The winter of Frankie Machine

36

It was 1981.

Frank and Patty were already having a tough time in their marriage. They’d been trying and trying to have a baby, to no avail. They’d been to doctor after doctor, but the word was always the same: Frank had a low sperm count, nothing they could do. They talked adoption, but Patty just wasn’t into it.

She said she didn’t blame him-that would be irrational and unfair, she said-but he knew that part of her, deep down, harbored a resentment. She blamed his schedule, the pressure he put on himself with not just the fish business but the linen business now, too, and he would answer that if they ever did have a baby, he wanted to be able to provide for the kid, offer his child a future.

So it was tough times, their love life had turned into an anxiety-ridden chore, and it was just on one of those days when she was most likely to get pregnant that he got the call from Chicago to go to Vegas and take care of this little problem.

Truth was, Frank wasglad to get away for a few days.

You need the money, he told himself, and he did, but the truth was that home was turning into a painful place and he was looking for excuses to get away. That was part of the reason for the long hours at work, part of the reason for taking the job in Las Vegas.

He and Patty argued over it.

“You’re going off to Vegas with your buddies?” she said.“Now?”

Now, Frank thought, when I’m supposed to be dutifully, joylessly performing an act of love. “It’s work.”

“Work,” she scoffed. “Gambling away our money, screwing hookers, some kind of work.”

“I don’t gamble, I don’t screw hookers.”

“So what do you do in Vegas?” she asked. “Go to shows?”

He blew up. “It’swork! It’s how I make money! How I put food on the table! How I pay for doctors! How I-”

“What kind of work?” she asked. “What exactly is it you do, anyway?”

“You don’t want to know!” he yelled. “Just take the money, keep your mouth shut, don’t ask questions about things that are none of your business!”

“None of mybusiness? I’m yourwife!”

“You don’t need to remind me!”

That hurt her. He knew it before the words were even out of his mouth and wished he could call them back out of the air. She dissolved into tears. “I want a baby.”

“So do I.”

His parting words, going out the door. Still, he had to admit that the long drive to Vegas was a relief, a few hours of solitude andquiet. No arguments or recriminations, no daunting sense of failure. And time to think about the job, because it was a tricky one.

Donnie Garth was the golden boy, the wunderkind, of the Chicago real estate tycoons. Nobody knew how well he’d done, though, until he up and bought the Paladin Hotel in Vegas. Nobody knew he hadthat kind of money.

It worked out well for a while; then Garth got delusions of grandeur and actually objected to the skimming that the Chicago mob was conducting in his casino.

Frank was the one who drove Carmine Antonucci up to Garth’s place in La Jolla to “explain it to him.” Garth’s home was something else-a Norman-style mansion with a circular gravel driveway and a six-car garage that housed, among other cars, a Ferrari and an Austin-Healey.

There was no denying that Garth had style.

He stepped out the front door that day, a diminutive man with a yellow cashmere sweater tied around his neck, a blue silk shirt open at the collar, and white slacks over loafers.

Frank remembers that he was dwarfed by the huge wooden door behind him. He was all smiles and handshakes, but you could tell that he was embarrassed that actual hoods had showed up at his door, and nervous that the neighbors might see the kind of visitors he was getting.

Visitors like Carmine Antonucci and Frankie Machine.

Carmine was Chicago’s man in Las Vegas, supervising the very profitable skim that Garth wanted to mess with. So Carmine politely accepted the iced tea that Garth offered, waited while the butler went and got it, drank a few social sips, then pointed to Frank and said, “Take a good luck at this man. Do you know why they call him ‘The Machine’?”

“No.”

“Because he’s automatic,” Carmine said. “He never misses. And if you continue to be an obstacle to the smooth running of my hotel, I’m going to send The Machine to see you. You’ll never see him, because you’ll be dead. Do we have an understanding?”

“We do.”

Garth’s hand was shaking like there was an earthquake. You could hear the ice and the long silver teaspoon rattling in the glass.

