Don Winslow: The winter of Frankie Machine

Uncle Tony is a man. Uncle Tony is old-school.

He digs his cell phone out of his pants pocket and punches in the number. It takes a few rings before the old man comes to the phone. “Uncle Tony, this guy is trying to tell me-”

“Easy, kid,” Tony says.

“I can take him, Uncle Tony!”

“You can’t, Jimmy!” The voice is harsh, clear, and decisive. “This deal has to be completed successfully. Frankie M. goes; then G-Sting gets shut down.”

“Fuck G-Sting!” Jimmy says. “Fuck the Migliores and their clubs. We can live without it.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tony says. “You think this is just about a bunch of strippers grinding their naked twats on laps? Smarten up. This is just the down payment, nephew. Let the senator cunt make this deal and then he’s ours, all the way to the White House. Better than Kennedy, better than Nixon, because we got this son of a bitch by the balls. By theballs. Now hang up the phone and do what you got to do.”

Jimmy hangs up.

As always, Uncle Tony is right.

But it still sucks, what they’re going to do.

Don Winslow

The Winter of Frankie Machine

Jill Machianno balances her ski bag between her hip and the wall as she unlocks the front door of her apartment. She has the door open and is reaching for the ski bag when the tall redheaded woman comes up to her.

“Jill Machianno?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Donna, a friend of your father’s.”

Jill gives her a stare as cold as the snow she was skiing on. “I know who you are.”

“I don’t want to frighten you,” Donna says, “but your father’s had an accident.”

“Oh my God. Is he-”

“He’s going to be fine,” Donna says, “but he’s in the hospital.”

“Is my mother with him?”

“She’s out of town somewhere,” Donna says. “Your dad asked me to find you and take you to the hospital. I’m parked across the street.”

Jill sets her skis and luggage inside the door, shuts it, and follows Donna to her car.

Dave Hansen is at Shores.

Well, at least there’s plenty of parking, he thinks as he pulls into the public lot across the street from the little playground.

Donnie Garth is already out there, standing by the vacant lifeguard tower, looking out at the gray sea. He looks vaguely ghostlike in his hooded white slicker. Or, Dave thinks, like a hopelessly out of place Klansman.

Dave gets out of the car and steps over the low wall onto the beach.

“Are you wearing a wire?” Garth asks.

“No, are you?”

“I’m going to have to pat you down.”

Dave lifts his arms and lets Garth feel him for a wire. Satisfied, Garth says, “Let’s go for a walk.”

They head north, toward Scripps Pier.

“This Summer Lorensen nonsense,” Garth says, “I don’t know what you think you know, but youdon’t know what you’re fooling with.”

“See, I think I do,” Dave says. “That’s the problem.”

“You’re damn right it’s a problem.” Garth turns to look at him. Rain drips off the edge of the hood onto his nose. “You’re a few months away from retirement. Take your pension and go fishing. Visit the grandkids. Forget about all this.”

“What if I don’t?”

“There are certain people who want you to know,” Garth says, “that if you persist with this crusade, you’ll leave with nothing. You’ll be a security guard on the night shift, if you’re not in jail, that is.”

“In jail for what?”

“Start with cooperation with a known organized crime figure, Frank Machianno,” Garth says. “You’ve been protecting him. Or how about your collusion in the torture of Harold Henkel? Or assaulting a federal agent. There’s plenty, Hansen. More than enough, trust me. And without friends to protect you…”

“Oh, you want to be my friend.”

“You need to decide who your friends are, Dave,” Garth says. “You choose wrong, you end up as a disgraced cop with nothing. Choose right, you can live a happy life. Christ, why would you sacrifice your future for some second-rate hit man, anyway?”

“He’s afirst -rate hit man, Donnie,” Dave says. “As you, of all people, should know.”

Garth stops and turns around. “I’ll walk back by myself. If Frankie Machine contacts you, we expect you to do the right thing. Do you understand?”

Dave looks over the man’s shoulder at the waves.

I’d rather be out there, he thinks, in a wave, under a wave. Anything would be better than this.

“Do you understand?” Garth says.

“Yeah.”

I understand.

Frank sits in the little shack in the hills outside of Escondido. He’s known about the place for years-it sits up a dirt road in a canyon above the orange groves. It’s a place to hidemojados -they live up here away from themigra and go down just before dawn to pick the oranges, then return at dusk.

Except there are nomojados now.

You don’t pick oranges in the winter, in the rain.

Nevertheless, he can smell the tangy scent of the orange trees below. Makes him nostalgic, sad, that he won’t be around to taste the oranges in the spring.

He has one gun and four bullets.

It won’t be enough.

They’ll be coming with an army-so four bullets, or forty, or four hundred, or four thousand, it won’t make any difference, because there’s only one of you.

And you can’t win this battle.

All those cliches about life-they’re all true. If you could cook one more meal, ride one more wave, have a chat with a customer, smile at a friend, hug your lover, hold your child. If you had more time, you’d spend it differently.

If only you had more time.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, he thinks. After all, you’ve got it coming. You’ve done a lot of bad things in this world. You’ve taken life, and that’s the worst thing there is. You can justify it all you want, but when you look back at your life with your eyes open, you know what you were.

All you can do-maybe, maybe -is get a small measure of justice for a dead woman.

Take the rocks from her mouth.

Maybe give her daughter a chance for a real future.

The way you’d like someone to giveyour daughter a chance.

Jill.

What’s she going to do?

You have to take care of your own daughter.

He calls Sherm.

“Frank, thank God, I thought-”

“Don’t thank him yet,” Frank says. “Look, I need to know-”

“It was the feds, Frank,” Sherm says. “They had me under. It was your buddy Dave Hansen-he had me wired. He passed the info along.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Frank says. “All that matters is that Jill and Patty are taken care of. If you flipped on me, you flipped on me. I’m sure you had your reasons. It’s blood under the bridge-”

“Frank-”

“There are some properties,” Frank says. “You know how to dig them out. Something should happen to me, liquidate the assets, make sure Jill’s medical school is paid for.”

“You can count on it, Frank.”

“They have to let me take care of my family,” Frank says. “They can do what they want with me, butthey have to let me take care of my family. That was always the way, back in the old times.”

“Patty and Jill will be taken care of,” Sherm says. “You have my word.”

It’s hard to hear the tone of a man’s voice over the telephone, especially these tinny cell phones, but Frank is satisfied by what he can hear. It’s all he can do anyway, trust The Nickel to do the right thing by the money, even if Sherm did betray him.

If there’s a trace of honor left in this thing, they’ll let a man go out knowing his family is taken care of.