Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

When he got it open, she said, “You don’t have to come in, Frankie.”

“Momo said I did.”

She looked at him funny. “Then I guess you’d better.”

Inside, she went straight to the bar and started making a Manhattan.

“Do you want one, Frankie?”

“I’m too young to drink.” It’d be two more years before he could get a legal drink.

She smiled. “I’ll bet you’re not too young forother things, are you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. A.”

But of course he did, and it scared the hell out of him. He was in a jam here-if he got up and left, which was what he wanted to do, he’d be in big trouble. But if he stayed here and Mrs. A. kept making moves on him, he’d be in bigger trouble.

He was working through this when she said, “Momo can’t fuck me, you know.”

Frank didn’t know what to say. He’d never even heard a woman sayfuck, never mind what Mrs. A. was telling him.

“He can fuck every cheap whore in San Diego and Tijuana,” she continued, “but he can’t fuck his wife. What do you think of that?”

Justhearing this could get me killed-that’s what Frank thought of that. If Momo found out that I know this, he’d clip me so I couldn’t tell anyone else. Which Momo really doesn’t have to worry about, because I’m never going to say this even to myself. Doesn’t matter, though. If Momo knew thatI knew that he wasn’t taking care of business with his wife, he’d kill me just because he couldn’t look me in the eye.

“A woman has needs,” Marie was saying. “Do you know what I mean, Frankie?”

“I guess so.”

Patty didn’t seem to have them.

“You guess so.” Now she sounded angry.

Frank figured she couldn’t be too angry, though, because she started to slide her dress off her left shoulder.

“Mrs. A…”

“‘Mrs. A.,’” she mimicked. “I know you’ve been looking at my tits all night, Frankie. They’re nice, aren’t they? You should feel them.”

“I’m leaving, Mrs. A.”

“But Momo told you to stay.”

“I’m leaving anyway, Mrs. A.,” he said. Now he could see the top of her breast in the black brassiere. It was round and white and beautiful, but what he reached for was the doorknob, thinking, You screw a made man’s wife, what they do is they cut your balls off and make you eat them. That’sbefore they kill you.

Those were the rules.

“What’s the matter, Frankie?” she asked. “Are you a homo?”

“No.”

“You have to be,” Mrs. A. said. “I think you’re a homo.”

“I’m not.”

“Are you afraid, Frankie, is that it?” she asked. “He won’t be home for hours. You know how these things go. He’s probably with some whore right now.”

“I’m not scared.”

Her face got softer now. “Are you a virgin, Frankie? Is that it? Oh, baby, there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll make you feel so good. I’ll show you everything. I’ll show you how to please me, don’t worry.”

“It’s not that. It’s-”

“You don’t think I’m pretty?” she asked, her voice getting an edge. “What, you think I’m too old for you?”

“You’re very pretty, Mrs. A.,” Frank said. “But I gotta go.”

He was turning the doorknob as she said, “If you leave, I’ll tell him you did it. I’m in for a beating, anyway, so I’ll just tell him that you fucked me until I screamed. I’ll tell him you screwed me silly.”

Frank remembered it, what, forty years later, how he was standing there with his hand on the doorknob and his chin on his chest, thinking, What’s this drunken broad saying? That if I don’t screw her, she’s going to tell her husband that I did?

But if I do screw her…

You’re dead anyway, he thought.

Frank felt the panic welling up in his chest as he looked at that hot little number Marie Anselmo standing there with her little black dress half off, holding a lipstick-smudged Manhattan glass up to her bee-stung lips, her perfume swirling around him like a sexy, deadly cloud.

What saved him was the door opening.

She turned from him and got her dress back on just as Momo came into the room.

He didn’t look so good.

They had beaten the shit out of him.

Nicky Locicero shoved him into the room and told him to sit down on the couch. Momo did it because Locicero had a. 38 in his hand. Locicero looked at Frank and said, “Get some ice for your boss.”

Frank stepped over to the ice bucket at the bar.

“Icecubes, ” Locicero said, “from thefreezer, dipshit. In the kitchen.”

Frank hustled into the kitchen, got a tray out of the freezer, and cracked a few cubes into the sink. Then he found a dish towel in a drawer, put the ice in the towel, and wrapped it up. When he got back into the living room, Al DeSanto was there. He had a real smirk on his goofy-looking face.

Marie wasn’t smiling. She just stood there like she was a piece of ice herself. Frozen, stone-cold sober now.

Frank sat next to Momo on the couch and held the ice up to his cut, swollen eye.

“He can do it himself,” Locicero said.

Frank heard him but didn’t listen. He kept holding the cloth up to Momo’s eye. A trickle of blood ran down the towel, and Frank twisted it to keep the blood from getting on the sofa.

“We have some unfinished business,” DeSanto said to Marie.

“No, we don’t,” Marie said.

“I disagree,” DeSanto said. “You don’t play with a man like that, then leave him high and dry. It isn’t nice.”

He grabbed her wrist. “Where’s the bedroom?”

She didn’t answer. He slapped her across the face. Momo started to get up, but Locicero pointed the gun at his face and Momo sat back down.

“I asked you a question,” DeSanto said to Marie, his hand cocked again.

She pointed to a door off the living room.

“That’s better,” DeSanto said. He turned to Momo. “I’m just going to go give your wife what she wants, paisan. You don’t mind, do you?”

Locicero, leering, stuck the pistol in Momo’s temple.

Momo shook his head.

Frank could see him trembling.

“Come on, honey,” De Santo said. He walked her to the bedroom door and pushed her in. He went in himself, started to shut the door, then changed his mind and left it ajar.

Frank saw him toss Marie face-first onto the bed. Saw him grab her by the neck with one hand and rip the dress down with the other. Saw her kneeling on the bed in her black lingerie as DeSanto pulled her panties down and unzipped his fly. The guy was already hard and he shoved himself into her.

Frank heard her grunt, saw her body quiver under DeSanto’s weight.

“You had it coming, Momo,” Locicero said. “You ran your mouth.”

Momo didn’t say anything, just put his head in his hands. Bubbles of snot and blood ran down from his nose. Locicero put the pistol barrel under Momo’s chin and lifted his face so he had to look.

DeSanto had left the door open so that Momo had to see him pulling Marie’s hair back and riding her hard. Frank saw it, too. Saw Marie’s face, her lipstick smudged, her mouth twisted into an expression Frank hadn’t seen before. DeSanto was pulling her hair with one hand and mauling her breasts with the other. He grunted with effort and his glasses were askew on his face as his sweat made them slide down his nose.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it, bitch?” DeSanto asked. “Say it.”

He yanked her head up.

She murmured, “Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes!”

“Say, ‘Fuck me, Al.’”

“Fuck me, Al!” Marie cried.

“Sayplease. ‘Please, fuck me, Al.’”

“Please fuck me, Al.”

“That’s better.”

Frank saw him push her face into the mattress and lift her ass up so he could drive into her harder. He was really piling into her, and Frank heard Marie start making noises. He couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain or both, but Marie started moaning and then yelling, and Frank saw her small fingers grip the bedspread as she screamed.