“Thank you for the iced tea,” Carmine said, getting up. “It was delicious and refreshing. We’d love to stay for dinner, thank you, but I have to catch a flight.”

And that was that.

Frank never said a word.

He drove Carmine back to the airport, where a private plane flew him back to Vegas.

And Donnie Garth started behaving himself.

Except he soon had a problem.

What had happened was that Donnie Garth was going to take the kink out of his sore neck by taking a steam in the hotel spa, and he was doing this when a piece of Chicago muscle named Marty Biancofiore walked in.

Marty had done some serious work for Garth, intimidating a few other prospective buyers who had also wanted the Paladin, so he got it in his head that he wasowed. What he said to Garth while they were both wrapped in towels was that Donnie was going to give him a piece of the hotel or he was going totake a piece of Garth, and a very essential piece at that.

Which sort of put the kink back in Garth’s neck.

His hair was still damp when he called Carmine.

Now, Donnie Garth was a first-rate pain in the ass, but the Paladin was bringing in a lot of money, a lot more money than Marty could ever kick up.

And Garth was scared, skulking around the hotel, half afraid to come out of his office, wanting extra security all the time, so Carmine finally put a call in to Frank.

Because Garth had personally requested “that guy, The Machine.”

A lot of people had seen or at least heard about the beef between Garth and Biancofiore, and Chicago wanted to send a message: You do not mess with one of our people. They wanted Biancofiore done right on the Strip, they wanted his body found, and they wanted it ugly.

Marty Biancofiore was no civilian. He had done some work for Chicago himself. He’d be armed and on the lookout. Marty Biancofiore wasn’t going to open his door to no pizza guy.

He was the first man you actually had to hunt, Frank remembers. You spent five whole days tracking him, watching his patterns, waiting for an opportunity, thinking it through.

It would have to be at night, he decided. Even Frankie Machine wouldn’t try to take someone out on the Strip in broad daylight. No, that would come later, Frank thinks now, when Chicago duked it out old-style with Joe Bonnano and they did just that. Luckily, Marty Biancofiore worked the eight-to-two shift at Caesar’s, where he’d been put on the prime-time crew just to bust Garth’s balls.

Marty would work his shift, stop at the bar for two comped vodkas to unwind, then walk out to his car in the employees’ parking lot. He always looked carefully around and unlocked the car with a remote key, for fear of a bomb, Frank guessed. He always looked into the car before he got in, locked the doors quickly, and drove straight home. One night, he called a hooker; the other three he took a shower, watched some television, and went to bed.

It would be relatively easy to hit him at home, Frank thought. Break in when he’s in the shower and pop him there. But that’s not how Chicago wants it. Or that little punk, Garth, who’s demanding that “a lesson be taught.”

It would have to be the parking lot.

But how?

You can’t just gun him down when he walks out of the casino-too many potential witnesses, and the risk of a gunfight breaking out is too heavy. Some civilian catching a stray bullet right on the Strip would be unacceptable.

It was one of Frank’s absolute rules: You don’t put civilians at risk. Guys in the game, they know the risks, and they take their chances, but some Joe Lunchbucket who saves up his money for a Vegas blowout doesn’t deserve to die because someone gets sloppy.

So it has to be inside the car.

But if you shim the door, the alarm will go off and that will be that. You could steal the keys and have them copied, get in and wait for Marty, but he checks the car out pretty good before he gets in, and he’d either run away or gun you down while you’re lying on the backseat.

So how are you going to get in the car?

Only one way.

Marty has to invite you in.

And how are you going to get him to do that?

Every man has a fatal flaw. Bap had taught Frank that. Not in those words exactly, but the point was that every man had a chink in his armor, and it was just a matter of finding it.

Bap had even listed them for him. “You got your lust, your greed,” Bap had said, “you got your ego, your pride, and then you got your wishful thinking.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some people believe what they want to believe,” Bap had said, “they want it bad enough.”

