Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

“It’s raining,” the receptionist tells him.

Troy holds up his umbrella.

There are maybe three people in San Diego who own an umbrella.

Anyway, it’s not raining hard, and the umbrella stands up to the wind. Troy walks three blocks down to a little lunch place on Broadway, at the edge of the Gaslamp District. He finds a stool at the counter and sits down.

“What’s the soup of the day?” he asks the guy behind the counter.

“Vegetable bean.”

Troy orders the soup and half-sandwich special and unfolds his newspaper. He removes the sports section, sets it down on the stool beside him, and starts to read the main section.

A minute later, the guy two stools over gets up, slides his check off the counter, picks up the sports section, and goes up to the register. The man pays his check and walks out into the rain.

Troy cautions himself to ignore the man walking out. He makes himself sit and finish his sandwich and his cup of vegetable bean soup.

Which, he thinks, is not exactly haute cuisine, but good on a cold, rainy day.

The fishermen were trying to bag a four-hundred-pound marlin, but they hooked a four-hundred-pound bouncer instead.

Grisly catch.

Dave Hansen gets the call that morning and goes down to the docks to meet the boat. He isn’t very worried about the forensics getting screwed up on a body that’s been in the water for two days.

Still and all, it isn’t hard to ID Tony Palumbo.

A few hours later, Dave gets confirmation that Palumbo was shot with the same gun that killed Vince Vena.

Hypothesis: Vena had come out from Detroit to get rid of Tony Palumbo, and someone had killed them both.

So someone was trying to clean up G-Sting from the top down. And to do it, they contracted with the most efficient hit man in California.

Dave puts a warrant out for Frank Machianno.

Frank takes a left on Nautilus Street and pulls off the road at Windansea.

Sherm’s single word, Run, let him know that The Nickel is hot.

On a normal day, he’d relish the chance to come to Windansea, the legendary surf spot. Especially on a day when the break is going off and some of the world’s best surfers will be out. But this isn’t a normal day. This is a day when somebody is waiting to kill him.

Let them wait, Frank thinks.

He flirts briefly with the idea of driving into La Jolla anyway and just letting the chips fall.

They don’t know what car you’re driving, and, better, they don’t know that you know that they’re there. On the downside, you don’t know who they are, or how many, or where they are. All you know is that they-whoever “they” are-will be hanging close to Sherm’s office. And besides, what do you gain even if you “win” a shoot-out in the crowded shopping district on La Jolla Boulevard?

Life without parole.

So don’t be stupid, he tells himself.

He pulls out of the parking lot and heads east on Nautilus, then south on La Jolla Scenic Drive, then east on Soledad Mountain Road out to the 5. Then he drives north to the 78 and heads east.

Jimmy the Kid Giacamone sits in a car and thinks about balls.

Balls is what Frankie Machine’s got. Big, clanging brass clappers.

First he snatches Mouse Junior and rides him right into his daddy’s place of business, next he pulls John Heaney into a Dumpster, and then he strolls into Migliore’s bar, beats half the guys senseless, and roughs up Teddy himself.

The guy’s got balls.

Good, Jimmy thinks, because that’s the kind of trophy you want hanging on your wall. Not his balls, of course, not literally-but any hunter worth his salt wants the big old bull elephant, the one that, you fuck up, is going to kill you.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

Jimmy’s in California with his whole crew.

“The Wrecking Crew,” they’re glossed, because they work out of a car-salvage place out in Deerborn. Jimmy likes the tag-the Wrecking Crew-it says it all.

They didn’t come in together, of course. That would’ve been stupid. They came in on separate flights, and none of them into San Diego, either. Jimmy came into Orange County, Paulie and Joey into L.A., Carlo into Burbank, Tony into Palm Springs, Jackie into Long Beach.

Mouse’s guys met them and hooked them up with hardware.

That’s all Jimmy asked from those West Coast mooks. “Get us some hardware, clean, untraceable. You guys think you can handle that?”

Maybe yes, maybe no. Frankie M. had come right into their driveway, for Chrissakes, and they let him skate. Way he heard it, Frankie had shot up the kid’s Hummer and stolen Joey Fiella’s car in the process.

Too fucking funny.

But the Mouseketeers had come through with the arsenal he’d requested, so his crew was strapped and ready to rock and roll, Motor City-style.

Eight Mile-style.

Jimmy starts to sing:

“You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow

This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo…”

No shit, you ain’t gonna blow this opportunity. Take care of business here, go back and jump the old man for the spot on the council. Like, king me, Dad. First step in taking the family back from the Tominellos and getting it home where it belongs, to the Giacamones.

Something Dad never had the stones to do.

But I do, Jimmy thinks.

Me and Frankie M., we got balls.

I just gotta blow Frankie’s off.

So he sits in the car and waits.

Frankie Machine is going to show up sooner or later.

Two hours later, Frank’s in the desert.

It’s raining there.

Raining in the damn desert, Frank thinks. It just figures. It goes with all the other weird stuff that’s going down.

Borrego Springs is an oasis in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, 770,000 acres of some of the wildest terrain in the country. The town’s founders thought it was going to be the next Palm Springs, but that never happened, mostly because there are only two roads into town, both of them bad, both of them winding through miles and miles of tough, inhospitable desert. A dozen or somojados die every year trying to cross the desert from the Mexican side, and the Border Patrol has taken to burying water beneath thirty foot red-flagged poles to try to save lives.

So the town never really flourished, and now it’s mostly a small retirement community for snowbirds, along with a couple of thousand hardy souls who live there year-round, even in the summer, when the temps can reach 130.

Frank drives in from Route 22, which snakes in seemingly endless switchbacks down from the mountains onto the vast desert floor and becomes Borrego’s main street, which sports a couple of motels, a few restaurants and shops, and a bank.

The bank is what has brought Frank here.

It’s a “tame” bank, one of the many places that Sherm launders money, and the prearranged pickup spot for Frank to get cash in case of an emergency. He drives past it, though, looking for cars or people who look out of place.

He doesn’t see anything.

He parks the car outside Albierto’s, a little Mexican joint where he’s eaten before. The food is good, and cheap, and you get a lot of it, because Albierto’s caters to the local Mexicans, who work damn hard and want a good meal for their money.

Frank stops outside, gets aBorrego Sun from the newspaper machine, walks up to the counter and orders two chicken enchiladas with black beans and rice and an iced tea, then sits down in a booth and waits for them to call his name.

Not a lot happens in Borrego Springs. There’s an article about a new archaeological dig, another one about renovations to the high school gym, but the lead story is about the San Diego city council scandal and the grand jury indicting another councilman.