Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

Besides, he didn’t want to create any more vendettas than he already had.

And apparently, he thinks, I have one I don’t even know about.

John Heaney? Frank thinks as he drives the Mustang back toward Dolphin Girl’s condo to pick up his own car. What did I ever do to John?

John Heaney goes out for a cigarette break. Out by the Dumpster in back of Hunnybear’s.

It’s been a bitch of a night; the place is jammed with both the usual pack of locals and a swarm of tourists-some convention in from Omaha. Anyway, the girls are making money and the bar register’s ringing like a twenty-alarm fire.

John takes the pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and his lighter from his pants pocket, lights up, and leans back against the Dumpster. Suddenly, he’s choking as an arm comes across his throat and he feels himself being lifted off his feet.

Just an inch or so, but it’s enough. He can’t breathe and he can’t get traction to move.

“I thought we were friends, John,” he hears Frank Machianno say.

Frankie Machine is standing in the Dumpster, calf-deep in garbage, his strong left forearm locked across Heaney’s neck.

“Oh shit,” John says.

“Mouse Junior gave you up,” Frank says. “What was it, John? Did I give you a delivery of bad tuna, or what?”

“Oh shit,” John repeats.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Frank says.

The club’s back door opens and a wedge of yellow light spills out into the back. John feels himself being jerked up like a fish into a boat, and then he’s lying in garbage, Frank’s heavy body on top of him.

And a gun barrel pressed against his left temple.

“Go ahead and yell,” Frank whispers.

John shakes his head.

“Good decision,” Frank says. “Now make it two in a row-tell me who sent you to Mouse Junior.”

“Nobody,” John whispers.

“John, you’re a mediocre cook and a night manager at a titty joint,” Frank says. “You don’t have the swag to order a hit. And the next lie you tell me, I swear, I’ll pop you and leave your body here in the garbage, where it belongs.”

“I didn’t want to, Frank,” John whines. “They said they could help me.”

“Who, Johnny? Who came to you?”

“Teddy Migliore.”

Teddy Migliore, Frank thinks. Owner of Callahan’s and scion of the Combination. It’s not good news.

“Help you with what?”

“I’ve been indicted, Frank.”

“Indicted?”

“On this G-Sting shit,” John says. “I was the bagman. I brought cash to a cop. He was undercover.”

John blurts out the rest of the story. He was being squeezed from both sides, the feds offering him a deal to flip, the wise guys threatening to whack him to keep him from talking.

“I was totally fucked, Frank.”

Then Teddy Migliore offered him a way out: If John went to Mouse Junior and made him a deal, he could walk. The mob wouldn’t clip him and they’d get him off the indictment, or at least get him a pardon.

“And youbelieved this crap?” Frank asks him, knowing it’s a useless question. A condemned man will believe anything that will give him even a little hope.

He cocks the hammer of the pistol and feels John flinch underneath him.

“Don’t, Frank, please,” John says. “I’m sorry.”

Frank eases the hammer back down; then John’s body lurches into sobs.

“I’m going to leave now, Johnny,” Frank whispers. “You lie here for five minutes before you get out. If you feel bad about what you did to me, you’ll wait an hour before you call Teddy. If you don’t, well, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Frank climbs out of the Dumpster and brushes the garbage off. It’ll be good to get someplace where he can take a shower and get a change of clothes, but right now he has something else to do.

He walks to his car and opens the trunk.

Frank stands across the street from Callahan’s, waiting for it to close.

It’s a long, cold wait at two in the morning.

Finally, the trendy young crowd starts to pour out and, a few minutes later, the bouncer goes to lock the door.

That’s when Frank steps in.

The bouncer takes a swing at him.

Frank ducks underneath the punch, pulls the softball bat from under his coat and Tony Gwynns the bouncer’s shin bones. The resultingcrack, and the bouncer toppling to the sidewalk, gets some attention from the after-hours crowd inside the bar.

One of the boys rushes Frank.

Frank butts him in the solar plexus with the blunt end of the bat, then swings the handle up in an arc and catches the man under the chin. He takes a step back to let the guy fall, then sees the next man reach in his jacket into shoulder-holster territory. Frank swings the bat and breaks the guy’s wrist against the gun butt.

The bartender vaults the bar with a nightstick in his hand and swings it down toward the back of Frank’s head. Frank turns, raises the bat horizontally to block the nightstick, pulls his arms back in, and then thrusts the bat back into the bartender’s nose, which breaks with a splatter of blood. Then Frank crosses his right foot over his left, whirls, and delivers a home-run swing into the bartender’s floating ribs.

Three guys down.

Teddy Migliore stands there like his feet are rooted to the spot.

Then he turns and runs.

Frank lofts the bat low across the floor. It bounces and catches Teddy in the back of the knees, sending him sprawling to the floor. Frank’s on top of him before he canstart to get up. He puts his right knee into the small of Teddy’s back, grabs him by the back of the collar, and smashes his face into the expensive tile until he can see blood trickle into the grouting.

“What,” Frank yells, “did I ever do to you? Huh? What did I ever do to you? ”

Frank leans down, slips one hand under Teddy’s chin, and lifts as his other arm forms a bar across the top of Teddy’s neck. He can either snap Teddy’s spinal cord or choke him out, or both.

“Nothing,” Teddy gasps. “I just got the word is all.”

“Whogave the word?” Frank asked.

Frank hears police sirens start to wail. Some citizen must have spotted the bartender writhing on the sidewalk and called the cops. Frank puts more pressure on Teddy’s neck.

“Vince,” Teddy says.

“Why? Why did Vince want me clipped?”

“I don’t know,” Teddy groans. “I swear, Frankie, I don’t know. He just told me to deliver you.”

Deliver me, Frank thinks. Like a pizza. And Teddy’s lying. He knows exactly why Vince wanted to kill me, or else he’s just laying it all on a dead man.

“Police! Come out with your hands where we can see them!”

Frank lets go of Teddy, steps over him into the office, and lets himself out the back door. As he’s leaving, he hears a voice on the answering machine.“Teddy? It’s me, John…”

Frank steps out in the alley and runs.

Teddy Migliore sits in his office and rubs his throat. He looks up at the uniformed cops and says, “You sure took your time…the fucking money we pay…”

The cops don’t look too eaten up with sympathy. They’ve stopped taking the money anyway. You’d have to be a fucking idiot to take an envelope from Teddy Migliore these days, what with everything going on.

Operation G-Sting.

“Do you know who did this?” one of the cops asks.

“Do you want to file a report?” asks the other.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Teddy tells them.

He’s going to file a report all right, but not with these two losers. He waits until they’ve left, though, to pick up the phone.

Frank jogs out of the alley and back onto the street.

You had it exactly backward, dummy, he tells himself. It wasn’t L.A. who contracted with Vince to take you out; it was Vince who used L.A., or at least Mouse Junior, to set you up.