The winter of Frankie Machine

48

The damn thing was, the strip club business had started as a limo business.

It was back in ’85.

Vegas had collapsed, and Mike and Frank were pretty much alone down in San Diego, unless you counted the Detroit guys, which Frank didn’t. The Migliores always did their own business, and they always seemed to do it without getting busted.

Frank didn’t care anyway. He was out of it by then.

Three-plus years of relative peace and quiet, and life was good. He had his home, his wife, his little fish business, and the limo service was booming in the easy-money eighties.

And then Patty got pregnant.

It was the most amazing thing. Back in the seventies, they had tried and tried, with no luck. Then, as their relationship deteriorated, they had stopped trying, then stopped making love altogether.

Then one night they went out to dinner. They had a little wine, had a little time together, and then they went home, fell into bed, andboom.

When Patty told him the news, he was over the moon.

So, coming into the summer of ’85, they were about to have a baby.

“You want to pick up a little easy money?” Mike asked him one day.

Frank did-the baby was due in a couple of weeks and a little extra cash sounded good.

“What’s the job?” he asked.

The job was that this banker was having a weekend-long party for a bunch of business associates. All they had to do, Mike told him, was drive a couple of cars, provide security at the party.

“Sounds good,” Frank said.

“There’s one little thing,” Mike said.

Of course, Frank thought. There’s always one little thing. “What?”

“The guy putting this party together?”

“Yeah?”

“Donnie Garth.”

“I’m out,” Frank said.

“Come on,” Mike said.

“Is thisyou talking?” Frank asked. “Mr. ‘There’s Nothing I Hate More Than a Rat’ Pella? Garth’s the biggest rat there ever was. I’m amazed he’s still on top of the dirt.”

“He’s connected, Frankie,” Mike said. “Bigger than you and I can conceive of.”

“I’ve done enough work for Donnie Garth,” Frank said. “Pass.”

“They asked for you personally, Frank.”

“Who did?”

“Old man Migliore,” Mike said. “And the guy from New Orleans.”

“Marcello?” Frank asked. “I don’t have anything to do with Marcello.”

“Yeah, but Garth does,” Mike told him. “He’s president of an S and L, and the guy from New Orleans has an interest. So do the Migliores.”

So that’s how Donnie Garth has kept breathing, Frank thought. He bought his way out. He paid for his pass.

“What do I have to do?” Frank sighed.

“Just drive,” Mike said. “Hang around the party, make sure everything stays copacetic. I’m telling you, it’s a straight job.”

Yeah, Frank thought, a straight job.

The “straight job” started with him driving one of the S amp;L officers to a bank in Rancho Santa Fe, where the guy took out fifty thousand in cash and then told Frank to drive him to Price Club.

Price Club? Frank wondered. What are you going to buy with fifty K at Price Club?

Women.

They met the madam in the parking lot. What was her name? Frank wonders now. Karen, that was it. She drove up in a Mercedes 500 convertible, and the bank officer leaned out the window of the limo to give her the cash. When they were driving away, the guy said, “I have an M.B.A. in finance from Wharton, and this is what I’ve become-a pimp.”

What was that guy’s name? Frank asks himself now.

Sanders-no, Saunders -John Saunders, another WASP who was shocked and appalled that his hands got dirty. Frank didn’t bother to tell him that pimps didn’t pay money; theytook it. And that Saunders wasn’t a pimp, but a procurer. Anyway, he took the guy down to the harbor, where Garth owned a 120-foot yacht, and dropped him off.

“Pick up the girls at eight,” Saunders said as he got out of the car. He gave Frank an address in Del Mar.

Patty would have had a fit, Frank thinks now, if she had seen the next part of the “straight job” you were working, swinging by a brothel to pick up a carful of the most gorgeous working girls you’ve ever seen.

Summer Lorensen was the prettiest, though.

She didn’t have that worn hooker look. Instead, she looked like your stereotypical corn-fed midwestern farm girl-blond, blue-eyed, peaches-and-cream complexion, the girl-next-door type thatPlayboy liked to use for the centerfold. Shespoke that way, too, with that sweet “oh shucks” manner, and she even called him “Mr. Machianno.” It was her first time in a limo and she was all excited about that. First time on a yacht, and she was all excited aboutthat, too.

