy,” Bap said, meaning Dorner. “You don’t know what you might have to do, huh?”

So that was it.

They were guarding Dorner and they wereguarding him. They weren’t letting anybody in and they weren’t letting him out. It was weird, sitting there playing rummy with the guy night after night, knowing you might be called on to whack him.

So it was tense.

It got a lot more tense when Mike came back from a little walk, took Frank aside and whispered to him, “We gotta talk.”

He wasshook.

Mike Pella, who was usuallyice, looked shaken.

“It’s Bap,” Mike said.

“What’sBap?” Frank asked with this edge to his voice, but he already knew the answer. He felt like he could throw up.

“Bap’sbeen talking to the feds,” Mike said. “He’s been wearing a wire.”

“No,” Frank said, shaking his head. Except he already knew it was true. It made sense-Bap had finally found his way to take out the L.A. leadership-cooperate with the feds and put them in jail. Then, when they’d made Paul Drina boss instead, he decided he needed to finish the job.

“How do youknow this?” Frank whispered. Dorner was asleep in his bedroom, but Frank wasn’t taking any chances he’d overhear.

“The guys set him up,” Mike said. “They tossed him some bullshit about a porn shakedown and the feds showed up at it.”

And now, Mike said, L.A. was wondering ifall Bap’s guys were in on this coup by cop.

“Frank,” Mike said, “you gotta figure they’re thinking about clippingall of us.”

He was freaking out now, paranoia pumping adrenaline. “What if Bap gaveus up, too?”

“He didn’t,” Frank said, still hoping.

“We don’t know that,” Mike said. “What if he takes the stand? He could put us up for DeSanto, Star…”

“If he had,” Frank said, “we’d have been arrested by now. The feds don’t sit on murder indictments.”

No, if this was true, Bap’s strategy was to get rid of L.A. by giving them up to the feds, then basically replace the L.A. guys with his own San Diego crew. Which was why not a single San Diego guy had been named in the sweeping indictments the previous summer. It had always been Bap’s dream to run California from San Diego.

“We’d be his two captains,” Frank said.

“The fuck you talking about?”

Frank laid out his analysis of Bap’s plan and repeated, “Bap is planning to make us the captains in his new family. He kept us out of the indictments; he kept us off the tape.”

“So, what, we owe him?”

“Yeah.”

“Do we owe him our fuckinglives, Frankie?” Mike asked. “Because that’s what we’re talking about here.”

Mike was right. Frank hated to admit it, but Mike was absolutely right. It was either/or. Either they took Bap out or they jumped in the boat with him.

And that boat was going down.

So there it was. The afternoons in Dorner’s luxurious jail cell got real long. Now there were three guys sitting around wondering if they were going to get whacked, trying to keep their minds off it by watching other guys rat on their boss.

The end of July, they got the word.

Jimmy Hoffa had disappeared.

So, Frank thought, I guess Chicago and Detroit worked it out. And, he learned, if it’s a contest between old connections and money, put your money on money.

Dorner took a big sigh of relief and kicked the two men out of his house.

They weren’t so glad to go. Nobody was going to clip them in Dorner’s condo. Outside, it might be a different story. Frank went home and got an uneasy night’s sleep.

Bap called at ten in the morning from his phone booth, telling Frank to come right over, that he had some news. Frank met him on the boardwalk at Pacific Beach. Bap had his easel set up. He was out there painting, and the man wasbeaming.

“They made meconsigliore, ” Bap said.

The pride in his voice was palpable.

“Cent’anni,” Frank said. “It’s overdue.”

“It’s not boss,” Bap said. “It’s not all I wanted, but it’s a significant honor. It’s anacknowledgment, you know what I mean?”

Frank wanted to cry. Maybe that was all the man had ever wanted: anattaboy, a pat on the back. Not a lot to ask. But Frank knew what it really was. It was poison wrapped in candy, a sleeping pill to lull Bap into a feeling of security.

It was a death sentence.

Frank almost told him.

But he choked the words back.

“I’m going to take care of you,” Bap said, tranquilly painting his crappy watercolor of the ocean. “Don’t you worry, you and Mike. I’m going to see that you get straightened out.”

“Thanks, Bap.”

“Don’t thank me,” Bap said. “You’ve earned it.”

Marie came out of the house with two tall glasses of iced tea for them. She wasn’t a hot little number anymore, but she still looked good, and it was clear from the way she looked at her husband that she adored him.

“You’re almost done with this painting, huh?” she said, looking over her husband’s shoulder. “It’s good.”

It isn’t, Frank thought. Only a loving wife would say it was.