Marty was bragging to anyone who would listen how he had that little shit Donnie Garth shaking in his Guccis, how Garth had better stay out of his way, how he might just put him in the dirt anyway. Frank actually heard him mouthing this crap, sitting at the bar after his shift.

And Marty needed money.

Frank did his homework. Marty had been hitting the sports book hard and it had been hitting him back harder. He had lost a bundle on college football, tried to get well on the Monday-night game, but had only got sicker. He owed a bundle to a nasty shy named Herbie Goldstein and was having trouble just coming up with the vig.

So when the call came from Donnie Garth, Martywanted to believe it. And Garth was a hell of an actor, a natural-born hustler who knew how to put up, well, afront. He also knew by then how to follow instructions, and he followed these to the letter.

Frank sat with him when he made the call.

“Marty? It’s Donnie.”

“You better have good news for me.”

“Marty, we’re friends,” Donnie said. “I’ve been thinking. I want to do the right thing. How about you take a hundred K, we put this to bed?”

“A hundred? Fuck you.”

Frank listened while they negotiated a settlement of $250,000. Bap was right, Frank thought. Biancofiore believed it because he wanted to believe it. It fed his ego and solved his financial problems. What was it Bap had said? “When you want to catch a fish, you gotta give it the bait it’shungry for.”

“Cash, Donnie,” Marty said.

Frank nodded and Donnie said, “But look, Marty, this has to stay between you and me. If word gets out that I can be…pressured, I’ll be shit in this town.”

“It’s nobody business but ours,” Marty said.

“That’s great, Marty, thanks,” Garth said. “Look, I’ll get the cash, then swing by your house.”

This was the critical moment. Frank held his breath for a second before he heard Marty say, “I think maybe someplace more public.”

“You don’t trust me, Marty?”

Biancofiore just laughed.

Garth said, “Marty, I can’t hand you a briefcase full of cash on the floor of Caesar’s Palace.”

Marty thought about it for a second. “The parking lot,” he said. “My car.”

“I’ll meet you after your shift.”

“Fuck that,” Marty said. “Noon.”

Because Marty knew what they all knew. No one, no one, was going to try to take him out in broad daylight right on the Strip.

Marty looked to Frank.

Frank thought about it for a second, then nodded.

“Okay,” Donnie said. “Noon it is. What are you driving these days? What’s your slot number?”

“Get out of town for a few days,” Frank told Garth. “Go back to your Norman mansion, throw a dinner party, create an alibi.” Sip some vintage wine with the beautiful people while I clean up your mess for you, he thought.

So it was Frank, not Donnie Garth, waiting in the parking lot when Marty drove in that day.

Marty didn’t like it at all.

He rolled down the window and asked, “Who the fuck are you? Where’s Garth?”

“He’s not coming.”

“What the fuck!”

But Frank saw him eyeball the attache case in his hand.

“I have the money,” Frank said. “Do you want it?”

“People don’t walk away from money,” Bap had lectured him. “They should, sometimes, but they don’t.” Marty didn’t. He thought about it-Frank could see him thinking-but he didn’t walk away. Instead, he got out of the car and carefully patted Frank down from his armpits to his ankles, front and back.

“I’m not wearing a wire,” Frank said.

“Fuck the wire,” Marty said. “I’m looking for a piece.”

He didn’t find one. He got back behind the driver’s seat, flipped the door locks open, and ordered, “Get in.”

Frank slid into the passenger seat.

Marty was holding a. 45 on his lap.

“Hey,” Frank said.

“I ain’t lived this long being careless,” Marty said. “You said you got the money?”

“It’s in the briefcase.”

That was the moment, Frank remembers now. You figured if Marty simply took the case, kicked you out, and drove away, you’d never get near him again. If he opened the briefcase right there, you were a dead man.

