Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

“Jesus, Momo,” Locicero said, “your wife is a hot little number.”

DeSanto finished and pulled out. He wiped himself off on her dress, zipped his fly back up, and got off the bed. He looked down at Marie, still lying facedown on the bed, her chest heaving. “Anytime you want more of that, baby,” he said, “you have my number.”

He walked back into the living room and asked, “Did you hear the bitch come?”

Locicero said, “Hell yes.”

“Didyou hear her, Momo?”

Locicero nudged Momo with the gun.

“I heard,” Momo said. Then he asked, “Why don’t you just shoot me?”

Frank felt like he was going to throw up.

DeSanto looked down at Momo. “I don’t shoot you, Momo, because I want you to keep earning. What Idon’t want is any more of this San Diego bullshit. What’s mine is mine and what’syours is mine. Capisce? ”

“Capisce.”

“Good.”

Frank was just staring at him. DeSanto noticed and asked, “What, kid, you got a problem?”

Frank shook his head.

“I didn’t think so.” DeSanto looked back toward the bedroom. “You want sloppy seconds, Momo, I don’t mind.”

He and Locicero laughed and then walked out.

Frank sat there in shock.

Momo got up, opened a dresser drawer, pulled out a wicked-looking little. 25 revolver, and started for the door.

Frank heard himself say, “They’ll kill you, Momo!”

“I don’t give a damn.”

Then Marie was standing in the hallway, leaning against the doorjamb, her dress still pulled down, her makeup smeared over her face like a crazy clown, her hair a tangled mess. “You’re not a man,” she said, “letting him do that to me.”

“You liked it, you cunt.”

“How could you-”

“He made you come.”

He lifted the pistol.

“Momo, no!” Frank yelled.

Momo said, “Shecame for him.”

He shot her.

“Christ!” Frank screamed as Marie’s body twirled and then corkscrewed to the floor. He wanted to lunge and take the gun away, but he was too scared, and then Momo took a step away from him, put the gun to his own head, and said, “I loved her, Frankie.”

Frank looked at those sad hound eyes for a second; then Momo pulled the trigger.

His blood spattered all over Kennedy’s smiling face.

Funny thing, Frank thinks now, that’s what I remember more than anything-that blood on John Kennedy. Later, when Kennedy was killed, it didn’t seem like such a surprise to him. It was like he’d seen it already.

Marie Anselmo survived-it turned out that Momo had hit her in the hip. She rolled around on the floor screaming while Frank frantically called the police. The ambulance took Marie away and the detectives took Frank. He told them most of what he’d seen-that is, that Momo had shot his wife and then himself. He left out any mention of Al DeSanto or Nicky Locicero, and was relieved to hear later that Marie had also kept her mouth shut about the rape. And if the San Diego cops were busted up over Momo’s suicide, they kept it hidden pretty well, unless open laughter was what they used to suppress their grief.

Marie spent weeks in the hospital, and had a barely detectable limp after that, but she lived. Out of respect for Momo, Frank used to deliver groceries to the house, and when she recovered enough, he still used to drive her to the supermarket.

But after that, Frank was disillusioned. All the stuff Momo had taught him about “this thing of ours”-the code, the rules, the honor, the “family”-was straight-up bullshit. He’d seen their fucking honor that night at Momo’s house.

He went back to working on the tuna boats.

And that probably would have been my life, he thinks now, looking out the window at the gray ocean and the whitecaps, except that, six months later, who should show up but Frank Baptista.

Bap came on the dock one night when Frank had just finished squaring the deck away and was headed for a shower and a night of struggling against Patty’s virtue. You didn’t see a lot of guys in suits and ties on the dock, so Frank lamped Bap right away as something different, but he didn’t know who he was.

Except the guy seemed to know Frank.

“Are you Frankie Machianno?” Bap asked.

“Yeah.” Frank was afraid now that the guy was a cop and maybe Marie had decided she wanted to press charges against DeSanto after all.

The guy stuck out his hand. “We got the same first name. I’m Frank Baptista.”

Frank was shocked. This guy sure didn’t look like a famous button man-round, chubby, soft body, meaty jowls, bottle-thick glasses over owl eyes. Balding, with a greasy comb-over. Bap made Momo look like Troy Donohue.

This is the guy, Frank wondered, that killed Lew Brunemann, “Russian Louie” Strauss, and Red Sagunda when the Cleveland mob tried to move on San Diego? This is the guy who was boss here since the forties, until he went into the can for bribery?

“Can I buy you a drink?” Bap asked. “A cup of coffee?”

I should have said no, Frank thinks now. I should have said, No offense, Mr. Baptista, but I’m out of that now. I seen enough. But I didn’t. I went for a beer with the Bap.

Frank followed him up to Pacific Beach to one of the joints near Crystal Pier. They got a booth in the back, where Bap ordered a coffee for himself and a beer for Frank. Bap spent a long time stirring milk and sugar into his coffee, and then he asked, “Did you like Momo?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“I hear you still bring Marie her groceries,” Bap said. “That speaks well of you. It shows you have respect.”

“Momo was always good to me.”

Bap took this in, then made small talk, but it was clear to Frank that the former boss wasn’t really interested in chitchat, so Frank finished his beer and said he had a date. Bap thanked him for his time and said it was nice meeting him. Frank figured that was that, but about a month later, Bap showed up at the dock again and said, “Come on, let’s go for a drive.”

Frank followed him to a Cadillac parked on Ocean Avenue. Bap tossed him the keys and sat in the front passenger seat. Frank got behind the wheel and started the engine. “Where do you want to go?”

“Don’t matter. Just drive.”

Frank pulled onto Sunset Drive and headed south, cruising alongside his surfing spots.

“You drive good,” Bap said. “You’re my driver now.”

And that was it. Frank went to work for Bap. He drove the man everywhere-to the grocery store, the barber’s, to clubs, to Momo’s old house to visit Marie, to the track when the horses were running at Del Mar. He took Bap to see all the bookies, the loan sharks, the hustlers in San Diego.

DeSanto didn’t like it.

The L.A. boss knew that Bap was out, that he was going to want his old territory back. He was going to want a piece of the money on the street, the gambling, anything else they had going in San Diego, and DeSanto didn’t want to give him any of that. Bap was a big name, a guy with ambitions, and L.A. didn’t want a strong guy down in San Diego wanting to go his own way again.

“We just got those Indians back on the reservation,” DeSanto told Nicky Locicero. “Last thing we need is a guy who thinks he’s a chief running around down there.”

So he tried to throw Bap a few crumbs off the table, and Bap wasn’t shy about expressing his dissatisfaction.

That was always Bap’s problem: He could never swallow a resentment. It always came out his mouth. At the end of the day, it’s what killed him. Frank could still remember Bap mouthing off back in ’64, right at the Del Mar track, with half the wise guys in Southern California within earshot. “What am I, a dog? He throws me a fewbones ?”