The winter of Frankie Machine

27

“We have an ID on your floater,” the rookie agent tells Dave.

He’s back in the FBI office downtown. The young agent came in like an acolyte bringing the chalice to a bishop. “How did you know, Mr. Hansen?”

“Dave,” Dave says. “I feel old enough already today.”

And I can’t remember this kid’s name, he thinks. The new crop all look alike, just like this one. Slim but muscular, clean-cut, short hair. Tailored black or blue suits, white shirts, understated monotone ties.

This one is particularly meticulous about his clothes. He’s wearing the standard white shirt, Dave notices, but it has French cuffs with expensive cuff links.

Cuff links, Dave thinks. What’s it coming to? And Troy-that’s the kid’s name. Troy…Vaughan.

“But how did you know, Dave?” asks Troy.

To check the fingerprints against the OC files, he means. Still, that was a lot of files, and Dave’s a little surprised they already have a hit. Supercomputers, I guess, he thinks. In the old days, it was a matter of-who cares, these aren’t the old days.

“Ididn’t know,” Dave says. “It was a hunch.”

“Awesome.”

“You going to give me the ID?” Dave asks.

Troy blushes and shows him the file.

Vincent Paul Vena looks a lot better in his mug shot than he did on the rocks at Point Loma. He’s giving the camera that classic wise-guy “I don’t give a shit” smile, the one they must teach in Goombah 101.

Vena has quite a sheet-simple assault, aggravated assault, shylocking, gambling, extortion, arson… He did a five spot in Leavenworth for the fire. The Michigan cops liked him for several murders in the nineties but couldn’t hang any on him. And the word is that he’d just risen to the ruling council of the Combination.

None of that means much to Dave. What does mean something-means a lot-is that Vena was the guy in Detroit whom Teddy Migliore kicked up to. It was Vena who looked after the San Diego strip club and prostitution business for the Combination.

“What’s a Detroit guy doing in California?” Troy asks.

“Vacationing?” says Dave.

Maybe, Dave thinks, but probably not. More likely he was out here doing damage control from the G-Sting indictments.

Maybe hit somebody.

But it looks like someone hit back.

Dave finishes reading the Vena file, then gets in his car and drives over to what used to be Little Italy. Frank Machianno didn’t show up again for the Gentlemen’s Hour or at the bait shop, which was still locked up. No one has reported him missing, but he is missing, goddamn it.

Dave walks over to the downtown branch of the library, where Patty Machianno works part-time. Just to have a chat with her, not as an FBI agent, but as a concerned friend.

She’s not there.

He walks all over the building and doesn’t see her, so he asks a woman her age behind the front desk.

“Is Patty here today?”

The woman looks at him, then glances at his wedding ring.

“I’m a friend of Frank’s,” he says. Because everyone loves Frank the Bait Guy. “I was in the library, thought I’d say hi.”

“Patty called in sick yesterday,” the woman tells him. “Said she wasn’t sure how long she’d be out.”

“Thanks.”

Dave goes back to the office, checks out a car, and drives over to Patty’s house. He rings the bell half a dozen times, then snoops around the house, peeking in windows. The place is all locked up. He looks in the mailbox, and it’s empty. No mail, no newspaper. He knows that Patty takes theUnion-Trib, because Frank is always bitching about it.

“She could read it at the library,” Frank told him.

“Maybe she likes to read it over breakfast, Frank.” Patty is a devoted Padres and Chargers fan and reads the sports section every morning. She’saddicted to Nick Canepa’s columns.

Dave calls the newspaper’s customer-service line.

“Hey, Frank Machianno here,” he says. “I didn’t get my paper this morning.”

He gives the lady on the phone Patty’s address. A few seconds later the girl gets back on the line and says, “Sir, you stopped delivery for two weeks.”

Dave ends the call, dials the office, and gets Troy on the line. “Troy, get a license plate number and registration for a Machianno, Patricia, and start looking for the vehicle.”

He spells out the name.

“Try the airport,” he tells Troy. “Not the main lot, but one of the bargain lots.”

A woman married to Frank Machianno for all those years wouldn’t pay prime parking fees at the main airport lot. She’d go to one of the cheaper commercial lots off PCH and take the complimentary van to the airport.

Troy asks, “What file should I-”

“Youdon’t, ” Dave snaps. “You don’t open a file; you just do what I ask.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t call me ‘sir.’”

“No.”

Dave feels badly about snapping at the kid. He says, “Troy, you’re doing a great job, okay?”

Dave leaves Patty’s house and drives up to Solana Beach. He feels a little guilty about doing it, because Frank doesn’t know that Dave knows about Donna. Frank has a thing about keeping his private life, well, private, and he probably wouldn’t like Dave intruding into his personal life. Except that there’s a Bureau intelligence file on Frankie, and Dave’s studied every word of it.

I’m worried about you, Frank, Dave thinks as he drives north.

Donna Bryant’s shop is closed.

Dave gets out of the car, walks up to the door, and reads the hand-lettered sign.

ON VACATION.

Donna Bryant doesn’t take vacations.

Dave has checked in on the shop from time to time, and it’s always open-seven days a week. If Donna Bryant were really taking a vacation, she would have planned it well in advance and would have arranged for someone to work the shop. At the very least, she would have had a printed sign made up-with a date announcing when she would reopen.

But she doesn’t know when she’ll be back, Dave thinks.

She didn’t know she was leaving, either.

So Frank’s in the wind, his ex-wife is gone, and his girlfriend, who is as big or bigger a workaholic than even Frank is, goes on a sudden vacation.

All after a Detroit strong-arm man washes up on the rocks.

No. It doesn’t work that way.

Frank Machianno’s in trouble.

But Frank wouldnever go in the wind without making sure his loved ones were safe first. Patty and Donna being gone is a good sign that Frank is still alive, that he told them to get scarce and then went off the grid himself.

And where is Jill?

He debates whether to call her. On the one hand, he wants to make sure she’s safe; on the other hand, he doesn’t want to scare the hell out of her. And there’s something else: Jill Machianno doesn’t know that her father is…

And Frank just got back on good terms with her, and that means the world to him, and the last thing Dave wants to do is screw that up.

So find her, he tells himself, put a loose surveillance on her, but let it go at that. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to put a little pressure on Sherm Simon.

See what The Nickel has to say.