The winter of Frankie Machine

7

Tonight, he drives home and there’s a car in the alley.

A car he doesn’t know.

Frank knows the neighbors, knows all their vehicles. None of them owns a Hummer. And even through the now-driving rain, he can see there are two guys sitting in the front seat.

They aren’t pros; he knows that straight off.

Pros would never use a vehicle as conspicuous as a Hummer. And they aren’t cops, because even the feds don’t have the budget for a vehicle like that. And third, professionals would know that I love life, and because I love life, I haven’t, in thirty years, pulled into my house at night without driving around the block first. Especially when my garage entrance is in an alley where I could get cut off.

So if these guys were pros, they wouldn’t be sitting in the alley; they’d be at least half a block down, wait for me to pull into the alley, and then come in.

They spotted him, though, as he drove by.

Or they think they did.

“That was him,” Travis says.

“Bull fucking shit,” J. answers. “How can you tell?”

“No, that was him, Junior,” Travis says. “That was Frankie fucking Machine. A motherfucking legend.”

Parking isn’t easy in Ocean Beach, so it takes Frank about ten minutes to find a spot on the street three blocks away. He pulls in, reaches under the seat and finds his. 38 S amp;W, puts it in the pocket of his raincoat, pulls his hood up, and gets out of the car. Walks another block out of his way so that he’ll hit the alley from the east and not from the west, where they might be expecting him. He comes around to the alley and the Hummer is still there. Even over the rain he can hear the bass vibrating, so the dumb mooks are in there listening to rap music.

Which is going to make it easier.

He walks up the alley, his feet sloshing in the puddles, ruining the shine on his shoes, and he’s careful to stay dead center with the back of the Hummer so he’s less likely to get spotted in either rearview mirror. As he gets closer, he can smell the reefer, so now he knows he’s dealing with complete doofs-kids, probably, drug dealers-sitting in their cool sled, getting high and listening to tunes.

He’s not even sure they hear him when he opens the back door, slides in, sticks a gun in the back of the driver’s head, and pulls the hammer back.

“I told you it was him,” Travis says.

“Frankie,” J. says. “Don’t you recognize me?”

Yeah, Frank maybe recognizes him, although it’s been years. The kid-maybe in his mid-twenties-has short black hair gelled into spikes, some sort of stud stuck through his bottom lip, and earrings through the tops of his ears. He’s decked out in surfer clothes-a long-sleeve Billabong shirt under a Rusty fleece, and workout pants.

“Mouse Junior?” Frank asks.

The other one chuckles, then quickly shuts up. Mouse Junior doesn’t like being called Mouse Junior. He prefers “J.,” which is what he tells Frank now.

The other one is also dressed like a clown. He’s got the gel thing going, too, and a wispy goatee, and he’s wearing one of those surfer’s beanies on his head, which Frank resents, because Frank wears one to keep his head warm when he’s come out of the cold water after actuallysurfing, and not to look pseudo-hip. And both of them are wearing sunglasses, which is maybe why they couldn’t see a full-grown man coming up behind them. He doesn’t tell them this, though, and he doesn’t put the gun down, even though holding a gun to the son of a boss is a major violation of protocol.

That’s okay, Frank thinks. He doesn’t wantBut he respected protocol carved on his headstone.

“Who are you?” he asks the other one.

“My name is Travis,” the other says. “Travis Renaldi.”

This is what it’s come to, Frank thinks. Italian parents giving their kids Yuppie names like Travis.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Machianno,” Travis says. “‘Frankie Machine.’”

“Shut up,” Frank says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, shut the fuck up,” Mouse Junior says. “Frankie, could you put that gun down now? Could we go inside, maybe you could offer us a beer or a cup of coffee or something?”

“This is a social call?” Frank asks. “You waiting in the alley in the middle of the night?”

“We figured we’d wait until you were done with your booty call, Frankie,” Mouse Junior says. Frank’s not sure he knows what a “booty call” is, but he can figure it out from the nasty tone of Mouse Junior’s voice. He hasn’t seen Junior in probably eight years, and the kid was a spoiled teenage punkthen. He hasn’t matured any. Frank would like to give him a hard cuff in the ear for the “booty call” remark but there are limits to what you can do to a boss’s kid, even a boss as limp as Mouse Senior.

