Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

“I hope they get the guys,” he says, and then pulls out and drives east, doing the speed limit.

You’re an idiot, he tells himself. Or else you’re just getting tired, worn down.

It was the guy in the ice cream shop, across the street. You know him, just can’t place him.

Damngetting old.

Come on, think, think, think.

It’s flirting with him, skirting the edge of his memory.

Carlo Moretti.

A Detroit guy, a hitter for Vince Vena.

It was 1981.

Frank and Patty were already having a tough time in their marriage. They’d been trying and trying to have a baby, to no avail. They’d been to doctor after doctor, but the word was always the same: Frank had a low sperm count, nothing they could do. They talked adoption, but Patty just wasn’t into it.

She said she didn’t blame him-that would be irrational and unfair, she said-but he knew that part of her, deep down, harbored a resentment. She blamed his schedule, the pressure he put on himself with not just the fish business but the linen business now, too, and he would answer that if they ever did have a baby, he wanted to be able to provide for the kid, offer his child a future.

So it was tough times, their love life had turned into an anxiety-ridden chore, and it was just on one of those days when she was most likely to get pregnant that he got the call from Chicago to go to Vegas and take care of this little problem.

Truth was, Frank wasglad to get away for a few days.

You need the money, he told himself, and he did, but the truth was that home was turning into a painful place and he was looking for excuses to get away. That was part of the reason for the long hours at work, part of the reason for taking the job in Las Vegas.

He and Patty argued over it.

“You’re going off to Vegas with your buddies?” she said.“Now?”

Now, Frank thought, when I’m supposed to be dutifully, joylessly performing an act of love. “It’s work.”

“Work,” she scoffed. “Gambling away our money, screwing hookers, some kind of work.”

“I don’t gamble, I don’t screw hookers.”

“So what do you do in Vegas?” she asked. “Go to shows?”

He blew up. “It’swork! It’s how I make money! How I put food on the table! How I pay for doctors! How I-”

“What kind of work?” she asked. “What exactly is it you do, anyway?”

“You don’t want to know!” he yelled. “Just take the money, keep your mouth shut, don’t ask questions about things that are none of your business!”

“None of mybusiness? I’m yourwife!”

“You don’t need to remind me!”

That hurt her. He knew it before the words were even out of his mouth and wished he could call them back out of the air. She dissolved into tears. “I want a baby.”

“So do I.”

His parting words, going out the door. Still, he had to admit that the long drive to Vegas was a relief, a few hours of solitude andquiet. No arguments or recriminations, no daunting sense of failure. And time to think about the job, because it was a tricky one.

Donnie Garth was the golden boy, the wunderkind, of the Chicago real estate tycoons. Nobody knew how well he’d done, though, until he up and bought the Paladin Hotel in Vegas. Nobody knew he hadthat kind of money.

It worked out well for a while; then Garth got delusions of grandeur and actually objected to the skimming that the Chicago mob was conducting in his casino.

Frank was the one who drove Carmine Antonucci up to Garth’s place in La Jolla to “explain it to him.” Garth’s home was something else-a Norman-style mansion with a circular gravel driveway and a six-car garage that housed, among other cars, a Ferrari and an Austin-Healey.

There was no denying that Garth had style.

He stepped out the front door that day, a diminutive man with a yellow cashmere sweater tied around his neck, a blue silk shirt open at the collar, and white slacks over loafers.

Frank remembers that he was dwarfed by the huge wooden door behind him. He was all smiles and handshakes, but you could tell that he was embarrassed that actual hoods had showed up at his door, and nervous that the neighbors might see the kind of visitors he was getting.

Visitors like Carmine Antonucci and Frankie Machine.

Carmine was Chicago’s man in Las Vegas, supervising the very profitable skim that Garth wanted to mess with. So Carmine politely accepted the iced tea that Garth offered, waited while the butler went and got it, drank a few social sips, then pointed to Frank and said, “Take a good luck at this man. Do you know why they call him ‘The Machine’?”

“No.”

“Because he’s automatic,” Carmine said. “He never misses. And if you continue to be an obstacle to the smooth running of my hotel, I’m going to send The Machine to see you. You’ll never see him, because you’ll be dead. Do we have an understanding?”

“We do.”

Garth’s hand was shaking like there was an earthquake. You could hear the ice and the long silver teaspoon rattling in the glass.

“Thank you for the iced tea,” Carmine said, getting up. “It was delicious and refreshing. We’d love to stay for dinner, thank you, but I have to catch a flight.”

And that was that.

Frank never said a word.

He drove Carmine back to the airport, where a private plane flew him back to Vegas.

And Donnie Garth started behaving himself.

Except he soon had a problem.

What had happened was that Donnie Garth was going to take the kink out of his sore neck by taking a steam in the hotel spa, and he was doing this when a piece of Chicago muscle named Marty Biancofiore walked in.

Marty had done some serious work for Garth, intimidating a few other prospective buyers who had also wanted the Paladin, so he got it in his head that he wasowed. What he said to Garth while they were both wrapped in towels was that Donnie was going to give him a piece of the hotel or he was going totake a piece of Garth, and a very essential piece at that.

Which sort of put the kink back in Garth’s neck.

His hair was still damp when he called Carmine.

Now, Donnie Garth was a first-rate pain in the ass, but the Paladin was bringing in a lot of money, a lot more money than Marty could ever kick up.

And Garth was scared, skulking around the hotel, half afraid to come out of his office, wanting extra security all the time, so Carmine finally put a call in to Frank.

Because Garth had personally requested “that guy, The Machine.”

A lot of people had seen or at least heard about the beef between Garth and Biancofiore, and Chicago wanted to send a message: You do not mess with one of our people. They wanted Biancofiore done right on the Strip, they wanted his body found, and they wanted it ugly.

Marty Biancofiore was no civilian. He had done some work for Chicago himself. He’d be armed and on the lookout. Marty Biancofiore wasn’t going to open his door to no pizza guy.

He was the first man you actually had to hunt, Frank remembers. You spent five whole days tracking him, watching his patterns, waiting for an opportunity, thinking it through.

It would have to be at night, he decided. Even Frankie Machine wouldn’t try to take someone out on the Strip in broad daylight. No, that would come later, Frank thinks now, when Chicago duked it out old-style with Joe Bonnano and they did just that. Luckily, Marty Biancofiore worked the eight-to-two shift at Caesar’s, where he’d been put on the prime-time crew just to bust Garth’s balls.

Marty would work his shift, stop at the bar for two comped vodkas to unwind, then walk out to his car in the employees’ parking lot. He always looked carefully around and unlocked the car with a remote key, for fear of a bomb, Frank guessed. He always looked into the car before he got in, locked the doors quickly, and drove straight home. One night, he called a hooker; the other three he took a shower, watched some television, and went to bed.