He and Mike would take shifts, one of them keeping watch out the window while the other grabbed some sleep or watched some bad television show. They only got a break when Star went out, which he did at 7:30 every morning to go jogging.
They discovered this the first morning when Star came out the front door of the building in a purple jumpsuit and running shoes and started doing stretches against the rail of the building steps.
“What the fuck?” Mike asked.
“He’s going running,” Frank said.
“Heshould go fucking running,” said Mike.
“He looks good, though,” Frank observed.
Star did look good. He had a nice tan, his black razor-cut hair was neatly brushed back, and he was thin. They decided only one guy should tail him, and Mike took the job. He came back an hour later, sweaty and incensed.
“Fucking guy,” Mike huffed, “goes jogging around the marina like he don’t have a worry in the world. Scoping the chicks, looking at the boats, soaking in the sunshine, working on his fucking tan. Cocksucker is leading the good life while friends of his are in the hole. I’m telling you, we shouldhurt this motherfucker before we take him out.”
Frank agreed-Starshould suffer for what he’d done-but those weren’t the orders. Bap had been very clear about that-“quick and clean” was how he wanted it. Get in, do the job, get out.
The sooner the better, as far as Frank was concerned. Patty hadn’t been too thrilled about him going away like this.
“Where are you going?” she’d asked.
“Come on, Patty.”
“What for? Why?”
“Business.”
“What kind of business?” she’d pressed. “Why can’t you tell me? You’re just going out to party with your buddies, aren’t you?”
Some party, Frank thought. Sharing a cheap motel room with Mike Pella, listening to his constant toilet mouth, sucking in his cigarette smoke, smelling his gas, spending hour after tedious hour looking out the window, trying to establish the pattern of some rat’s pathetic life.
Because that was the key, a pattern.
Bap had coached him on that. “Guys lapse into habits,” he had told Frank. “Everyone does. People are predictable. Once you can predict what a guy’s going to do and when he’s going to do it, then you can find your opening. Quick and clean, in and out.”
So they knew he went jogging around the marina every morning. Mike wanted to do it then. “We get ourselves some fag tracksuits, we run up behind him, and we pop him in the head. Done.”
Frank vetoed it. Too many things could go wrong. One, him and Mike jogging-they’d stick out like polar bears in a sauna. Two, they’d be out of breath, and it was hard to shoot accurately when you were out of breath, even from short range. Three, there’d just be too many potential witnesses.
So they had to figure something else out.
Problem was, Star wasn’t giving them many openings. He lived a very boring life, predictable as death and taxes, but very tight. He’d go jogging in the morning, then come home, shower (presumably) and change clothes, then go to his job at an insurance agency, where he’d work from ten to six. Then he’d walk back to his condo and stay there until he went jogging again in the morning.
“This is one dull motherfucker,” Mike said. “He don’t go out to no clubs, no bars, don’t pick up no broads. What, the guy just sits in there jacking himself off every night? Biggest excitement in this guy’s life is ‘Pizza Night.’”
Every Thursday night, 8:30, Star had a pizza delivered to his door.
“I love you, Mike.”
“You going fag on me?”
“Pizza night,” Frank said. “Star buzzes the guy in.”
This was on a Tuesday, so they pretty much relaxed for a couple of days, laid low, and waited for Pizza Night. Wednesday night, they ordered a pizza from the same joint, ate it, and saved the box.
At exactly 8:25 Frank was at the front door of Star’s building with the pizza box in his hand. Mike was in the work car on the street, ready to drive them out of there and to intercept the pizza guy with some sort of bullshit if he had to.
Frank rang the bell and shouted into the intercom, “Pizza, Mr. Roth.”
A second later, the buzzer sounded and Frank heard the metallic click of the lock opening. He went into the building, walked down the hallway to Star’s unit, and rang the bell.
Star opened it a crack, keeping the chain on the door. Frank could hear the drone of a television. So this was the rat’s big life, Frank thought, treating himself to a pizza while he watches the boob tube.
“Pizza,” Frank repeated.
“Where’s the usual kid?” Star asked.
“Sick,” Frank said, hoping this thing wasn’t going south. He got ready to kick the door in, but Star opened it first. He had his money in his hand-a five and two ones.
“Six-fifty, right?” Star asked, holding out the bills.
Frank reached into his pocket like he was digging for a couple of quarters.
“Keep the change,” Star said.
“Thanks.” A fifty-cent tip, Frank thought. No self-respecting wise guy in the world would give a fifty-cent tip. No wonder he turned rat. Frank handed Star the pizza box, and when the guy’s hands were full, Frank pushed him inside, kicked the door shut behind him, and pulled the silenced. 22 pistol.
Star tried to run. Frank put the bead on the back of his head and fired. Star fell forward and crashed into the wall. Frank stepped up over Star’s prone body and aimed at the back of his head.
“Rat,” Frank said.
He pulled the trigger three more times and walked out.
The whole thing had taken maybe a minute. Frank got in the car; Mike put it in gear and drove away.
“How’d it go?” Mike asked.
“Fine,” Frank said.
Mike grinned. “You’re a machine,” he said. “‘Frankie Machine.’”
“Wasn’t that the name of a guy that Sinatra played in the movies?” Frank asked.
“The Man with the Golden Arm,” Mike said. “He was a junkie.”
“Great.”
“But you,” Mike said, “you’re the man with the goldenhand. Frankie Machine.”
The name stuck.
They took Ingraham Street down to the floodway. Frank got out, smashed the pistol on some rocks, and threw the pieces into the water. Then they dumped the work car in a strip mall parking lot in Point Loma, where they found two other cars waiting. Frank got into his and drove downtown, dumped the car, took a taxi to the airport, then another taxi back home.
Nothing ever came of it.
The San Diego cops pretty much took a pass on the case, sending a message of their own to the feds: If you’re going to put a snitch in our yard and not tell us about it, what the hell do you want us to do?
The truth is, nobody really likes snitches, not even the cops who make their bread and butter from them.
Frank got up the next morning, made coffee, and turned on the television. It was showing the kitchen of some hotel in Los Angeles.
“What, you’re surprised?” Mike asked him later that morning.
“Kind of.”
“I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” Mike said.
And that’s the way it is, Frank thought. Bobby gets two in the head, Nixon gets checks.
There was a lot of celebration down at the cab office when Nixon got elected. One of the first things the new president did was to transfer the San Diego federal prosecutor who was putting so much pressure on the guys.
The indictments against Bap were dropped, although Forliano went into the can.
Other than that, it was back to business as usual.
Frank and Mike split two thousand dollars for the Tony Star job.