Mouse Senior-Peter Martini-is boss of what’s left of the L.A. family, which also includes what’s left of the San Diego crew. Peter got the nickname “Mouse” after L.A. police chief Daryl Gates famously referred to the West Coast mob as “the Mickey Mouse Mafia,” and the name stuck. He became Mouse Senior after he had his son and named him Peter.

But the rules are the rules: You can’t lay hands on a boss’s kid.

And you can’t refuse him hospitality.

Frank doesn’t like it, though, as he leads them into his place. For one thing, he doesn’t like letting them get the lay of the land, in case they come back later to try something. Second, it’s not a good idea in case they ever flip and take the witness stand. It will be harder for him to deny that a meeting ever happened if they can accurately describe what the inside of his house looked like.

On the other hand, he knows his house isn’t wired.

He pats them both down the second they come in.

“No offense,” he says.

“Hey, these days…,” Mouse Junior says.

No kidding, these days, Frank thinks. This is probably what this little sit-down is about anyway-Mouse Senior sending Mouse Junior down to get reassurance that Frank is still on the reservation.

Because Mouse Senior hasn’t been named on the Goldstein hit, even though he was the one who ordered it done, and Frank knows it.

Like Mouse Senior is so careful, Frank thinks. For three years, three years, back in the late eighties, Bobby “the Beast” Zitello was wearing a wire, while Mouse Senior thought the sun shone out of his ass. Bobby’s “Greatest Hits” album went platinum and put half the family in the joint for fifteen years. Now Mouse Senior is out, and he doesn’t want to go back in.

But the Goldstein thing might put them all in the can for good. Poor Herbie got clipped back in ’97 and a couple of low-level mokes confessed to it. But there’s no statute of limitations on murder, and the Goldstein killing has come back like a ghost. The feds have been all over it lately, as part of Operation Button Down, their attempt to put the last nail in Mouse Senior’s coffin. What probably happened is the two mooks found out they didn’t like prison so much and decided to trade up. For all Frank knows, Mouse Senior might be under a sealed indictment and be looking to make some trades of his own.

So Frank pats Mouse Junior down pretty thoroughly.

He doesn’t find any wires or mikes.

Or guns.

That would be the other possibility-Mouse Senior wanting to make absolutelycertain that I don’t tell the feds who ordered up the Goldstein thing. But Mouse would have sent one of the few soldiers he has left. Even Mouse wouldn’t send his own kid on a mission to try to hit Frankie Machine.

You want your son to buryyou.

“You want coffee or beer?” Frank asks, taking off his raincoat. He keeps the pistol in his hand.

“Beer, if you got it,” Mouse Junior says.

“I have it,” Frank says. Good, he thinks, it saves me the trouble of brewing up a pot. He goes into the kitchen, grabs two Dos Equis, then changes his mind and takes two of the cheaper Coronas instead. He comes back out, hands them the beers, says, “Use coasters.”

The two kids sit on his sofa like bad students in the principal’s office. Frank sits down in his chair, with his pistol on his lap, and kicks off his wet shoes. That’s all I need, he thinks, a cold. They go through the preliminaries: “How’s your father? How’s your uncle? Give them my regards. What brings you boys to San Diego?”

“Dad suggested it,” Mouse Junior says. “He said I should come talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I got a problem,” Mouse Junior says.

You got more than one problem, Frank thinks. You’re stupid, you’re lazy, you’re uneducated, and you’re careless. What did the kid do, a year and a half of junior college before he dropped out to “help Dad with the business”?

“We-” Mouse Junior begins.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Frank asks.

“Me and Travis,” Mouse Junior explains. “We have a sweet little porno operation running. Golden Productions. We’re getting a piece of half the distribution that comes out of the Valley.”

Frank doubts it. You can read the papers and know the San Fernando Valley produces billions in porn every year, and these kids don’t look like billionaires. Maybe, maybe, they have the arm on a few operations, but that’s about it.

Still, it’s lucrative. How many times did Mike Pella try to get me to invest in the porn business? And how many times did I refuse? For one thing, it used to be all mobbed up, back when it was illegal. Two, as I told him, “I have adaughter, Mike.”

But since porn went mainstream, most of the money in it is strictly legit. You set up shop, or you invest, like you would with any other business. So what…

“Bootlegs,” Mouse Junior explains. “We invest in the studio so we can get a good master. We distribute a bunch of those on the legit market, but for every one we sell legally, we bootleg three.”

