The winter of Frankie Machine

81

Frank calls information and gets the number of the senator’s office.

“I’d like to speak to the senator, please.”

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“Tell him it’s a buddy from his Solana Beach days.”

“I don’t think he’s going to be available, sir.”

“See, and I think he is,” Frank says. “Why don’t you tell him it’s about Summer, and we’ll see who’s right.”

A minute later, Fortunate Son gets on the phone.

“If you record your calls,” Frank says, “I suggest you shut the machine off.”

“Who is this?”

“You know who it is,” Frank says. “I’ll wait.”

Fortunate Son comes back on the line a few seconds later. “Okay. Speak.”

“You know who this is.”

“I have a pretty good guess.”

“You have the wrong guy,” Frank says. “The wrong chauffeur. I know it’s hard to tell the little people apart, but it was Mike Pella in the limo that night, not me. If it had been me, none of this would have happened, because I wouldn’t have let you beat a girl to death and get away with it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Frank holds the little dictaphone up to the receiver and plays Donnie Garth’s narration.

“He’s lying,” Fortunate Son says.

“Yeah,” Frank says. “Look, I don’t care. Ishould care that you killed that girl and now you killed that other one, but the point is, I have a life I want to live and a family to take care of. So here’s the deal, Senator. I want a million dollars in cash, or I go public with this. I know I can’t go to the cops or the feds, because you own them, but I’ll go to the media, and then, at the very least, your career is over. Maybe we can’t make you for the girl’s murder, but we can put you at the scene, and that’s all it will take.”

“Perhaps we could take the position that-”

“A million dollars, Senator, in cash,” Frank repeats, “and I want you to deliver it personally.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Fortunate Son says.

“Which?” Frank asks. “The cash, or you?”

“Me,” Fortunate Son says.

“Then send your pimp, Garth,” Frank says, and tells him where and when.

A long silence, then: “How do I know I can trust you?”

“I’m a man of my word,” Frank says. “Are you?”

“I am.”

“Then we have a deal?”

“We do.”

Fortunate Son hangs up the phone.

Frank turns off the tape recorder.

He’s not a child-he knows they’re not coming with any million dollars.

They’re coming to kill him.

I could run, Frank thinks. And I could make a good run of it. I could stretch it out for years, maybe. But what kind of life is that? Watching myself slowly become poor Jay Voorhees, until I’m relieved when they finally catch up with me?

No kind of life at all.

So let them come.

Let’s get this thing done.