The winter of Frankie Machine

21

John Heaney goes out for a cigarette break. Out by the Dumpster in back of Hunnybear’s.

It’s been a bitch of a night; the place is jammed with both the usual pack of locals and a swarm of tourists-some convention in from Omaha. Anyway, the girls are making money and the bar register’s ringing like a twenty-alarm fire.

John takes the pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and his lighter from his pants pocket, lights up, and leans back against the Dumpster. Suddenly, he’s choking as an arm comes across his throat and he feels himself being lifted off his feet.

Just an inch or so, but it’s enough. He can’t breathe and he can’t get traction to move.

“I thought we were friends, John,” he hears Frank Machianno say.

Frankie Machine is standing in the Dumpster, calf-deep in garbage, his strong left forearm locked across Heaney’s neck.

“Oh shit,” John says.

“Mouse Junior gave you up,” Frank says. “What was it, John? Did I give you a delivery of bad tuna, or what?”

“Oh shit,” John repeats.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Frank says.

The club’s back door opens and a wedge of yellow light spills out into the back. John feels himself being jerked up like a fish into a boat, and then he’s lying in garbage, Frank’s heavy body on top of him.

And a gun barrel pressed against his left temple.

“Go ahead and yell,” Frank whispers.

John shakes his head.

“Good decision,” Frank says. “Now make it two in a row-tell me who sent you to Mouse Junior.”

“Nobody,” John whispers.

“John, you’re a mediocre cook and a night manager at a titty joint,” Frank says. “You don’t have the swag to order a hit. And the next lie you tell me, I swear, I’ll pop you and leave your body here in the garbage, where it belongs.”

“I didn’t want to, Frank,” John whines. “They said they could help me.”

“Who, Johnny? Who came to you?”

“Teddy Migliore.”

Teddy Migliore, Frank thinks. Owner of Callahan’s and scion of the Combination. It’s not good news.

“Help you with what?”

“I’ve been indicted, Frank.”

“Indicted?”

“On this G-Sting shit,” John says. “I was the bagman. I brought cash to a cop. He was undercover.”

John blurts out the rest of the story. He was being squeezed from both sides, the feds offering him a deal to flip, the wise guys threatening to whack him to keep him from talking.

“I was totally fucked, Frank.”

Then Teddy Migliore offered him a way out: If John went to Mouse Junior and made him a deal, he could walk. The mob wouldn’t clip him and they’d get him off the indictment, or at least get him a pardon.

“And youbelieved this crap?” Frank asks him, knowing it’s a useless question. A condemned man will believe anything that will give him even a little hope.

He cocks the hammer of the pistol and feels John flinch underneath him.

“Don’t, Frank, please,” John says. “I’m sorry.”

Frank eases the hammer back down; then John’s body lurches into sobs.

“I’m going to leave now, Johnny,” Frank whispers. “You lie here for five minutes before you get out. If you feel bad about what you did to me, you’ll wait an hour before you call Teddy. If you don’t, well, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Frank climbs out of the Dumpster and brushes the garbage off. It’ll be good to get someplace where he can take a shower and get a change of clothes, but right now he has something else to do.

He walks to his car and opens the trunk.