Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

Donna has great lingerie.

She gets it wholesale from her suppliers. So she indulges herself. Well, she indulgesme, Frank thinks as he leans over to take off his shoes and then loosens his tie. Once, just once, he took all his clothes off and was in bed naked when she came out, and she asked, “And what areyou assuming?” and asked him to leave.

The wait is interminable, and he enjoys every second of it. He knows she’s dressing carefully to please him, freshening her makeup, putting on perfume, brushing her hair.

The door opens; she shuts off the bathroom light and comes out.

She never fails to knock him out.

Tonight, she’s wearing a sheer emerald green peignoir over a black garter belt and hose and has high freaking heels on. She turns around slowly, to let him enjoy every angle of her, and then he gets up and takes her in his arms. He knows that now she wants him to take over.

He knows you don’t “have sex” with Donna; you make love to her-slowly, carefully, finding each little pleasure spot on her amazing body and lingering there. And she’s a dancer-she wants it to be a dance, so she glides over him with a dancer’s grace and eroticism, using her breasts, her hands, her mouth, her hair on him, undressing him and making him hard. Then he lays her down on the bed and moves down her long frame and pushes up the peignoir, and she’s dotted perfume on her thighs, but she doesn’t need any perfume there, Frank thinks.

He takes his time. There’s no hurry and his own need can wait, wants to wait, because it will be all the better for the waiting.

It’s like the ocean, he thinks later, like a wave coming in and then receding. Again and again, and then building like an ocean swell, thick and heavy and picking up speed. He likes to look at her face when he’s making love to her, likes to see her green eyes brighten and the smile on her elegant lips, and, tonight, hear the sound of the rain pelting the window glass.

They lie there for a long time afterward, listening to the rain.

“That was beautiful,” he says.

“Always.”

“You okay?”

Frank, the working guy, always checking his work.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “You?”

“That was me screaming,” he says.

He’s lying there politely, considerately, but she knows that he’s already restless. It’s fine with her; she’s not that much of a cuddler, and anyway, morning comes early and she sleeps better alone. So she gives the standard cue: “I’m going to wash up a little.”

Which means that he can get dressed while she’s in the bathroom, and when she comes out, they can go through the comfortable ritual:

“Oh? Are you heading out?”

“Yeah, I think so. Busy day tomorrow.”

“You can stay if you want.”

And he’ll pretend to consider it, then say, “Nah, I’d better get home.”

And then they’ll have a warm kiss and he’ll say, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

And then he’ll be gone. To go home, grab a little sleep, and start the whole thing over again.

It’s the routine.

Except tonight turns out different.

Tonight, he drives home and there’s a car in the alley.

A car he doesn’t know.

Frank knows the neighbors, knows all their vehicles. None of them owns a Hummer. And even through the now-driving rain, he can see there are two guys sitting in the front seat.

They aren’t pros; he knows that straight off.

Pros would never use a vehicle as conspicuous as a Hummer. And they aren’t cops, because even the feds don’t have the budget for a vehicle like that. And third, professionals would know that I love life, and because I love life, I haven’t, in thirty years, pulled into my house at night without driving around the block first. Especially when my garage entrance is in an alley where I could get cut off.

So if these guys were pros, they wouldn’t be sitting in the alley; they’d be at least half a block down, wait for me to pull into the alley, and then come in.

They spotted him, though, as he drove by.

Or they think they did.

“That was him,” Travis says.

“Bull fucking shit,” J. answers. “How can you tell?”

“No, that was him, Junior,” Travis says. “That was Frankie fucking Machine. A motherfucking legend.”

Parking isn’t easy in Ocean Beach, so it takes Frank about ten minutes to find a spot on the street three blocks away. He pulls in, reaches under the seat and finds his. 38 S amp;W, puts it in the pocket of his raincoat, pulls his hood up, and gets out of the car. Walks another block out of his way so that he’ll hit the alley from the east and not from the west, where they might be expecting him. He comes around to the alley and the Hummer is still there. Even over the rain he can hear the bass vibrating, so the dumb mooks are in there listening to rap music.

Which is going to make it easier.

He walks up the alley, his feet sloshing in the puddles, ruining the shine on his shoes, and he’s careful to stay dead center with the back of the Hummer so he’s less likely to get spotted in either rearview mirror. As he gets closer, he can smell the reefer, so now he knows he’s dealing with complete doofs-kids, probably, drug dealers-sitting in their cool sled, getting high and listening to tunes.

He’s not even sure they hear him when he opens the back door, slides in, sticks a gun in the back of the driver’s head, and pulls the hammer back.

“I told you it was him,” Travis says.

“Frankie,” J. says. “Don’t you recognize me?”

Yeah, Frank maybe recognizes him, although it’s been years. The kid-maybe in his mid-twenties-has short black hair gelled into spikes, some sort of stud stuck through his bottom lip, and earrings through the tops of his ears. He’s decked out in surfer clothes-a long-sleeve Billabong shirt under a Rusty fleece, and workout pants.

“Mouse Junior?” Frank asks.

The other one chuckles, then quickly shuts up. Mouse Junior doesn’t like being called Mouse Junior. He prefers “J.,” which is what he tells Frank now.

The other one is also dressed like a clown. He’s got the gel thing going, too, and a wispy goatee, and he’s wearing one of those surfer’s beanies on his head, which Frank resents, because Frank wears one to keep his head warm when he’s come out of the cold water after actuallysurfing, and not to look pseudo-hip. And both of them are wearing sunglasses, which is maybe why they couldn’t see a full-grown man coming up behind them. He doesn’t tell them this, though, and he doesn’t put the gun down, even though holding a gun to the son of a boss is a major violation of protocol.

That’s okay, Frank thinks. He doesn’t wantBut he respected protocol carved on his headstone.

“Who are you?” he asks the other one.

“My name is Travis,” the other says. “Travis Renaldi.”

This is what it’s come to, Frank thinks. Italian parents giving their kids Yuppie names like Travis.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Machianno,” Travis says. “‘Frankie Machine.’”

“Shut up,” Frank says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, shut the fuck up,” Mouse Junior says. “Frankie, could you put that gun down now? Could we go inside, maybe you could offer us a beer or a cup of coffee or something?”

“This is a social call?” Frank asks. “You waiting in the alley in the middle of the night?”

“We figured we’d wait until you were done with your booty call, Frankie,” Mouse Junior says. Frank’s not sure he knows what a “booty call” is, but he can figure it out from the nasty tone of Mouse Junior’s voice. He hasn’t seen Junior in probably eight years, and the kid was a spoiled teenage punkthen. He hasn’t matured any. Frank would like to give him a hard cuff in the ear for the “booty call” remark but there are limits to what you can do to a boss’s kid, even a boss as limp as Mouse Senior.