Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

Anyway, now he sat low in the backseat of a work car and watched while Sherrell came out, said good night to the bartender, pulled the metal screen down, and started to set the padlock.

Frank stuck the. 22 rifle through the car’s open window, sighted in on the fleshy part of Sherrell’s right calf, and fired. Sherrell went down, Mike hit the gas, and that was it. Frank knew that the bartender would come back and get Sherrell to the hospital. The Chokemaster would be on crutches for a couple of weeks, if that.

All in all, it was a very tempered response to the assault on Angie Basso, whose wrists would take months to heal. If anything it was ade escalation of the war, but instead, the other side kicked it up a notch.

Frank saw it happening-literally.

He was at the airport waiting for a pickup when he saw Pat Porter walk into the terminal. Frank gave him a little space and then followed him in, where Porter met a direct flight from Heathrow and warmly greeted two men as they got off the plane.

They were what the Brits would call “hard men.” Frank could see that by the way they walked and carried themselves. Heavily muscled, but graceful, like athletes. One was barrel thick and wore a rugby shirt over jeans and tennis shoes. The other was thin and a little taller, sporting an Arsenal football club jersey.

Porter had brought in a crew.

They showed up at the Pinto Club two days later.

It was late afternoon on a Tuesday, just when the after-work construction crowd would start to come in. Pretty quiet, not dead. Frank was sitting in his regular booth, grabbing a quick cheeseburger and a Coke before the evening rush started and he’d have to leave to make pickups.

He spotted the British crew as they came through the door. So did Georgie Y, who left the bar, where he was sitting with Myrna, and started toward the Englishmen. They smiled like he was a meal walking their way.

Frank waved Georgie over to the booth instead.

“Frank,” Georgie said. “I don’t like them coming in here.”

“Did I ask what you like?” Frank said. “Myrna’s up. Go watch her dance, think about what she’ll be doing later tonight with you.”

“Frank-”

“What did I say, Georgie? I have to repeat myself now?”

Georgie gave Porter a bad look, then took a seat ringside and watched Myrna gyrate her little body in a bad imitation of eroticism.

Porter walked over to Frank’s booth, his two boys, still decked out in their sporting gear, on either shoulder.

Frank didn’t ask them to sit.

Porter was in his uniform-dark suit, buttoned collar, skinny black tie. He looked at Frank and said, “You know, in the end it’s going to come down to me and you.”

“What is this, Shane?” Frank asked, laughing. Looking at Porter’s face, he knew one thing for sure about him: Pat Porter didn’t like being laughed at.

“Me and you,” Porter repeated.

Frank looked over Porter’s shoulder. “Then what are they here for?”

“To make sure no one else steps in,” Porter said. “I know how you guineas are.”

Frank went back to eating his cheeseburger. “I’m on a clock, Sam Spade,” he said, chewing. “If you have a point, make it. Otherwise…”

Frank jutted his chin toward the door.

“I’m going to kill you, Frankie Machine,” Porter said. “Or make you kill me.”

“I’ll take door number two,” Frank said.

Porter didn’t get the joke. He just stood there, like he was waiting for something. What, Frank thought, am I supposed to jump up and “draw”? We’re going to do B Westerns, 1988 on Kettner Boulevard?

Frank finished the last bite of his burger, took a swallow of the Coke, then stood up and slammed the heavy glass into the side of Porter’s face. Rugby Shirt started in, but suddenly Frank had a pistol out. He cocked it, pointed it at the two sidekicks, and said, “Really?”

Apparently not.

Rugby Shirt and Arsenal stood there, frozen.

Keeping the gun on them, he reached down to where Porter was now kneeling with blood pouring down the side of his face, grabbed the man’s tie, wrapped it around his neck, and, with his gun on the other two Brits, dragged Porter across the floor, up the stairs to the landing, and out the door.

He waved the pistol at Rugby Shirt and Arsenal and said, “Out.”

“You’re dead, mate,” Arsenal said.

“Yeah. Out.”

They walked out the door. Frank came back into the room, stepped carefully over the broken glass and blood, and sat back down in the booth.

He signaled to the waitress for the check.

Everyone was staring at him-the waitress, the bartender, the three construction workers sitting at a table, Myrna and Georgie Y. They were all wide-eyed.

“What?” Frank asked.“What?”

I’m in a bad mood, all right? he thought. I haven’t seen my kid awake in three weeks, my wife is threatening to call a lawyer, I’m trying to eat a burger before I work all night, and some Brit has to come in and hassle me with bad movie dialogue? I shouldn’t have toexplain myself to you people.

“Get me some club soda and a few bar towels,” he said.

“I’ll clean it up, Frank,” the waitress said.

“Thank you, Angela,” Frank said, “but I made the mess. I’ll clean it up.”

“We have cheesecake today, Frank.”

“That’s okay, honey. I’m watching my figure.”

He cleaned up the blood and broken glass, and was more than normally alert when he went out in the parking lot to start making his pickups. When he got back with his first customer, Mike was waiting for him, laughing. “Don’t youever fucking lecture me about my temper again.”

“The blood came out of the carpet okay.”

Mike looked at Frank, then grabbed him by the cheeks and said, “I love you. I just fuckinglove you, all right?”

He turned to the whole bar. “I just love this fucking guy!”

Two weeks later, it happened.

It shouldn’t have, wouldn’t have, except that Mike suddenly had a group of Japanese businessmen who wanted to party, and he needed both limos to take care of them. So Frank would be driving instead of doing what he had planned to do, which was make a pickup of some shy money. It was supposed to have been a very simple, no-sweat errand-this junkie boyfriend of one of the dancers had borrowed some money and was going to make his first payment on the vig.

“Have Georgie do it,” Mike said. “He can swing by the guy’s place on his way in.”

So Frank called Georgie, and he was happy to do it. Frank and Mike went out and drove the Japanese around, and when they got back to the club, it was one in the morning and Myrna was sitting at the bar, two other strippers holding her shoulders as she sobbed hysterically.

It took Frank thirty minutes to get the story out of her.

She had gone with Georgie to make the pickup. The junkie lived in an apartment building in the Lamp. They were going to pick up the money on the way in to work, so that’s why she was with him. They pulled into the parking lot and Georgie told her to wait in the car. She said that was fine, because she needed to get her makeup on.

When Georgie got out of his car, three guys got out of another.

“Did you recognize them?” Frank asked.

Myrna nodded, then broke into another fresh bout of sobs. When she recovered, she said, “Frankie, one of them was that guy you beat up the other day. He had bandages on his face, but I recognized him. The other two were the guys who were with him.”

Frank felt sick as Myrna told the rest of the story. Georgie tried to fight them, but there were three of them. One of them kicked Georgie in the head and his legs buckled under him. She got out of the car and tried to help him, but one of the guys wrapped his arms around her and held her.