Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

If Vena succeeds in extorting sixty points out of Mouse Junior, the L.A. family might just as well give up the ghost entirely. Which is fine with me, Frank thinks. New York, Chicago, Detroit, it’s all the same. It’s all going the way of the dinosaur anyway. Doesn’t matter who shuts the lights out-it’s still dark.

“Why are you coming to me?” Frank asks, even though he knows the answer.

“Because you’re Frankie Machine,” Mouse Junior says.

“What doesthat mean?”

What it means, Mouse Junior explains, is that they’ve “calendared” a sit-down with Vena to hammer out a deal.

“Do it,” Frank says. “If Vena says sixty, he’ll take forty, maybe even thirty-five. You give him a cut of the pie, then you just go out and make a bigger pie, that’s all. There’s enough for everybody.”

Mouse Junior shakes his head. “If we don’t stop it here…”

“You stop it here,” Frank says, “you start a war with Detroit.”

And let me tell you what your old man already knows, kid. You don’t have the troops. But Mouse Junior’s too young to know that. Too much testosterone bouncing around in there.

Mouse Junior says, “I’m not rolling over for this guy.”

“So don’t,” Frank says.

It’s not my problem.

I’m retired.

“Fifty K,” Mouse Junior says.

Thatis high, Frank thinks. There must be more money in this porn thing than I thought. It shows they have resources, but it also shows how weak they are. You don’t normally pay cash to have this kind of thing done-you give it to one of your soldiers in exchange for future business considerations, or maybe getting him straightened out.

But L.A. doesn’t have many soldiers left. Not good ones anyway, guys who could do this kind of work.

Fifty K is a lot of money. Invested well, it would pay a lot of tuition.

“I’m going to take a pass on this one,” Frank says.

“Dad said you might turn it down,” Mouse Junior says.

“Your father is a wise man.”

Actually, he’s a jackass, but what the hell.

“He said to tell you,” Mouse Junior continues, “that he would consider this a personal favor, a matter of loyalty.”

“Meaning what?”

Frank’s going to make him say it.

“With everything that’s happening in Vegas,” Mouse Junior says, his voice quivering a little, scared. “The Goldstein stuff…Dad would like to know that you’re, you know, on the team.”

So there it is, Frank thinks. It’s two birds with one stone. Mouse Senior gets his Detroit problem taken care of, and he gets an insurance policy on my silence over Goldstein, because I can’t go to the feds with a fresh hit on my hands. And if I don’t do the Vena job, I make myself suspect as a possible rat. So either I take Vena out or I put myself in the bull’s-eye. But if Mouse Senior doesn’t have the soldiers to take Vince himself, why does he think he has the resources to make a run atme? Nobody in the Mickey Mouse Club has either the skills or the stones.

Who could he send?

He’d go outside the family. New York, maybe Florida, maybe even the Mexicans.

He could get it done.

It’s a problem.

“Tell you what,” Frank says. “I’ll get Vena off your back, one way or the other. Set up a meeting with him. I’ll come along. If he sees me there, he’ll be more reasonable. If not…”

He lets it hang there. The rest is obvious.

Travis likes the idea, anyway. “That’ll work, J.,” he says. “If Vena sees that we have Frankie freakingMachine on our team, he’ll shit his pants.”

“No, he won’t,” Frank says. “But he will negotiate more reasonable points.” He turns to Mouse Junior. “You don’t want a war if you can help it, kid. I’ve seen war. Peace is better.”

Something you’ll learn when you get a little older, Frank thinks, if you don’t get yourself killed first. Young guys, they always want to prove how tough they are. It’s a testosterone thing. Older guys see the beauty in compromise. And save the testosterone for better things.

Mouse Junior thinks it over. Judging by the expression on his face, it’s apparently a grueling process. Then he asks, “What about the fifty K?”

“The fifty is for solving your problem,” Frank says. “Either way.”

“Half now,” Mouse Junior says, “half when the job is done.”

Frank shakes his head. “All of it up front.”

“That’s unprecedented.”

“Thisis unprecedented.”

Them approaching him directly, that is. The protocol is that they should have gone through Mike Pella, capo of what’s left of San Diego, who’d collect a referral fee.

It would be good to talk to Mike about this Vena thing, get his take. Mike Pella is an old-school mafioso, among the last of a dying breed. He and Frank have been tight since forever. Mike’s been his friend, his confidant, his partner, his captain. Mike would be able to give him the lay of the land, steer him clear of the land mines.

But Mike, with his instinct for survival, has been in the wind since the Goldstein thing came back up.

Good place for you to be, Mike.

Stay there.

“Two-thirds, one-third,” Mouse Junior says.

“I’m notnegotiating with you, kid,” Frank says. “I gave you the conditions under which I’ll work. If it’s worth it to you, fine. If not, it’s also fine.”

The money’s in the Hummer.

Mouse Junior sends Travis out to get it. He brings back a briefcase containing fifty K in used bills, nonsequential.

“Dadsaid you’d want it all up front,” Mouse Junior says, smiling.

“Then why were you busting chops?” Frank asks. Because you’re a smarmy, wise-ass punk, Frank thinks, trying to prove how smart and tough you are. And you’re neither. If you were smart, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this predicament. If you were tough, you’d take care of it yourself.

“It’s just business,” Mouse Junior says. “Nothing personal.”

Frank wishes he had a dime for every time he’s heard that line. The wise guys all heard it in the firstGodfather and liked it. Now they all use it. Same with the termgodfather, for that matter-until the movie came out, Frank never heard the word in that context. The boss was just the “boss.” Those were good movies and all-well, two of them were-but they had nothing to do with the mob, not the mob that Frank knows, anyway.

Maybe it’s just a West Coast thing, he thinks. We never went in for all that heavy “Sicilian” stuff.

Or maybe it’s just too warm out here for all those hats and overcoats.

“Mr. Machine?” Travis is saying.

Frank shoots him a dirty look.

“Mr. Machianno, I meant,” Travis says. “There’s one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The sit-down is tonight,” Mouse Junior says.

“Tonight?” Frank asks. It’s already after midnight. He has to be up in three hours and forty-five minutes.

“Tonight.”

Frank sighs.

It’s a lot of work being me.

Mouse Junior hands him a cell phone.

“It’s on speed dial,” he says, pressing the button for him.

Vena doesn’t answer until the fifth ring.

“Hello?” He sounds like the phone woke him up.

“Vince? Frank Machianno here.”

There’s a long pause, which is what Frank expected. Vince’s mind has to be whirling, he figures, wondering why Frankie Machine is on the phone, how he got this number, and what he wants.

“Frankie! Long time!”

“Too long,” Frank says, not meaning it.

If he never talked to Vince Vena again, he’d be very happy. He knows Vince from the old days, back in the eighties in Vegas, when it was open territory and everybody’s playground. Vince was a fixture at the Stardust, practically furniture. When he wasn’t at the blackjack table, he was out catching the comedians’ shows, and then he’d annoy everyone by constantly reciting their routines. Vince liked to think he did a pretty good Dangerfield, which he didn’t, although, unfortunately, that never stopped him from doing it.