Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

“Tell him to sell one of his cars and pay the man,” Frank said. “Tell him The Machine said so.”

Donnie Garth paid Herbie Goldstein his $75K.

Which is how Frank became friends with Herbie Goldstein.

Fat Herbie sought Frank out after he got his money from Donnie Garth. Goldstein actually got on a plane, flew out to San Diego, and requested a sit-down with Frankie Machine. They had it over lunch, of course-if you were with Herbie, you wereeating.

Now, a lot of mobbed-up guys had the sobriquet “Fat.” Frank knew five of them personally. But none of them could play seesaw with Herbie Goldstein-they’d just be up in the air, looking down at almost four hundred pounds of Herbie, who’d probably be sucking on a Fudgsicle.

Anyway, Herbie took Frank out to lunch and said, “That was a decent thing, what you did for me. I just wanted to tell you in person I appreciated it.”

“It was the right thing,” Frank said.

“Not everybodydoes the right thing,” Herbie said. “Not these days.”

Herbie picked up the lunch check, which was no small thing, then extended an invitation: “If you’re ever in Las Vegas, I’ll show you a good time.”

Frank didn’t plan on going to Vegas, he really didn’t. But the invitation lingered in his head. The harder he worked, the longer hours, the dutiful, futile sex with Patty, the fights, the silences all made the offer from the 375-pound gangster seem like a siren song.

So one day, after a chef gave him agita over a perfectly fine unit of yellowtail, Frank threw a few clothes in the car and headed to Las Vegas.

He pulled into town and gave Herbie a ring. Ten minutes later, he was unpacking his clothes in a comped suite at the Paladin. He took a nice long bath in the in-room Jacuzzi, then a nap, then got up and got dressed to go meet Herbie in the lobby.

Herbie had two Playboy models with him, Susan and Mandy.

Susan, a petite blonde with an unpetite chest, was Herbie’s date. Mandy was for Frank. She had shiny shoulder-length brown hair, full lips, warm brown eyes and was wearing a dress that showed a body that deserved showing. Frank told himself that she was a platonic date, that’s all. A companion for drinks, dinner, and maybe a show, so he wouldn’t feel like the third wheel.

They did the town.

God, did they do the town.

The food, the wine, the shows-Frank was never allowed to reach for his wallet. Not that a bill came anyway, it never did. Herbie left a big tip, and that was it. They got the best tables, bottles of the best wine came over with compliments of the management, and they got invited to parties in the greenroom after the shows.

And then there were the women.

Fat Herbie Goldstein was not an attractive man, although he did bear an uncanny resemblance to Pavarotti-if the tenor had gone on an all-pudding diet for a couple months, that is.

And he wasn’t charming-if anything, Herbie had a kind ofanti- charm, where the wordrepulsive came from, Frank guessed. Herbie repulsed most people-with his voracious consumption, nonexistent table manners, and the rivers of sweat that always seemed to be running down his fat cheeks or pooling in his armpits. His clothes were rumpled and usually had food stains on them, he had a mouth like a sewer, and most people in Vegas would cross the street to avoid running into him.

But Herbie pulled women.

There was just no question about it. Frank never saw Herbie after dark without an absolutely drop-dead-gorgeous woman on his arm. And they weren’t hookers-they were dancers and models and good-time girls. They accepted presents from him, for sure, sometimes fairly big presents, like condos or cars, but it wasn’t just the money.

They really seemed to like being with Herbie, and the more time Frank spent with the guy, the more he did, too.

But that first night…

They rolled back into the Paladin around 3:00 a.m. When Frank went to say good night to Mandy, his Playmate, she looked at him funny.

“You don’t like me?” she asked.

“I like you fine.”

“What is it, I don’t turn you on?”

He’d had a hard-on all night. “You turn me on a lot.”

“Then let’s go make each other feel good,” she said.

“Mandy, I’m married.”

She smiled. “It’s just sex, Frank.”

No, it wasn’t.

After nine faithful years of marriage, the last few of them fairly unhappy, nothing was “just sex.” Mandy did things that Patty would never have thought of and wouldn’t have done if she had. Frank was starting in on his usual sexual routine when Mandy stopped him and said gently, “Frank, let me show you how to please me.”

She did.

For the first time in his life, Frank felt this sense of freedom about sex, because it wasn’t a struggle or negotiation or an obligation. It was just pure pleasure, and when he woke up in the morning, he wanted to feel guilty, but the fact was, he didn’t. He just felt good.

It didn’t hurt that Mandy had already gotten up and left, leaving only a little note telling him that she felt “well and truly fucked,” with one of those little smiley faces above her signature.

Herbie came by to take him to breakfast.

“You should try some Jew food,” Herbie said when Frank went for the bacon and eggs.

He ordered Frank an onion bagel with lox, cream cheese, and a slice of red onion.

It was delicious, and the contrasts of tastes and textures-sharp, creamy, soft, and crispy-was a revelation to him. Herbie knew what he was talking about. When you really got talking with him, it turned out that Herbie knew a lot about a lot. He knew about food, wine, jewelry, and art. He had Frank over to his house to see his collection of Erte and his wine cellar. You would never call Herbie a cultured man by any means, but he had some surprises in him.

Take the crossword puzzles, for instance.

It was Herbie who turned Frank on to the puzzles, and Herbie could do the SundayNew York Times puzzle in ink. Sometimes, Frank wasn’t so sure Herbie needed to write anything down at all-he might have all the words in his head. And he was a walking dictionary, although the funny thing was, he didn’t use any of those words in his conversation, ever.

“I guess I’m what you would call an idiot savant,” he said one day when Frank asked him about it. Although, when Frank looked up the termidiot savant, he realized that no idiot savant would know the expression.

“You and Mandy got along, huh?” Herbie asked as they were walking out of his wine cellar the day after Frank had shattered his marriage vows with multiple, and creative, acts of adultery.

“I guess you could say that.”

“We have two different girls tonight,” Herbie said. “Very nice girls. Very nice.”

Frank left Vegas five days later in need of a vitamin E injection but otherwise feeling rested and satisfied. He went back a lot after that, mostly getting comped at the Paladin, sometimes staying somewhere else and paying his own way because he didn’t want to abuse the situation.

The wise guys were banging Vegas for everything it was worth.

And why not?

The skim was flowing.

The only problem was, the bosses wanted more and more of it, and other families were looking to get in on it, so the skimmers got to the point that they weren’t just skimming; they were tapping deeper and deeper into the well.

But there’s only so much water in a desert.

Sooner or later, it would have to end, but none of them saw then that it was going to be sooner. It was just one continuous party then, and Frank, after years of working his ass off, was partying with the best of them. What he’d do was, he’d put in sixteen-hour days in San Diego at his businesses all week, then leave Friday after lunch and drive to Vegas and spend the weekend. Most times, he’d make it back on Monday, but sometimes he wouldn’t.