Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

Bad watercolors.

He had dozens of them, scores of them, probably, and he used to give them out as presents all the time; otherwise, Marie would bitch about him clogging up their whole place with the paintings.

Bap would give them for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, Groundhog Day, anything. All the guys had them-what were you going to say, no? Frank had one on the wall of his little apartment on India Street-it was a sailboat heading out into the sunset, because Bap knew that Frank liked boats.

Which was true, Frank did like boats, which made this watercolor all the more painful, because no vessel should have to suffer what Bap did to this boat. But Frank kept it on his wall, because you never knew when Bap might drop by, and Frank didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

This worked because he wasn’t married yet. The married guys’ wives usually made them put Bap’s paintings in a closet or something, because the married guys were usually made men and protocol, even in casual San Diego, dictated that even a boss didn’t just drop by without a phone call. But there had been some frantic replacements of paintings on walls when the phone call came, with guys scrambling to get one of Bap’s hideous watercolors up in the living room before the doorbell rang.

So if it was just normal business, they met at the beach. This day, however, Bap told them to meet him at the zoo, outside the reptile house.

The subject was a guy named Jeffrey Roth.

“Who?” Mike asked.

“You heard of Tony Star?” Bap asked, his face pressed up against the glass, staring at a spitting cobra.

“Sure,” Mike said.

They all had heard of Tony Star. He was a rat from Detroit, whose testimony had put half that city’s family away. Rocco Zerilli, Jackie Tominello, Angie Vena, they were all doing time because of Tony Star. The papers had a field day with the irresistible headline TONY STAR WITNESS.

“He’s ‘Jeffrey Roth’ now, in the Witness Protection Program,” Bap said. He started tapping on the glass, trying to provoke the cobra into attacking. “You think you could get one of these guys to spit at you?”

“I don’t think they want you doing that,” Frank said. He felt bad for the snake, which was just minding its own business.

Bap looked at him like he was nuts, and Frank got it. “They” probably didn’t want Bap killing people, hijacking trucks, shylocking money, and running gambling operations, either, so he probably wasn’t going to stop tapping on the glass at the zoo. Indeed, Bap tapped on the glass some more, then asked, “Guess where Star is living now? Mission Beach.”

“No shit!” Mike said.

It was a personal affront, a rat living right in their own backyard.

Frank and Mike had had many discussions on the subjects of rats. It was the worst-possible thing in the world to be, the lowest of the low.

“You gotta be a stand-up guy,” Mike had said. “We’re all grown men; we know the risks. If you get popped, you keep your mouth shut and do your time.”

Frank had agreed, absolutely.

“I’d die before I’d go into the program,” he’d said.

Now they had a guy who had put half the Detroit family in the joint, and here he was, hanging out and enjoying himself on Mission Beach.

“How’d they find him?” Mike asked.

The spitting cobra had curled itself into a ball and looked like it was asleep. Bap gave up and moved on to the puff adder in the next cage. It was wrapped around a tree limb, coiled and looking dangerous.

“Some secretary in the Justice Department that Tony Jack’s got on the arm,” Bap said, tapping on the adder’s cage. He took a slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Frank. The note had an address in Mission Beach written on it. “Detroit wanted to send their own guys, but I said no, it’s a matter of honor.”

“Fuckin’ right it is,” Mike said. “Our turf, our responsibility.”

“And it’s worth twenty grand,” Bap said.

The puff adder struck at the glass and Bap jumped back about five feet, losing his glasses in the process. Frank suppressed a laugh as he picked them up, wiped them off on his sleeve, and handed them to Bap.

“Sneaky fuckers,” Bap said, taking the glasses.

“They’re camouflaged,” Mike said.

Frank and Mike went out and bought some geeky clothes that made them look like tourists and checked into a motel on Kennebec Court on Mission Beach. They spent most of their time looking out through venetian blinds at Tony Star’s condo across Mission Boulevard.

“We’re kind of like cops,” Mike said the first night in.

“How do you figure?”

“I mean, this is what they do, right?” Mike asked. “Stakeouts?”

“I guess,” Frank said. First time he ever felt sorry for cops, because being on a stakeout was boring. It gave whole new meaning to the wordtedium. Sitting there drinking bad coffee, taking turns going to Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, or a local taco joint, eating off your lap on sheets of greasy paper. What this garbage was doing to his insides, Frank could only guess. Heknew what it was doing to Mike’s insides, because it was a small room, and when Mike opened the door as he came out of the bathroom…Anyway, Frank started feeling bad for cops.

He and Mike would take shifts, one of them keeping watch out the window while the other grabbed some sleep or watched some bad television show. They only got a break when Star went out, which he did at 7:30 every morning to go jogging.

They discovered this the first morning when Star came out the front door of the building in a purple jumpsuit and running shoes and started doing stretches against the rail of the building steps.

“What the fuck?” Mike asked.

“He’s going running,” Frank said.

“Heshould go fucking running,” said Mike.

“He looks good, though,” Frank observed.

Star did look good. He had a nice tan, his black razor-cut hair was neatly brushed back, and he was thin. They decided only one guy should tail him, and Mike took the job. He came back an hour later, sweaty and incensed.

“Fucking guy,” Mike huffed, “goes jogging around the marina like he don’t have a worry in the world. Scoping the chicks, looking at the boats, soaking in the sunshine, working on his fucking tan. Cocksucker is leading the good life while friends of his are in the hole. I’m telling you, we shouldhurt this motherfucker before we take him out.”

Frank agreed-Starshould suffer for what he’d done-but those weren’t the orders. Bap had been very clear about that-“quick and clean” was how he wanted it. Get in, do the job, get out.

The sooner the better, as far as Frank was concerned. Patty hadn’t been too thrilled about him going away like this.

“Where are you going?” she’d asked.

“Come on, Patty.”

“What for? Why?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?” she’d pressed. “Why can’t you tell me? You’re just going out to party with your buddies, aren’t you?”

Some party, Frank thought. Sharing a cheap motel room with Mike Pella, listening to his constant toilet mouth, sucking in his cigarette smoke, smelling his gas, spending hour after tedious hour looking out the window, trying to establish the pattern of some rat’s pathetic life.

Because that was the key, a pattern.

Bap had coached him on that. “Guys lapse into habits,” he had told Frank. “Everyone does. People are predictable. Once you can predict what a guy’s going to do and when he’s going to do it, then you can find your opening. Quick and clean, in and out.”

So they knew he went jogging around the marina every morning. Mike wanted to do it then. “We get ourselves some fag tracksuits, we run up behind him, and we pop him in the head. Done.”