Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

Except that wasn’t quite it, was it?

There was that afternoon you picked up Marie Anselmo’s grocery order and brought it to the house and she answered the door but wouldn’t let you bring the bags in like usual, but you could see through the open door.

Bap, in the hallway, pulling his pants on.

He married Marie six months later.

After that, no one ever whispered a word about what happened that night at Momo’s with DeSanto.

Frank sure as hell didn’t.

He’d decided to go straight. So one day, he drove to Oceanside, saw the recruiter, and was in the Marines about five minutes after that.

Like the Surfaris song that was so popular then:

Surfer Joe joined Uncle Sam’s Marines today

They stationed him at Pendleton, not far away…

It’s funny, Frank thinks now.

I got my training from the federal government.

Frank turns from the window, gets on the phone, and calls the bait shop.

The kid Abe answers on the first ring.

“Frank, you okay? I came in and the shop was closed.”

“You know what, Abe?” Frank says. “Let’s shut it down for a few days.”

There’s an incredulous silence, then: “Shut it down?”

“Yeah, with the storm, we’re not going to do much business anyway,” Frank says. “Let’s take a few days off. I’ll call you when I want to reopen. Why don’t you go down to Tijuana, see your mom and dad or something.”

Abe doesn’t need to be asked twice.

Patty’s going to be a tougher nut.

“Patty, it’s Frank.”

“I recognized the voice.”

“Patty, I was thinking, you haven’t been to see your sister in a while, have you?” Patty’s sister Celia and her husband moved up to Seattle ten years ago, following the aerospace industry. They have a house-where is it? Bellingham, maybe?

“Frank, youhate my sister.”

“Go up and visit her, Patty,” Frank says. “Go today.”

She hears the tone in his voice. “Are you all right, Frank?”

“I’m fine,” Frank says. “I just need you to go.”

“Frank-”

“I’m fine,” Frank repeats.

“How long will I be gone?”

“I don’t know yet,” Frank says. “Not long. Go upstairs and pack.”

“Iam upstairs.”

“Then pack.”

“Frank?”

“What?” he snaps. He doesn’t want to be on the phone too long, in case they have her line tapped.

“Take care of yourself, okay?” she says. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The next call is to Donna.

“Nonfat latte, two shots of espresso,” she says when she hears his voice. “Please.”

“Now listen,” Frank says, “and, just foronce, do exactly what I tell you without argument or discussion. Close the shop, go home and pack, get on a plane to Hawaii. The Big Island, Kauai, doesn’t matter, just go. Today. Take your cell phone. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, and don’t come back until you’ve heard from me. Not amessage from me, from mepersonally. Will you do that?”

There’s a silence as she takes all this in; then she simply says, “Yes.”

“Good. Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she says. “Will I see you again?”

“Absolutely.”

Now they’ve gotme saying it, he thinks.

He calls Jill and gets her answering machine: Hi, I’m off skiing in Big Bear. Aren’t you jealous? Leave a message and I’ll call you back. He tries her cell and gets pretty much the same message. Oh well, he thinks, she’s safe in Big Bear-even if “they,” whoever they are, want to try to get her, they can’t track her down there.

So the people I love are safe.

Which is a good thing on its own, and also gives me freedom of movement.

And it’s time to move.

He packs the shotgun and some clothes into a gym bag, straps on a shoulder holster for the. 38, then slips into a raincoat and heads out the door. He takes a taxi downtown, then goes to Hertz and uses his Sabellico identification to rent a nondescript Ford Taurus.

He heads north on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Toward L.A.

Dave Hansen walks out onto the beach.

The wet sand looks like dark, shiny marble and the cold rain pelts him in the face. Two thousand miles of coastline, he thinks, and the floater had to wash up on federal land, in weather like this. He’s at the edge of America, literally. Point Loma is the last stop in the continental USA, the end of the line.

The floater just made it.

A few feet the other way and the body would have been a Mexican problem.

A bunch of sailors from the Coast Guard station and a few San Diego cops are gathered around the body.

“We didn’t touch it,” the police sergeant tells Dave. “This is your jurisdiction.”

He sounds pleased as punch.

“Thanks,” Dave says.

Actually, the San Diego cops like Hansen. He has a light touch, for a fed. The sergeant says, “We haven’t had any missing persons report. Usually do in a drowning. I checked with Coast Guard, too. Nada.”

“He didn’t drown,” Dave says. “He’s not blue.”

The skin of drowning victims, even if they’ve been in the water for only a few minutes, turns a ghastly blue. No one who’s seen it ever forgets it. Dave squats down by the body. He opens up the guy’s jacket and sees the large entrance wound right where the guy’s heart used to be. He keeps looking and finds the other entrance wound in the stomach.

Whoever killed the John Doe shot him in the gut, then pressed the gun against his chest and finished him off. Even after an unknown number of hours in the water, the powder burns on his clothes are unmistakable.

“Probably a dope run gone wrong,” the sergeant said.

“Probably,” Dave says. He keeps looking through the guy’s clothes. The shooter also removed John Doe’s ID. No wallet, no watch, no ring, nothing. Dave looks closely at the victim’s face, or what’s left of it after the fish pecked at the eyes. He doesn’t recognize him, didn’t expect to, but there’s something vaguely familiar about him.

A faint memory, or an old dream, washed up onshore like a piece of driftwood.

It’s weird.

But it’s been a weird day, Dave thinks. Must be the weather; these high-pressure fronts seem to make everything and everybody a little crazy. People do odd things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.

Frank Machianno, for instance.

Frank’s at the bait shop every morning like clockwork for as long as Dave can remember, and then today he doesn’t show up. And Frank, who’s been a regular at the Gentlemen’s Hour for longer than Dave has, is a no-show for the best waves of the year.

Dave figured he was sick, and called the house to bust his chops about the great waves he missed, but no answer. Tried Frank on his cell, same thing. So he went back to the bait shop, only to find the kid Abe closing it up.

“Frank said to,” Abe told him. “Said take a few days off.”

“Franksaid take a few days off.”

“WhatI thought,” Abe said. “Told me to go home for a while.”

“Where’s home?”

Abe pointed south. “TJ.”

Like, where else?

So Dave took a drive over to Frank’s house. His van and his Mercedes in the garage, the house all locked up, no Frank.

So it’s been a strange day.

A murdered body that by all the rules of normal tide and current should have drifted down the Baja coast manages instead to snag itself up on the last tip of America.

When Dave first heard they had a floater, he was afraid it was Tony Palumbo. The star witness in G-Sting has been undercover for years as a bouncer at Hunnybear’s, and he was supposed to meet with Dave earlier that morning.