The winter of Frankie Machine

54

Frank had been retired for a while back in ’97.

Retired from thelife anyway. No more limo business, no more strip clubs, no more OC. He was working his bait shop, his fish business, his linen service, and his rental managements when Mike Pella came to him to talk about taking back Vegas.

“Take itback?” Frank asked. “When did we everhave it?”

They were on OB Pier, walking off a heavy lunch at the OBP Cafe. Mike had aged. There was a lot of silver in that black hair, and the wide shoulders, though still wide, were a little stooped.

“Las Vegas should beour thing,” Mike told him. “Not New York’s, not Chicago’s-L.A.’s.”

Deck chairs on theTitanic, Frank thought. A bunch of hyenas squabbling over a dried-up skeleton. There’s nothing tohave in Vegas, not since Donnie Garth turned state’s evidence and RICO shut the whole thing down. Anyway, Las Vegas is Family Town, USA now, Disney World with blackjack. It’s all corporations now.

Lawyers and guys with M.B.A.’s.

“Peter is ready to make a move,” Mike said. “Take back what’s ours. Make our family a real family again.”

“How many times have we heard this ‘real family’ chorus?” Frank asked. “We heard it from Bap, we heard it from Locicero, then Regace, then Mouse before he went away the first time, Mouse before he went away thesecond time…”

“It’s for real this time.”

“What makes this time different?”

Herbie Goldstein, Mike told him.

Fat Herbie? Frank thought. Pavarotti look-alike Herbie, the Will Rogers of the pastry counter? The man who never met a doughnut he didn’t like? This guy is Mouse’s ticket to the show?

Time had not been kind to Herbie. He’d done an eight-year stretch for using funny plastic and stealing stamps. Stealing stamps, that’s what it had come to, Frank thought. In prison, Herbie’d had not one but two bypass operations and a couple of toes amputated because of diabetes. Now he was out, running an auto-body shop so he could launder shylock money through it and dick insurance companies on car repairs at the same time.

“Herbie doesn’t have any juice,” Frank said.

“He does now,” Mike said.

Turned out that Herbie had the arm on a billionaire casino owner named Teddy Binion, who gave Herbie $100,000 to put on the street. Then Herbie did a very smart thing: He turned it all over to an Indian.

“An Indian?” Frank asked.

“Indiangambling?” Mike prompted. “This guy goes to reservations, gets them to build a casino, gets the management contractand the shy business on the chronic losers. He’s getting from both ends-he gets the skim, and he gets the vig from the money he puts out on the street, or the dirt roads, or whatever the fuck they have on these places. Chief Running Deer, or whatever the fuck his name is, kicks to Herbie, who kicks to Binion, who has a wicked coke and showgirl habit, which Herbie provides him both.”

“So?”

“So,” Mike explained, “Binion is in hot water with the Nevada Gambling Commission over his drug use and his friendship with known mobster Herbie Goldstein. He’s a half hour from seeing his name in the Black Book, which means he’ll be forced to sell the casino. So he’s going to let Herbie come and bust it out, skim the fucking shit out of it.

“And get this,” Mike said. “Binion trusts Herbie so much, he gave him all his jewelry-hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth-for ‘safekeeping.’ Herbie’s got them in a safe in his house.”

He held up his wrist and showed Frank his new Patek Philippe watch. “Herbie let me have it for a grand.”

So much for “safekeeping,” Frank thought.

“Herbie,” Mike says, “is going to bust out Binion’s casino. He’s getting a taste of the Indian skim, a slice of the shy. Plus, he’s using that auto shop of his to scam insurance companies and fence half the stolen shit in Nevada.”

“Good for Herbie.”

“Good forus, ” Mike said. “We’re going to partner with him.”

“Herbieagreed to that?”

“Not yet,” Mike said. “That’s where you come in.”

Frank leaned over the railing and looked down at the blue water. “No, that’s where Idon’t come in. I like Herbie. We’re old friends. He turned me on to onion bagels. Not a small thing, Mike.”