You were counting on his character, his caution. This was a man who checked his cars for bombs every night. He wasn’t going to take a briefcase away with him.

Anyway, you hoped he wouldn’t.

“Show me,” Marty said.

“You want me to open it right here?”

“The fuck did I say?”

Frank lifted the briefcase onto his own lap, slid the locks, and the lid flipped open with a metallic click. Frank grabbed the silenced . 25 inside and fired five times through the briefcase lid. Then he put the gun back in the case, got out of the car, and walked away.

Right down the Strip.

Frank went back to his hotel room, wiped the gun down with isopropyl alcohol, did the same with the briefcase. Chicago had offered a cleanup crew to dispose of the weapon, but Frank didn’t trust anyone else to clean up after him. He’d chosen a. 25 for a reason, knowing that the bullets, after piercing the cheap briefcase, would have the juice to enter Marty’s skull, but not enough to exit. A parking lot attendant found Marty about an hour later. He thought the guy slumped on the wheel had had a heart attack until he saw the five holes in his head.

Frank got into his car and drove the back route through the Mojave, found a decrepit mine, smashed the gun into pieces, and tossed it and the briefcase down the shaft.

Yeah, easy to get rid of the gun, harder to get rid of the memories.

They don’t stay down the mine shaft.

Actually, there had been instant fallout from the Biancofiore job. Fat Herbie Goldstein started screaming all over town that he was out the $75,000 that Marty was evenless likely to pay him now that he was dead, and thatsomeone owed him this money.

“Tell Garth to pay him,” Frank told Mike Pella.

“Are you fucking kidding?”

“Tell him to sell one of his cars and pay the man,” Frank said. “Tell him The Machine said so.”

Donnie Garth paid Herbie Goldstein his $75K.

Which is how Frank became friends with Herbie Goldstein.

Fat Herbie sought Frank out after he got his money from Donnie Garth. Goldstein actually got on a plane, flew out to San Diego, and requested a sit-down with Frankie Machine. They had it over lunch, of course-if you were with Herbie, you wereeating.

Now, a lot of mobbed-up guys had the sobriquet “Fat.” Frank knew five of them personally. But none of them could play seesaw with Herbie Goldstein-they’d just be up in the air, looking down at almost four hundred pounds of Herbie, who’d probably be sucking on a Fudgsicle.

Anyway, Herbie took Frank out to lunch and said, “That was a decent thing, what you did for me. I just wanted to tell you in person I appreciated it.”

“It was the right thing,” Frank said.

“Not everybodydoes the right thing,” Herbie said. “Not these days.”

Herbie picked up the lunch check, which was no small thing, then extended an invitation: “If you’re ever in Las Vegas, I’ll show you a good time.”

Frank didn’t plan on going to Vegas, he really didn’t. But the invitation lingered in his head. The harder he worked, the longer hours, the dutiful, futile sex with Patty, the fights, the silences all made the offer from the 375-pound gangster seem like a siren song.

So one day, after a chef gave him agita over a perfectly fine unit of yellowtail, Frank threw a few clothes in the car and headed to Las Vegas.

He pulled into town and gave Herbie a ring. Ten minutes later, he was unpacking his clothes in a comped suite at the Paladin. He took a nice long bath in the in-room Jacuzzi, then a nap, then got up and got dressed to go meet Herbie in the lobby.

Herbie had two Playboy models with him, Susan and Mandy.

Susan, a petite blonde with an unpetite chest, was Herbie’s date. Mandy was for Frank. She had shiny shoulder-length brown hair, full lips, warm brown eyes and was wearing a dress that showed a body that deserved showing. Frank told himself that she was a platonic date, that’s all. A companion for drinks, dinner, and maybe a show, so he wouldn’t feel like the third wheel.

They did the town.

God, did they do the town.

The food, the wine, the shows-Frank was never allowed to reach for his wallet. Not that a bill came anyway, it never did. Herbie left a big tip, and that was it. They got the best tables, bottles of the best wine came over with compliments of the management, and they got invited to parties in the greenroom after the shows.

