Mediocre, as it turns out.
It’s nearly 10:30 when Mouse Junior emerges from the apartment building.
Whistling.
Unreal, Frank thinks as he hears Mouse Junior warbling. The kid is a walking cliche. He waits as the door opens and Mouse Junior gets behind the wheel. Then he presses the pistol barrel into the back of the driver’s seat so Mouse Junior can feel it poking into his back.
“Press your hands onto the ceiling,” Frank says. “Hard.”
Mouse Junior does it.
Frank reaches over and finds the pistol in Mouse Junior’s shoulder holster, empties the chamber, and tucks the gun into his own waistband.
“Now put your hands on the wheel,” Frank says.
Mouse Junior does that, too. “Please don’t kill me, Mr. Machianno.”
“If I wanted you dead,” Frank says, “you’d already be dead. Just understand that if you make me shoot you through this seat, it will be the bulletand the hand-tooled leather and God knows what else that will be blowing through your vital parts. Capisce? ”
“I understand,” Mouse Junior says, his voice quivering.
“Good,” Frank says. “Now let’s go see Daddy.”
It’s a long drive to Westlake Village, mostly because Mouse Junior develops a case of verbal diarrhea and can’t stop the foolishness flowing out of his mouth. About how happy he is that Frank’s alive, how shocked he was about what happened on the boat, how he and Travis ran and called his dad right away to see if he could help, how the whole L.A. family has been-
“Junior? Shut up,” Frank says. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“Sorry.”
“Just drive,” Franks says. He tells him to go to the one place in the world that no one would expect Frank Machianno to go: Mouse Senior’s place of business. The coffeehouse will be closed to the public by now, but Frank knows that Mouse Senior and half the L.A. family will be there.
Which is just what he wants.
Get this thing settled so he can get his life back.
When they get there, Frank tells Mouse Junior to pull into the back parking lot, keep the engine running, and use his cell phone to call his dad. Mouse Junior’s hand is shaking like an old drunk’s as he punches the number on speed dial.
When Frank hears Mouse Senior answer, he grabs the phone.
“Come outside,” he says.
Mouse Senior recognizes the voice. “Frank? What the fuck?”
“I have a gun pressed to your kid’s back and I’ll pull the trigger unless you’re out here in ten seconds.”
“What are you, drunk?” Mouse Senior asks. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“One…”
“Frank, what the fuck’s wrong with you?”
“Two…”
“Frank, I’m looking out the window, I see Junior sitting in his car by himself.”
“Tell him,” Frank says to Mouse Junior.
“Dad?” Mouse Junior says. “He’s here. He’s in the backseat. He has a gun.”
“That was three, four, and five,” Frank says.
“Is this a kidnap thing?” Mouse Senior asks. “Are you crazy, Machianno? Are you out of your fucking mind? ”
Is it possible, Frank thinks, that Mouse Senior didn’t know about the setup?
“Six,” Frank says.
“I’m coming out! I’m coming out!” Frank keeps the gun on Mouse Junior’s back but rises up just enough to see out the window. Mouse Senior steps out the back door. His brother Carmen is with him, and so are Rocco Meli and Joey Fiella. The Martini brothers won’t be carrying guns, Frank knows, but Rocco and Joey will definitely be strapped.
It doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to take a shot at him while he’s this close to the boss’s son. I could, Frank thinks. I could make the shot and never splash a drop of blood on the kid, but that’s me, that’s not them.
And they know it.
They also know that I could have killed the kid already, if that’s what I was about. And I would have been within my rights to do it, for setting me up. The fact that I brought him here, where it would be tantamount to suicide to pull the trigger, let’s them know I want to make peace.
He says, “Pete, you know your son could be dead already.”
“Take it easy, Frank.”
Frank hasn’t seen Mouse Senior in years. The boss still has that broad, flat, frying-pan face, but the lines in it are a lot deeper and his hair has gone completely white.
“I’m taking it easy,” Frank says. “You do the same and you just listen. We’ve apparently had some sort of bad misunderstanding, Pete, to lead you to think you had to have me clipped. If you think I’m going to flip on you for Herbie Goldstein, you’re wrong. I haven’t been arrested, indicted, or even questioned about it. And even if I had, I’m not a rat.”
“I never thought you were,” Mouse Senior says. “What thefuck are you talking about?”
“The little sit-down with Vince Vena on the boat?” Frank sees some movement from the corner of his eye. “Tell Joey to stop working his way around the other side of the car.”
“Joey, stand still,” Mouse Senior orders. “Frank, what the fuckare you talking about?”
“He doesn’t know?” Frank asks Junior.
Mouse Junior shakes his head.
“You’d better tell him.”
“Tell me what?” Mouse Senior glares at his son. “Tell mewhat, Junior? What did you fuck up now?”
“Dad…”
“Goddamn it, tell me!”
“Me and Travis were shooting some porn down in San Diego,” Mouse Junior says. “Internet porn, Webcam shit…streaming video…”
“You fucking little asshole,” Mouse Senior says. “You know that’s-”
“I was trying to make some money, Dad!” Mouse Junior says. “I was trying to earn!”
“Keep talking.”
“I was making so much fucking money, Dad,” Mouse Junior says. “Then the Detroit guys found out. They jammed me up, said they were going to take it to you unless-”
“What did youdo, Junior?”
“They just wanted me to set up a meeting,” Mouse Junior cries. “Get Frank to come, sit down with Vena. That’s all. I didn’t know they were going to kill him; I swear, I didn’t know. They just said tell him this story, get him to the meeting, I could keep my business down there.”
“Frank, I’m sorry,” Mouse Senior says. “I didn’t know.”
“Baloney,” Frank says. “Detroit would never come on your turf and clip one of your guys without you signing off on it. You’re the boss.”
“The boss?” Mouse Senior asks, his mouth twisting into a rueful sneer. “Boss ofwhat? I’m the boss ofshit. ”
It’s the stone-cold truth.
Most of Mouse’s guys are in the joint, what he’s got left are garbage, and he’s looking down the barrel of another indictment. Heis the boss of shit-Frank just didn’t realize that he knew it.
“So where are we now, Frankie?” Mouse Senior asks. He turns to his son. “You know the man is within his rights to kill you.”
“Dad-”
“Shut up, idiot,” Mouse Senior says. He turns to Frank. “You have a daughter, Frank. You know how it feels. You want me to give him a good beating, I will. But let him go, please. Father to father, I’m begging you. I’m humbling myself.”
“Who?” Frank asks Mouse Junior. “One chance to tell me the truth-who came to you?”
“John Heaney,” Mouse Junior says.
John Heaney, Frank thinks. No wonder he looked so edgy when I saw him-could it have been just last night?-outside Freddie’s. John, my old surfing buddy, my friend, the guy I helped get half a dozen jobs…
That’s this world we live in.
“Get out of the car,” Frank says.
Mouse Junior practically falls tumbling out of the Hummer. Frank climbs into the driver’s seat, slams the door shut, puts the vehicle into reverse, and roars out of the parking lot onto the street. From the rearview mirror, he can already see Joey winging shots at him, Rocco scrambling to a car, and Mouse Senior slapping Mouse Junior upside the head.
But taking a break long enough to yell-
“Kill that cocksucker!”
18
Yeah, well, wanting to kill that cocksucker and actuallykilling that cocksucker are two very different things, Frank thinks.