Marie spent weeks in the hospital, and had a barely detectable limp after that, but she lived. Out of respect for Momo, Frank used to deliver groceries to the house, and when she recovered enough, he still used to drive her to the supermarket.
But after that, Frank was disillusioned. All the stuff Momo had taught him about “this thing of ours”-the code, the rules, the honor, the “family”-was straight-up bullshit. He’d seen their fucking honor that night at Momo’s house.
He went back to working on the tuna boats.
And that probably would have been my life, he thinks now, looking out the window at the gray ocean and the whitecaps, except that, six months later, who should show up but Frank Baptista.
11
Bap came on the dock one night when Frank had just finished squaring the deck away and was headed for a shower and a night of struggling against Patty’s virtue. You didn’t see a lot of guys in suits and ties on the dock, so Frank lamped Bap right away as something different, but he didn’t know who he was.
Except the guy seemed to know Frank.
“Are you Frankie Machianno?” Bap asked.
“Yeah.” Frank was afraid now that the guy was a cop and maybe Marie had decided she wanted to press charges against DeSanto after all.
The guy stuck out his hand. “We got the same first name. I’m Frank Baptista.”
Frank was shocked. This guy sure didn’t look like a famous button man-round, chubby, soft body, meaty jowls, bottle-thick glasses over owl eyes. Balding, with a greasy comb-over. Bap made Momo look like Troy Donohue.
This is the guy, Frank wondered, that killed Lew Brunemann, “Russian Louie” Strauss, and Red Sagunda when the Cleveland mob tried to move on San Diego? This is the guy who was boss here since the forties, until he went into the can for bribery?
“Can I buy you a drink?” Bap asked. “A cup of coffee?”
I should have said no, Frank thinks now. I should have said, No offense, Mr. Baptista, but I’m out of that now. I seen enough. But I didn’t. I went for a beer with the Bap.
Frank followed him up to Pacific Beach to one of the joints near Crystal Pier. They got a booth in the back, where Bap ordered a coffee for himself and a beer for Frank. Bap spent a long time stirring milk and sugar into his coffee, and then he asked, “Did you like Momo?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“I hear you still bring Marie her groceries,” Bap said. “That speaks well of you. It shows you have respect.”
“Momo was always good to me.”
Bap took this in, then made small talk, but it was clear to Frank that the former boss wasn’t really interested in chitchat, so Frank finished his beer and said he had a date. Bap thanked him for his time and said it was nice meeting him. Frank figured that was that, but about a month later, Bap showed up at the dock again and said, “Come on, let’s go for a drive.”
Frank followed him to a Cadillac parked on Ocean Avenue. Bap tossed him the keys and sat in the front passenger seat. Frank got behind the wheel and started the engine. “Where do you want to go?”
“Don’t matter. Just drive.”
Frank pulled onto Sunset Drive and headed south, cruising alongside his surfing spots.
“You drive good,” Bap said. “You’re my driver now.”
And that was it. Frank went to work for Bap. He drove the man everywhere-to the grocery store, the barber’s, to clubs, to Momo’s old house to visit Marie, to the track when the horses were running at Del Mar. He took Bap to see all the bookies, the loan sharks, the hustlers in San Diego.
DeSanto didn’t like it.
The L.A. boss knew that Bap was out, that he was going to want his old territory back. He was going to want a piece of the money on the street, the gambling, anything else they had going in San Diego, and DeSanto didn’t want to give him any of that. Bap was a big name, a guy with ambitions, and L.A. didn’t want a strong guy down in San Diego wanting to go his own way again.
“We just got those Indians back on the reservation,” DeSanto told Nicky Locicero. “Last thing we need is a guy who thinks he’s a chief running around down there.”
So he tried to throw Bap a few crumbs off the table, and Bap wasn’t shy about expressing his dissatisfaction.
That was always Bap’s problem: He could never swallow a resentment. It always came out his mouth. At the end of the day, it’s what killed him. Frank could still remember Bap mouthing off back in ’64, right at the Del Mar track, with half the wise guys in Southern California within earshot. “What am I, a dog? He throws me a fewbones ?”
Frank was running Bap’s bets to the window, and Bap wasn’t doing so good. No wonder he needs money, Frank thought; he has a fondness for slow horses. Bap threw another handful of losing tickets at his feet and said, “I’m in the joint for three years, not earning. This guy has to let me eat, for Chrissakes.”
He said this right in front of three L.A. guys down for the race season, so he had to know it was going straight back to DeSanto as soon as they could get to a telephone. And the L.A. boss wasn’t going to be happy hearing this shit from Bap.
Especially what Bap said next: “Maybe I should just start my own fucking thing down here.”
Which was Bap justbegging to get clipped.
DeSanto wasn’t long in honoring the request. He set up a meet at which Bap would be killed.
And his driver with him, if it fell that way.
They met in a vacant lot up in Orange County.
In those days, Frank remembers, Orange County was mostly just that, orange groves with Disneyland thrown on top. Memory is a funny thing, because he can still smell the oranges from that night.
Anyway, he pulled into this red dirt lot alongside an orange grove on an isolated road. DeSanto and Locicero were already there, Locicero behind the wheel of DeSanto’s black Cadillac, the boss sitting behind him in the backseat.
“Don’t worry,” Bap said when he saw the scared look in Frank’s eyes. “Nick has guaranteed my safety.”
Bap got out and walked over to the Cadillac. Locicero got out, snubbed his cigarette out in the dirt, and walked over to him. Bap raised his arms and Locicero patted him down, then nodded, and Bap got into the back with DeSanto.
Locicero leaned back against the hood, keeping an eye on Frank. Nodded at Frank and smiled.
As he did, another car pulled into the lot, right in back of Frank, trapping him. Frank started to sweat. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw that there were two guys in the front of the Lincoln. One he recognized as Jimmy Forliano; the other he didn’t know.
It was a younger guy, about his own age. But this guy had a confident look that made him seem older.
Then Frank saw what looked like lightning in the back of DeSanto’s Caddy, and it took him a second to realize that they were muzzle flashes.
Locicero smiled and lit another cigarette.
You were so scared, Frank remembers now. You tried to start the car, but your hand was shaking on the key and there was no place to go anyway, so you started to open the door and try to make a run for it, but Forliano was already at the window.
“Easy, kid.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
Forliano just smiled.
And then the back door of the Caddy opened up and-
Bap got out. Waved his hand at you to come over.
Forliano opened the door for you and you walked over to Bap, your legs shaking, your knees rattling, and then Bap handed you the gun.
“Momo was your friend, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah…”
“He was my friend, too,” Bap said. “This cocksucker had to go.”
Hitting aboss? Frank wanted to pay DeSanto back for Momo, too, but hitting a boss was suicide. Even if you did manage to get to him, you’d have every family in the country after you. And maybe Bap used to be the boss in San Diego, but he was demoted to a common soldier when he went into the can.
“You gotta put a couple into him,” Bap was saying.