The winter of Frankie Machine

70

Frank dumps the Celica off in Point Loma and walks back to Ocean Beach.

If you can call it walking. More like limping, hobbling.

Like some old B-movie monster, Frank thinks, emerging from the swamp. It’s a good thing it’s pouring like hell and the rain-phobic San Diegans are off the streets, so they can’t see this messed-up, bleeding freak lurching along the sidewalks.

They’d call the cops.

And that would be that.

Frank doesn’t want to go back to his safe house. It’s risky goingback to anywhere, but he has no place else to go. And he has to go someplace-get out of the elements, clean his wounds, get some rest, figure out his next move.

He unlocks the door of his Narragansett Street pad, not knowing what might be waiting for him in there. The cops? The feds? The Wrecking Crew?

But nobody’s in the apartment.

Frank gets out of his wet, bloody clothes and gets into the shower, both to get warm and wash his wounds. The spray stings like needles. He gets out, gently daubs himself dry, and looks at the blood left on the towel. Then he finds the hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet, sits down on the edge of the bathtub, and looks at the deep scrapes on his legs. He takes a deep breath, then pours the peroxide on the wounds. Sings “Che gelida manina” to distract his mind from the pain. It doesn’t really work. He examines the wounds, then pours more peroxide into them until he sees the chemical bubble up.

Then he repeats the process on his arms and chest.

He gets up slowly, finds gauze pads and medical tape, and dresses the wounds. It takes him a long time. Hurts to move his right arm anyway, and he’s tired-bone-tired. Part of him just wants to lie down and give up. Just lie there until they come and put two in the back of his head.

But you can’t do that, he tells himself as he applies the gauze and wraps the tape around it to hold it in place.

You have a daughter who needs you.

So keep your head in the game.

He makes himself a pot of strong black coffee and sits down to think it over.

What the hell was Mike trying to tell you?

That he was working for the feds.

That the feds forced him to set you up.

But why?

Why would they want me dead?

Doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe it was just more Mike Pella bull. Like him going to the refrigerator to get the gun, knowing he was about to make his curtain call, and going out singing some old song they used to like back in the day.

Back in the summer of ’72.

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…

Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord, Frank thinks. Keep going, finish it. There’s something there.

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

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no…

No, Frank thinks.

Not fortunate one.

FortunateSon.

And not the summer of ’72.

The summer of ’85.

Summer 1985.