The winter of Frankie Machine

8

Mouse Junior hands him a cell phone.

“It’s on speed dial,” he says, pressing the button for him.

Vena doesn’t answer until the fifth ring.

“Hello?” He sounds like the phone woke him up.

“Vince? Frank Machianno here.”

There’s a long pause, which is what Frank expected. Vince’s mind has to be whirling, he figures, wondering why Frankie Machine is on the phone, how he got this number, and what he wants.

“Frankie! Long time!”

“Too long,” Frank says, not meaning it.

If he never talked to Vince Vena again, he’d be very happy. He knows Vince from the old days, back in the eighties in Vegas, when it was open territory and everybody’s playground. Vince was a fixture at the Stardust, practically furniture. When he wasn’t at the blackjack table, he was out catching the comedians’ shows, and then he’d annoy everyone by constantly reciting their routines. Vince liked to think he did a pretty good Dangerfield, which he didn’t, although, unfortunately, that never stopped him from doing it.

Poor Rodney, Frank thinks now. That was a truly funny man.

“Hey, Vince,” Frank says, “This thing with Mouse Ju-with Pete’s kid.”

“J.,” Mouse Junior prompts.

Vince’s voice sounds pissed off. “What is it? Mousedick Junior been whining to you?”

“He reached out.”

Frank chooses these words deliberately, because they have a very specific meaning: I’m involved now. You’re dealing with me.

Vince hears it. “I didn’t know you was in the DVD business, Frank. If I did, I’d’ve come to you in the first place. No disrespect, huh?”

“I’m not in the business, Vince. It’s just that, well, the boss’s kid reaches out to me, what am I going to do?”

“The boss?” Vince laughs, then sings, ‘“Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.’”

“Anyway,” Frank says. “I’m going to come along for the sit-down, you don’t mind.”

Or even if you do.

“These kids,” Frank continues, “they don’t know what’s right”-he casts a pointed glance at the two doofs sitting across from him, who look down at the floor-“but you and me, I’m sure we can get it straightened out.”

He’s sure they can. What he’ll do is, he’ll take ten K of the fifty along as a gesture, then negotiate Vince down to fifteen points on the rest of the deal. That’s a fair offer, one that Vince should accept. If not, Mouse Senior is in a position to bitch to Detroit about Vena, get him in line. If none of that works…

Frank doesn’t want to even think about that.

It’ll work.

“Hey, whatever’s right, Frankie,” Vince is saying.

Which means he’s going to be reasonable, Frank thinks. He says, “See you in a little bit, Vince.”

“Give it a half hour,” Vince says. “Me and this chick are making some waves, you know what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Frank says. And who says “chick” anymore?

“Didn’t Mousedick Junior tell you?” Vince says. “I’m on a boat. Here in San Diego.”

“A boat?”

“A cabin cruiser,” Vince says. “I’m renting it.”

“It’swinter, Vince.”

“A friend of ours cut me a deal.”

Classic wise guy, Frank thinks. Long as they think they’re getting a deal, they’ll go for it. So you got a cheap shakedown artist on a boat he can’t use, in the rain.

Classic.

He knows what’s coming next.

Vince doesn’t disappoint him. “So if the boat is rockin’,” Vince says, “don’t come knockin’.”

“Finish your beers,” Frank says. “Then let’s go get this straightened out.”

He goes into the kitchen, opens a drawer, and takes out an envelope. Then he comes back into the living room, counts ten thousand out from the fifty, puts it in the envelope, and slides it into his jacket pocket.

“What are you doing?” Mouse Junior asks.

“Didn’t your parents teach you any manners?” Frank asks. “You never go to a person’s empty-handed.”

In the same spirit, he checks the load on his. 38 and slips it in the waistband of his slacks, underneath the back of his coat. He looks at the boys. “Are you carrying?”

“Sure.”

“Absolutely.”

“Leave the hardware in the car,” Frank says.

When they start to object, he says, “Something goes south-which I don’t expect, but it might-the last thing I want is one of you blowing my brains out by accident. If the stuff hits the fan, you hit the deck and stay there until it gets real quiet and you hear me telling you to get up. You don’t hear me telling you to get up, it’s because you’re dead, and then it doesn’t make any difference anyway. And you letme do the talking. Capisce? ”

“Got it.”

“Absolutely.”

“And quit saying ‘absolutely,’” Frank tells Travis. “It annoys me.”

“Abso-”

“We’ll take your car,” Frank says to Mouse Junior. No sense in burning upmy gas, he thinks, the prices at the pump these days.

Even in the rain, Frank loves the view of San Diego from the harbor.

The lights from the tall downtown buildings reflect red and green on the water, and on the horizon, the Coronado Bay Bridge’s lights shine in the night sky like the diamonds of a necklace on an elegant woman’s neck.

The rain just makes everything sparkle all the more.

He loves this city.

Always has.

