The winter of Frankie Machine

85

Frank sits in the little shack in the hills outside of Escondido. He’s known about the place for years-it sits up a dirt road in a canyon above the orange groves. It’s a place to hidemojados -they live up here away from themigra and go down just before dawn to pick the oranges, then return at dusk.

Except there are nomojados now.

You don’t pick oranges in the winter, in the rain.

Nevertheless, he can smell the tangy scent of the orange trees below. Makes him nostalgic, sad, that he won’t be around to taste the oranges in the spring.

He has one gun and four bullets.

It won’t be enough.

They’ll be coming with an army-so four bullets, or forty, or four hundred, or four thousand, it won’t make any difference, because there’s only one of you.

And you can’t win this battle.

All those cliches about life-they’re all true. If you could cook one more meal, ride one more wave, have a chat with a customer, smile at a friend, hug your lover, hold your child. If you had more time, you’d spend it differently.

If only you had more time.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, he thinks. After all, you’ve got it coming. You’ve done a lot of bad things in this world. You’ve taken life, and that’s the worst thing there is. You can justify it all you want, but when you look back at your life with your eyes open, you know what you were.

All you can do-maybe, maybe -is get a small measure of justice for a dead woman.

Take the rocks from her mouth.

Maybe give her daughter a chance for a real future.

The way you’d like someone to giveyour daughter a chance.

Jill.

What’s she going to do?

You have to take care of your own daughter.

He calls Sherm.

“Frank, thank God, I thought-”

“Don’t thank him yet,” Frank says. “Look, I need to know-”

“It was the feds, Frank,” Sherm says. “They had me under. It was your buddy Dave Hansen-he had me wired. He passed the info along.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Frank says. “All that matters is that Jill and Patty are taken care of. If you flipped on me, you flipped on me. I’m sure you had your reasons. It’s blood under the bridge-”

“Frank-”

“There are some properties,” Frank says. “You know how to dig them out. Something should happen to me, liquidate the assets, make sure Jill’s medical school is paid for.”

“You can count on it, Frank.”

“They have to let me take care of my family,” Frank says. “They can do what they want with me, butthey have to let me take care of my family. That was always the way, back in the old times.”

“Patty and Jill will be taken care of,” Sherm says. “You have my word.”

It’s hard to hear the tone of a man’s voice over the telephone, especially these tinny cell phones, but Frank is satisfied by what he can hear. It’s all he can do anyway, trust The Nickel to do the right thing by the money, even if Sherm did betray him.

If there’s a trace of honor left in this thing, they’ll let a man go out knowing his family is taken care of.

“Hey, Sherm,” Frank says, “you remember that time down in Rosarito? You were wearing that big sombrero?”

“I remember, Frank.”

“Those were good times.”

“Hell yes, they were.”

“Good-bye, Sherm.”

“Go with God, my friend.”

Frank has set this up so they’ll have to come uphill and into the sun. He wants every little edge he can get, even though it won’t make any difference in the end. But take, say, Jimmy the Kid out with you, you’ve done a good thing.

Maybe it’ll count in my favor when I answer to the man.

Go with God.

He hears the car before he sees it.

Then the engine noise stops.

Smart, Frank thinks. They’re coming in on foot. They’ll give the cabin lots of room, work around it, and come in from all sides. He settles in, lays the pistol barrel on the windowsill, and gets ready to put one in the first head that comes into sight.

A head appears, but he doesn’t shoot.

Because it’s Donna.