“I like Herbie, too,” Mike said. “We’re not going to clip him, just explain to him that it’s not right he should eat alone when his friends are hungry. We’ll have a little sit-down, and I figure if he seesyou there…Besides, I want you to have this shot. It’s your chance to be aplayer. You want to sell bait the rest of your life?”

As a matter of fact, Frank thought, I do.

That would be just fine.

“Mouse Senior asked me to ask you,” Mike said. “He would consider it a favor.”

Which, translated, meant it was a command performance.

They met at Denny’s.

Denny’s, Frank remembers thinking at the time. This is what it’s come to-lunch meetings at Denny’s. Shiny menus and greasy chins. The Martini brothers were studying the menu like it was theDaily Racing Form, arguing over the “Fresh Catch of the Day” item.

“You see a ocean out there?” Carmen asked, pointing out the window at the desert.

“No,” Mouse Senior answered.

“Then how the fuck can it be fresh?”

“I think it means it was fresh when they froze it,” Mouse Senior replied. “Here’s Frank. Ask him. Hesells fish.”

“What about it, Frankie?”

“They catch it, flash-freeze it, then overnight it,” Frank told him, taking a seat next to Mike.

“Is thisyour fish?” Mouse Senior asked him.

“I don’t sell to chains.”

“So, should he get the fish?” Carmen asked.

“No.”

Frank felt like his head was about to come off. The sheer tedium…

Mouse Senior set his menu down. “Thanks for coming, Frank.”

“No problem, Peter.”

Carmen nodded his thanks and Frank nodded back.

It took about a year and a half to order, all on separate checks.

Frank asked for an iced tea.

“That’s it?” Mouse Senior asked. “That’s what you’re having for lunch? An iced tea?”

“That’s all I want,” Frank said.

“That’s, like, antisocial,” Mike said.

“No offense intended,” Frank replied.

The truth was that Frank liked food too much to eat any of this stuff, and, more important, he had a lunch date following this summit meeting. He had met this stunning dancer named Donna the night before at the Tropicana. She had said she’d go to lunch with him but not dinner, and he was going to take her out to someplace really nice.

“Let’s get down to business,” Carmen said when the food arrived. “Herbie Goldstein.”

“He’s a greedy, selfish miser,” Mouse Senior said, a little dab of tuna salad on the corner of his lip. “That fat Jew boy is making money hand over fist and not paying anybody.”

“‘Fat Jew boy’?” Frank said. “What’s that?”

“What, you’re Herbie’s big friend all of a sudden?” Mouse Senior asked.

“No, I’ve been his friend foryears, ” Frank said. “So have all of you.”

“Do you know the money he’s fucking making?” Mike asked. “Just the fenced shit he has in his fucking house is probably worth a fortune, and he hoards money in there, too.”

“Frank,” Carmen said. “He has to share.”

“I know,” Frank said.

“So?” Mouse asked.

“I’ll talk to him,” Frank said. “Give me a chance to talk to him.”

“Not you alone,” Carmen said.

“Me and Mike.”

“Mike, you good with that?” Mouse asked.

Mike nodded.

“Today,” Carmen insisted.

“Tonight,” Frank said.

Everybody looked at him.

“I have a date today,” Frank said.

It was agreed-Frank and Mike would have a talk with Herbie that night, and get him on board.

“But Frank,” Mouse said, “if Herbie doesn’t do the right thing, then…”

“Then I’ll take care of it,” Frank said.

Then it will go the other way, he thought.

And that was it. The guys finished their meals, happy with the knowledge that they were about to use Fat Herbie Goldstein to bankroll their takeover of Las Vegas, then went up to the counter to pay their separate checks. Frank said his good-byes, visited the men’s room, and waited there until they had all left. Then he walked past the table and saw just what he’d expected.

Three bucks and change in tips.

The cheap bastards had sat there for two hours, and left three bucks and change. Frank took two twenties out of his wallet and laid them on the table.

Lunch with Donna was great.

He took her to a little French place off the Strip, and the lady knew her away around a menu. They were at the table for two and a half hours, talking, drinking wine, eating good food, enjoying each other’s company.

