The winter of Frankie Machine

57

“Why?” Frank asks.

“Why what?”

“Why do the feds want me dead?”

His head isscreaming. It’s crazy, what Mike’s telling me, that the feds told him to put a contract on me. It doesn’t make any sense the feds going to Mike, then Mike going to Detroit to get the job done. What’s in it for Detroit? What can Mike offer Vince Vena?

“Why ask why?” Mike says. “They didn’t tell mewhy, Frank. They just told mewhat. You’re right-they made me for Herbie, told me if I did them a favor, I could keep my immunity deal. The favor was you.”

“Who?”

“Who what?”

“Who reached out to you?” Franks asks. “Who’s running this thing?”

“They’d kill me if I told you that, Frank,” Mike says.

Frank gestures with the pistol barrel, like, I’ll kill you if youdon’t. But Mike smiles and shakes his head. “That ain’t you, Frankie. You don’t have it in you. Always your fucking problem.”

Mike drains his beer and gets up. “We got us a bitch of a situation here, though, don’t we? I don’t see any way out of it. You sure you don’t want a beer? I could sure as hell use another.”

He walks to the kitchen. “Hey, Frankie, you remember summer of ’72?”

“Yeah.”

“That was a good summer,” Mike says as he opens the refrigerator door. He smiles and starts singing:

“Some folks are born to wave the flag,

Ooh, they’re red, white and blue.

And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief,’

Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord…”

He reaches into the refrigerator, turns back, and points the. 38 at Frank.

Frank shoots him in the heart twice.