Another Secret Service agent directed him where to park. He did, then got out to open the doors for Fitzsimmons and his boys and saw the president of the United States walking down to meet them.
Frank, even with the twenty-something cynicism that was part and parcel of the seventies, had to admit he felt a little awed, maybe even intimidated. This was thepresident of the United States, the commander in chief, and the former Marine in Frank made him straighten his posture a little bit, and he had to fight the impulse to salute.
He felt something else-this little stirring of pride at being in on this, even as a chauffeur. It was this feeling of being part of something…so powerful…it could bring them to the home of the president of the United States, and the man would personally walk down from his house to greet them.
Nixon opened his arms wide as he walked toward Fitzsimmons and said, “I hear you have good news for me, Frank!”
“Verygood news, Mr. President!”
It must have been, because Nixon was in a very good mood. He embraced Fitzsimmons and then went around and shook everybody’s hand, working the crowd like the career politician he was. He shook all the board members’ hands, then came around and even shook the drivers’ hands.
“Nice to meet you,” Nixon said to Frank. “Thanks for coming.”
Frank didn’t know what to say. He was afraid of saying something stupid, like what was in his head, which was, You have a great break here, Mr. President, but Nixon had already moved on well before Frank formed the words.
That’s the last Frank saw of him that day.
The Teamsters’ board went up to the house and the drivers waited by their cars. The house staff brought them barbecued chicken and ribs-the same meal the big shots were getting up on the lawn. Later on, some staffer came and gave them each a golf ball with the president’s signature on it.
“I’m going to keep this for fucking ever,” Mike said. Frank could swear he saw tears in his eyes. Frank wandered down to the edge of the bluff. He had lots of time because the Teamsters were scheduled to play a round on the president’s three-hole golf course, and that was going to take a while.
So Frank sat by the ocean and watched Cottons break below him. There were no surfers out there, never were when Nixon was in residence. I guess the Secret Service is afraid of some surfing assassin or something, Frank thought, although it would be one hell of a shot from the beach up to the lawn.
He looked south and, sure enough, could see the westernmost buildings of the Sur glistening white in the sun, and he wondered what Joey the Clown and Tony Pro were doing while everybody else was visiting the president’s house, wondered if they felt bad being left out.
That was the summer of ’72, the summer of Richard Nixon.
By the winter of ’75, it had all gone to shit.
25
Nicky Locicero died in the fall of ’74. His funeral was pathetic, just immediate family-none of the guys showed up because they didn’t want to give the feds any ammo.
The feds werepounding the L.A. family. It was like the FBI was living inside the guys’ heads, the prosecutors seemed to know everything, and the feds’ Xerox machines were breaking down, they were cranking out so many indictments.
And the indictments were rock-solid. Even Sherm Simon advised the guys to plead out, which they did. Peter Martini got popped for four years, Jimmy Regace, who had just taken over as boss, for two. He named old Paul Drina as acting boss.
Bap thought it should have been him. He was very pissed off.
“Tom is a lawyer who’s never got his hands wet,” Bap said to Frank. “What’s he ever done other than be Jack’s brother? And they jump him over me? After all I’ve done for them?”
This was Bap’s constant refrain back in the seventies, the “after all I’ve done for them” mantra. The fact that it was justified didn’t make it any less tedious or futile, though. Fact was, Frank was sick of hearing it.
There comes a time in a man’s life, he figured, the infamous midlife crisis, when a guy has to face the reality that what he has is all he’s going to get, and he needs to find his peace and his happiness in his life as it is. Most guys managed to get that done, but not Bap-he was always griping about how he’d been screwed, how this guy or that guy had done him dirt in a deal, how there were guys who were “dead wood” and he was sick of carrying them, how L.A. never cut him in for his fair piece of the pie.
Whatpie? Frank thought as he heard this litany for maybe the thousandth time. There’s practically no pie to cut up, what with half the guys in the can and New York and Chicago picking the bones like vultures.
Which was why Frank had taken his meager savings and gone into the fish business. Mike could laugh at him all he wanted, and make jokes about how Frank smelled like a mackerel (which wasn’t true-(a) Frank showered meticulously after work, and (b) there were no mackerel in the Pacific Ocean), but the money was clean and safe. And while he wasn’t raking it in like you could with the rackets when everything was good, everythingwasn’t good.
And they couldn’t expect any help from on high, either, because the guy in the White House had his own problems, and he wasn’t about to reach a hand out to a bunch of mobsters.
So it was a bad time for things to go haywire at the Sur.
But they did.
June, the summer of ’75, Frank got a call from Bap’s phone booth office. “You and Mike, get your asses here quick.”
Frank heard the urgency in his voice and told him they could be in Pacific Beach in half an hour.
“Not Pacific Beach,” Bap said. “The Sur. And come heavy.”
It was Fort Sur Mer.
Driving up to the main building, Frank spotted half a dozen wise guys, all dressed casually, like guests, but posted to control the avenues of access. And Frank knew that under the polo shirts and the gabardine trousers, or tucked in golf bags or tennis frames, the guys were carrying serious hardware.
Frank parked in a slot across from Dorner’s condo. Bap must have seen them pull up, because he was walking toward them before Frank even turned the motor off.
“Come on, come on,” Bap said, opening Frank’s door.
“What’s up?”
“Hoffa’s making his play,” Bap said. “He might be putting a hit out on Dorner.”
Frank had never seen Bap this worked up. When they got into Dorner’s condo, Frank could see why.
The heavy drapes were pulled closed against the big glass slider that normally looked out on the golf course. Jimmy Forliano stood at the edge of the curtain, peeking out, a holster with a. 45 strapped on his shoulder. Joey Lombardo was in the kitchen, getting a beer out of the fridge.
Carmine Antonucci sat on the sofa, sipping coffee. Dorner sat next to him, a gin and tonic sweating on the glass-top coffee table at his knees. In a big chair across from them sat Tony Jacks, looking cool and collected in a white linen suit and a royal blue tie.
Dorner looked up at them as if he’d never seen them before, even though they had hauled him back and forth from his private jet at least a few dozen times. He didn’t look good. He looked pale and tired.
“Hi, guys,” he said.
His voice was weak.
“You stay tighter on Dorner than his own asshole,” Tony Jacks said. “He don’t shit, shave, or shower, he don’t look over his shoulder and not see one of you there. Anything happens to him, it happens to you next.”
The siege went on for three weeks.
“Hey,” Mike said about a week in. “If you’re going to go to the mattresses, there are worse places to do it than the Sur.”
MoreGodfather jive, Frank thought. If anybody had ever “gone to the mattresses” in San Diego before this, they were air mattresses in swimming pools.
Dorner started to get cabin fever.
“I want to get out,” he said. “Play a little golf, just take a fucking walk. Get a little sun.”