They have no trouble finding a parking spot, or the slip where Vena’s cabin cruiser is docked. Walking down the floating dock, Frank reminds them, “Remember, leave everything to me.”

“But we could help,” Mouse Junior says.

“If anything goes down,” Travis clarifies.

“Don’t help me,” Frank says.

Where do they learn to talk like this? The movies, I guess, or television. Anyway, the only thing that’s going to “go down” is Vena’s percentage, which will drop an automatic ten points just by virtue of me being there. He knows what Vena’s move will be-try to get Frank alone and tell him that if he makes Mouse Junior give up forty points, he’ll cut Frank in for five.

And I’ll turn the offer down because it’s a boss’s kid, which Vince will understand; then we’ll get down to the realhondeling. Another word Herbie taught me, God rest.

He finds the boat, theBecky Lynn. The name tells the story-two guys finally get their wives’ permission to buy a boat together and name it after both wives so they don’t get jealous. Not of each other, of the boat.

Which never works, Frank thinks.

Women and boats mix like…

Women and boats.

He steps down off the dock onto the afterdeck. The cabin is all shut up against the rain, but the lights are on and Frank can hear music inside.

“Ahoy!” he yells, because he can’t resist it.

The door opens and Vince Vena’s ugly face pops out. He never was a good-looking guy, Vince. Got this thin face with old acne scars and his eyes are a little too close together. Now he grabs his shirt collar, gives it a tug, and says, a la Rodney, “My wife and I were very happy for twenty years…”

“Then we met,” Frank thinks.

“Then we met,” Vince says, and laughs. “Come in out of the rain, Frank. Prove everyone wrong, what they say about you.”

Vince goes back into the cabin and leaves the door open.

Frank steps in, the door shuts, and the garrote is around his neck and cutting into his throat before he can get his hands up. Which is a good thing, because your instinct is to try to get between the wire and your throat, and that’s actually the last thing you should do-you only end up getting your fingers sliced along with your windpipe.

The guy is huge. Frank can feel his height and his bulk and he knows he’s not going to outmuscle him. So he reaches behind him and jams his fingers into his attacker’s eyes, which doesn’t make the guy let go but does make him suck his breath in, and Frank uses that second to squat low, grab the man’s wrist, pivot, and hip-roll the guy to the deck.

His would-be strangler lands with a crash on the little dining table and Frank continues his roll, getting his body under the table just as Vince pulls a pistol and crouches to shoot him.

Frank’s gun slides out in one easy move. All he can see are Vena’s legs, so he aims at a point above them and fires twice, then sees Vince’s legs stagger back and collapse against the bulkhead, and hears Vince yell, “Oh fuck! Oh fuck!”

Frank closes his eyes and shoots through the bottom of the table three times. Splinters of plywood hit his face, and then everything is quiet. Frank opens his eyes and sees blood dripping down.

He stays under the table in case there’s a third guy.

He can hear running on the dock, two pairs of feet beating it out of there, and he figures it’s Mouse Junior and Travis.

Absolutely.

Frank makes himself wait for thirty seconds before he crawls out from under the table.

The would-be strangler is dead, two bullet holes and a bunch of plywood splinters in his face. And the guy is enormous-four bills easy. Frank checks out what’s left of the guy’s face. He recognizes him from someplace but can’t quite remember where.

Vince is still breathing, sitting with his back against the bulkhead, his hands trying to hold his guts in.

Frank squats down beside him. “Vince, who sent you?”

Vince’s eyes stare out into space. Frank has seen the look before-Vince isn’t going to make it. Whether he’s looking at the white light, or whatever, he’s already checked out ofthis motel, and whatever sound he’s hearing now, it isn’t Frank’s voice.

Frank gives it one more try, though. “Vince, whosent you?”

Nothing.

Frank puts the pistol barrel against Vince’s heart and pulls the trigger. Then he sits down to catch his breath, surprised and pissed off that his chest is pounding. He makes himself take a few long, deep breaths to slow his heart rate.

It takes a minute.

You’re not getting any younger, he thinks. And you almost weren’t getting anyolder, either. And don’t deserve to, either, being so stupid and careless.

Letting a punk kid like Mouse Junior set you up.

And that’s what he did. How do the kids say it these days? He “played” you. Worked on your ego and set you up.

Frank gets up and takes a long look at the dead guy on the table.

The wire garrote is still clutched in his hands. Old-school, Frank thinks, using a wire. But they probably didn’t want to risk the noise of a gun unless they had to. Use a silencer, then. Unless the garrote was meant to make it slow and painful, in which case this hit waspersonal.

But who has that kind of beef with me? he wonders.

Get real, he tells himself, it’s a long list.

Frank starts the engine. Then he goes back out and unmoors the boat from its slip. One piece of luck is that the two flanking boats are both empty, battened down for the winter. He goes back in, lets the engines warm up, then backs the boat out of the slip.

He steers it into the channel and heads out to sea.