The girls were all dressed to the nines and had clearly been chosen so that there was someone to suit every taste, although any man would have been more than happy to have any one of them.

Summer Lorensen, though, she was something else.

So Frank picked up one carload of girls, Mike picked up another, and they drove to the harbor. Saunders was there to meet them on the dock. He and Frank and Mike helped the girls in their high heels negotiate the step down onto the yacht; then Saunders said, “Now, look, what you see on the boat, who you see on the boat, stays on the boat. I’m counting on your absolute discretion.”

“Discretion is us,” Mike assured him, smiling at Frank. Like, We’ve seen things that would make this Yuppie fuck piss his pants, and we’ve kept them to ourselves. What do you have to show us?

Well, a lot.

It was almost comical at first, when the girls stepped down onto the deck and these bankers stopped talking and justgawked, almost drooled, like fat men at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Well, they weremostly bankers. You also had a couple of federal judges, three or four U.S. congressmen, one senator, and a few just general political types. Frank didn’t know who they were, but Mike did, and he stood there pointing them out by name.

“How do you know all this?” Frank asked.

“My business to know,” Mike said. “It could come in handy, a congressman in your pocket.”

“Tell me you’re not thinking of blackmailing one of these guys.”

Frank’s philosophy was, If the feds aren’t messing with you, don’t mess with them. Let sleeping dogs lie.

Mike didn’t answer because Garth himself got up to make a “welcome aboard” speech to his guests. The guy was actually wearing a captain’s uniform, with the blue jacket, white trousers, and the billed hat. He looked like a total doofus, but then again, he was a total doofus who owned his own bank.

Well, a savings and loan, anyway.

So Garth welcomed his guests, greeted the ladies, even used the “What you see on the boatstays on the boat” line. Got a good laugh when he said that, as a ship’s captain, he could even marry people, the unions being legal as long as they were at sea.

Which would be all night.

With that, they shoved off and headed out into the harbor.

Frank stood along the fore rail and watched as the men picked out their partners. It was remarkable, but even with the knowledge that these were working girls, the partiers seemed to feel the need to chat them up first, have a drink, and flirt. And the girls were pros-they laughed at the jokes, posed prettily, flirted back. It wasn’t long before they paired off and started to drift down into the cabins belowdecks.

Discretion, Frank thought.

But inhibitions went south when the coke came out.

Piles of it, served up by John Saunders, like he was a waiter. Pimp and waiter, Frank thinks now, that’s the career an M.B.A. got you in the coked-up, easy-money eighties. The straight businessmen and the pols and the hookers were snorting it up with one-hundred-dollar bills, more than one of which Frank saw fly off unnoticed into the night breeze.

The coke turned the party into a floating orgy, a maritime bacchanalia.

CaligulameetsCaptains Courageous.

It was an incredible scene. With the lights of San Diego as a backdrop, a real-life porn extravaganza was played out on the deck of Garth’s yacht. It seemed like the whole party was in on it.

Except Mike Pella.

And Frank.

And Summer Lorensen.

Because it was Frank’s job to keep her out of it. Saunders had come up to him earlier and said, “She’s not part of the pass-around pack. She’s for theafter -party party. The VIP A list, at Donald’s beach house. Keep the riffraff away from her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s bait,” Saunders said. “We have her slotted for a particular individual, and not yet.”

So Summer sat with Frank and Mike most of the evening, talking, laughing, pretending not to notice the scene that was evolving around them. She told them about her high school days, about going to college for a year but not really liking it and dropping out. Eventually, she told them about getting pregnant and having her daughter and how the boyfriend she’d thought loved her just took off.

And sure, guys came up to hit on her, but Frank or Mike would quietly say, “She’s not for you,” and there weren’t a lot of guys on this earth who would take on either Mike or Frank, never mind both of them, so it just wasn’t a problem.

There was one guy who ogled her from a distance. He was young, maybe in his late twenties, early thirties, with the boyish face of a perpetual frat rat. He never came close, but from time to time Frank would see him checking her out from ten, fifteen feet away. And he had this smarmy smile on his face-not bold enough to be a leer, but confident, like he had a secret and it was a good one.

