The winter of Frankie Machine

11

Bap came on the dock one night when Frank had just finished squaring the deck away and was headed for a shower and a night of struggling against Patty’s virtue. You didn’t see a lot of guys in suits and ties on the dock, so Frank lamped Bap right away as something different, but he didn’t know who he was.

Except the guy seemed to know Frank.

“Are you Frankie Machianno?” Bap asked.

“Yeah.” Frank was afraid now that the guy was a cop and maybe Marie had decided she wanted to press charges against DeSanto after all.

The guy stuck out his hand. “We got the same first name. I’m Frank Baptista.”

Frank was shocked. This guy sure didn’t look like a famous button man-round, chubby, soft body, meaty jowls, bottle-thick glasses over owl eyes. Balding, with a greasy comb-over. Bap made Momo look like Troy Donohue.

This is the guy, Frank wondered, that killed Lew Brunemann, “Russian Louie” Strauss, and Red Sagunda when the Cleveland mob tried to move on San Diego? This is the guy who was boss here since the forties, until he went into the can for bribery?

“Can I buy you a drink?” Bap asked. “A cup of coffee?”

I should have said no, Frank thinks now. I should have said, No offense, Mr. Baptista, but I’m out of that now. I seen enough. But I didn’t. I went for a beer with the Bap.

Frank followed him up to Pacific Beach to one of the joints near Crystal Pier. They got a booth in the back, where Bap ordered a coffee for himself and a beer for Frank. Bap spent a long time stirring milk and sugar into his coffee, and then he asked, “Did you like Momo?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“I hear you still bring Marie her groceries,” Bap said. “That speaks well of you. It shows you have respect.”

“Momo was always good to me.”

Bap took this in, then made small talk, but it was clear to Frank that the former boss wasn’t really interested in chitchat, so Frank finished his beer and said he had a date. Bap thanked him for his time and said it was nice meeting him. Frank figured that was that, but about a month later, Bap showed up at the dock again and said, “Come on, let’s go for a drive.”

Frank followed him to a Cadillac parked on Ocean Avenue. Bap tossed him the keys and sat in the front passenger seat. Frank got behind the wheel and started the engine. “Where do you want to go?”

“Don’t matter. Just drive.”

Frank pulled onto Sunset Drive and headed south, cruising alongside his surfing spots.

“You drive good,” Bap said. “You’re my driver now.”

And that was it. Frank went to work for Bap. He drove the man everywhere-to the grocery store, the barber’s, to clubs, to Momo’s old house to visit Marie, to the track when the horses were running at Del Mar. He took Bap to see all the bookies, the loan sharks, the hustlers in San Diego.

DeSanto didn’t like it.

The L.A. boss knew that Bap was out, that he was going to want his old territory back. He was going to want a piece of the money on the street, the gambling, anything else they had going in San Diego, and DeSanto didn’t want to give him any of that. Bap was a big name, a guy with ambitions, and L.A. didn’t want a strong guy down in San Diego wanting to go his own way again.

“We just got those Indians back on the reservation,” DeSanto told Nicky Locicero. “Last thing we need is a guy who thinks he’s a chief running around down there.”

So he tried to throw Bap a few crumbs off the table, and Bap wasn’t shy about expressing his dissatisfaction.

That was always Bap’s problem: He could never swallow a resentment. It always came out his mouth. At the end of the day, it’s what killed him. Frank could still remember Bap mouthing off back in ’64, right at the Del Mar track, with half the wise guys in Southern California within earshot. “What am I, a dog? He throws me a fewbones ?”

Frank was running Bap’s bets to the window, and Bap wasn’t doing so good. No wonder he needs money, Frank thought; he has a fondness for slow horses. Bap threw another handful of losing tickets at his feet and said, “I’m in the joint for three years, not earning. This guy has to let me eat, for Chrissakes.”

He said this right in front of three L.A. guys down for the race season, so he had to know it was going straight back to DeSanto as soon as they could get to a telephone. And the L.A. boss wasn’t going to be happy hearing this shit from Bap.

Especially what Bap said next: “Maybe I should just start my own fucking thing down here.”

Which was Bap justbegging to get clipped.

DeSanto wasn’t long in honoring the request. He set up a meet at which Bap would be killed.

And his driver with him, if it fell that way.

They met in a vacant lot up in Orange County.

In those days, Frank remembers, Orange County was mostly just that, orange groves with Disneyland thrown on top. Memory is a funny thing, because he can still smell the oranges from that night.

Anyway, he pulled into this red dirt lot alongside an orange grove on an isolated road. DeSanto and Locicero were already there, Locicero behind the wheel of DeSanto’s black Cadillac, the boss sitting behind him in the backseat.

“Don’t worry,” Bap said when he saw the scared look in Frank’s eyes. “Nick has guaranteed my safety.”

Bap got out and walked over to the Cadillac. Locicero got out, snubbed his cigarette out in the dirt, and walked over to him. Bap raised his arms and Locicero patted him down, then nodded, and Bap got into the back with DeSanto.

Locicero leaned back against the hood, keeping an eye on Frank. Nodded at Frank and smiled.

As he did, another car pulled into the lot, right in back of Frank, trapping him. Frank started to sweat. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw that there were two guys in the front of the Lincoln. One he recognized as Jimmy Forliano; the other he didn’t know.

It was a younger guy, about his own age. But this guy had a confident look that made him seem older.

Then Frank saw what looked like lightning in the back of DeSanto’s Caddy, and it took him a second to realize that they were muzzle flashes.

