Or a wise guy would go to other wise guys to get justice. That’s how this whole thing of ours started anyway, wasn’t it? Ma figlia, ma figlia -my daughter, my daughter. But you can’t do that, because the other wise guys all want to kill you.
Go ahead, kill me, but let my daughter go.
But they won’t do that, because the wise guys have been corrupted by the politicians.
Lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
The irony is, I could have killed Mouse Senior’s kid and Billy Jacks’ kid-they were both in my sights and I let them walk. But I didn’t, because I’m a father, too, and it just isn’t done. It just isn’t done.
So who do you go to? Who do you trust?
You’ve always been able to trust yourself, but can you trust yourself to gun down the army they’re going to bring, and keep Jill safe in the process? Maybe, maybe in your prime you could have done it, but you’re twenty summers past your prime. You’re old, and you’re tired, and you’re hurt.
You can’t trust yourself to do this.
So where does that leave you?
More important, where does that leave Jill?
The answer is too awful to contemplate.
Face it, Frank says, there is only one chance, and it’s not even a very good one.
But it’s the only one.
Reluctantly, he sets down his gun and picks up the phone.
88
Dave Hansen remembers a breakfast he had with Frank Machianno at the OBP Cafe a few years back, some months after the Carly Mack case.
It was after an especially flat session at the Gentlemen’s Hour, and Frank was in a rare bad mood. It was something in the paper about a crackdown on organized crime, and Frank just went off on a rant.
“Nike pays twenty-nine cents to achild for making a basketball jersey, then turns around and sells it for one hundred and forty dollars,” Frank said. “AndI’m the criminal?
“Wal-Mart sends half the mom-and-pop stores in the country the way of the buffalo while they pay the kids who maketheir cheap crap seven cents an hour. AndI’m the criminal?
“Two million jobs have gone adios in the past two years, a working man can’t afford a down payment on a house anymore, and the IRS mugs us like drunks at an ATM, then sends our money to a defense contractor who closes down a factory, lays off workers, and pays himself a seven-figure bonus. AndI’m the criminal? I’m the guy who should get life without parole?
“You could take the Crips, the Bloods, the Jamaican posses, the Mafia, the Russian mob, and the Mexican cartels, and all of them put together couldn’t rake in as much green in a good year as Congress does in a bad afternoon. You could take every gang banger selling crack on every corner in America, and they couldn’t generate as much ill-gotten cash as one senator rounding the back nine with a corporate CEO.
“My father told me that you can’t beat the house, and he was right. You can’t beat the White House, or the House of Representatives. They own the game and the game isfixed, and it isn’t fixed forus.
“Sure, every thirty-eighth blue moon, they’ll whack one of their own. Send a human sacrifice to some Club Fed for a couple of years as sop to the masses and an example to the others of what happens to a rich white guy stupid enough to let that fifth ace fall out of his sleeve in full view of the public. But letme slip on the cosmic banana peel, and I am going to the maximum hole with the rest of the losers for the rest of my life.
“You know why the government wants to shut down organized crime?
“We’re competition.
“That’s it. That’s what’s behind the OC Task Force, your FBI, RICO. RICO? Big government and big business? That is the workingdefinition of ‘racketeering in conspiracy.’ A felony happens every time two suits take a piss together in the Senate men’s room.
“So the government wants to beat down organized crime.
“That’s hysterical.
“The governmentis organized crime.
“The only difference between them and us is they’remore organized.”
That was Frank’s rant on organized crime.
Dave didn’t believe it then, but he sure as shit believes it now.
Not that it matters, he thinks. I have to do what I have to do.
I have the rest of my life ahead of me.
The rest of the guys are coming along the beach, but Dave is coming in by boat, from the water.
It seems only fitting.
89
It’s cold and dark coming on four in the morning on a winter’s day in San Diego.
The famous sunshine doesn’t start for a few hours and the real sunny, warm days don’t start for a couple of months.
But the storm is over now.
The big swell has blown itself out, and the waves fall gently on the shore.
Frank walks along the beach toward the base of the pier. His body hurts, his chest so tight with anxiety, he can barely breathe.
First he sees the lights of the pier, then the faint glow of a flashlight; then he sees someone walking through the mist toward him.
A young man.
“Frankie Machine?” the man asks.
Frank nods.
“Jimmy Giacamone,” the man says, as if he expects Frank to recognize him. Frank just looks at him, so the man adds, “Jimmy ‘the Kid’ Giacamone.”
Frank doesn’t respond to it.
Jimmy the Kid says, “I could have taken you, Frankie Machine, I’d a had the chance.”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“She’s coming, don’t worry,” Jimmy the Kid says. “I gotta pat you down first, Frankie.”
Frank raises his arms.
Jimmy pats him down quickly and efficiently and finds the little tape cassette in Frank’s jacket pocket. “This is it?”
Frank nods. “Where’s my daughter?”
“Just so you know,” Jimmy says. “I don’t approve of any of this. This thing with your daughter. I’m old-school.”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“Come on.”
Jimmy the Kid grabs him by the right elbow and leads him along the beach. When they get under the pier, he says, “I got it. I got him. He’s clean.”
A group of men come out of the mist like ghosts, their flashlights in one hand, their guns in another. There are five of them, the whole Wrecking Crew.
And Donnie Garth, except he doesn’t have a gun. He holds out his hand and Jimmy the Kid gives him the tape. He pops it into a Dictaphone, listens for a second, and nods.
“Bring her to me,” Frank says.
Garth swings his flashlight up and down. An endless minute later, Frank sees Jill walking toward him through the fog, with Donna at her side.
“Daddy.”
She looks like she’s been crying, but she looks strong.
“It’s going to be all right, baby.”
“Daddy-”
Frank reaches out and holds her tight. Whispers into her ear. “Go. Be a doctor. Make me proud.”
She sobs into his shoulder. “Daddy-”
“Shhhhh, it’s all right.” He looks up at Garth. “I made copies. They’re in safe-deposit boxes all over the world. If anything should happen to my daughter-a robber shoots her, she gets hit by a car, she falls off a horse-there are people who will distribute this tape to every major news network.”
Jimmy the Kid looks at Garth.
“Let her go,” Garth says.
“Listen-”
“Shut up,” Garth says. “I said, ‘Let her go.’”
Jimmy hesitates, then nods his head at Donna and says, “Get her the fuck out of here.”
Donna starts to take her, but Jill grabs Frank’s neck and won’t let go. “Daddy, they’re going to kill you.”
“They’re not going to kill me, baby,” he whispers. “I’m Frankie Machine.”
Donna slips the gun into his hands, then pushes Jill to the ground and falls on top of her. Frank shoots Jimmy the Kid between the eyes, then one of the Wrecking Crew, then another.
Carlo gets a shot away before a bullet blows the back of his head off. The shock knocks Frank to the ground, and he tries to aim at the fourth guy but sees he’s going to be too late.