Don Winslow: The winter of Frankie Machine

Yeah, she will, Frank thinks.

“Gotta go,” he says.

“Me, too,” Donna says, eyeing a customer coming out of the dressing room with an outfit that would be a disaster on her. He nods and heads out the door as he hears her say, “Honey, withyour eyes, let me show you…”

Rental properties, Frank thinks, is a polite way of sayinghemorrhoids.

Because they are an itching, burning pain in the butt. The only difference is that rental properties make money and hemorrhoids don’t, unless you’re a proctologist, in which case they do.

He thinks this as he drives around Ocean Beach checking on the half dozen condos, houses, and small apartment buildings he looks after as a silent partner in OB Property Management, a limited partnership, which is limited basically to Frank and Ozzie Ransom, whose name appears on all the paperwork and who takes care of the money. Except that after Ozzie counts the money, Frank counts it all over again to make sure that Ozzie isn’t robbing him like a bartender. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Ozzie; it’s just that he doesn’t want to put his “partner” in the way of temptation.

Frank is similarly protective about the moral well-being of his “partners” in the linen business and the fish business. He checks their books on a regular basis and he also checks them on an “irregular” basis, as he calls it. They never know when Frank might drop in to check the accounts, the receipts, the inventory, or the order sheets. And every quarter, Frank has his accountant and attorney, Sherm “the Nickel” Simon (“A nickel here, a nickel there…”), go over all the books both to do his taxes and to make sure that even though the government is robbing him blind, his partners aren’t.

Frank is a fanatic about paying his taxes.

He calls it “the Capone factor.”

“Al Capone,” Frank once said to Herbie Goldstein, “ran the biggest bootlegging operation in history, bribed cops, judges, and politicians, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered people in broad daylight on the streets of Chicago, and what did he go to jail for? Income tax evasion.”

It’s as true now as it was then, Frank thinks-you can do aboutanything in this country as long as you kick up to the feds. Uncle wants his taste, and as long as he gets it, you can pretty much do what you want as long as you don’t rub it in Uncle’s nose.

Frank is meticulous on both counts.

He pays his taxes and does nothing to draw attention to himself. If The Nickel comes up with a deduction that’s even on the edge, Frank nixes it. The last thing in the world he wants is an audit. And Frank doesn’t even go near the businesses that attract the feds’ attention-garbage, construction, bars, porno. No, he’s just Frank the Bait Guy and his side endeavors are all totally legit. He works his linen supply, his fish, his rental properties.

Renters are a pain, especially in a beach community where people tend to be somewhat transient, anyway. People come to the beach thinking it’s paradise and that they’re going to spend all day beachcombing and all night partying, and they forget that somewhere in all that they still have to make a living.

They always think they can make the rent, and then find that they can’t, so what they do is move in a roommate or five, very often people they met at a bar, who may or may not have the rent money on the first of the month.

Not that Frank doesn’t counsel them-he does. When he’s taking their application, he goes over first month/last month/damage deposit. He gets a credit check, a bank statement, and references, and more than half the time tells them that they just can’t afford to live by the beach.

But the young people didn’t come to Californianot to live by the beach, so they get some roommates and dive into an obligation they can’t handle. The result is that Frank has a lot of turnaround, and turnaround is the bane of rental-property management. It means cleaning costs, repairs, advertising, interviewing, credit checks, and running down references and employment. On the other hand, you do collect the last month’s rent and the damage deposit, because the kids always damage the place, usually as a result of a party.

Frank has the whole enchilada on his plate this afternoon. He has to show an apartment and interview a couple of young ladies who will be either waitresses or strippers, or waitresses who will soon decide that there’s more money in stripping. Then there’s a kitchen upgrade he wants to check in on. Then he has to check on the cleaning of an apartment that’s in transition, and make sure that the carpet cleaners havesteamed the vomit stains left by the previous tenants/party animals out of the carpet.

He shows the two young ladies the apartment. They’re strippers all right, and a nice semi-married lesbian couple, so Frank doesn’t have to worry about their ability to pay the rent or about them having skanky guys from the strip clubs moving in. They want the place and he takes their deposit on the spot. The credit check will be a formality and he’ll give the club a quick call to confirm employment.

Next, he hustles over to the condo to check on the kitchen upgrade, which looks pretty good with the new Sub-Zero refrigerator-freezer and flat-surface stovetop. After that, he takes a walk around the outside to make sure the landscapers and gardeners are keeping the place up, whereupon he notices that the ice plant needs a little trimming.

Then he goes “opportunity shopping,” scouting the neighborhood for rental properties that have good locations but look a little shabby or rundown. Maybe they need a coat of paint, or the lawn has been neglected, or a window screen is torn and hasn’t been fixed. He makes a note of their addresses and will track down their ownership, because maybe the owners might need a manager or a change of managers. Or maybe they’re tired of the work that comes with ownership and might be looking to sell low.

He finds three or four possibilities.

Then he heads over to Ajax Linen Supply, plops down in the old wooden rolling chair behind the Steelcase desk, and reviews the week’s orders. The Marine House order on kitchen towels is down 20 percent, and he makes a note to find out if Ozzie has started selling some of his own towels along with the company’s. But the orders from the rest of the customers are the same or up, so probably it’s something specific to the Marine House, and he makes a note to drop by there and find out what’s what. He makes a quick check of the day’s receipts, then heads down to the docks to the Sciorelli Fish Company offices, where he reviews and compares the price of yellowfin tuna with that of his competitors, and then decides that they can reduce the price by two cents a pound for their prime customers.

“They’re buying at this price,” Sciorelli argues. “They’re happy.”

“I want them tostay happy,” Frank says. “I don’t want them looking around for the better deal. We’llgive them the better deal, keep their eyes from wandering.” He also tells Sciorelli to buy as much of the Mexican shrimp as he can get-the storm is going to keep the shrimp boats in for a week or so and thecamarones will be getting prime price.

Things change and they don’t, he thinks as he gets in the van and heads back toward OB Pier. My daughter is going to be a doctor, but we’re still selling tuna. And there are other things that don’t change, he thinks as he drives to Little Italy, right up the hill from the airport-I’m still fixing things in the old house.

The old house is just that-an old house, something that’s getting more and more rare in downtown San Diego, even over here in Little Italy, which used to be a neighborhood of old, well-kept single-family homes but is now giving way to condo buildings, office buildings, trendy little hotels, and parking structures to service the airport.