Locicero smiled and lit another cigarette.

You were so scared, Frank remembers now. You tried to start the car, but your hand was shaking on the key and there was no place to go anyway, so you started to open the door and try to make a run for it, but Forliano was already at the window.

“Easy, kid.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

Forliano just smiled.

And then the back door of the Caddy opened up and-

Bap got out. Waved his hand at you to come over.

Forliano opened the door for you and you walked over to Bap, your legs shaking, your knees rattling, and then Bap handed you the gun.

“Momo was your friend, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah…”

“He was my friend, too,” Bap said. “This cocksucker had to go.”

Hitting aboss? Frank wanted to pay DeSanto back for Momo, too, but hitting a boss was suicide. Even if you did manage to get to him, you’d have every family in the country after you. And maybe Bap used to be the boss in San Diego, but he was demoted to a common soldier when he went into the can.

“You gotta put a couple into him,” Bap was saying.

“That’s okay,” Frank said.

“No, you gotta,” Bap said, “so you can’t be a witness. This boat, we got to be in together.”

He walked Frank over to the other side of the Caddy and opened the door. De Santo’s body, with two holes in the head, toppled halfway out. His glasses slid down his nose and dropped in the dirt.

“Put two in his chest,” Bap said.

Frank hesitated.

“I like you, kid,” Bap said. “I don’t want to have to leave you in this field with him.”

Bap walked away. Frank knew he was listening for the shots, waiting for the flashes. He tried to lift the gun and shoot, but he just couldn’t do it. Then he heard someone come up behind him.

“Your first one?”

It was the young guy from the car parked behind him. Jet-black hair, medium height, wide shoulders on an otherwise-thin frame.

“Yeah,” Frank said.

“I’ll help you,” the guy said. “It’s easier than you think.”

The guy helped him aim the gun at DeSanto’s body.

“Now just pull the trigger.”

Frank did. His hand was shaking, but he couldn’t miss at that range.

The body jolted with each shot, though. Then it slid down the open door and onto the dirt, raising a little cloud of dust when it hit. The guy beside Frank took his own gun out and put two more into DeSanto’s corpse.

“Now,” the guy said, “we’re in it together. You and me.”

Bap walked back over and pissed on the body.

This was years before all the DNA stuff, so nobody cared in those days. Bap just whipped his thing out and pissed into DeSanto’s gaping mouth.

“This is for Marie,” he said. He finished, zipped up, and then said to Frank, “Drive me home.”

Frank sort of shuffled back to the car. Forliano stopped him and took the gun out of his hand. “We’ll take care of this.”

“Okay.”

“You did good, kid,” Forliano said. “You’re all right.”

The younger guy was standing there, too, smiling at Frank like he was in on some kind of funny practical joke. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You did fine.”

He had an East Coast accent.

“Thanks,” Frank said. “You know, for helping me out there.”

“Forget about it.” The guy offered his hand. “Mike Pella.”

“Frank Machianno.”

They shook hands.

Locicero got into the car with Forliano and Pella and they took off. Frank got behind the wheel and this time managed to turn the key in the ignition. The wheels spun in the dirt as he hit the gas.

“Drive slow, not fast,” Bap instructed him. “Always drive the speed limit leaving a job. Last thing you want is to get stopped for speeding; you get a cop putting you near the scene. Just get out on the highway, get in the flow of traffic.”

Frank did what he was told. They were a good twenty miles south on the 5 before Bap said, “I been in Chicago.”

Okay, Frank thought.

“You don’t get what I mean,” Bap said. “I mean I talked with certain people there.”

Which did nothing to enlighten Frank.

“L.A. runs San Diego,” Bap explained, “but L.A. don’t run L.A. L.A.’s never really been its own thing. Used to be it answered to New York, to the Jews, Siegel and Lansky. Now L.A. can’t shake its own dick after it takes a piss, it don’t put a call in to Chicago first.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Because you ain’t supposed to,” Bap said. “L.A. don’t want San Diego guys crying to Chicago, they got a problem with L.A.”

But that’s what you just did, Frank thought.

“I go back,” Bap said, like he read Frank’s mind. “I was doing work for Chicago when Al DeSanto was getting Jack Drina his coffees. I talked with certain people there, and they didn’t like the cocksucker, either.”

“They gave the okay?” Frank was shocked.

“That ain’t the way it works, Frankie,” Bap said. “They don’t say yes. They just don’t say no. That means, something happens to the guy in L.A., they ain’t gonna do nothing about it. Makes you feel any better, Detroit said the same thing.”

Now Frank got it. “And Locicero’s the new boss.”

“Everyone has his price, Frankie,” Bap said. “Never forget that.”

Frank didn’t.

So that was that, Frank remembers now.

Locicero became the boss, Bap got San Diego, although as a captain in the L.A. family.

Except that wasn’t quite it, was it?

There was that afternoon you picked up Marie Anselmo’s grocery order and brought it to the house and she answered the door but wouldn’t let you bring the bags in like usual, but you could see through the open door.

Bap, in the hallway, pulling his pants on.

He married Marie six months later.

After that, no one ever whispered a word about what happened that night at Momo’s with DeSanto.

Frank sure as hell didn’t.

He’d decided to go straight. So one day, he drove to Oceanside, saw the recruiter, and was in the Marines about five minutes after that.

Like the Surfaris song that was so popular then:

Surfer Joe joined Uncle Sam’s Marines today

They stationed him at Pendleton, not far away…

It’s funny, Frank thinks now.

I got my training from the federal government.