She was from Detroit originally, her father had spent his life on the Ford line, and she knew she didn’t want that life. She was good at dancing-she had the body and the legs-so she studied dance: ballet, until she got too tall, then tap and jazz. She went to Vegas with a boy she thought she was in love with, got married, but it didn’t work out.

“He liked hitting on cocktail waitresses even more than he liked wailing on me,” Donna said.

The boy went home; she stayed.

She met an entertainment director in the buffet at the Mirage and he got her an audition for the line at the Tropicana. She went to bed with him out of gratitude and because he was a nice guy, but nothing came of it except that she got the job.

“I saw other girls,” she said, “sleeping around, getting into the coke thing, trying to party their way into something better. I realized that therewas nothing better and the party scene was a dead-end street, so I pretty much just did my job and went home and washed my hair.”

She did get married again, to the chief of security at Circus Circus. The marriage lasted three years-“No kids, thank God”-and then she discovered he was sleeping around with chip girls and was blowing their money hitting on eighteen.

“Why am I telling you all this?” she asked Frank. “I’m usually a very reserved person.”

“It’s my eyes,” Frank said. “I have kind eyes-people tell me things.”

“You do have kind eyes.”

“You have fantastic eyes.”

She told him all about her “business plan.”

“I’m going to stay ‘on the line’ for two more years,” she said. “Then I’m going to open a little shop.”

“What kind of shop?”

“Women’s clothing,” she said. “A boutique, upscale but not out of reach.”

“Where?” he asked. “Here in Vegas?”

“I think so.”

He leaned across the table a little. “Have you ever thought about San Diego?”

She didn’t go back to his room with him that afternoon, but she did agree to go out to San Diego when she got a couple of free days. He offered to buy her airline ticket and get her a hotel room, but she said she preferred to pay her own way.

“I decided a long time ago,” she said, “that a woman in this world needs to take care of herself. I prefer it that way. I like it.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” Frank said.

“You didn’t,” she said. “I can see your heart.”

He and Mike met up that night and went over to Herbie’s house. They rang the bell and there was no answer, but they could hear the television and there were lights on. The door was unlocked, so they let themselves in.

“Herbie?” Frank called.

They found him in front of the TV, slumped in his big easy chair.

Three bullet holes in the back of his head.

His mouth gaping open.

“Jesus,” Mike said.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Frank said, surprised that he felt an angry heat coming up on his face.

The place was a mess. It had been tossed-burglarized.

“We better get out of here,” Mike said.

“One second,” Frank said. He pulled his shirtsleeve down over his fingers, picked up the phone, and dialed 911. Gave them Herbie’s address and said that the resident there had suffered a heart attack.

“What the fuck, Frank?” Mike asked.

“I didn’t want him decomposing,” Frank said as they walked out. “He doesn’t deserve that. He didn’t deservethis. ”

“Look,” Mike said as they were driving away, “half the hustlers in town knew what a pack rat Herbie was.”

“What are you saying?” Frank asked. “This was a coincidence?”

“Could have been anybody.”

“You know better than that.”

Frank checked out of the Mirage, got into his car, and drove all the way to L.A. It was morning when he got to Westlake Village and found Mouse Senior at his coffeehouse, drinking an espresso, munching on apain au chocolat, and reading theLos Angeles Times. He looked surprised to see Frank, who ordered a cappuccino and an apricot Danish and sat down next to him.

“It’s probably better you don’t come to see mehere, ” Mouse said, “at my place of business.”

“You want to go someplace else…”

“No, it’s okay this once,” Mouse said. “So, did you get Herbie straightened out?”

“No,” Frank said, looking into his face. “Youdid.”

It was there. Just a flicker, but it was there, before Mouse composed his face, looked irritated, and asked, “What are you talking about?”

“You gave the nod,” Frank said. “Half wasn’t good enough for you. You wanted a bigger pie to cut up, so you gave the nod.”

Mouse put thatboss tone in his voice. “The nod for fuckingwhat, exactly?”

“To have Herbie done.”

Mouse set his newspaper down. “Herbie’s gone?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you-”

“I saw the body.”

