Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

That was the summer of ’72, the summer of Richard Nixon.

By the winter of ’75, it had all gone to shit.

Nicky Locicero died in the fall of ’74. His funeral was pathetic, just immediate family-none of the guys showed up because they didn’t want to give the feds any ammo.

The feds werepounding the L.A. family. It was like the FBI was living inside the guys’ heads, the prosecutors seemed to know everything, and the feds’ Xerox machines were breaking down, they were cranking out so many indictments.

And the indictments were rock-solid. Even Sherm Simon advised the guys to plead out, which they did. Peter Martini got popped for four years, Jimmy Regace, who had just taken over as boss, for two. He named old Paul Drina as acting boss.

Bap thought it should have been him. He was very pissed off.

“Tom is a lawyer who’s never got his hands wet,” Bap said to Frank. “What’s he ever done other than be Jack’s brother? And they jump him over me? After all I’ve done for them?”

This was Bap’s constant refrain back in the seventies, the “after all I’ve done for them” mantra. The fact that it was justified didn’t make it any less tedious or futile, though. Fact was, Frank was sick of hearing it.

There comes a time in a man’s life, he figured, the infamous midlife crisis, when a guy has to face the reality that what he has is all he’s going to get, and he needs to find his peace and his happiness in his life as it is. Most guys managed to get that done, but not Bap-he was always griping about how he’d been screwed, how this guy or that guy had done him dirt in a deal, how there were guys who were “dead wood” and he was sick of carrying them, how L.A. never cut him in for his fair piece of the pie.

Whatpie? Frank thought as he heard this litany for maybe the thousandth time. There’s practically no pie to cut up, what with half the guys in the can and New York and Chicago picking the bones like vultures.

Which was why Frank had taken his meager savings and gone into the fish business. Mike could laugh at him all he wanted, and make jokes about how Frank smelled like a mackerel (which wasn’t true-(a) Frank showered meticulously after work, and (b) there were no mackerel in the Pacific Ocean), but the money was clean and safe. And while he wasn’t raking it in like you could with the rackets when everything was good, everythingwasn’t good.

And they couldn’t expect any help from on high, either, because the guy in the White House had his own problems, and he wasn’t about to reach a hand out to a bunch of mobsters.

So it was a bad time for things to go haywire at the Sur.

But they did.

June, the summer of ’75, Frank got a call from Bap’s phone booth office. “You and Mike, get your asses here quick.”

Frank heard the urgency in his voice and told him they could be in Pacific Beach in half an hour.

“Not Pacific Beach,” Bap said. “The Sur. And come heavy.”

It was Fort Sur Mer.

Driving up to the main building, Frank spotted half a dozen wise guys, all dressed casually, like guests, but posted to control the avenues of access. And Frank knew that under the polo shirts and the gabardine trousers, or tucked in golf bags or tennis frames, the guys were carrying serious hardware.

Frank parked in a slot across from Dorner’s condo. Bap must have seen them pull up, because he was walking toward them before Frank even turned the motor off.

“Come on, come on,” Bap said, opening Frank’s door.

“What’s up?”

“Hoffa’s making his play,” Bap said. “He might be putting a hit out on Dorner.”

Frank had never seen Bap this worked up. When they got into Dorner’s condo, Frank could see why.

The heavy drapes were pulled closed against the big glass slider that normally looked out on the golf course. Jimmy Forliano stood at the edge of the curtain, peeking out, a holster with a. 45 strapped on his shoulder. Joey Lombardo was in the kitchen, getting a beer out of the fridge.

Carmine Antonucci sat on the sofa, sipping coffee. Dorner sat next to him, a gin and tonic sweating on the glass-top coffee table at his knees. In a big chair across from them sat Tony Jacks, looking cool and collected in a white linen suit and a royal blue tie.

Dorner looked up at them as if he’d never seen them before, even though they had hauled him back and forth from his private jet at least a few dozen times. He didn’t look good. He looked pale and tired.

“Hi, guys,” he said.

His voice was weak.

“You stay tighter on Dorner than his own asshole,” Tony Jacks said. “He don’t shit, shave, or shower, he don’t look over his shoulder and not see one of you there. Anything happens to him, it happens to you next.”

The siege went on for three weeks.

“Hey,” Mike said about a week in. “If you’re going to go to the mattresses, there are worse places to do it than the Sur.”

MoreGodfather jive, Frank thought. If anybody had ever “gone to the mattresses” in San Diego before this, they were air mattresses in swimming pools.

Dorner started to get cabin fever.

“I want to get out,” he said. “Play a little golf, just take a fucking walk. Get a little sun.”

Frank shook his head. “No can do, Mr. Dorner.”

He had strict orders.

“I feel like a prisoner in my own home,” Dorner said.

It’s not far from the truth, Frank thought, beginning to wonder if they were protecting Dornerfrom Hoffa orfor him. He expressed this to Bap one day as he was walking him out of the condo.

Bap looked at him for a long moment.

“You’re a smart boy, Frankie,” Bap said. “You’re going to go places.”

It could go either way, Bap explained. Chicago and Detroit were working it out; all they could do was wait.

Basically, Tony Jacks was fighting for his boy Hoffa, while the Chicago boys were taking up for Fitzsimmons and Dorner. Bap was betting on Fitzsimmons and Dorner, because they were the better earners, but then again, Hoffa’s Detroit connections were long and strong.

And Tony Jacks was lobbying hard for both Dorner and Fitzsimmons to get the chop.

“Don’t let yourself get too close to the guy,” Bap said, meaning Dorner. “You don’t know what you might have to do, huh?”

So that was it.

They were guarding Dorner and they wereguarding him. They weren’t letting anybody in and they weren’t letting him out. It was weird, sitting there playing rummy with the guy night after night, knowing you might be called on to whack him.

So it was tense.

It got a lot more tense when Mike came back from a little walk, took Frank aside and whispered to him, “We gotta talk.”

He wasshook.

Mike Pella, who was usuallyice, looked shaken.

“It’s Bap,” Mike said.

“What’sBap?” Frank asked with this edge to his voice, but he already knew the answer. He felt like he could throw up.

“Bap’sbeen talking to the feds,” Mike said. “He’s been wearing a wire.”

“No,” Frank said, shaking his head. Except he already knew it was true. It made sense-Bap had finally found his way to take out the L.A. leadership-cooperate with the feds and put them in jail. Then, when they’d made Paul Drina boss instead, he decided he needed to finish the job.

“How do youknow this?” Frank whispered. Dorner was asleep in his bedroom, but Frank wasn’t taking any chances he’d overhear.

“The guys set him up,” Mike said. “They tossed him some bullshit about a porn shakedown and the feds showed up at it.”

And now, Mike said, L.A. was wondering ifall Bap’s guys were in on this coup by cop.

“Frank,” Mike said, “you gotta figure they’re thinking about clippingall of us.”