So they sell one of the company’s videos and three of their own, Frank thinks. Basically, they cheat their own partners.

“It’s even easier with DVDs,” Travis explains. “You can press them out like pancakes. The Asians can’t buy enough of blondes with big tits fucking and sucking.”

“Watch your mouth,” Frank says. “This is my home.”

Travis turns red. He forgot what J. had warned him, that Frankie Machine doesn’t like profanity. “Sorry.”

Frank talks to Mouse Junior. “So what’s your problem?”

“Detroit.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” Frank asks.

“Some guys from Detroit,” Mouse Junior says, “friends of ours, have done a little porn out here, and okay, maybe they introduced us to some people. Now they think they’re owed.”

“They are,” Frank says. He knows the rules.

Besides, Detroit-aka “the Combination”-has had a piece of San Diego forever, since back in the forties, when Paul Moretti and Sal Tomenelli came out and opened a bunch of bars, restaurants, and strip clubs downtown. Back in the sixties, Paul and Tony ran a lot of heroin through those joints, but after Tomenelli was murdered, they settled into loan-sharking, gambling, strip clubs, porn, and running whores.

Anyway, they carved out their piece.

Because of Moretti’s prestige, his son-in-law Joe Migliore got a pass in San Diego, never having to kick up or even answer to L.A. It was like Detroit had its own separate little colony in the Gaslamp District. They still do-Joe’s kid, Teddy, still has Callahan’s down in the Lamp, and runs his other businesses from the back room.

“If Detroit set you up with these connections,” Frank tells Mouse Junior, “youdo owe them.”

“Not sixty percent,” Mouse Junior whines. “We do all the work-make the videos, set up the warehouses, do the bootlegs, get to the Asian markets. Now this guy wants a majority share? I don’tthink so.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“Vince Vena,” Mouse Junior tells him.

“You’re sideways with Vince Vena?” Frank asks. “You do have a problem, kid.”

Vince Vena is a heavy guy.

Word is, he just made it on the ruling council of the Combination. No wonder Mouse Junior is scared. The L.A. family was never that strong-it used to bow to New York, then Chicago, and now there’s a power vacuum as the East Coast families are getting hammered by old age, attrition, and the RICO statutes. So now Detroit is positioning itself to move in on what’s left of the West Coast, and in one of the few profit centers left. And it makes sense to start with Mouse’s kid, because if you pull that off, you’re proving a point: Mouse Senior is so weakened by the Goldstein indictments, he doesn’t have the strength to protect his own son.

If Vena succeeds in extorting sixty points out of Mouse Junior, the L.A. family might just as well give up the ghost entirely. Which is fine with me, Frank thinks. New York, Chicago, Detroit, it’s all the same. It’s all going the way of the dinosaur anyway. Doesn’t matter who shuts the lights out-it’s still dark.

“Why are you coming to me?” Frank asks, even though he knows the answer.

“Because you’re Frankie Machine,” Mouse Junior says.

“What doesthat mean?”

What it means, Mouse Junior explains, is that they’ve “calendared” a sit-down with Vena to hammer out a deal.

“Do it,” Frank says. “If Vena says sixty, he’ll take forty, maybe even thirty-five. You give him a cut of the pie, then you just go out and make a bigger pie, that’s all. There’s enough for everybody.”

Mouse Junior shakes his head. “If we don’t stop it here…”

“You stop it here,” Frank says, “you start a war with Detroit.”

And let me tell you what your old man already knows, kid. You don’t have the troops. But Mouse Junior’s too young to know that. Too much testosterone bouncing around in there.

Mouse Junior says, “I’m not rolling over for this guy.”

“So don’t,” Frank says.

It’s not my problem.

I’m retired.

“Fifty K,” Mouse Junior says.

Thatis high, Frank thinks. There must be more money in this porn thing than I thought. It shows they have resources, but it also shows how weak they are. You don’t normally pay cash to have this kind of thing done-you give it to one of your soldiers in exchange for future business considerations, or maybe getting him straightened out.

But L.A. doesn’t have many soldiers left. Not good ones anyway, guys who could do this kind of work.

Fifty K is a lot of money. Invested well, it would pay a lot of tuition.

“I’m going to take a pass on this one,” Frank says.

“Dad said you might turn it down,” Mouse Junior says.

“Your father is a wise man.”

Actually, he’s a jackass, but what the hell.