Mike noticed Frank checking him out.

“You know who that is?” Mike asked.

“No.”

Mike smiled and whispered the answer.

“No kidding?” Frank said, taking another look at the senator’s son.

Sure, they already had one senator on the boat, but just like there were bosses and there werebosses, there were senators and there weresenators. Same as you had, say, bosses of Kansas City or Jersey or, for that matter, L.A., and you treated them with respect, even though they weren’t in the same league as bosses in Chicago, Philly, and New York.

So this guy’s daddy was asenator who chaired a key banking committee. Daddy might even be president someday, not of some bank, but of theUnited States, and even the one senator on the boat and a bunch of congressmen were treating junior with some deference, even letting him cut in on the line to blow some coke.

Frank and Mike were watching this action when Mike started to sing:

“Some folks are born to wave the flag,

Ooh, they’re red, white and blue.

And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief,’

Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord…”

And Frank joined in with him on the chorus:

“It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son.”

So that was it-they dubbed the frat boy “Fortunate Son,” and Fortunate Son was checking Summer Lorensen out like something he thought he should own.

She’s bait. We have her slotted for a particular individual, and not yet.

And she was amazing, Frank remembers. Her colleagues were giving blow jobs and doing threesomes and foursomes just feet away from her, and she just kept chattering on about the girls’ basketball team at her high school, and how nice the yacht was, and how pretty the city lights were shining on the water.

CaligulameetsPollyanna.

She eventually fell asleep, sitting in that deck chair, breathing gently, her mouth just open, a thin sheen of perspiration glistening on the just-visible hairs above her upper lip.

The yacht came back toward the dock that morning like a plague ship, bodies strewn about the deck in various states of undress, moans emerging from unconscious mouths as the smell of stale sweat and sex cut through the salt air.

Forty minutes out, Frank and Mike helped Saunders rouse the partiers, get them dressed, and pour some coffee and orange juice down their throats. The guests left the boat happily exhausted and slunk into waiting cars and limousines.

The lucky few were invited back to Garth’s house-not the one in La Jolla, but his “weekend home” ten minutes away in Solana Beach. Frank drove Summer there. She slept most of the way and only woke up as they were pulling into Garth’s driveway.

“Wow,” she said.

Honest to God, Frank thinks, she actually said “Wow.”

Not that Garth’s beach house wasn’t worth a “Wow.” At $1.5 million back in 1985, it should have been pretty impressive, and it didn’t disappoint. It was long, sleek, white, and modern, its floor-to-ceiling windows practically inviting the ocean in.

Frank can’t imagine what the place would go for now.

Six, seven mil easy.

Mike pulled in and opened the door for a second girl, a stunning redhead with green eyes, sophisticated where Summer was naive, exuding an aggressive, experienced sexuality in contrast to Summer’s innocence.

Whatwas her name? Frank tries to think.

Alison. Alison…something. She was from someplace in the South, or at least she had the accent.

Garth came out of the house, followed by Fortunate Son, who was dressed in nothing but a smile and the towel wrapped around his waist.

Turned out that he was the entire A list.

You served her up, Frank thinks now. Served her like a special dish.

Get a grip, he tells himself now. She was ahooker -the fresh, innocent virgin persona was part of her act. Itwas her hook, her appeal; it drove up her price. The gorgeous girl next door you always wanted but couldn’t have.

Unless you were Fortunate Son.

Then there wasnothing you wanted and couldn’t have.

Fortunate Son wanted them both.

Of course he did, Frank thinks. Who wouldn’t? Be honest with yourself-if you could have everything you wanted, wouldn’t you take it? And if you knew you were going to get what you wanted, you wouldn’t have been in any hurry, either. Nobody was going to take it away from you, so why not wait? If you were used to getting anything you wanted, maybe the waiting was better than the getting.

The girls said they really wanted to take showers. They went inside for a while and came out in bikinis; then everyone went for a long walk on the beach, with Frank and Mike trailing behind, out of earshot but within sight.

Nobody went in the water, Frank remembers.

