Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

Frank vetoed it. Too many things could go wrong. One, him and Mike jogging-they’d stick out like polar bears in a sauna. Two, they’d be out of breath, and it was hard to shoot accurately when you were out of breath, even from short range. Three, there’d just be too many potential witnesses.

So they had to figure something else out.

Problem was, Star wasn’t giving them many openings. He lived a very boring life, predictable as death and taxes, but very tight. He’d go jogging in the morning, then come home, shower (presumably) and change clothes, then go to his job at an insurance agency, where he’d work from ten to six. Then he’d walk back to his condo and stay there until he went jogging again in the morning.

“This is one dull motherfucker,” Mike said. “He don’t go out to no clubs, no bars, don’t pick up no broads. What, the guy just sits in there jacking himself off every night? Biggest excitement in this guy’s life is ‘Pizza Night.’”

Every Thursday night, 8:30, Star had a pizza delivered to his door.

“I love you, Mike.”

“You going fag on me?”

“Pizza night,” Frank said. “Star buzzes the guy in.”

This was on a Tuesday, so they pretty much relaxed for a couple of days, laid low, and waited for Pizza Night. Wednesday night, they ordered a pizza from the same joint, ate it, and saved the box.

At exactly 8:25 Frank was at the front door of Star’s building with the pizza box in his hand. Mike was in the work car on the street, ready to drive them out of there and to intercept the pizza guy with some sort of bullshit if he had to.

Frank rang the bell and shouted into the intercom, “Pizza, Mr. Roth.”

A second later, the buzzer sounded and Frank heard the metallic click of the lock opening. He went into the building, walked down the hallway to Star’s unit, and rang the bell.

Star opened it a crack, keeping the chain on the door. Frank could hear the drone of a television. So this was the rat’s big life, Frank thought, treating himself to a pizza while he watches the boob tube.

“Pizza,” Frank repeated.

“Where’s the usual kid?” Star asked.

“Sick,” Frank said, hoping this thing wasn’t going south. He got ready to kick the door in, but Star opened it first. He had his money in his hand-a five and two ones.

“Six-fifty, right?” Star asked, holding out the bills.

Frank reached into his pocket like he was digging for a couple of quarters.

“Keep the change,” Star said.

“Thanks.” A fifty-cent tip, Frank thought. No self-respecting wise guy in the world would give a fifty-cent tip. No wonder he turned rat. Frank handed Star the pizza box, and when the guy’s hands were full, Frank pushed him inside, kicked the door shut behind him, and pulled the silenced. 22 pistol.

Star tried to run. Frank put the bead on the back of his head and fired. Star fell forward and crashed into the wall. Frank stepped up over Star’s prone body and aimed at the back of his head.

“Rat,” Frank said.

He pulled the trigger three more times and walked out.

The whole thing had taken maybe a minute. Frank got in the car; Mike put it in gear and drove away.

“How’d it go?” Mike asked.

“Fine,” Frank said.

Mike grinned. “You’re a machine,” he said. “‘Frankie Machine.’”

“Wasn’t that the name of a guy that Sinatra played in the movies?” Frank asked.

“The Man with the Golden Arm,” Mike said. “He was a junkie.”

“Great.”

“But you,” Mike said, “you’re the man with the goldenhand. Frankie Machine.”

The name stuck.

They took Ingraham Street down to the floodway. Frank got out, smashed the pistol on some rocks, and threw the pieces into the water. Then they dumped the work car in a strip mall parking lot in Point Loma, where they found two other cars waiting. Frank got into his and drove downtown, dumped the car, took a taxi to the airport, then another taxi back home.

Nothing ever came of it.

The San Diego cops pretty much took a pass on the case, sending a message of their own to the feds: If you’re going to put a snitch in our yard and not tell us about it, what the hell do you want us to do?

The truth is, nobody really likes snitches, not even the cops who make their bread and butter from them.

Frank got up the next morning, made coffee, and turned on the television. It was showing the kitchen of some hotel in Los Angeles.

“What, you’re surprised?” Mike asked him later that morning.

“Kind of.”

“I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” Mike said.

And that’s the way it is, Frank thought. Bobby gets two in the head, Nixon gets checks.

There was a lot of celebration down at the cab office when Nixon got elected. One of the first things the new president did was to transfer the San Diego federal prosecutor who was putting so much pressure on the guys.

The indictments against Bap were dropped, although Forliano went into the can.

Other than that, it was back to business as usual.

Frank and Mike split two thousand dollars for the Tony Star job.

Frank bought an engagement ring with his cut.

So he was a married man when he met President Nixon.

It was 1972.

Partially as a reward for the Tony Star thing, Frank and Mike had been bumped up from driving cabs to driving limousines and Town Cars.

When they weren’t driving, they were on the hustle. Frank probably put more hours in than your average working stiff, but it was different. It wasn’t like you were working for that hourly wage, with Uncle taking his piece out of it. Even though they were working hard, it didn’t feel like working; it was more like playing a game.

Which is why they called it “scoring,” Frank guessed.

That’s what they did in those days: They scored; they went out on scores. They scored merchandise off the backs of trucks, street tax from bookies, vig from shylock money, no-show jobs on construction projects.

They ran card and dice games, sports books, and lotteries. They made round-trip runs across the Mexican border-alcohol down and cigarettes back. They practically had a license from the San Diego cops to rip off drug dealers.

They were scoring, making money, although not much of it stuck to their hands. Most of it they had to kick up to Chris, who kicked up to Bap, who kicked up to Nicky Locicero. Even with all their scoring and hustling, they really weren’t getting ahead. Frank resented it, but Mike, being from the East Coast, was more old-school.

“It’s the way it is, Frankie,” he’d lecture when Frank would complain. “It’s the rules. We’re not even made guys yet. We gotta show we canearn. ”

Frank wasn’t into the whole “made guy” thing. He really didn’t give a damn about all that old Sicilian stuff. He was just trying to make a living, stash away enough money for a down payment on a house.

Three-plus years of busting his hump and he and Patty were still renting a walk-up apartment in the old neighborhood. And he was working all the time-when he wasn’t on a score, he was driving the limo, mostly back and forth from the airport to La Sur Mer Spa up in Carlsbad.

Mike about shit when he heard Frank had driven Moe Dalitz from the airport to La Sur Mer, or just “the Sur,” as it was known to the locals and cognoscenti. Dalitz went way back-he had been an admiral in Detroit’s “Little Jewish Navy” before the Venas moved in and chased him to Cleveland. He eventually became Chicago’s eyes and ears in Vegas, where he was considered “the Jewish Godfather.”

“Dalitz fuckingbuilt the Sur,” Mike said. “He got the Teamsters to put up the money.”

The Teamsters’ Central States Pension fund was jointly controlled by the Chicago and Detroit families, Mike explained. The go-between was a insurance executive named Allen Dorner, the son of “Red” Dorner, who was buddies with Chicago boss Tony Accardo.