“There’s a million junkies in Vegas,” Mouse said. “They all knew what a pack rat Herbie was. Any one of them-”

Interesting, Frank thought, he used the exact same phrase as Mike-“what a pack rat Herbie was.” He shook his head, “Three twenty-twos, to the back of the head. Professionals.”

“Herbie made a lot of enemies in his-”

“Cut the crap.”

“What are you, drunk?” Mouse asked. “Talking to your boss like that?”

Frank leaned across the table. “What are you going to do about it, Mouse? What are you going to do about it?”

Mouse didn’t say anything.

“That’s right,” Frank said.

He was walking away when the young waiter came over with the coffee and Danish. “You don’t want your-”

“Nothing personal,” Frank said to him, “but your coffee is garbage and your pastry is crap. You serve cheap shit to suckers who don’t know any better. I know better.”

He walked out and waited for the blowback.

It didn’t take long.

Two days later, Mike showed up at the bait shop.

“That was stupid, what you did up in Westlake,” Mike told him.

“You here to straighten me out?”

Mike looked hurt. “The fuck could you ask me that? I’d do them before I took a run at you. We should have our own fucking thing, anyway, not be tied to those limp dicks. Watch, they’ll find a way to fuck this Binion thing up.”

“What happened, Mike?” Frank asked. “When we left the table, we were supposed totalk to Herbie.”

“I don’t know. I was gone.”

“Mouse has something to answer for,” Frank said.

“Don’t get crazy on me,” Mike said. “It’s one thing to go insult a boss in his place of business-you get a pass for that because you’re Frankie fucking Machine. It’s another thing you go looking to square Herbie on a fuckingboss. Let it go.”

“So we just let them get away with it?”

“Hey, Frank,” Mike said. “Herbie wasn’t exactly Saint Francis of fucking Assisi himself. He didplenty, believe me. What we’re going to do now is swallow the shit, smile like it was chocolate cake, and get back to business.”

Which they did.

As usual, Mike was right.

You have an ex-wife to support, Frank told himself, and a kid who needs orthodonture. You have a man’s responsibilities, and you can’t go getting yourself killed to get revenge for Herbie Goldstein.

As it turned out, L.A. never took over Vegas, not even a piece of it. Teddy Binion’s jewelry collection got cut up and made an appearance on the street for a while, but the Martinis never succeeded in taking over his casino and busting it out. Binion held on until he died of an other-inflicted drug overdose, and his young wife and her young lover took the fall for that.

The only one who prospered from the deal was Mike Pella, who worked the Indian gambling thing and gave it serious legs. It was everything Mike had always wanted, a long-term, integrated scam in which he took from the front, the middle, and the back ends.

He would have been a very wealthy man if he hadn’t screwed up.

But we always do, Frank thinks now. That’s the trademark of the Mickey Mouse Mafia-we always find a way to screw up. Usually over something stupid. That was certainly the case with Mike, who was on easy street until he lost his temper and beat up a guy in a parking lot.

Before Mike slipped on the banana peel, he was raking in money from Indian gambling and never cut Frank in on a penny. Not that Frank expected it or even wanted it. What he expected was what he got-Mike saying, “I mean, after all, you never reallydid anything with Herbie, right?”

No, Mike, Frank thinks now-youdid.

The Martini RICO trial has been delayed again, ostensibly because the feds think they have new evidence to link the Martini brothers to Herbie’s killing.

But there are two guys left who could connect the Martinis with Herbie’s murder, Frank thinks.

Mike Pella.

And me.

Mike’s in the wind, and I haven’t been indicted.

But Mike thinks I’m cooperating with the feds, and that’s why he tried to have me whacked.

Because Mike killed Herbie.

Why didn’t I see it? Frank thinks as he rolls south on the 5. It was always Mike who was pushing for Herbie’s murder. He knew about the jewels, he knew about the money, and he was going to use the Goldstein windfall to bankroll starting his own family. Mike knew damn well when we went over to Herbie’s house that the fat man was already dead.

It was all an act.

Now the feds are back on it, Mike thinks I know the truth and that I’m giving him up. He’s cleaning up his tracks, and I’m one of them.