Well, Summer ran in up to her knees and ran back yelling that it was cold, and Fortunate Son wrapped his arms around her and rubbed her back to warm her up. Then they all went back to the house, where lunch was served outside on the deck.

You and Mike sat in the kitchen, Frank remembers, and ate with the cook. You kept the door open so you could see what was going on outside. Funny the things you remember-the men drank beer and the girls had mimosas.

After lunch, the girls said they were sleepy and the men said they could use a siesta, too, and everyone repaired to separate bedrooms. Frank and Mike agreed to split a watch and Frank took the first one. When Mike relieved him, Frank went back to his car, stretched out on the front seat, and fell sound asleep.

When he woke up, he walked back to the house to see what was up. He looked down at the living room through the blue-tinted glass.

Summer, dressed in an open white robe over her bikini, was on her knees on the lush white carpet. Alison was kneeling beside her, gently kissing her neck. Donnie Garth and Fortunate Son sat in two big black leather easy chairs, watching. A bowl of cocaine was set on the chrome and glass coffee table; the remnants of lines looked like white dust.

Alison nuzzled Summer’s neck and Summer said, “If you do that, I can’t stop you.”

Alison said, “I know,” and reached around and unclasped the top of the bathing suit. Alison dipped her head down and kissed one breast and then the other and gently pushed Summer down on her back and then slid down herself, kissing her along her stomach and then across the top of her panties as Summer moaned and said, “I’ve never done this before.”

Alison sat up and pulled the panties off, then opened Summer’s legs and laid down between them, and soon Summer’s hips started to roll; then her back arched and her fingers dug into the lush white carpet.

It was straight from a bad porn movie, Frank thought. A parody, an act-“The Corruption of Innocence”-but a good one, simultaneously stupid, obscene, and compelling. Summer was a good actress-she alternately resisted and succumbed-and, toward the end, she lay with her head in Alison’s lap as Fortunate Son, his dick coated with numbing cocaine, moved in for the final act.

That’s when the radio squawked in Mike’s car. Mike wasn’t paying any attention, so Frank got in and answered it. It was the office dispatcher.

“Christ, I’m glad I reached you,” she said. “Patty went into labor. She’s at Scripps.”

Frank hustled out of the car.

“I gotta go,” he told Mike.

Mike was transfixed on the scene inside the house.

“Now?”

“Patty went into labor.”

Mike didn’t take his eyes off the window. “Go. Go. ”

Frank jumped back into his car and sped out. He made it to the hospital in time and was in the room when Jill was born. He held his daughter in his arms and his life changed.

Like that.

Frank learned later-with the rest of the suckers-that the savings and loan industry was the biggest bust-out scheme in history, dwarfing anything any wise guy ever managed to put together.

Here’s how the scam worked:

Garth and the other S amp;L guys would get themselves savings and loan operations, make unsecured loans to themselves and their partners through shell corporations, then default on the loans and drain their S amp;Ls of all their assets.

Garth took his own Hammond Savings and Loan down for a billion and a half bones.

Identical in shape to your classic Mafia bust-out, Frank thinks now, except we only managed to do it with restaurants and bars, maybe the occasional hotel. These guys busted out the whole country to the tune of $37 billion and Congress hit up the working guy to pay for it.

The whole S amp;L house of cards eventually came tumbling down, and Garth and a few of the others did some time polishing their short games at various Club Feds, and the senators and congressmen who had been on the boat, literally and figuratively, got on CNN to proclaim what a disgrace it all was.

Karen Wilkenson did a couple of years for pandering. John Saunders went away for a year for misuse of bank funds.

Fortunate Son went on to become a U.S. senator.

Summer Lorensen had a sadder ending, Frank remembers. They found her body a few days later in a ditch off the road on Mount Laguna. She ended up a victim of the Green River Killer, who picked up prostitutes, raped and killed them, then stuffed their mouths with rocks.

The police didn’t catch him for years.

Not surprising. Back then, the cops had a phrase for the murders of prostitutes and junkies: “No humans involved.”

But Frank felt bad, thinking about that sweet girl lying off a road with rocks in her mouth.

But then he forgot about it.

He was busy.

The Strip Club Wars were about to break out.