And it’s time to move.
He packs the shotgun and some clothes into a gym bag, straps on a shoulder holster for the. 38, then slips into a raincoat and heads out the door. He takes a taxi downtown, then goes to Hertz and uses his Sabellico identification to rent a nondescript Ford Taurus.
He heads north on the Pacific Coast Highway.
Toward L.A.
13
Dave Hansen walks out onto the beach.
The wet sand looks like dark, shiny marble and the cold rain pelts him in the face. Two thousand miles of coastline, he thinks, and the floater had to wash up on federal land, in weather like this. He’s at the edge of America, literally. Point Loma is the last stop in the continental USA, the end of the line.
The floater just made it.
A few feet the other way and the body would have been a Mexican problem.
A bunch of sailors from the Coast Guard station and a few San Diego cops are gathered around the body.
“We didn’t touch it,” the police sergeant tells Dave. “This is your jurisdiction.”
He sounds pleased as punch.
“Thanks,” Dave says.
Actually, the San Diego cops like Hansen. He has a light touch, for a fed. The sergeant says, “We haven’t had any missing persons report. Usually do in a drowning. I checked with Coast Guard, too. Nada.”
“He didn’t drown,” Dave says. “He’s not blue.”
The skin of drowning victims, even if they’ve been in the water for only a few minutes, turns a ghastly blue. No one who’s seen it ever forgets it. Dave squats down by the body. He opens up the guy’s jacket and sees the large entrance wound right where the guy’s heart used to be. He keeps looking and finds the other entrance wound in the stomach.
Whoever killed the John Doe shot him in the gut, then pressed the gun against his chest and finished him off. Even after an unknown number of hours in the water, the powder burns on his clothes are unmistakable.
“Probably a dope run gone wrong,” the sergeant said.
“Probably,” Dave says. He keeps looking through the guy’s clothes. The shooter also removed John Doe’s ID. No wallet, no watch, no ring, nothing. Dave looks closely at the victim’s face, or what’s left of it after the fish pecked at the eyes. He doesn’t recognize him, didn’t expect to, but there’s something vaguely familiar about him.
A faint memory, or an old dream, washed up onshore like a piece of driftwood.
It’s weird.
But it’s been a weird day, Dave thinks. Must be the weather; these high-pressure fronts seem to make everything and everybody a little crazy. People do odd things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.
Frank Machianno, for instance.
Frank’s at the bait shop every morning like clockwork for as long as Dave can remember, and then today he doesn’t show up. And Frank, who’s been a regular at the Gentlemen’s Hour for longer than Dave has, is a no-show for the best waves of the year.
Dave figured he was sick, and called the house to bust his chops about the great waves he missed, but no answer. Tried Frank on his cell, same thing. So he went back to the bait shop, only to find the kid Abe closing it up.
“Frank said to,” Abe told him. “Said take a few days off.”
“Franksaid take a few days off.”
“WhatI thought,” Abe said. “Told me to go home for a while.”
“Where’s home?”
Abe pointed south. “TJ.”
Like, where else?
So Dave took a drive over to Frank’s house. His van and his Mercedes in the garage, the house all locked up, no Frank.
So it’s been a strange day.
A murdered body that by all the rules of normal tide and current should have drifted down the Baja coast manages instead to snag itself up on the last tip of America.
When Dave first heard they had a floater, he was afraid it was Tony Palumbo. The star witness in G-Sting has been undercover for years as a bouncer at Hunnybear’s, and he was supposed to meet with Dave earlier that morning.
He didn’t show up.
He wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and a four-hundred-pound man is hard to miss.
So Tony Palumbo is 441.
And Frank goes off the radar.
14
James “Jimmy the Kid” Giacamone walks into the bar of the Bloomfield Hills Country Club in suburban Detroit and looks for his father. He spots Vito William Giacamone, aka “Billy Jacks,” sitting at a banquette by the window, sadly contemplating the snow-covered eighteenth green.
Billy Jacks turns and looks at his son. The kid comes to the country club dressed in baggy pants and an old sweatshirt with the hood up. Like one of them rappers-what’s the white one’s name, the local kid?…Some kind of candy…M amp;M’s.
His son thinks he’s M amp;M’s.
Then again, Billy thinks, the kid just did a hard stint-five years for extortion. And the boy has done some other work that, thank Saint Anthony, the feds didn’t make him for. The boy may look like a clown, but he’s a good worker.
And he’s back with me, so let him look like what he wants. This life of ours, you never know how much time you have with your kids, so why bust balls?
Jimmy slips into the booth beside him and signals the bartender to bring him his usual.
“It’s gonna be months,” Billy says, “before we can get out there.”
Jimmy doesn’t care. Golf is for old guys.
A waiter sets a vodka and tonic in front of Jimmy and walks away.
“You heard from Vince?” Billy asks.
Jimmy shakes his head. “B Company ain’t comin’ back.”
Which is what happens, Jimmy thinks, when you send a guy like Vince against a legend like Frankie Machine.
Billy accepts the verdict. What choice does he have? If Vince was alive, he would have checked in. He hasn’t, and the silence can only mean one thing-Vince Vena better hope he was current with his Acts of Contrition.
Fuckin’ shame about Vince, though. After a life of service, the guy finally makes it to the ruling council of the Combination and then gets himself whacked just a few weeks later. Then again, it means there’s going to be a vacancy on the council.
Jimmy sits there listening to his father’s brain grinding away on overtime. He can see the old man working through the stages of grief. First there’s acceptance: Vince is dead. Then there’s anger: Fuck, Vince is dead! Then there’s ambition: Vince is dead and someone’s going to get his seat at the table.
They’re like hyenas, these old guys, thinks Jimmy, who watched a lot of shows on Animal Planet when he was in the joint. They run together, they hunt in packs, they share the kill, but one of them goes down, the rest will eat his bones and suck the marrow.
And Vince’s bones have some juicy marrow in them.
There’s only two street bosses, Jimmy thinks, my dad and old Tony Corrado, so one of them is going to move up. And if Dad can rescue this San Diego deal, it’s going to be him.
“They should have sentme, ” Jimmy says.
“You asked,” Billy says.
Jimmy shrugs. It’s true, he made a big play with Jack Tominello, but the head of the council, the real boss, agreed that it should be Vince. After all, San Diego was going to be Vince’s territory, so he should take care of his own business.
Except he couldn’t.
“Now what?” Billy asks.
He’s come to that age when he’s asking advice from his own kid. But youth must be served, and Jimmy the Kid is an up-and-comer, at only twenty-seven years of age the Combination’s biggest earner, and there’s a seat practically reserved for him at the council table.
In his turn, in his time. And the first step would be I move up to the council; then Jimmy gets my street-boss slot.
“Now what?” Jimmy asks. “I kill Frankie Machine, that’s what.”
Billy Jacks shakes his head.
“Dad,” Jimmy says, “we can’t let this guy kill a member of the ruling council and walk away. Besides, we promised certain people…”