The next call came from Mike.

They met down at Dog Beach, watched golden retrievers fetch Frisbees.

“It’s a done deal,” Mike said. “L.A., Chicago, and Detroit have all signed off. Chris Panno gets San Diego; we report to Chicago until L.A. gets its act together.”

“Yeah? When willthat be?” Frank asked, avoiding the real topic.

“We gotta do it,” Mike said.

“He’s ourboss, Mike!”

“He’s a fucking rat!” Mike said. “He has to go. You want to go with him, that’s your choice, but I’m telling you right now, it ain’t mine.”

Frank stared out at the ocean, thinking he’d like to get out on a board and just paddle. Maybe get his ass kicked in a big wave and get…cleansed.

“Look, I’ll do it, that makes you feel better,” Mike said. “Youdrive this time.”

“No,” Frank said. “I’ll do it.”

He went home that afternoon, turned on the television, and watched Nixon walk to a helicopter, then stand there and wave.

Jimmy Forliano made an appointment for Bap to call him that night. It was raining that night along the coast. Bap was wearing a Windbreaker and one of those old wise-guy fedoras like they used to wear in the movies. He took it off when he got inside the phone booth.

Frank sat in the car and watched him take the roll of quarters out of his pocket and knock it against the little metal shelf to break the paper open. Then he started feeding quarters into the phone.

Forliano was up in Murietta.

A long-distance call.

Frank couldn’t hear him say “It’s me,” but even through the rain and the glass, he could see his lips move. He waited until Bap was in the middle of the conversation, not worried about it ending early. Forliano was a bullshit artist; if there was anything he could do, it was talk.

Frank had a. 25 pistol for this job, not his usual. 22. (“Don’t sign your work,” Bap had told him.) He flipped the hood of his Windbreaker up over his head and stepped outside. The street was empty-people in San Diego don’t come out at night in the rain. Only Bap did that, to come to his office.

Bap dropped the roll of quarters when he saw Frank. They clattered to the floor, some of them rolling around like they were trying to escape. Bap tried to hold the door shut.

He knew, Frank thought.

He knows.

There was a little hurt look in his eyes as he tried to hold the door, but Frank was too strong and just ripped it open.

“I’m sorry,” Frank said.

He put four shots into Bap’s face.

The blood followed him back into the street.

Frank went to the funeral. Marie seemed inconsolable. Later on, she sued the FBI for negligence. The suit didn’t get very far.

Neither did the murder investigation.

The feds liked Jimmy for it, and charged him, and threw the hit into the indictment salad against L.A. with everything else, but they had no evidence and couldn’t prove anything.

And Frank got his button for that night, him and Mike.

They had a cheesy “ceremony” in the back of a car pulled off the I-15 near Riverside, with Chris Panno and Jimmy Forliano. That was it: Chris just pulled off the side of the road and Jimmy turned around to the backseat, pricked Frank’s thumb with a pin, kissed him on the cheeks, and said, “Congratulations, you’re in.”

They didn’t hold burning paper, or a stiletto or a gun, or anything like that. It was nothing like it was supposed to have been in the old days, nothing like it was in the movies.

Mike was disappointed.

Frank went straight after the hit on Bap.

Mike went to San Quentin.

He had gotten popped for extorting local gamblers-the feds had a wire tap of him and Jimmy Regace discussing it, so they were both jacked up good. The feds tried to put him behind the wheel for the Baptista hit, with Forliano as the triggerman, and tried to get him to trade up, but Mike didn’t buy the bluff, and he wouldn’t have taken the deal anyway.

Whatever else Mike was or wasn’t, he wasn’t a rat.

And he never breathed Frank’s name.

Nobody did, and Frank sweated it out (literally) down in Rosarito. That same spring, the California Crime Commission listed ninety-three names on its “Organized Crime” list, and Frank wasn’t on it. He figured that he had dodged a big bullet, so it was time to lay low.

Frank saw Richard Nixon one more time.

It was the autumn of ’75, and the president wasn’t the president anymore, but theex -president, in exile and disgrace in San Clemente.

He came down to the Sur in October to play in Fitzsimmons’s golf tournament, his first public appearance since being hounded out of office. Frank was in the parking lot when Nixon’s limo pulled in and he saw him get out of the car. Nixon didn’t look jaunty anymore; he looked beaten and old, but he played a full eighteen holes, and this time he didn’t seem to mind being seen with the likes of Allen Dorner and Joey the Clown and Tony Jacks, who were playing, too.

They didn’t mind being seen with Richard Nixon.