Frank didn’t want to believe it, but the “cheating” talk only got worse. Stone and Sherrell met with Mike to show him the figures. Frank refused to be there. He had it rationalized six ways to Sunday: (a) Mac wasn’t stealing; (b) even if he was, he was making them so much money, they were better off with him stealing than without him; (c) Mac wasn’t stealing.
But Mac was.
He knew Mac was.
Stone confronted Mac with the evidence and Mac threatened to kill him, kill him and his whole family, kill them all.
“He’s gotta go,” Mike said to Frank.
Frank shook his head.
“No one’s asking you for yourvote, Frankie,” Mike said. “The decision’s been made. I just came as, you know, acourtesy, because I know the guy is your friend.”
You just came, Frank thought, because you wanted to make sure that Frankie Machine wouldn’t take it personally. See it as a grudge, respond the way I did over Georgie Y’s killing. Well, you have a legitimate concern there.
“The guys down in the Lamp,” Mike added, “they’ve signed off on it.”
Letting Frank know that if he decided to do something about this, he’d be taking on Detroit, too.
“What do the Migliores have to do with it?”
“They own strip clubs,” Mike said. “This moolie getting toxic affects them, too. They don’t like it. Headlines are bad for business. He’s gotta go, Frank.”
“Let me do it.”
“What?”
“Let me do it,” Frank said.
You guys are scared shitless of him. You’ll panic and just blast away until there’s nothing left of the man. If it has to be done, let me do it quick and clean.
I owe the man that much.
He’s my friend.
Frank found him in the dojo. The sound system was blasting out Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew.” Frank walked in and saw Mac standing on one shaky leg, kicking the heavy bag with the other.
The bag barely moved.
And Mac didn’t even notice him.
Frank walked up and put two. 45 slugs into the back of his head.
Then he went home, got his old longboard out of the garage, and gave it a good waxing. Then he took it out into the water and let the waves pound him.
He never went back to the limo business or the Pinto Club.
Patty filed for divorce later that year.
Frank didn’t contest it.
He gave her the house and custody of Jill.
50
Four more bodies, Frank thinks as he drives through the desert.
English Pat Porter and his two boys.
And Mac.
Four more candidates, but not exactly strong ones. Hell, all that was almost twenty years ago. Even back then, the word was that people in London were relieved that Porter and his crew hadn’t cashed in on their round-trip tickets.
And Mac?
He’d had no family, no people. And the SDPD hadn’t exactly rushed to investigate the murder of a crooked ex-cop.
Of course, Mike lost the Pinto Club. Without Mac to restrain him, he ran it into the ground and ended up burning it down before the IRS, the bank, or the other creditors could take it away from him.
Then he got popped for the arson and went in for a ten spot.
The Migliores eventually took over the whole San Diego strip club business, and the prostitution and porn that went with it, with the Combination as their grand protectors.
But what does it have to do with me? Frank wonders.
Is it possible that the feds have reopened one of the Strip Club War cases and are going after the Migliores? So they’re eliminating potential witnesses, including yours truly?
If that’s the case, maybe Mike is in the dirt instead of the wind.
Frank pulls off the road.
Tired.
It hits him like a cold, hard wave.
This fatigue, this…despair. This acknowledgment of reality-that he can run and fight, run and fight, andwin every one, but that eventually, inevitably, he’s going to lose.
Hell, Frank thinks, I’vealready lost.
My life.
The life I love, anyway. Frank the Bait Guy is already dead, even if Frankie Machine ekes out survival. That life is gone-my home, the early mornings on the pier, the bait shack, seeing my customers, sponsoring the kids.
The Gentlemen’s Hour.
All gone now, even if I “live.”
And Patty.
And Donna.
And Jill.
What’s left of them now for me? Brief, tense meetings in hotels somewhere? Hurried embraces in the thick air of fear? Maybe a quick kiss, a fast hug. “How are you?” “What’s new?” Maybe there’ll be grandkids someday. Jill will send pictures to some post office box. Or maybe I can check in on one of those Internet sites, watch my grandchildren grow up on a little laptop screen.
If life is just running now, why bother?
Why not just swallow the gun right here?
Jesus, he thinks, you’ve become Jay Voorhees.
This is what kills you, surer than a bullet.
He makes a phone call.
51
The Nickel’s been expecting it.
A call from Frank on the backup phone.
Four in the morning, he’s in that surreal half sleep when the phone rings.
“Frank, thank God.”
“Sherm.”
“Look, there’s a clean passport and airline tickets waiting for you in Tijuana,” Sherm says. “You can be in France tomorrow morning. The EU won’t extradite on a capital crime. Everything’s taken care of for Patty and Jill. Godspeed, my friend.”
“Am I going to walk into another ambush, friend?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Sherm listens to Frank tell him about the ambush at the bank and the GPS monitor that led to the motel in Brawley.
“Frank, you don’t think-”
“What am I supposed to think, Sherm?” Frank asks. “Who knew about that bank? You and me.”
“They came, Frankie,” Sherm says. “I gave them nothing, I swear.”
“Who came?”
“Some wise guys,” Sherm says. “And the feds.”
“The feds?”
“That buddy of yours,” Sherm says. “Hansen. They have warrants out for you, Frank. For Vince Vena and Tony Palumbo.”
Tony Palumbo? Frank thinks. That must have been the guy with the garrote on the boat. “You know anything about this Palumbo, Sherm?”
“Word on the street,” Sherm says, “is that he was an FBI undercover, an informant, the guy behind the G-Sting indictments.”
G-Sting, Frank thinks.
Strip clubs.
Teddy Migliore.
And Detroit.
“Who were the wise guys?” Frank asked.
“I don’t know,” Sherm says. “All I know is I gave them nothing. Frank, whereare you?”
“Yeah, right.”
Sherm sounds legitimately hurt. “After all these years, Frank.”
“WhatI’m thinking, Sherm.”
“You have to trustsomebody, Frank.”
Is that right? Frank thinks. Who? There were three people who knew about the existence of that bank-me, Sherm, and Mike Pella. The only one I absolutelyknow didn’t flip on me is me.
So I’d better find Mike, and I don’t know where he is. There’s somebody who might, though.
Can I trust Dave?
Because we’ve been friends for twenty years?
And because he owes me one?
52
It was in 2002.
Dave hadn’t made it to the Gentlemen’s Hour in two weeks.
Frank knew why.
Everyone in San Diego knew what was keeping the FBI busy-the disappearance of a seven-year-old girl from her upstairs bedroom in the suburbs. Carly Mack’s parents had put her to bed the night before, and when they went to wake her in the morning, she was gone.
Just gone.
Terrifying, Frank thought when he read about it in the paper. A parent’s worst nightmare. He couldn’t imagine how the Macks felt. He knew that moment of sheer panic when he lost sight of Jill at the mall for ten seconds. To wake up and find her gone? Right from your own house, her own bedroom?