Don Winslow - The winter of Frankie Machine

He stopped going into his dojo altogether. The heavy bag hung still and unused, a lonely symbol of Mac’s decline.

Frank tried to talk to him. It didn’t do any good, but Mac loved him for the attempt.

“All these people,” he said to Frank one night when they were sitting alone together at the pool. “All these people are hangers-on. They’re all parasites. Not you, Frank Machianno, you’re aman. You love me man to man.”

It was the truth.

Frank did love him.

Loved the memory of the distinguished, generous genius that Mac had been, and could be again. Instead of the paranoid, mean, incoherent shell he had become. Mac looked awful-the once-tight body was sagging and thin. The man rarely ate, his eyes were dilated, and his skin looked like dark brown parchment paper.

“These people,” Mac continued, “will kill me.”

“No, Mac,” Frank said.

But they did.

John Stone came to Frank one day at the Sunday party that autumn and said, “He’s cheating us.”

“Who is?”

“Our ‘partner,’” Stone said. He gestured toward Mac’s bedroom, where Mac was holed up, as he usually was those days. And the Sunday party wasn’t what it used to be, either. Fewer and fewer people came, and those who did were mostly the hard-core sex and coke freaks.

“No way,” Frank said.

“Don’t tell me no way,” Stone said. “Half our money is going up that nigger’s nose.”

Frank didn’t want to believe it, but the “cheating” talk only got worse. Stone and Sherrell met with Mike to show him the figures. Frank refused to be there. He had it rationalized six ways to Sunday: (a) Mac wasn’t stealing; (b) even if he was, he was making them so much money, they were better off with him stealing than without him; (c) Mac wasn’t stealing.

But Mac was.

He knew Mac was.

Stone confronted Mac with the evidence and Mac threatened to kill him, kill him and his whole family, kill them all.

“He’s gotta go,” Mike said to Frank.

Frank shook his head.

“No one’s asking you for yourvote, Frankie,” Mike said. “The decision’s been made. I just came as, you know, acourtesy, because I know the guy is your friend.”

You just came, Frank thought, because you wanted to make sure that Frankie Machine wouldn’t take it personally. See it as a grudge, respond the way I did over Georgie Y’s killing. Well, you have a legitimate concern there.

“The guys down in the Lamp,” Mike added, “they’ve signed off on it.”

Letting Frank know that if he decided to do something about this, he’d be taking on Detroit, too.

“What do the Migliores have to do with it?”

“They own strip clubs,” Mike said. “This moolie getting toxic affects them, too. They don’t like it. Headlines are bad for business. He’s gotta go, Frank.”

“Let me do it.”

“What?”

“Let me do it,” Frank said.

You guys are scared shitless of him. You’ll panic and just blast away until there’s nothing left of the man. If it has to be done, let me do it quick and clean.

I owe the man that much.

He’s my friend.

Frank found him in the dojo. The sound system was blasting out Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew.” Frank walked in and saw Mac standing on one shaky leg, kicking the heavy bag with the other.

The bag barely moved.

And Mac didn’t even notice him.

Frank walked up and put two. 45 slugs into the back of his head.

Then he went home, got his old longboard out of the garage, and gave it a good waxing. Then he took it out into the water and let the waves pound him.

He never went back to the limo business or the Pinto Club.

Patty filed for divorce later that year.

Frank didn’t contest it.

He gave her the house and custody of Jill.

Four more bodies, Frank thinks as he drives through the desert.

English Pat Porter and his two boys.

And Mac.

Four more candidates, but not exactly strong ones. Hell, all that was almost twenty years ago. Even back then, the word was that people in London were relieved that Porter and his crew hadn’t cashed in on their round-trip tickets.

And Mac?

He’d had no family, no people. And the SDPD hadn’t exactly rushed to investigate the murder of a crooked ex-cop.

Of course, Mike lost the Pinto Club. Without Mac to restrain him, he ran it into the ground and ended up burning it down before the IRS, the bank, or the other creditors could take it away from him.

Then he got popped for the arson and went in for a ten spot.

The Migliores eventually took over the whole San Diego strip club business, and the prostitution and porn that went with it, with the Combination as their grand protectors.

But what does it have to do with me? Frank wonders.

Is it possible that the feds have reopened one of the Strip Club War cases and are going after the Migliores? So they’re eliminating potential witnesses, including yours truly?

If that’s the case, maybe Mike is in the dirt instead of the wind.

Frank pulls off the road.

Tired.

It hits him like a cold, hard wave.

This fatigue, this…despair. This acknowledgment of reality-that he can run and fight, run and fight, andwin every one, but that eventually, inevitably, he’s going to lose.

Hell, Frank thinks, I’vealready lost.

My life.

The life I love, anyway. Frank the Bait Guy is already dead, even if Frankie Machine ekes out survival. That life is gone-my home, the early mornings on the pier, the bait shack, seeing my customers, sponsoring the kids.

The Gentlemen’s Hour.

All gone now, even if I “live.”

And Patty.

And Donna.

And Jill.

What’s left of them now for me? Brief, tense meetings in hotels somewhere? Hurried embraces in the thick air of fear? Maybe a quick kiss, a fast hug. “How are you?” “What’s new?” Maybe there’ll be grandkids someday. Jill will send pictures to some post office box. Or maybe I can check in on one of those Internet sites, watch my grandchildren grow up on a little laptop screen.

If life is just running now, why bother?

Why not just swallow the gun right here?

Jesus, he thinks, you’ve become Jay Voorhees.

This is what kills you, surer than a bullet.

He makes a phone call.

The Nickel’s been expecting it.

A call from Frank on the backup phone.

Four in the morning, he’s in that surreal half sleep when the phone rings.

“Frank, thank God.”

“Sherm.”

“Look, there’s a clean passport and airline tickets waiting for you in Tijuana,” Sherm says. “You can be in France tomorrow morning. The EU won’t extradite on a capital crime. Everything’s taken care of for Patty and Jill. Godspeed, my friend.”

“Am I going to walk into another ambush, friend?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Sherm listens to Frank tell him about the ambush at the bank and the GPS monitor that led to the motel in Brawley.

“Frank, you don’t think-”

“What am I supposed to think, Sherm?” Frank asks. “Who knew about that bank? You and me.”

“They came, Frankie,” Sherm says. “I gave them nothing, I swear.”

“Who came?”

“Some wise guys,” Sherm says. “And the feds.”

“The feds?”

“That buddy of yours,” Sherm says. “Hansen. They have warrants out for you, Frank. For Vince Vena and Tony Palumbo.”

Tony Palumbo? Frank thinks. That must have been the guy with the garrote on the boat. “You know anything about this Palumbo, Sherm?”

“Word on the street,” Sherm says, “is that he was an FBI undercover, an informant, the guy behind the G-Sting indictments.”