Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

He was freaking out now, paranoia pumping adrenaline. “What if Bap gaveus up, too?”

“He didn’t,” Frank said, still hoping.

“We don’t know that,” Mike said. “What if he takes the stand? He could put us up for DeSanto, Star…”

“If he had,” Frank said, “we’d have been arrested by now. The feds don’t sit on murder indictments.”

No, if this was true, Bap’s strategy was to get rid of L.A. by giving them up to the feds, then basically replace the L.A. guys with his own San Diego crew. Which was why not a single San Diego guy had been named in the sweeping indictments the previous summer. It had always been Bap’s dream to run California from San Diego.

“We’d be his two captains,” Frank said.

“The fuck you talking about?”

Frank laid out his analysis of Bap’s plan and repeated, “Bap is planning to make us the captains in his new family. He kept us out of the indictments; he kept us off the tape.”

“So, what, we owe him?”

“Yeah.”

“Do we owe him our fuckinglives, Frankie?” Mike asked. “Because that’s what we’re talking about here.”

Mike was right. Frank hated to admit it, but Mike was absolutely right. It was either/or. Either they took Bap out or they jumped in the boat with him.

And that boat was going down.

So there it was. The afternoons in Dorner’s luxurious jail cell got real long. Now there were three guys sitting around wondering if they were going to get whacked, trying to keep their minds off it by watching other guys rat on their boss.

The end of July, they got the word.

Jimmy Hoffa had disappeared.

So, Frank thought, I guess Chicago and Detroit worked it out. And, he learned, if it’s a contest between old connections and money, put your money on money.

Dorner took a big sigh of relief and kicked the two men out of his house.

They weren’t so glad to go. Nobody was going to clip them in Dorner’s condo. Outside, it might be a different story. Frank went home and got an uneasy night’s sleep.

Bap called at ten in the morning from his phone booth, telling Frank to come right over, that he had some news. Frank met him on the boardwalk at Pacific Beach. Bap had his easel set up. He was out there painting, and the man wasbeaming.

“They made meconsigliore, ” Bap said.

The pride in his voice was palpable.

“Cent’anni,” Frank said. “It’s overdue.”

“It’s not boss,” Bap said. “It’s not all I wanted, but it’s a significant honor. It’s anacknowledgment, you know what I mean?”

Frank wanted to cry. Maybe that was all the man had ever wanted: anattaboy, a pat on the back. Not a lot to ask. But Frank knew what it really was. It was poison wrapped in candy, a sleeping pill to lull Bap into a feeling of security.

It was a death sentence.

Frank almost told him.

But he choked the words back.

“I’m going to take care of you,” Bap said, tranquilly painting his crappy watercolor of the ocean. “Don’t you worry, you and Mike. I’m going to see that you get straightened out.”

“Thanks, Bap.”

“Don’t thank me,” Bap said. “You’ve earned it.”

Marie came out of the house with two tall glasses of iced tea for them. She wasn’t a hot little number anymore, but she still looked good, and it was clear from the way she looked at her husband that she adored him.

“You’re almost done with this painting, huh?” she said, looking over her husband’s shoulder. “It’s good.”

It isn’t, Frank thought. Only a loving wife would say it was.

The next call came from Mike.

They met down at Dog Beach, watched golden retrievers fetch Frisbees.

“It’s a done deal,” Mike said. “L.A., Chicago, and Detroit have all signed off. Chris Panno gets San Diego; we report to Chicago until L.A. gets its act together.”

“Yeah? When willthat be?” Frank asked, avoiding the real topic.

“We gotta do it,” Mike said.

“He’s ourboss, Mike!”

“He’s a fucking rat!” Mike said. “He has to go. You want to go with him, that’s your choice, but I’m telling you right now, it ain’t mine.”

Frank stared out at the ocean, thinking he’d like to get out on a board and just paddle. Maybe get his ass kicked in a big wave and get…cleansed.

“Look, I’ll do it, that makes you feel better,” Mike said. “Youdrive this time.”

“No,” Frank said. “I’ll do it.”

He went home that afternoon, turned on the television, and watched Nixon walk to a helicopter, then stand there and wave.

Jimmy Forliano made an appointment for Bap to call him that night. It was raining that night along the coast. Bap was wearing a Windbreaker and one of those old wise-guy fedoras like they used to wear in the movies. He took it off when he got inside the phone booth.

Frank sat in the car and watched him take the roll of quarters out of his pocket and knock it against the little metal shelf to break the paper open. Then he started feeding quarters into the phone.

Forliano was up in Murietta.

A long-distance call.

Frank couldn’t hear him say “It’s me,” but even through the rain and the glass, he could see his lips move. He waited until Bap was in the middle of the conversation, not worried about it ending early. Forliano was a bullshit artist; if there was anything he could do, it was talk.

Frank had a. 25 pistol for this job, not his usual. 22. (“Don’t sign your work,” Bap had told him.) He flipped the hood of his Windbreaker up over his head and stepped outside. The street was empty-people in San Diego don’t come out at night in the rain. Only Bap did that, to come to his office.

Bap dropped the roll of quarters when he saw Frank. They clattered to the floor, some of them rolling around like they were trying to escape. Bap tried to hold the door shut.

He knew, Frank thought.

He knows.

There was a little hurt look in his eyes as he tried to hold the door, but Frank was too strong and just ripped it open.

“I’m sorry,” Frank said.

He put four shots into Bap’s face.

The blood followed him back into the street.

Frank went to the funeral. Marie seemed inconsolable. Later on, she sued the FBI for negligence. The suit didn’t get very far.

Neither did the murder investigation.

The feds liked Jimmy for it, and charged him, and threw the hit into the indictment salad against L.A. with everything else, but they had no evidence and couldn’t prove anything.

And Frank got his button for that night, him and Mike.

They had a cheesy “ceremony” in the back of a car pulled off the I-15 near Riverside, with Chris Panno and Jimmy Forliano. That was it: Chris just pulled off the side of the road and Jimmy turned around to the backseat, pricked Frank’s thumb with a pin, kissed him on the cheeks, and said, “Congratulations, you’re in.”

They didn’t hold burning paper, or a stiletto or a gun, or anything like that. It was nothing like it was supposed to have been in the old days, nothing like it was in the movies.

Mike was disappointed.

Frank went straight after the hit on Bap.

Mike went to San Quentin.

He had gotten popped for extorting local gamblers-the feds had a wire tap of him and Jimmy Regace discussing it, so they were both jacked up good. The feds tried to put him behind the wheel for the Baptista hit, with Forliano as the triggerman, and tried to get him to trade up, but Mike didn’t buy the bluff, and he wouldn’t have taken the deal anyway.

Whatever else Mike was or wasn’t, he wasn’t a rat.

And he never breathed Frank’s name.

Nobody did, and Frank sweated it out (literally) down in Rosarito. That same spring, the California Crime Commission listed ninety-three names on its “Organized Crime” list, and Frank wasn’t on it. He figured that he had dodged a big bullet, so it was time to lay low.