The winter of Frankie Machine

35

Frank goes out the back as soon as he hears the sirens.

Osborne had hit the silent alarm, just like he’d told him to. Hopefully, the banker will follow the rest of his instructions.

“Tell the state troopers a man came in and tried to rob you, then got nervous and ran out. Give the cops the description of one of the guys who approached you this morning,” he’d told Osborne.

“Why don’t I tell them the robber got twenty grand?” Osborne asked.

“Are yousupposed to have an extra twenty K in the bank?” Frank said.

“No.”

“Well?”

“Oh, right.”

“Just hit the alarm, okay?”

Frank doesn’t run out the back alley, though. He finds the ladder that leads to the roof and climbs up. By the time he reaches the top, his heart is hammering and he’s gasping for breath.

Jill was right about the red meat and the desserts, he thinks. I have to cut down. He crawls along the rooftop on his stomach, then climbs down the ladder on the other side just as the troopers’ cars screech to the front of the bank. Frank walks back to his car, calmly backs out, drives across the street to a gas station, and starts to fill his tank.

“What’s going on?” he asks the attendant, who’s come out to see what all the excitement’s about.

“I don’t know,” the kid says. “Something with the bank.”

“Jeez, no kidding?” Frank says. “That’s wild.”

He watches as Osborne comes out of the bank with one of the troopers and a citizen runs across from the ice cream parlor and starts pointing west, with one of those emphatic “They went thataway” gesticulations.

One of the troopers rushes back to his car and races west.

Frank fills up his tank.

“I hope they get the guys,” he says, and then pulls out and drives east, doing the speed limit.

You’re an idiot, he tells himself. Or else you’re just getting tired, worn down.

It was the guy in the ice cream shop, across the street. You know him, just can’t place him.

Damngetting old.

Come on, think, think, think.

It’s flirting with him, skirting the edge of his memory.

Carlo Moretti.

A Detroit guy, a hitter for Vince Vena.