“He said to tell you,” Mouse Junior continues, “that he would consider this a personal favor, a matter of loyalty.”

“Meaning what?”

Frank’s going to make him say it.

“With everything that’s happening in Vegas,” Mouse Junior says, his voice quivering a little, scared. “The Goldstein stuff…Dad would like to know that you’re, you know, on the team.”

So there it is, Frank thinks. It’s two birds with one stone. Mouse Senior gets his Detroit problem taken care of, and he gets an insurance policy on my silence over Goldstein, because I can’t go to the feds with a fresh hit on my hands. And if I don’t do the Vena job, I make myself suspect as a possible rat. So either I take Vena out or I put myself in the bull’s-eye. But if Mouse Senior doesn’t have the soldiers to take Vince himself, why does he think he has the resources to make a run atme? Nobody in the Mickey Mouse Club has either the skills or the stones.

Who could he send?

He’d go outside the family. New York, maybe Florida, maybe even the Mexicans.

He could get it done.

It’s a problem.

“Tell you what,” Frank says. “I’ll get Vena off your back, one way or the other. Set up a meeting with him. I’ll come along. If he sees me there, he’ll be more reasonable. If not…”

He lets it hang there. The rest is obvious.

Travis likes the idea, anyway. “That’ll work, J.,” he says. “If Vena sees that we have Frankie freakingMachine on our team, he’ll shit his pants.”

“No, he won’t,” Frank says. “But he will negotiate more reasonable points.” He turns to Mouse Junior. “You don’t want a war if you can help it, kid. I’ve seen war. Peace is better.”

Something you’ll learn when you get a little older, Frank thinks, if you don’t get yourself killed first. Young guys, they always want to prove how tough they are. It’s a testosterone thing. Older guys see the beauty in compromise. And save the testosterone for better things.

Mouse Junior thinks it over. Judging by the expression on his face, it’s apparently a grueling process. Then he asks, “What about the fifty K?”

“The fifty is for solving your problem,” Frank says. “Either way.”

“Half now,” Mouse Junior says, “half when the job is done.”

Frank shakes his head. “All of it up front.”

“That’s unprecedented.”

“Thisis unprecedented.”

Them approaching him directly, that is. The protocol is that they should have gone through Mike Pella, capo of what’s left of San Diego, who’d collect a referral fee.

It would be good to talk to Mike about this Vena thing, get his take. Mike Pella is an old-school mafioso, among the last of a dying breed. He and Frank have been tight since forever. Mike’s been his friend, his confidant, his partner, his captain. Mike would be able to give him the lay of the land, steer him clear of the land mines.

But Mike, with his instinct for survival, has been in the wind since the Goldstein thing came back up.

Good place for you to be, Mike.

Stay there.

“Two-thirds, one-third,” Mouse Junior says.

“I’m notnegotiating with you, kid,” Frank says. “I gave you the conditions under which I’ll work. If it’s worth it to you, fine. If not, it’s also fine.”

The money’s in the Hummer.

Mouse Junior sends Travis out to get it. He brings back a briefcase containing fifty K in used bills, nonsequential.

“Dadsaid you’d want it all up front,” Mouse Junior says, smiling.

“Then why were you busting chops?” Frank asks. Because you’re a smarmy, wise-ass punk, Frank thinks, trying to prove how smart and tough you are. And you’re neither. If you were smart, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this predicament. If you were tough, you’d take care of it yourself.

“It’s just business,” Mouse Junior says. “Nothing personal.”

Frank wishes he had a dime for every time he’s heard that line. The wise guys all heard it in the firstGodfather and liked it. Now they all use it. Same with the termgodfather, for that matter-until the movie came out, Frank never heard the word in that context. The boss was just the “boss.” Those were good movies and all-well, two of them were-but they had nothing to do with the mob, not the mob that Frank knows, anyway.

Maybe it’s just a West Coast thing, he thinks. We never went in for all that heavy “Sicilian” stuff.

Or maybe it’s just too warm out here for all those hats and overcoats.

“Mr. Machine?” Travis is saying.

Frank shoots him a dirty look.

“Mr. Machianno, I meant,” Travis says. “There’s one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The sit-down is tonight,” Mouse Junior says.

“Tonight?” Frank asks. It’s already after midnight. He has to be up in three hours and forty-five minutes.

“Tonight.”

Frank sighs.

It’s a lot of work being me.