“That’s okay,” Frank said.
“No, you gotta,” Bap said, “so you can’t be a witness. This boat, we got to be in together.”
He walked Frank over to the other side of the Caddy and opened the door. De Santo’s body, with two holes in the head, toppled halfway out. His glasses slid down his nose and dropped in the dirt.
“Put two in his chest,” Bap said.
Frank hesitated.
“I like you, kid,” Bap said. “I don’t want to have to leave you in this field with him.”
Bap walked away. Frank knew he was listening for the shots, waiting for the flashes. He tried to lift the gun and shoot, but he just couldn’t do it. Then he heard someone come up behind him.
“Your first one?”
It was the young guy from the car parked behind him. Jet-black hair, medium height, wide shoulders on an otherwise-thin frame.
“Yeah,” Frank said.
“I’ll help you,” the guy said. “It’s easier than you think.”
The guy helped him aim the gun at DeSanto’s body.
“Now just pull the trigger.”
Frank did. His hand was shaking, but he couldn’t miss at that range.
The body jolted with each shot, though. Then it slid down the open door and onto the dirt, raising a little cloud of dust when it hit. The guy beside Frank took his own gun out and put two more into DeSanto’s corpse.
“Now,” the guy said, “we’re in it together. You and me.”
Bap walked back over and pissed on the body.
This was years before all the DNA stuff, so nobody cared in those days. Bap just whipped his thing out and pissed into DeSanto’s gaping mouth.
“This is for Marie,” he said. He finished, zipped up, and then said to Frank, “Drive me home.”
Frank sort of shuffled back to the car. Forliano stopped him and took the gun out of his hand. “We’ll take care of this.”
“Okay.”
“You did good, kid,” Forliano said. “You’re all right.”
The younger guy was standing there, too, smiling at Frank like he was in on some kind of funny practical joke. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You did fine.”
He had an East Coast accent.
“Thanks,” Frank said. “You know, for helping me out there.”
“Forget about it.” The guy offered his hand. “Mike Pella.”
“Frank Machianno.”
They shook hands.
Locicero got into the car with Forliano and Pella and they took off. Frank got behind the wheel and this time managed to turn the key in the ignition. The wheels spun in the dirt as he hit the gas.
“Drive slow, not fast,” Bap instructed him. “Always drive the speed limit leaving a job. Last thing you want is to get stopped for speeding; you get a cop putting you near the scene. Just get out on the highway, get in the flow of traffic.”
Frank did what he was told. They were a good twenty miles south on the 5 before Bap said, “I been in Chicago.”
Okay, Frank thought.
“You don’t get what I mean,” Bap said. “I mean I talked with certain people there.”
Which did nothing to enlighten Frank.
“L.A. runs San Diego,” Bap explained, “but L.A. don’t run L.A. L.A.’s never really been its own thing. Used to be it answered to New York, to the Jews, Siegel and Lansky. Now L.A. can’t shake its own dick after it takes a piss, it don’t put a call in to Chicago first.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Because you ain’t supposed to,” Bap said. “L.A. don’t want San Diego guys crying to Chicago, they got a problem with L.A.”
But that’s what you just did, Frank thought.
“I go back,” Bap said, like he read Frank’s mind. “I was doing work for Chicago when Al DeSanto was getting Jack Drina his coffees. I talked with certain people there, and they didn’t like the cocksucker, either.”
“They gave the okay?” Frank was shocked.
“That ain’t the way it works, Frankie,” Bap said. “They don’t say yes. They just don’t say no. That means, something happens to the guy in L.A., they ain’t gonna do nothing about it. Makes you feel any better, Detroit said the same thing.”
Now Frank got it. “And Locicero’s the new boss.”
“Everyone has his price, Frankie,” Bap said. “Never forget that.”
Frank didn’t.
So that was that, Frank remembers now.
Locicero became the boss, Bap got San Diego, although as a captain in the L.A. family.
Except that wasn’t quite it, was it?
There was that afternoon you picked up Marie Anselmo’s grocery order and brought it to the house and she answered the door but wouldn’t let you bring the bags in like usual, but you could see through the open door.
Bap, in the hallway, pulling his pants on.
He married Marie six months later.
After that, no one ever whispered a word about what happened that night at Momo’s with DeSanto.
Frank sure as hell didn’t.
He’d decided to go straight. So one day, he drove to Oceanside, saw the recruiter, and was in the Marines about five minutes after that.
Like the Surfaris song that was so popular then:
Surfer Joe joined Uncle Sam’s Marines today
They stationed him at Pendleton, not far away…
It’s funny, Frank thinks now.
I got my training from the federal government.
12
Frank turns from the window, gets on the phone, and calls the bait shop.
The kid Abe answers on the first ring.
“Frank, you okay? I came in and the shop was closed.”
“You know what, Abe?” Frank says. “Let’s shut it down for a few days.”
There’s an incredulous silence, then: “Shut it down?”
“Yeah, with the storm, we’re not going to do much business anyway,” Frank says. “Let’s take a few days off. I’ll call you when I want to reopen. Why don’t you go down to Tijuana, see your mom and dad or something.”
Abe doesn’t need to be asked twice.
Patty’s going to be a tougher nut.
“Patty, it’s Frank.”
“I recognized the voice.”
“Patty, I was thinking, you haven’t been to see your sister in a while, have you?” Patty’s sister Celia and her husband moved up to Seattle ten years ago, following the aerospace industry. They have a house-where is it? Bellingham, maybe?
“Frank, youhate my sister.”
“Go up and visit her, Patty,” Frank says. “Go today.”
She hears the tone in his voice. “Are you all right, Frank?”
“I’m fine,” Frank says. “I just need you to go.”
“Frank-”
“I’m fine,” Frank repeats.
“How long will I be gone?”
“I don’t know yet,” Frank says. “Not long. Go upstairs and pack.”
“Iam upstairs.”
“Then pack.”
“Frank?”
“What?” he snaps. He doesn’t want to be on the phone too long, in case they have her line tapped.
“Take care of yourself, okay?” she says. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
The next call is to Donna.
“Nonfat latte, two shots of espresso,” she says when she hears his voice. “Please.”
“Now listen,” Frank says, “and, just foronce, do exactly what I tell you without argument or discussion. Close the shop, go home and pack, get on a plane to Hawaii. The Big Island, Kauai, doesn’t matter, just go. Today. Take your cell phone. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, and don’t come back until you’ve heard from me. Not amessage from me, from mepersonally. Will you do that?”
There’s a silence as she takes all this in; then she simply says, “Yes.”
“Good. Thank you. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says. “Will I see you again?”
“Absolutely.”
Now they’ve gotme saying it, he thinks.
He calls Jill and gets her answering machine: Hi, I’m off skiing in Big Bear. Aren’t you jealous? Leave a message and I’ll call you back. He tries her cell and gets pretty much the same message. Oh well, he thinks, she’s safe in Big Bear-even if “they,” whoever they are, want to try to get her, they can’t track her down there.
So the people I love are safe.
Which is a good thing on its own, and also gives me freedom of movement.