And then there were the women.

Fat Herbie Goldstein was not an attractive man, although he did bear an uncanny resemblance to Pavarotti-if the tenor had gone on an all-pudding diet for a couple months, that is.

And he wasn’t charming-if anything, Herbie had a kind ofanti- charm, where the wordrepulsive came from, Frank guessed. Herbie repulsed most people-with his voracious consumption, nonexistent table manners, and the rivers of sweat that always seemed to be running down his fat cheeks or pooling in his armpits. His clothes were rumpled and usually had food stains on them, he had a mouth like a sewer, and most people in Vegas would cross the street to avoid running into him.

But Herbie pulled women.

There was just no question about it. Frank never saw Herbie after dark without an absolutely drop-dead-gorgeous woman on his arm. And they weren’t hookers-they were dancers and models and good-time girls. They accepted presents from him, for sure, sometimes fairly big presents, like condos or cars, but it wasn’t just the money.

They really seemed to like being with Herbie, and the more time Frank spent with the guy, the more he did, too.

But that first night…

They rolled back into the Paladin around 3:00 a.m. When Frank went to say good night to Mandy, his Playmate, she looked at him funny.

“You don’t like me?” she asked.

“I like you fine.”

“What is it, I don’t turn you on?”

He’d had a hard-on all night. “You turn me on a lot.”

“Then let’s go make each other feel good,” she said.

“Mandy, I’m married.”

She smiled. “It’s just sex, Frank.”

No, it wasn’t.

After nine faithful years of marriage, the last few of them fairly unhappy, nothing was “just sex.” Mandy did things that Patty would never have thought of and wouldn’t have done if she had. Frank was starting in on his usual sexual routine when Mandy stopped him and said gently, “Frank, let me show you how to please me.”

She did.

For the first time in his life, Frank felt this sense of freedom about sex, because it wasn’t a struggle or negotiation or an obligation. It was just pure pleasure, and when he woke up in the morning, he wanted to feel guilty, but the fact was, he didn’t. He just felt good.

It didn’t hurt that Mandy had already gotten up and left, leaving only a little note telling him that she felt “well and truly fucked,” with one of those little smiley faces above her signature.

Herbie came by to take him to breakfast.

“You should try some Jew food,” Herbie said when Frank went for the bacon and eggs.

He ordered Frank an onion bagel with lox, cream cheese, and a slice of red onion.

It was delicious, and the contrasts of tastes and textures-sharp, creamy, soft, and crispy-was a revelation to him. Herbie knew what he was talking about. When you really got talking with him, it turned out that Herbie knew a lot about a lot. He knew about food, wine, jewelry, and art. He had Frank over to his house to see his collection of Erte and his wine cellar. You would never call Herbie a cultured man by any means, but he had some surprises in him.

Take the crossword puzzles, for instance.

It was Herbie who turned Frank on to the puzzles, and Herbie could do the SundayNew York Times puzzle in ink. Sometimes, Frank wasn’t so sure Herbie needed to write anything down at all-he might have all the words in his head. And he was a walking dictionary, although the funny thing was, he didn’t use any of those words in his conversation, ever.

“I guess I’m what you would call an idiot savant,” he said one day when Frank asked him about it. Although, when Frank looked up the termidiot savant, he realized that no idiot savant would know the expression.

“You and Mandy got along, huh?” Herbie asked as they were walking out of his wine cellar the day after Frank had shattered his marriage vows with multiple, and creative, acts of adultery.

“I guess you could say that.”

“We have two different girls tonight,” Herbie said. “Very nice girls. Very nice.”

Frank left Vegas five days later in need of a vitamin E injection but otherwise feeling rested and satisfied. He went back a lot after that, mostly getting comped at the Paladin, sometimes staying somewhere else and paying his own way because he didn’t want to abuse the situation.