Frank shook his head. “No can do, Mr. Dorner.”
He had strict orders.
“I feel like a prisoner in my own home,” Dorner said.
It’s not far from the truth, Frank thought, beginning to wonder if they were protecting Dornerfrom Hoffa orfor him. He expressed this to Bap one day as he was walking him out of the condo.
Bap looked at him for a long moment.
“You’re a smart boy, Frankie,” Bap said. “You’re going to go places.”
It could go either way, Bap explained. Chicago and Detroit were working it out; all they could do was wait.
Basically, Tony Jacks was fighting for his boy Hoffa, while the Chicago boys were taking up for Fitzsimmons and Dorner. Bap was betting on Fitzsimmons and Dorner, because they were the better earners, but then again, Hoffa’s Detroit connections were long and strong.
And Tony Jacks was lobbying hard for both Dorner and Fitzsimmons to get the chop.
“Don’t let yourself get too close to the guy,” Bap said, meaning Dorner. “You don’t know what you might have to do, huh?”
So that was it.
They were guarding Dorner and they wereguarding him. They weren’t letting anybody in and they weren’t letting him out. It was weird, sitting there playing rummy with the guy night after night, knowing you might be called on to whack him.
So it was tense.
It got a lot more tense when Mike came back from a little walk, took Frank aside and whispered to him, “We gotta talk.”
He wasshook.
Mike Pella, who was usuallyice, looked shaken.
“It’s Bap,” Mike said.
“What’sBap?” Frank asked with this edge to his voice, but he already knew the answer. He felt like he could throw up.
“Bap’sbeen talking to the feds,” Mike said. “He’s been wearing a wire.”
“No,” Frank said, shaking his head. Except he already knew it was true. It made sense-Bap had finally found his way to take out the L.A. leadership-cooperate with the feds and put them in jail. Then, when they’d made Paul Drina boss instead, he decided he needed to finish the job.
“How do youknow this?” Frank whispered. Dorner was asleep in his bedroom, but Frank wasn’t taking any chances he’d overhear.
“The guys set him up,” Mike said. “They tossed him some bullshit about a porn shakedown and the feds showed up at it.”
And now, Mike said, L.A. was wondering ifall Bap’s guys were in on this coup by cop.
“Frank,” Mike said, “you gotta figure they’re thinking about clippingall of us.”
He was freaking out now, paranoia pumping adrenaline. “What if Bap gaveus up, too?”
“He didn’t,” Frank said, still hoping.
“We don’t know that,” Mike said. “What if he takes the stand? He could put us up for DeSanto, Star…”
“If he had,” Frank said, “we’d have been arrested by now. The feds don’t sit on murder indictments.”
No, if this was true, Bap’s strategy was to get rid of L.A. by giving them up to the feds, then basically replace the L.A. guys with his own San Diego crew. Which was why not a single San Diego guy had been named in the sweeping indictments the previous summer. It had always been Bap’s dream to run California from San Diego.
“We’d be his two captains,” Frank said.
“The fuck you talking about?”
Frank laid out his analysis of Bap’s plan and repeated, “Bap is planning to make us the captains in his new family. He kept us out of the indictments; he kept us off the tape.”
“So, what, we owe him?”
“Yeah.”
“Do we owe him our fuckinglives, Frankie?” Mike asked. “Because that’s what we’re talking about here.”
Mike was right. Frank hated to admit it, but Mike was absolutely right. It was either/or. Either they took Bap out or they jumped in the boat with him.
And that boat was going down.
So there it was. The afternoons in Dorner’s luxurious jail cell got real long. Now there were three guys sitting around wondering if they were going to get whacked, trying to keep their minds off it by watching other guys rat on their boss.
The end of July, they got the word.
Jimmy Hoffa had disappeared.
So, Frank thought, I guess Chicago and Detroit worked it out. And, he learned, if it’s a contest between old connections and money, put your money on money.
Dorner took a big sigh of relief and kicked the two men out of his house.
They weren’t so glad to go. Nobody was going to clip them in Dorner’s condo. Outside, it might be a different story. Frank went home and got an uneasy night’s sleep.
Bap called at ten in the morning from his phone booth, telling Frank to come right over, that he had some news. Frank met him on the boardwalk at Pacific Beach. Bap had his easel set up. He was out there painting, and the man wasbeaming.
“They made meconsigliore, ” Bap said.
The pride in his voice was palpable.
“Cent’anni,” Frank said. “It’s overdue.”
“It’s not boss,” Bap said. “It’s not all I wanted, but it’s a significant honor. It’s anacknowledgment, you know what I mean?”
Frank wanted to cry. Maybe that was all the man had ever wanted: anattaboy, a pat on the back. Not a lot to ask. But Frank knew what it really was. It was poison wrapped in candy, a sleeping pill to lull Bap into a feeling of security.
It was a death sentence.
Frank almost told him.
But he choked the words back.
“I’m going to take care of you,” Bap said, tranquilly painting his crappy watercolor of the ocean. “Don’t you worry, you and Mike. I’m going to see that you get straightened out.”
“Thanks, Bap.”
“Don’t thank me,” Bap said. “You’ve earned it.”
Marie came out of the house with two tall glasses of iced tea for them. She wasn’t a hot little number anymore, but she still looked good, and it was clear from the way she looked at her husband that she adored him.
“You’re almost done with this painting, huh?” she said, looking over her husband’s shoulder. “It’s good.”
It isn’t, Frank thought. Only a loving wife would say it was.
The next call came from Mike.
They met down at Dog Beach, watched golden retrievers fetch Frisbees.
“It’s a done deal,” Mike said. “L.A., Chicago, and Detroit have all signed off. Chris Panno gets San Diego; we report to Chicago until L.A. gets its act together.”
“Yeah? When willthat be?” Frank asked, avoiding the real topic.
“We gotta do it,” Mike said.
“He’s ourboss, Mike!”
“He’s a fucking rat!” Mike said. “He has to go. You want to go with him, that’s your choice, but I’m telling you right now, it ain’t mine.”
Frank stared out at the ocean, thinking he’d like to get out on a board and just paddle. Maybe get his ass kicked in a big wave and get…cleansed.
“Look, I’ll do it, that makes you feel better,” Mike said. “Youdrive this time.”
“No,” Frank said. “I’ll do it.”
He went home that afternoon, turned on the television, and watched Nixon walk to a helicopter, then stand there and wave.
Jimmy Forliano made an appointment for Bap to call him that night. It was raining that night along the coast. Bap was wearing a Windbreaker and one of those old wise-guy fedoras like they used to wear in the movies. He took it off when he got inside the phone booth.
Frank sat in the car and watched him take the roll of quarters out of his pocket and knock it against the little metal shelf to break the paper open. Then he started feeding quarters into the phone.
Forliano was up in Murietta.
A long-distance call.
Frank couldn’t hear him say “It’s me,” but even through the rain and the glass, he could see his lips move. He waited until Bap was in the middle of the conversation, not worried about it ending early. Forliano was a bullshit artist; if there was anything he could do, it was talk.
Frank had a. 25 pistol for this job, not his usual. 22. (“Don’t sign your work,” Bap had told him.) He flipped the hood of his Windbreaker up over his head and stepped outside. The street was empty-people in San Diego don’t come out at night in the rain. Only Bap did that, to come to his office.